apocalypses, yet everything has been transmuted in the crucible of his own vivid imagination into new combinations, and there is not a single instance in which he interpolates an entire passage from any known author—indeed there are no quotations at all, in the strict sense, found in the Apocalypse, but only allusions, reminiscences, and echoes, literary devices which reflect the thought without reproducing the form—and it is certainly an exceptional assumption that he interpolates only from authors whose works are now lost, or from sources furnished solely by tradition.(27) The impressions of unity are entirely too strong to be dissipated by visionary and purely theoretical views. A modified form of the Apocalyptic‐Traditional view, advanced by some late writers,(28) indicates a healthful reaction from the piecemeal theories of the earlier source‐criticism, and affords valuable suggestion for further study—whether, indeed, we can follow them or not in finding evidence of the introduction of a limited number of fragments of earlier origin,—viz. that the author drew freely from a mass of apocalyptic ideas and forms, or “apocalyptic conventions” as they have been called, which were widely current in Jewish circles, and with which his own mind was richly stored; and that this suggestive material was wrought over in his mental processes and used like that from the Old Testament, with which it was closely allied, as a framework for expressing the new and higher Christian thought peculiar to his message, the old form being constantly adapted to new meanings. The origin or source of these forms is chiefly a matter of theory; but the probability of their use is the more practical side of the problem. It will be seen that this view would account for all that the theory of diverse origin does without doing violence to the real unity of the book;(29) and it does not affect the question of the inspiration or reality of the visions, for the thought of the seer necessarily took form from his own mental furnishing, and his imagination, though quickened by the prophetic ecstasy, was not essentially altered in its mode of operation. But, with it all, let us not fail to apprehend that these questions pertaining to the method used in the composition of the Apocalypse, and to the introduction of foreign elements into its literary structure, which so largely occupy the minds of critical scholars in the present day, are, after all, mainly secondary to the larger question. In it has God spoken? And if so, what are the spiritual lessons of the book for the devout Christian mind and heart? 5. The Date.