Symbolism does not take up so large a space in the Seven Letters as it does in the rest of the Apocalypse. In

the letters the writer was brought more directly in contact with real life and h uman conduct; and the practical

character of Christian teaching had a stronger hold on him when he felt himself, even in literature, face to

face with a real congregation of human beings, and pictured to himself in imagination their history and their

needs, their faults and excellencies. Yet even in the letters symbolism plays some part; ideas and objects are

sometimes named, not in their immediate sense, but as representatives or signs of something else. Not

merely is the general setting, the Seven Stars, the Lamps (candle -sticks in the Authorised and the Revised

Versions), etc., symbolical: even in the letters there are many expression whose real meaning is not what lies

on the surface. The "crown of life," indeed, may be treated as a mere figure of speech; but the "ten days" of

suffering through which Smyrna must pass can hardly be regarded as anything more than "a time which

comes to an end." Even the metaphors and other figures are not purely literary: they have had a history, and

have acquired a recognised and conventional meaning. The "door," which is mentioned in 3:7, would hardly

be intelligible without regard to current Christian usage.

Two points of view must be distinguished in this case. In the first place a regular, generally accepted

conventional symbolism was growing up among the Christians, in which Babylon meant Rome, a door meant

an opening for missionary work, and so on: this subject has not yet been properly investigated in a

scientific way, apart from prejudices and prepossessions.

In the second place, the letters were written to be understood by the Asian congregations, which mainly

consisted of converted pagans. The ideas expressed in the letters had to be put in a form which the readers

would understand; to suit their understanding the figures and comparisons must be drawn from sources and

objects familiar to them; the words must be used in the sense in which they were commonly employed in the

cities addressed; illustrations, which were needed to bring home to the readers difficult id eas, must be drawn

from the circle of their experience and education, chapters 11 and 13.

It has been too much the custom to regard the earliest Christian books as written in a specially Christian

form of speech, standing apart and distinguishable from the common language of the eastern Roman

Provinces. Had that been the case, it is not too bold to say that the new religion could not have conquered

the Empire. It was because Christianity appealed direct to the people, addressed them in their own language,

and made itself comprehensible to them on their plane of thought, that it met the needs and filled the heart of

the Roman world.

It is true that the Christian books and letters had to express doctrines, thought, ideas, truths, which were in a

sense new. But the newness and strangeness lay in the spirit, not in the words or the metaphors or the

illustrations. In the spirit lies the essence of the new thought and the new life, not in the words. This may

seem to be, and in a sense it is, a mere truism. Every one says it, and has been saying it from the beginning;

yet it is sometimes strangely ignored and misunderstood, and in the last few years we have had some

remarkable examples of this. We have seen treatises published in which the most remarkable second-century

statement of the essential doctrines and facts of Christianity, the epitaph of Avircius Marcellus,--a

statement intended and declaring itself to be public, popular, before the eyes and minds of all men--has been

argued to be non-Christian, because every single word, phrase and image in it is capable of a pagan

interpretation, and can be paralleled from pagan books and cults. That is perfectly true; it is an interesting

fact, and well worthy of being stated and proved; but it does not support the inference that is deduced. The

parts, the words, are individually capable of being all treated as pagan, but the essence, the spirit, of the

whole is Christian. As Aristotle says, a thing is more than the sum of its parts; the essence, the reality, the

Ousia, is that which has to be added to the parts in order to make the thing.