pains and the glories of that bloody death. The Lord of his life, the author of his hopes, the guide of his youth, the cherisher of his spirit, was over and around him ever, with the consolations of his promised presence,—"with him always, even to the end of the world."
THE APOCALYPSE.
The Revelation of John the Divine opens with a moving and splendid view of these circumstances. Being, as it is recorded, in the isle that is called Patmos, for preaching the word of God, and for bearing witness of Jesus Christ, he was in his lonely banishment, one Lord's day, sitting wrapped in a holy spiritual contemplation, when he heard behind him a great voice, as of a trumpet, which broke upon his startled ear with a most solemnly grand annunciation of the presence of one whose being was the source and end of all things. As the amazed apostle turned to see the person from whom came such portentous words, there met his eye a vision so dazzling, yet appalling in its beauty and splendor, amid the bare, dark rocks around, that he fell to the earth without life, and lay motionless until the heavenly being, whose awful glories had so overwhelmed him, recalled him to his most vivid energies, by the touch of his life-giving hand. In the lightning-splendors of that countenance, far outshining the glories of Sinai, reflected from the face of Moses, the trembling eye of the apostolic seer recognized the lineaments of one whom he had known in other days, and upon whose bosom he had hung in the warm affection of youth. Even the eye which now flashed such rays, he knew to be that which had once been turned on him in the aspect of familiar love; nor did its glance now bear a strange or forbidding expression. The trumpet-tones of the voice, which of old, on Hermon, roused him from the stupor into which he fell at the sight of the foretaste of these very glories, now recalled him to life in the same encouraging words, "Be not afraid." The crucified and ascended Jesus, living, though once dead, now called on his beloved apostle to record the revelations which should soon burst upon his eyes and ears; that the churches that had lately been under his immediate attention, might learn the approach of events which most nearly concerned the advance of their faith. First, therefore, addressing an epistolary charge to each of the seven churches, he called them to a severe account for their various errors, and gave to each such consolations and promises as were suited to its peculiar circumstances. Then dropping these
