accomplished; it is not to be understood as foreshadowing the Papacy, according to the foolish imaginings,

"philosophy and vain deceit" as St. Paul would have called them (Col 2:8) of one modern school; it is not to

be tortured by extremists on any side into conformity with their pet hatreds. Those are all idle fancies, which

do harm to no one except those who waste their intellect on them. But it becomes a serious evil when the

magnificent confidence and certainty of St. John as to the speedy accomplishment of all these things is

distorted into a declaration of the immediate Co ming of the Lord and the end of the world. Time was not an

element in his anticipation. He was gazing on the eternal, in which time has no existence. Had any Asian

reader asked him at what time these things should be accomplished, he would assuredly have answered in

the spirit of Browning's Grammarian:--

What's time? Leave "now" to dogs and apes; Man has forever.

Moreover, it is declared in the plainest language which the Apocalypse admits that the series of the

Emperors is to continue yet for a season. The Beast himself is the eighth king (i.e. Emperor, according to the

strict technical usage of the Greek word): he is the incarnation and climax of the whole seven that precede:

he is Domitian himself as the visible present embodiment of the Imperial system. But the beast has also ten

horns: these are ten Emperors, which have not been invested with Imperial power as yet; but they receive

authority as Emperors with the Beast (i.e. as units in the Imperial system) for one hour: these shall war

against the Lamb , and the Lamb shall overcome them: 17:12,14.

The number ten is here to be interpreted as in 2:10, where the Church of Smyrna is to be exposed to

persecution for ten days. It merely denotes a finite number as contrasted with infinity: the series of Emperors

is limited and comes to an end in due season. Rome shall perish. In one sense Rome is perishing now in

every failure that it makes, in the victory of every martyr. The Beast was and is not. In another sense the end

is not yet. But there is an end. The p ower of every Emperor is for one hour: he shall live his little span of

pomp and pride, of power and failure, and he shall go down to the abyss, like his predecessors.