"I, John, your brother and fellow-sharer in the affliction and kingdom and steadfastness that are in Jesus, was in the isle called Patmos on account of the word of God and the witness of Jesus. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, and I heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet saying, What thou seest, write in a book, and send to the seven churches; to Ephesus, and to Smyrna, and to Pergamum, and to Thyatira, and to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea. And I turned about to see the voice that was speaking with me. And having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands; and in the midst of the lampstands one like unto a son of man, clothed with a garment reaching down to the foot, and girded about at the breasts with a golden girdle. But his head and hair were white as white wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like to burnished brass, as if refined in a furnace; and his voice as the voice of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars; and out of his mouth a sharp two-edged sword went forth; and his countenance was as the sun shining in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying, Fear not; I am the First and the Last, and the Living One; and I became dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades. Write, therefore, the things which thou sawest, and the things which are, and the things which are about to take place after these things; the mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest on my right hand and the seven golden lampstands : the seven stars are angels of the seven churches; and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.” Rev. i. 9-20. INTRODUCTION Section II.-The Seer and the Vision IT was well on in the afternoon of a spring day that our steamer slowly passed the Isle of Patmos. We were on our way We were on our way northward to Smyrna, and thence on to Constantinople. As if to add special appropriateness to the occasion, with us, too, it was "the Lord's Day." The quiet of a Sabbath hush rested on the company of voyagers who had just bidden farewell to the sacred scenes of the Holy Land. The day was a perfect one. Not a cloud rested on the peaceful sky that brooded over us, nor was there the ripple of a wave on the indescribable blue of that wondrous sea. Were it not for the throb and jar of the machinery, we might almost have supposed that the ship was at a standstill. Seated under the awning, with our Bibles open, the book of Revelation was read while the eye passed constantly from the printed page westward to the rocky shore where the |