The Seven Letters spring from the sense of reality, the living vigorous instinct, from which the Christian

spirit can never free itself. An Apocalypse could not content St. John: it did not bring him in close enough

relation to his Churches. And so, as a second thought, he addressed the Seven representative Churches

one by one; and, as the letters could not be placed last, he placed them near the beginning; but the one link

of connection between them and the Apocalypse lies in the words with which each is finished: he that hath

an ear, let him hear what the spirit saith to the Churches, i.e. not merely the words of the Letter, but the

Apocalypse which follows.

It is also not improbable that St. John had received a greater share of the regular Jewish education than most

of his fellow-Apostles, and that, through his higher education, the accepted Jewish forms of composition

had a greater hold on his mind, and were more difficult for him to throw off, than for Peter, who had never

been so deeply imbued with them. However that may be, it is at least evident in his later career that a new

stage began for him at this point, that he discarded Hebrew literary models and adopted more distinctly

Greek forms, and that his literary style and expression markedly improved at the same time. Proper

consideration of these facts must surely lead to the conclusion that no very long interval of time must

necessarily be supposed to have elapsed between the composition of the Revelation and of the Gospel. The

change in style is indeed very marked; but it is quite in accordance with the observed facts of literary

growth in other men that a critical and epoch-making step in mental development, when one frees oneself

from the dominion of a too narrow early education, and strikes out in a path of originality, may be

accompanied by a very marked improvement in linguistic expression and style.

The Seven Letters are farther removed from the type of the "true letter" than any other compositions in the

New Testament. In their conception they are strictly "literary epistles," deliberate and intentional imitations

of a literary form that was already firmly established in Christian usage. They were not intended to be sent

directly to the Churches to which they were addressed. They had never any separate existence apart from

one another and from the book of which they are a part. They are written on a uniform plan, which is

absolutely opposed to the spontaneity and directness of the true letter. At the stage in his development,

which we have supposed the author to be traversing, he passed from the domination of one literary form,

the Jewish apocalyptic, to the domination of another literary form, the Christian epistolary. He had not yet

attained complete literary freedom: he had not yet come to his heritage, emancipated himself from the

influence of models, and launched forth on the ocean of his own wonderful genius. But he was just on the

point of doing so. One step more, and he was his own master.

How near that step was is obvious, when we look more closely into the character of the Seven Letters. It is

only by very close study, as in the chapters below devoted to the individual letters, that the reader can duly

appreciate the special character of each. To sum up and anticipate the results of that closer study, it may

here be said that the author of the Seven Le tters, while composing them all on the same general lines, as

mere parts of an episode in a great work of literature, imparts to them many touches, specially suitable to the

individual Churches, and showing his intimate knowledge of them all. In each case, as he wrote the letter,

the Church to which it was addressed stood before his imagination in its reality and its life; he was absorbed

with the thought of it alone, and he almost entirely forgot that he was composing a piece of literature, and

apostrophis ed it directly, with the same overmastering earnestness and sense of responsibility that breathe

through St. Paul's letters.

As will be shown fully in chapter 14, the Seven Churches stood as representative of seven groups of

congregations; but the Seven Letters are addressed to them as individual Churches, and not to the groups

for which they stand. The letters were written by one who was familiar with the situation, the character, the

past history, the possibilities of future development, of those Seven Cities. The Church of Sardis, for

example, is addressed as the Church of that actual, single city: the facts and characteristics mentioned are

proper to it alone, and not common to the other Churches of the Hermus Valley. Those others were not

much in the writer's mind: he was absorbed with the thought of that one city: he saw only death before it.

But the other cities which were connected with it may be warned by its fate; and he that overcometh shall be