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THE SEVEN CHURCHES IN ASIA.

ONE of the promises of the Saviour to His disciples is, "I will come again." The particulars involved in this promise are given in His discourse recorded in the 24th and 25th chapters of the Gospel by Matthew. A prominent feature in these particulars is the apparent nearness of His advent. "This generation," He says, "shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled." This prospective nearness of the Lord's coming took strong hold of the minds of the early disciples of the Saviour. It tinged all their thoughts and feelings, and appears in all their allusions to the subject. Its hope sustained them in the difficulties and perplexities by which they were surrounded, and in the fearful persecutions to which they were exposed. What to them were the sufferings of an hour if the judge was at the door, and the end of all things was at hand.

The lapse of time has shown that the early Christian teachers placed too literal an interpretation on this feature of the Lord's discourse respecting His second coming. But no lapse of time can nullify the truth of prophecy, or weaken the certainty of the fulfilment of Divine promises. Mistaken interpretations are exposed and fade away in the light of advancing Christian intelligence, but Divine promises are like the everlasting hills, a tower of strength and a rock of security and hope to the Church of God in every period of her history. And, when rightly interpreted, it will be seen that no promise involves a richer hope than the promise, "I will come again."

This feature of the prophecy respecting the Lord's second coming determines the period to which the teaching and prophecies of the Apocalypse have special reference. The opening chapter, and almost the opening words, refer to this subject. The Apocalypse is "the revelation of Jesus Christ," given "to show unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass" (ver. 1). They are blessed "who read and hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things that are written therein, for the time is at hand" (ver. 3). And the seventh verse announces, "Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him." These words clearly indicate that the varied contents of this Apocalypse have special reference to the period of the second coming of the Lord. Expositors who have sought the fulfilment of its prophecies in the external history of the Church and the world, have overlooked these intimations of its purpose. Had they been carefully studied they would

have shown that all its teachings have relation to the actual state of the Church at the time of the Lord's coming; and are intended to make manifest the prevalent evil and error of the fallen Church, to reveal the execution of the judgment predicted respecting it, to strengthen the things of wisdom and holiness that remain, and to announce the fact of His second coming, and the setting up of a new dispensation of faith and life as the hope of the Church and of the world. If now we are convinced that the time of this advent is really at hand that the marvellous changes in the rcligious, social, and civil life of modern times, and especially the increased attention given to the exposition of the Word and the education and religious culture of the people, are but the effects and evidences of the nearer approach of the Son of man in the clouds of heaven,-then we must see that every portion of this book has a practical application to the condition and circumstances of modern Christianity; and that to trace this application and gain from it some of the lessons it is intended to impart is at once a privilege and a duty.

One of the most wonderful events in human history is the rise and spread of the Christian Church. There was nothing in the appearance of the Saviour, or in the circumstances of His apostles, to justify the expectation of so marvellous a progress, or so miraculous a power as was evinced in the early promulgation of the gospel. Nothing short of direct influences of love and truth operating from the Lord into the minds of the disciples could have so elevated them above the prejudices of their Jewish education, enlightened their minds with the wisdom descending from above, and enabled them so powerfully to influence the minds of others.

Not less remarkable was the direction given to apostolic labour, and the places where the Christian Churches were first planted. Light had risen in the East. Science and learning and civilization had found their home on the banks of the Euphrates, and in what are now the buried cities of the ancient world. The time had arrived that the light of truth was to flood the western world, and to become the glory of the Gentiles--i.e. of the nations hitherto outside the pale of the Church. No position could be more favourable for the first establishment of a Church having this mission than the cities of what has been called proconsular Asia.1 They faced the West, whence the light was to travel, and were thronged by visitors from the nations towards whom the Apostles were being guided.

1 Proconsular Asia comprehended Phrygia, Mysia, Lydia, and Caria. Its chief

We read in Acts xvi. that when Paul and Silas "had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia," they "were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia." And "after they were come to Mysia they assayed to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered them not." The current of their life and mission was thus being directed by an unseen influence towards another continent and another people. They were led onward to Troas, situated at the north-western portion of Asia Minor, whence was easy transit to Europe. And while here there appeared to Paul in a dream a man of Macedonia, who "prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us." And after the vision we read, "immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them." On his return to Asia Paul found disciples at Ephesus who had been baptized into John's baptism-the baptism of repentance. These he instructed and baptized into "the name of the Lord Jesus; and here he continued for "the space of two years, so that all they which dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks" (Acts xix. 10).

