his Churches, he could remain calm, free from apprehension, confident in their steadfastness on the whole

and their inevitable victory over the enemy. In that lonely time the thoughts and habits of his youth came

back to him, while his recently acquired Hellenist habits were weakened in the want of the nourishment

supplied by constant intercourse with Hellenes and Hellenists. His Hellenic development ceased for the

time. The head of the Hellenic Churches of Asia was transformed into the Hebrew seer. Nothing but the

Oriental power of separating oneself from the world and immersing oneself in the Divine could stand the

strain of that long v igil on the shore of Patmos. Nothing but a Vision was possible for him; and the Vision,

full of Hebraic imagery and the traces of late Hebrew literature which all can see, yet also often penetrated

with a Hellenist and Hellenic spirit so subtle and delicate that few can appreciate it, was slowly written

down, and took form as the Revelation of St. John.

Most men succumb to such surroundings, and either die or lose all human nature and sink to the level of the

beasts. A few can live through it, sustained by the hope of escape and return to the world. But St. John rose

above that life of toil and hopeless misery, because he lived in the Divine nature and had lost all thought of

the facts of earth. In that living death he found his true life, like many another martyr of Christ. Who shall tell

how far a man may rise above earth, when he can rise superior to an environment like that? Who will set

bounds to the growth of the human soul, when it is separated from all worldly relations and trammels,

feeding on its o wn thoughts and the Divine nature, and yet is filled not with anxiety about its poor self, but

with care, love and sympathy for those who have been constituted its charge?

When he was thus separated from communication with his Churches, St. John was already dead in some

sense to the world. The Apocalypse was to be, as it were, his last testament, transmitted to the Asian

Churches from his seclusion when opportunity served, like a voice coming to them from the other world.

Those who can with sure and easy hand mark out the limits beyond which the soul of man can never go, will

be able to determine to their own satisfaction how far St. John was mistaken, when he thought he heard the

Divine voice and listened to a message transmitted through him to the Churches and to the Church as a

whole. But those who have not gauged so accurately and narrowly the range of the human soul will not

attempt the task. They will recognise that there is in these letters a tone and a power above the mere human

level, and will confess that the ordinary man is unable to keep pace with the movement of this writer. It is

admitted that the letters reveal to us the character and the experiences of the writer, and that they spring out

of his own nature. But what was his nature? How far can man rise above the human level? How far can man

understand the will and judgment of God? We lesser men who have not the omniscient confidence of the

critical pedant, do not presume to fix the limits beyond which St. John could not go.

But we know that from the Apocalypse we have this gain, at least. Through the study of it we are able in a

vague and dim way to understand how that long drawn -out living death in Patmos was the necessary

training through which he must pass who should write the Fourth Gospel. In no other way could man rise to

that superhuman level, on which the Fourth Gospel is pitched, and be able to gaze with steady unwavering

eyes on the eternal and the Divine and to remain so unconscious of the ephemeral world. And they who

strive really to understand the education of Patmos will be able to understand the strangest and most

apparently incredible fact about the New Testament, how the John who is set before us in the Synoptic

Gospels could ever write the Fourth Gospel.

The Revelation, which was composed in the circumstances above described, must have been slow in taking

form. It was not the vision of a day; it embodied the contemplation and the insight of years. But its point of

view is the moment when the Apostle was snatched from the world and sent into banishment. After that he

knew nothing; his living entombment began then; and if the Revelation is quoted as an historical authority

about the Province, its evidence applies only to the period which he knew.

At last there came the assassination of the tyrant, the annulling of all his acts, and the strong reaction

against his whole policy. The Christians profited by this. The persecution, though not first instituted by