The place chosen for his banishment was a dreary desert island in the Aegean sea, called Patmos. It is situated among that cluster of islands, called the Sporades, about twenty miles from the Asian coast, and thirty or forty southwest of Ephesus. It is at this day known by the observation of travelers, to be a most remarkably desolate place, showing hardly anything but bare rocks, on which a few poor inhabitants make but a wretched subsistence. In this insulated desert the aged apostle was doomed to pass the lonely months, far away from the enjoyments of Christian communion and social intercourse, so dear to him, as the last earthly consolation of his life. Yet to him, his residence at Ephesus was but a place of exile. Far away were the scenes of his youth and the graves of his fathers. “The shore whereon he loved to dwell,”——the lake on whose waters he had so often sported or labored in the freshness of early years, were still the same as ever, and others now labored there, as he had done ere he was called to a higher work. But the homes of his childhood knew him no more forever, and rejoiced now in the light of the countenances of strangers, or lay in blackening desolation beneath the brand of a wasting invasion. The waters and the mountains were there still,——they are there now; but that which to him constituted all their reality was gone then, as utterly as now. The ardent friends, the dear brother, the faithful father, the fondly ambitious and loving mother,——who made up his little world of life, and joy, and hope,——where were they? All were gone; even his own former self was gone too, and the joys, the hopes, the thoughts, the views of those early days, were buried as deeply as the friends of his youth, and far more irrevocably than they. Cut off thus utterly from all that once excited the earthly and merely human emotions within him, the whole world was alike a desert or a home, according as he found in it communion with God, and work for his remaining energies, in the cause of Christ. Wherever he went, he bore about with him his resources of enjoyment,——his home was within himself; the friends of his youth and manhood were still before him in the ever fresh images of their glorious examples; the brother of his heart was near him always, and nearest now, when the persecutions of imperial tyranny seemed to draw him towards a sympathetic participation in the pains and the glories of that bloody death. The Lord of his life, the author of his hopes, the guide of his youth, the cherisher of his spirit, was over and around him ever, with the consolations of his promised presence,——“with him always, even to the end of the world.”
THE APOCALYPSE.
The Revelation of John the Divine opens with a moving and splendid view of these circumstances. Being, as it is recorded, in the isle that is called Patmos, for preaching the word of God, and for bearing witness of Jesus Christ, he was in his lonely banishment, one Lord’s day, sitting wrapped in a holy spiritual contemplation, when he heard behind him a great voice, as of a trumpet, which broke upon his startled ear with a most solemnly grand annunciation of the presence of one whose being was the source and end of all things. As the amazed apostle turned to see the person from whom came such portentous words, there met his eye a vision so dazzling, yet appalling in its beauty and splendor, amid the bare, dark rocks around, that he fell to the earth without life, and lay motionless until the heavenly being, whose awful glories had so overwhelmed him, recalled him to his most vivid energies, by the touch of his life-giving hand. In the lightning-splendors of that countenance, far outshining the glories of Sinai, reflected from the face of Moses, the trembling eye of the apostolic seer recognized the lineaments of one whom he had known in other days, and upon whose bosom he had hung in the warm affection of youth. Even the eye which now flashed such rays, he knew to be that which had once been turned on him in the aspect of familiar love; nor did its glance now bear a strange or forbidding expression. The trumpet-tones of the voice, which of old, on Hermon, roused him from the stupor into which he fell at the sight of the foretaste of these very glories, now recalled him to life in the same encouraging words, “Be not afraid.” The crucified and ascended Jesus, living, though once dead, now called on his beloved apostle to record the revelations which should soon burst upon his eyes and ears; that the churches that had lately been under his immediate attention, might learn the approach of events which most nearly concerned the advance of their faith. First, therefore, addressing an epistolary charge to each of the seven churches, he called them to a severe account for their various errors, and gave to each such consolations and promises as were suited to its peculiar circumstances. Then dropping these individualizing exhortations, he leaves all the details of the past, and the minutiae of the state of the seven churches, for a glance over the events of coming ages, and the revolutions of empires and of worlds. The full explanation of the scenes which follow, is altogether beyond the range of a mere apostolic historian, and would require such ability and learning in the writer,——such a length of time for their application to this matter, and such an expanse of paper for their full expression, as are altogether out of the question in this case. Some few points in this remarkable writing, however, fall within the proper notice of the apostle’s biographer, and some questions on the scope of the Apocalypse itself, as well as on the history of it, as a part of the sacred canon, will therefore be here discussed.
