the interest lies. It is not orthodoxy, it is living faith, and it shows us the place of Christ in the religion of John and of those to whom he wrote. And the Church not only owes to Jesus the wonderful emancipation and exaltation here described-the liberation from sin and the kingly and priestly dignity-it owes to Him also everything for which it still hopes. 'Behold, He cometh with the clouds.' What His coming means it takes the the whole book to tell, but it so includes every Christian hope that all Christian prayers can be briefly comprehended in the words, 'Come, Lord Jesus' (22 20).

I

The vision of the Son of Man in ch. 1 12 ff. is remarkable as applying to Jesus several of the features which in Daniel 7, on which it is based, belong to the Ancient of Days; but what is most remarkable in it is the assumption of divine attributes by the Risen Lord Himself. 'I am the first and the last and the living one, and I became dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever, and have the keys of death and of Hades.' This is not the language of the first of the saints, but of one whose relation to believers is quite disparate from any relation they can ever bear to each other. What gives it impressiveness, too, is the fact that it is no mere theologoumenon, no piece of speculative doctrine which has been artificially produced and is without practical consequence; the divine significance of Jesus which is exhibited in it is applied with heart-searching power, in the seven epistles, to everything in the moral life of the Church. Addressed as they are to local communities, and dealing with local conditions, these epistles are almost as directly as the central chapters of the fourth gospel a testimony of Jesus to Himself. They are concerned throughout with Him, and with His relations to the churches, and His interest in them. It is worth while to read them thinking only of the Speaker, or noticing only what is said in

the first person. 'I know thy works. Thou hast patience and didst endure for My name's sake. I have it against thee that thou hast left thy first love. I will remove thy candlestick out of its place unless thou repent. Thou hatest . . . what I also hate. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life. . . . These things saith the First and the Last . . . Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life. . . . These things saith He that hath the sharp two-edged sword. . . . Thou holdest fast My name and didst not deny My faith even in the days when Antipas, My witness, My faithful one, was slain among you. . . . To him that overcometh will I give of the hidden manna. . . These things saith the Son of God, who hath His eyes as a flame of fire. . . I know thy works . . but I have against thee. . . . All the churches shall know that I am He that searcheth reins and hearts and shall give you each according to your works. .. What ye have hold fast until I come. And he that overcometh and keepeth My works unto the end, I will give him authority over the nations. . . . These things saith He that hath the seven spirits of God. I know thy works. . . . I have found no works of thine fulfilled before My God. . . . Thou hast a few names in Sardis that have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy. He that overcometh shall be clothed thus in white garments, and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, and I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels. . . . These things saith He that is holy, He that is true. . . . Thou hast kept My word and hast not denied My name. I will make them know that I have loved thee. Thou hast kept the word of My patience, and I will keep thee from the hour of temptation. He that overcometh, I will make him a pillar in the Temple

of My God, and he shall go no more out, and I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, and My new name. . . . These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. I know thy works. Thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. I counsel thee to buy of Me. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any one hear My voice and open the door, I will come into him and will sup with him and he with Me. He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with Me on My throne, even as I overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.' . . . For the practical comprehension of the place of Jesus, not in the creed or the theology, but in the faith and life of primitive Christianity, these extracts from the epistles to the seven churches are priceless. It does not matter what the speculative Christology of the writer was, or whether he had any such thing; it does not matter, in phrases like 'the beginning of the creation of God' (34), and 'the word of God' (19 13), whether we are or are not to trace the influence of Paul or of the Alexandrian philosophers: here we are in contact with the living soul of Christianity, and however He may have been conceived we see what Christ vitally and practically meant for it. In any meaning we can attach to the term, His significance for it was divine. It is impossible to convey any idea of it if we think of Jesus as related to the Church and its members merely in the way. in which they are related to each other. The whole conception is the more remarkable in the Apocalypse because the writer shows himself peculiarly sensitive about worship being offered to angels, superhuman though they are (1910, 229), and because the idea of apotheosis, or the bestowing of divine honours on a

human being, is, as his attitude to Cæsar worship shows, one which he regards with the utmost horror. The adoration of the Lamb, an adoration in which not only those who are redeemed to God by His blood participate, but every creature in heaven and earth and under the earth, is in keeping with the divine significance He has for Christian souls. If He sometimes stands between the throne and the Redeemed, as their representative with God, at others He is on the throne, as God's omnipotent love ruling all things on their behalf. The throne itself is the throne of God and of the Lamb, and it is the glory of those who partake in the first resurrection that they become priests of God and of Christ (20°). If we add to this that the sum of all Christian hope is the Coming of Christ, and that with His final advent all things are made new, it is unnecessary to say more. The writer's Christology may mingle naively archaic elements like the lion of the tribe of Judah, or the iron sceptre which dashes nations in pieces, with speculative ideas like the first principle of creation or the eternal divine word-it matters not. What his work reveals is that Jesus is practically greater than any or all these ways of representing Him; neither the imagination of the Jew nor the philosophical faculty of the Greek can embody Him; in the faith and life of the seer He has an importance to which neither is adequate; the only true name for Him is one which is above every name.

(b) The Epistles of John

It is convenient to take the epistles of John before the Gospel, not because they are earlier in date, which is improbable, but because they are epistles, and we can see without difficulty the place which Jesus holds in the writer's faith. The interest of these documents is all the

greater that the author himself is deeply concerned to show that that place can be historically justified.

The Christian religion has to do with what he calls eternal life. This life has been manifested, and has become an experience and a possession of men. The writer himself shares in it, and it is his desire and the purpose of his epistle that his readers should share in it also. 'What we have seen and heard we announce to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us: yea and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ' (1. 13). This co-ordination of the Son with the Father, which we have traced in all the New Testament writings from the epistles to the Thessalonians onward, is peculiarly characteristic of the epistles of John. The Son and the Father are terms of absolute significance; there is only one Son as there is only one Father, and the salvation of men depends upon a relation to the Son and the Father in which neither can be conceived apart from the other. 'God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life, he who has not the Son of God has not the life' (1.5"). He who denies the Son has not the Father either, but he who confesses the Son has the Father also (1. 2 23). The perfect Christian life is that of those who abide in the Son and in the Father (1. 224). 'We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life' (1. 5 20). This is the language not of theology, but of spiritual experience, and it shows, with a clearness which cannot be mistaken, the place which Jesus holds in the religious life of the apostle. He owes to Him as to God, or he owes to God in and through Him alone, all that he calls truth and life. It is this incomparable significance of Christ,