'Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments.'--Revelation 16:15

There is a marked peculiarity and also a special charm about the allusions of the

'beloved disciple' to the 'Temple and its services.' The other New Testament writers refer

to them in their narratives, or else explain their types, in such language as any well-

informed worshipper at Jerusalem might have employed. But John writes not like an

ordinary Israelite. He has eyes and ears for details which others would have left

unnoticed. As, according to a Jewish tradition, the high-priest read the Divine answer of

the Urim and Thummim by a heavenly light cast upon special letters in the names of the

tribes grave upon his breast-plate, so to John the presence and the words of Jesus seem

to render luminous the well-remembered services of the Temple. This, as we shall have

frequent occasion to show, appears in his Gospel, but much more in the Book of

Revelation. Indeed, the Apocalypse, as a whole, may be likened to the Temple services

in its mingling of prophetic symbols with worship and praise. But it is specially

remarkable, that the Temple -references with which the Book of Revelation abounds are

generally to minutiae, which a writer who had not been as familiar with such details, as

only personal contact and engagement with them could have rendered him, would

scarcely have even noticed, certainly not employed as part of his imagery. They come in

naturally, spontaneously, and so unexpectedly, that the reader is occasionally in danger

of overlooking them altogether; and in language such as a professional man would

employ, which would come to him from the previous exercis e of his calling. Indeed, some

of the most striking of these references could not have been understood at all without

the professional treatises of the Rabbis on the Temple and its services. Only the studied

minuteness of Rabbinical descriptions, derived from the tradition of eye-witnesses, does

not leave the same impression as the unstudied illustrations of St. John.

These naturally suggest the twofold inference that the Book of Revelation and the

Fourth Gospel must have been written before the Temple services had actually ceased,

and by one who had not merely been intimately acquainted with, but probably at one

time an actor in them. 65

The argument may be illustrated by an analogous case. Quite lately, they who have dug

under the ruins of the Temple have discovered one of those tablets in the Court of the

Temple which warned Gentiles, on pain of death, not to advance farther into the

sanctuary. The tablet answers exactly to the description of Josephus, and its inscription

is almost literally as he gives it. This tablet seems like a witness suddenly appearing,

after eighteen centuries, to bear testimony to the narrative of Josephus as that of a

contemporary writer. Much the same instantaneous conviction, only greatly stronger, is

carried to our minds, when, in the midst of some dry account of what went on in the

Temple, we suddenly come upon the very words which St. John had employed to

describe heavenly realities. Perhaps one of the most striking instances of this kind is

afforded by the words quoted at the head of this chapter--'Blessed is he that watcheth,

and keepeth his garments.' They literally describe, as we learn from the Rabbis, the