The minute history of the apostolic writings,——the discussion of their particular scope and tenor,——and the evidences of their inspiration and authenticity,——are topics, which fall for the most part under a distinct and independent department of Christian theology, the common details of which are alone sufficient to fill many volumes; and are of course altogether beyond the compass of a work, whose main object is limited to a merely historical branch of religious knowledge. Still, such inquiries into these deeper points, as truly concern the personal history of the apostles, are proper subjects of attention, even here. The life of no literary or scientific man is complete, which does not give such an account of his writings as will show under what circumstances,——with what design,——for what persons,——and at what time, they were written. But a minute criticism of their style, or illustrations of their meaning, or a detail of all the objections which have been made to them, might fairly be pronounced improper intrusions upon the course of the narrative. With the danger of such an extension of these investigations, in view, this work here takes up those points in the history of John’s writings, that seem to fall under the general rule in making up a personal and literary biography.
In the case of this particular writing, moreover, the difficulties of an enlarged discussion are so numerous and complicated, as to offer an especial reason to the apostolic historian, for avoiding the almost endless details of questions that have agitated the greatest minds in Christendom, for the last four hundred years. And the decision of the most learned and sagacious of modern critics, pronounces the Apocalypse of John to be “the most difficult and doubtful book of the New Testament.”
The points proper for inquiry in connection with a history of the life of John, may be best arranged in the form of questions with their answers severally following.
I. Did the Apostle John write the Apocalypse?
Many will doubtless feel disposed to question the propriety of thus bringing out, in a popular book, inquiries which have hitherto, by a sort of common consent, been confined to learned works, and wholly excluded from such as are intended to convey religious knowledge to ordinary readers. The principle has been sometimes distinctly specified and maintained, that some established truths in exegetical theology, must needs be always kept among the arcana of religious knowledge, for the eyes and ears of the learned few, to whom “it is given to know these mysteries;” “but that to them that are without,” they are ever to remain unknown. This principle is often acted on by the theologians of Germany and England, so that a distinct line seems to be drawn between an exoteric and an esoteric doctrine,——a public and a private belief,——the latter being the literal truth, while the former is such a view of things, as suits the common religious prejudices of the mass of hearers and readers. But such is not the free spirit of true Protestantism; nor is any deceitful doctrine of “accommodation” accordant with the open, single-minded honesty of apostolic teachings. Taking from the persons who are the subjects of this history, something of their simple freedom of word and action, for the reader’s benefit, several questions will be boldly asked, and as boldly answered, on the authorship, the scope, and character of the Apocalypse. And first, on the present personal question in hand, a spirit of tolerant regard for opinions discordant with those of some readers, perhaps may be best learned, by observing into what uncertainties the minds of the greatest and most devout of theologians, and of the mighty founders of the Protestant faith, have been led on this very point.
The great Michaelis (Introduction to the New Testament, vol. IV. c. xxxiii. § 1.) apologizes for his own doubts on the Apocalypse, justifying himself by the similar uncertainty of the immortal Luther; and the remarks of Michaelis upon the character of the persons to whom Luther thus boldly published his doubts, will be abundantly sufficient to justify the discussion of such darkly deep matters, to the readers of the Lives of the Apostles.
Not only Martin Luther as here quoted by Michaelis, but the other great reformers of that age, John Calvin and Ulric Zwingle, boldly expressed their doubts on this book, which more modern speculators have made so miraculously accordant with anti-papal notions. Their learned cotemporary, Erasmus, also, and the critical Joseph Scaliger, with other great names of past ages, have contributed their doubts, to add a new mark of suspicion to the Apocalypse.