To whom were the mystical words given? Not to a youth brave-hearted, and fiery, whose feet were newly shod with the “preparation of the Gospel of Peace.” Not to a man who had served the Lord Jesus for a few troublous years, but to one who, from youth to extreme old age, had wrought in the fields of his Master, bearing with all patience and meekness, the burden and the heat of the day, and who now stood upon the very verge of the grave! Observe, too, the _time_ that was chosen for the Revelation to be made. It was not while St. John was borne down by anxiety, and exposed every hour to danger, insult, and all that could distract his mind, but when far-removed from the scene of his labors, it was impossible for him to longer turn up the furrows of the field, or gather in the fruit ripe for the harvest. And the place! far removed from his home, surrounded by a quiet “deeper than silence is,” safe from persecution—away from the jarring sights and sounds of a busy world. Beholding under such circumstances a vision so wonderful, so miraculous, listening for the first time to a voice whose sound was like the rushing of many waters, it is neither a very strange thing, nor the slightest evidence of a want of entire confidence and faith in God, that John fell as one dead at the feet of the Son of Man, whose countenance was like the sun shining in his strength. Into that mystery of mysteries, the revelation of the Divine, it is not my purpose now to look. Its deep things which remain yet unsolved, I cannot flood with light, and as regards much of the Revelation, far-reaching, keen, and subtle minds, have endeavored (with how much of success it were best each reader should determine for himself) to sweep back the clouds which hang around that declaration of things that _have_ been. Of those pages St. John has said, “Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein, for the time is at hand.” And surely we are not to consider those words as applicable only to the Seven Churches to which they were first addressed. And if, in all those pages so gorgeously illumined with prophecy, there is advanced no truth the mind can comprehend, save the record of the New Jerusalem’s glory, if that, and the promise of the everlasting “rest of the saints,” only inspires the reader to strive without ceasing for the blessings that await the redeemed, it will surely not have proved a sealed volume to him. There are none who _by searching_ may find out God, further than he in his good pleasure chooses to reveal himself; but there can be no one who is possessed of a “seeing eye,” or a “hearing ear,” who is incapable of perusing this allegorical or highly figurative series of prophecies with an uninterested or uninstructed mind and heart.