"To desert islands banished,
With God the exile dwells,
And sees the future glory
His mystic writing tells."
The grotto of La Scala may have been the spot from which he looked out upon the Ægean Sea, and upward into the heavens, communing in solitude with his own thoughts, or with his Lord for whom he was there. Patmos was for this a fitting place, whether he had gone there from his own choice, or had been driven thither by the cruelty of his persecutor. In such solitude did Milton muse, and Bunyan dream.
It was the "Lord's Day," says John. He alone, and at this time only, uses that name with which we have become familiar, though it may have been in common use among the early Christians. It meant much to John, even more than to us. It was a reminder of the day when he looked into, and then entered, the tomb of his Lord, and believed that He had risen from the dead.
His meditations may have been aided by Old Testament Manuscripts, his only companions; especially that of Daniel, in which it is claimed "the spirit and imagery of the Book of Revelation is steeped."
What a contrast there was between the peaceful waves of Gennesaret, creeping silently upon the sandy beach of his childhood home, and the breakers dashing upon the rocky coast of his exile abode in his old age! How suggestive of the calm and turmoil of his life!
Smyrna—Old Engraving
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But his musings were suddenly broken by "a great voice, as of a trumpet," giving a command—"What thou seest, write in a book." He says, "I turned to see the voice that spake with me." He beheld his Lord in greater grandeur than he had seen Him on earth, even on Hermon. As he gazed upon the divine figure he must have exclaimed,