The introduction of this portion of Asia seems, therefore, as we have intimated, to involve an important feature in the early propagation of the gospel. It was the point of connection between the east and the west. The religion of the Bible, hitherto confined to the east, was, under the gospel, to be extended to the west; and, as a preparation for this extension of the Saviour's kingdom, the Church was first established in that part of the globe, where these two great portions of the human family met. Greeks and Romans were attracted by the opulence of the Asiatic cities of this part of the continent. They resorted to them for purposes of commerce, of religion, or of intellectual culture. And here they came in contact with the current of the new life and light which was being poured out upon the nations of the earth. They came to the seat of earthly magnificence and splendour, and they found the riches of heaven and the glory of the unseen world. The seven Churches in Asia were literally, therefore, the Churches formed from the earliest receivers of the gospel; and, if we may so express it, they formed "the base of operations" in the warfare against "the world, the flesh, and the devil," involved in the promulgation of "the glorious gospel of the blessed God."

town was Ephesus. Only a portion of this territory, not more than a hundred miles square, was occupied by the cities in which were planted the seven Churches in Asia.

But the relation of these Churches to modern Christianity-to the religion of our own day, and to the progress of religion in the souls of men-can only appear from a deeper insight into their scriptural meaning. Every name in the Word denotes a quality and involves a hidden meaning. This is true of persons, and is readily recognised in some of the more prominent names of Holy Scripture. No thoughtful reader of the Word can fail to discover that there is a hidden meaning attached to the names of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the heads of the commonwealth of Israel; to Moses and Aaron, who conducted their descendants from Egypt to Canaan; to Joshua, who won for them an establishment in the land of promise; and to Elijah and Daniel among their prophets. In relation to these the Word itself points out the fact of this hidden meaning, and the Church has recognised its existence from the earliest periods of her history. Abraham is "the father of the faithful," Moses represents the law he was the instrument of conveying to the world, Aaron, the priesthood instituted in him and his descendants, Joshua, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Captain of our salvation, and Elijah and Daniel, the Word in its varied prophetic aspects. And what is thus conspicuous in these prominent names doubtless extends to all the others, though we may often fail to read their full significance, and to reach the depths of their hidden meaning.

The great lesson thus taught in the names of persons is not less truly involved in the names of places. And here also some of the more prominent places named in the Word manifestly represent spiritual things, and are so regarded by the most enlightened teachers of the Church. The land of Canaan has supplied to Christian writers their best thoughts respecting heaven, which they have seen that it represents. Jerusalem and Zion have been interpreted in all Christian literature to denote the Church. And this law of spiritual interpretation has extended to the other cities of Canaan, as Tyre and Sidon, the cities in "the region of Decapolis," and "the cities of the south." Nor is it possible to carefully examine the prophecies respecting the great monarchies of the ancient world, and not discover in the names of Egypt and Idumea, Babylon and Assyria, traces of this inner meaning. It is this spiritual sense of the Word which connects revelation with the religious history of the race, and makes it a Divine medium of promoting the regeneration of the world. There is indeed a geography of the Church and of the regenerate mind as well as of the outer world. And in the inspired teaching of the written Word the

geography of the world, as known to the inspired writers, is made, by the Divine law of correspondence, the medium of conveying to the world the knowledge of this higher, more interior, and spiritual geography.

The general law which thus applies to all the places named in the Word may be traced in the allusions made to Asia. Its religious meaning will be discerned in its most prominent features; its speciality, if we may so express it, which is its use in the history of the world. Asia, as we have seen, was the seat of the earliest religions and the most ancient civilizations. Here the earliest revelations of which we have historical records were made to the minds of men. Churches had been established, risen to their noonday splendour, and faded away in the obscurity of error and the darkness of spiritual night, and civilizations, which without the quickening powers of religion are impossible, had attained the zenith of their glory, sunk into decline, and become things of the past, before Greece had risen to sway the world by her subtle philosophy and marvellous art, or Rome had bound to her triumphal car the captive nations of the earth. In the written Word, therefore, Asia is distinguished as the seat of what Swedenborg calls the most ancient Church, i.e. of the Church whose religious history is involved in the Mosaic account of the creation; and subsequently of the ancient church, which was instituted in Noah and his descendants; and finally, of the patriarchal and Israelitish church, established in Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their descendants. There is one feature runs through all these institutions of mercy and goodwill to men-it is the revelation of truth to the Church and to the world. Before the revelation we now have other revelations of truth were made to the world. To some of these the Bible itself refers, and their existence is involved in the benevolence of the Creator and his care for the spiritual well-being of His children. The revelations to the most ancient church were, doubtless, light breaking through the purified will to illumine the understanding and to instruct the life. In succeeding ages it became a revelation from without, instructing the mind in the ways of wisdom, and guiding the footsteps into the path of peace. One feature is common to every revelation; it is the light of spiritual intelligence and heavenly wisdom given to lift the soul above the things of earth, and to fit men, who are born for immortality, for their final abode in the heavens.

It is this light of truth then which is denoted by Asia, and it is its condition in the world as it still lingers in the Church at the time of