17 morning star.1 And the Spirit and the bride say, Come.2 And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of 18 life freely. For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add3 unto him the plagues that are 19 written in this book and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from 20 the things which are written in this book. He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, 21 come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

5

1 The splendour and beauty of this star make it the object of comparison. It succeeds the darkness of the night and brings on the day. "In each trial," says Mr. Barnes," each scene of sorrow, let us think of the bright star of the morning as it rises on the darkness of the night, emblem of our Saviour as He rises on our sorrow and our gloom."

2 A response to Him who saith, "Behold, I come quickly " (ver. 12), who styles Himself" the bright and morning star." That the appeal in the last two clauses is to men, there can be no doubt; an appeal evidently suggested and enforced by the address first made to the Son of God. This interpretation harmonizes with verse 20, and is that of Daubuz, Dr. S. Clarke in D'Oyly and Mant, Calmet in his commentary, Bloomfield, Professor Stuart, Hengstenberg, etc.

3 These words of course have special reference to this book of the Apocalypse; although any alteration of the sacred Scriptures in any part by addition or subtraction must of course in like manner be criminal in the sight of God.

4 We have here the parting words of Jesus and of John, Jesus once more repeating those animating words which contain the sum of the prophetic announcements of this book. The "Even so, come "is spoken by the Spirit (ver. 17), or by John as His organ and as the representative of the Church, the bride. The response to the invitation has as large a meaning as the promise.

5 This is the simplest form of the benediction, and is the same as that which closes the epistle of St. Paul to the Philippians, and is also found in Romans xvi. 24.

CHAPTER XI.

TRADITIONARY HISTORY CONTINUED.

LENGTH OF HIS IMPRISONMENT IN PATMOS.-HEARS OF THE SIEGE AND FALL OF JERUSALEM.-EFFECT OF THE TIDINGS ON HIM.-SOLE SURVIVOR OF THE APOSTLES. THE CHANGES THAT HAD COME OVER HIM.-ACCESSION OF TITUS TO THE EMPIRE.-CHARACTER OF THIS EMPEROR-WAS ST. JOHN

ACQUAINTED WITH THE GREAT WRITERS OF GREECE AND ROME?-EPICTETUS, SENECA, AND PLINY.-ST. PAUL'S LABOURS IN ASIA MINOR.—THE JEWS OF ASIA MINOR.-HEATHEN PHILOSOPHY.-ST. JOHN'S SPECIAL FITNESS FOR THIS SCENE OF LABOUR.-EARLY ADULTERATION OF CHRISTI ANITY. THE APOSTLE VISITS THE SEVEN CHURCHES. ANCIENT SMYRNA. -PERGAMOS.-THYATIRA.-SARDIS.-PHILADELPHIA.-LAODICEA.-RETURN TO EPHESUS.-ANECDOTE OF HIS PURSUIT OF A YOUNG ROBBER. THE EBIONITES.-DOCETE.-CERINTHIANS.-CO-LABOURERS.

WE left the apostle in Ephesus, the chief city of what was known in Bible times as Asia," the western part of what we term Asia Minor; and where shortly after his arrival, not far from the year 65, the Neronian persecution had reached him. In Patmos, to which he was banished, he had been permitted to see, in the visions of the Apocalypse, the consummation in perfect and everlasting glory of that kingdom, in laying the foundations of which, amid scenes of contest and bloodshed, he had taken, and was yet to take, so important a share.

As to the length1 of his imprisonment, we have no reliable means of information. We cannot suppose it continued longer than the persecution under which it occurred; and the persecutor himself died in the middle of June, A.D. 68. At his release he probably returned at once to Ephesus. Clement of Alexandria says 2 that at the death of the tyrant John returned to Ephesus from the island Patmos. The persecution was then raging in his native land. The times he had foretold as at hand, and the things shortly to come to pass, had commenced. Tidings would no doubt reach him, from time to time, of the woes of Palestine, and of the progress of the siege of Jerusalem. At length he hears of the fall of the city, and the destruction of the temple, in accomplishment of the Lord's and his own predictions. It is not impossible that

The Chronicon Paschale says he lived in Ephesus nine years before his exile, and spent fifteen years in Patmos.

* Quis Salvus Dives, § 42, quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., iii. 23.

S

he may have learned from some who escaped how the faithful witnesses (who, as we have supposed,1 were two of his brother apostles) prophesied in the streets of that devoted city until they were slain, and their dead bodies permitted to lie unburied until God Himself resuscitated them and took them up to heaven. Sad indeed must have been the recital of the woes and horrors which attended the siege and overthrow of Jerusalem, to one who had known and loved it so well. Of all the stately city, its palaces, fortresses, temple, nothing remained except the towers of Phasaelus, Mariamne, and Hippicus, and part of the western wall, left as a defence of the Roman camp. Not only was it depopulated, but the same may be said of the adjacent districts for a wide distance. The political existence of the nation was annihilated, and never since has it been numbered among the states of the world.

We have now arrived at that point in the history when St. John was the only or almost the sole survivor of the apostles. He could not have been far from 65 years of age. James, and Peter, and Paul were no more. If Peter survived, or any of the others, it must have been in extreme old age, or in some remote quarter of the globe; and John must have been very soon left entirely alone, to continue some score and a half of years longer, engaged in settling the foundations and extending the borders of the Christian Church. His eye was not dimmed, nor his natural force abated; and for at least the period of still another human generation he was to be the acknowledged leader of the Christian Church. If hitherto he had seemed to be less prominent than Peter and Paul, "if," as has been said, " Peter was appointed by the Lord to lay the foundation of the apostolic church, and Paul to build the main structure thereon, John, the apostle of completion, was to erect the dome, whose top should lose itself in the glory of the new heaven."

as now.

"Far away were the scenes of his youth and the graves of his fathers. The homes of his childhood were to know him no more for ever, 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 The ardent friends, the dear brother, the faithful father, the fondly ambitious mother, who made up this 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 irrecoverably. Cut off thus utterly from everything that 1 See Note, Rev. xi. 12, p. 213.

Schaff, Hist. of the Church, i., p. 78.