language as entirely peculiar to the Book of Revelation. You will find
the four angels holding the four winds, the mighty angel with a face like the sun, his right foot on the sea, his left on the earth, the woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, the great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, the beast that rose out of the sea, the mighty earthquake, the destruction of Babylon, the summoning of the fowls of Heaven to the supper of the great God, the binding of Satan, the great white throne, the last judgment, the descent of the New Jerusalem from Heaven, the description of the glorious city — who can read such things without being struck by them? Who can study them and avoid the conclusion, "This is written with the finger of God!"
Such is the general character of the Book of Revelation. Such is the book which you are emphatically told it is "blessed" to read. I will only offer two general remarks on the symbolic style in which the book is composed and then pass on.
1. One remark is, that you must not regard the use of symbolic language as entirely peculiar to the Book of Revelation. You will find it in other parts of Scripture. The very emblems and figures of the Apocalypse, whose meaning seems so obscure, are often employed by the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. You read, for example, of four living creatures in the fourth chapter. You read of four also in Ezekiel (1:5). You read of horses in the vision of the four first seals. You read of horses also in the vision of Zechariah (6:2,3). You read of a sealed company in the seventh chapter. You read also of a sealed and marked people in the vision of Ezekiel (chapter 9). You read of a plague of locusts under the fifth trumpet. You read of locusts also in the prophecy of Joel (chapter 2). You read of John eating the little
book in the tenth chapter. You read also of Ezekiel eating the scroll in his vision (chapter 3). You read of olive trees and candlesticks in the vision of the two witnesses. You read of the same emblems in the prophecy of Zechariah (chapter 4). You read of a beast having seven heads and ten horns in the thirteenth chapter. You read of a similar beast in the Book of Daniel (chapter 7). You read of a wondrous celestial city in the twenty-first chapter. You have the description of a city scarcely less mysterious, though different, at the end of Ezekiel (chapter 40 etc.)
These things are worthy of remark. They show us that we must not be stumbled by the symbols of Revelation, as if they were altogether a new and strange thing. We must remember they are used in the Old Testament as well as here, though far more sparingly, in communicating the mind of God to man. The peculiarity of the Apocalypse is not so much the use of symbols and emblems — as the profuse abundance of them.
My other remark is, that a symbolic style of composition will always seem more strange to us — than it does to Oriental nations. Figures, parables, illustrations, and similitudes are infinitely better known in the countries around the Holy Land, than they are among ourselves. The hieroglyphic inscriptions, for example, which abound in Egypt and elsewhere in the East, are nothing more than symbolic writings. Who does not know that at first sight, these hieroglyphics seem uncouth, meaningless, dark, and obscure? The first step the student of them must take, is to become familiar with their appearance. By and by he may hope to become acquainted with the key to their meaning. Ultimately, that key being found, these very hieroglyphics are found full of interesting matter.
It is much the same with the Book of Revelation. It is a book of sacred hieroglyphics. Its very style is one to which our matter of fact northern mind is utterly unaccustomed. To us, therefore, its visions seem doubly strange — strange because we are not familiar with such a mode of conveying our ideas — stranger still, because in many