cannot be said with truth that the letter is exclusively Jewish in tone. There is nothing in it which would

seem strange or foreign to the Hellenic or Hellenised people for whom the book was in the first instance

written. Even the tree of life carried no un-Hellenic connotation to Ephesian readers. The tree was as

significant a symbol of life -giving Divine power to the Asian Greeks as to the Jews, though in a different

way. Trees had been worshipped as the home of the Divine nature and power from time immemorial, and

were still so worshipped, in Asia Minor as in the ancient world generally. On some sacred tree the prosperity

and safety of a family or tribe o r city was often believed to depend. When the sacred olive-tree on the

Acropolis of Athens put forth a new shoot after the city had been burned by the Persians, the people knew

that the safety of the State was assured. The belief was widely entertained that the life of a man was

connected with some tree, and returned into that tree when he died. The tree which grew on a grave was

often thought to be penetrated with the spirit and life of the buried man; and an old Athenian law punished

with death any one that had cut a holm-oak growing in a sepulchral ground, i.e. heroon. Sacred trees are

introduced in Figure 4 chapter 6, Figure 23 chapter 21 and Figure 14A chapter 17.

It will probably seem to many persons an unworthy and even irrational procedure to trace any connection

between the superstitious veneration of sacred trees and the symbolism of St. John. But it was shown in

chapter 13 that although Ignatius abhorred paganism, and though the memory of his pagan days caused a

lasting sense of shame in his mind, yet he could compare the life of a Christian congregation to the

procession at a pagan festival, and could use symbolism derived from the pagan mysteries to shadow forth

the deepest thoughts of Christianity. In all those cases the same process takes place: the religious ideas of

the pagans are renovated in a Christian form, ennobled and spiritualised. The tree of life in the Revelation

was in the mind of the Ephesians a Christianisation of the sacred tree in the pagan religion and folklore: it

was a symbolic expression which was full of meaning to the Asian Christians, because to them the tree had

always been the seat of Divine life and the intermediary between Divine and human nature. The problem

which was constantly present to the ancient mind in thinking of the relation of man to God appears here:

how can the gulf that divides human nature from the Divine nature be bridged over? how can God come into

effective relation to man? In the holy tree the Divine life is bringing itself closer to man. He who can eat of

the tree of life is feeding on the Divine power and nature, is strengthening himself with the body and the

blood of Christ. The idea was full of power to the Asian readers.

But to us the "tree of life" carries in itself little meaning. It seems to us at first little more than a metaphor in

this passage, and in Revelation 22 it appears to us to be a mere detail in a rather fanciful and highly poetical

allegory. A considerable effort is needed before we can even begin dimly to appreciate the power whic h this

idea had in the minds of Ephesian readers: we have to recreate the thoughts and mind of that time, before we

can understand their conception of the "tree of life."

Accordingly, although the "tree of life" is different from any expression that occurs, so far as known, in

Greek literature, it contains nothing that would seem strange or exotic to Greeks or Asians. And every other

idea in the letter would seem equally natural, and would appeal to equally familiar beliefs and habits of life.

While we need not doubt that the writer took the "tree of life" from his own Jewish sphere of thought, yet he

certainly avoids in all these letters anything that is distinctly anti-Hellenic in expression. So far as the Seven

Letters are concerned, he is in advance of, not in hostility to, the best side of Hellenic thought and

Thus ends the letter. It is a distinctly laudatory one, when it is examined phrase by phrase: it shows

admiration and full appreciation of a great career and a noble history. Yet it does not leave a pleasant

impression of the Ephesian Church; and there is a lack of cordial and sympathetic spirit in it. The writer

seems not to have loved the Ephesians as he did the Smyrnaeans and Philadelphians. He respected and

esteemed them. He felt that they possessed every great quality except a loving enthusiasm. But when, in

order to finish with a word of praise, he seeks for some definite laudable fact in their conduct at the present

moment, the one thing which he finds to say is that they hated those whom he hated. Their disapproval and

their hatred were correctly apportioned: in sympathy and love they were deficient. A common hatred is a

poor and ephemeral ground of unanimity.