ew race of sinless and immortal men.

"Tears shall not break from their full source,
Nor Anguish stray from her Tartarean den,
The golden years maintain a course
Not undiversified, though smooth and even,
We not be mock'd with glimpse and shadow then,
Bright seraphs mix familiarly with men,
And earth and sky compose a universal heaven."

We have now arrived at the threshold of the last book in the New
Testament, that book which, in the words of Lucke, "lies like a
Sphinx at the lofty outgate of the Bible." There are three modes
of interpreting the Apocalypse, each of which has had numerous and
distinguished advocates. First, it may be regarded as a congeries
of inspired prophecies, a scenic unfolding, with infallible
foresight, of the chief events of Christian history from the first
century till now, and onwards. This view the combined effect of
the facts in the case and of all the just considerations
appropriate to the subject compels us to reject. There is no
evidence to support it; the application of it is crowded with
egregious follies and absurdities. We thus simply state the result
of our best investigation and judgment, for there is no space here
to discuss it in detail. Secondly, the book may be taken as a
symbolic exhibition of the transitional crises, exposures,
struggles, and triumphs of the individual soul, a description of
personal experience, a picture of the inner life of the Christian
in a hostile world. The contents of it can be made to answer to
such a characterization only by the determined exercise of an
unrestrained fancy, or by the theory of a double sense, as the
Swedenborgians expound it. This method of interpreting the
Revelation is adopted, not by scholarly thinkers, who, by the
light of learning and common sense, seek to discern what the
writer meant to express, but by those persons who go to the
obscure document, with traditional superstition and lawless
imaginations, to see what lessons they can find there for their
experimental guidance and edification. We suppose that every
intelligent and informed student who has

6 Cicero de Nat. Deorum, lib. ii. cap. 46. Also Ovid, Minucius
Felix, Seneca, and other authorities, as quoted by Rosenmuller on
2 Peter iii. 7.

examined the subject with candid independence holds it as an
exegetical axiom that the Apocalypse is neither a pure prophecy,
blazing full illumination from Patmos along the track of the
coming centuries, nor an exhaustive v