We are certainly not compelled, and it may seriously be questioned whether we are allowed, to interpret the concluding chapters of the Apocalypse as a vision of the future heaven which awaits the just, of the glorified and celestial state of believers who have passed through the trials of earth and have entered into their final reward. The probabilities are very strong that it is rather the vision of a redeemed and purified earth, the victory which shall result here from the complete ascendancy of Christ, which is presented to our faith and hope. This interpretation of the vision would give consistency and unity to the book. It would account for the discrimination which is certainly made between the “city” and the nations which “walk in the light thereof,” and also for the statement that the leaves of the tree of life are “for the healing of the nations;” and it is confirmed by the fact that in his first epistle, which was probably written subsequently to the Apocalypse, John declared that it had not been revealed or made manifest to him at that time what we shall be when Christ shall be manifested to us in his heavenly glory (1 John iii, 2)――a statement hardly to be reconciled with truth if the vision of the Apocalypse is to be taken as a revelation of the heavenly state. The careful student will not fail to observe that upon all questions relating to the life beyond the grave the Bible preserves a marked reticence; nor is there any more impressive evidence of its divinity than this. To gratify a curiosity which might easily become morbid is no part of its object and might defeat its more practical purpose. While, therefore, it shows us the rent veil and opens the curtain sufficiently to reveal to us a world lying beyond, it does not allow us to penetrate further or uncover to us the mysteries hidden therein. It is enough for us to know that a way leads from the holy place to the holy of holies, and that Christ is that way, the life of the world beyond as he is of this, and the truth and reality of both alike. It is not certain that a revelation to us of the glories of the celestial state would realize to us the satisfaction we anticipated. Even were a revelation made to us in terms which we were able to grasp and comprehend, that which would be blissful to our glorified and transformed faculties might not seem so to our earthly ones, and the revelation might become rather a stumbling-block than a stimulus. We know that the prophecies concerning the Messiah in the Old Testament were not only obscure, but even seemed to involve contradictions, which, however, his advent in the flesh explained and reconciled. This may be the case also in regard to the future state of the blessed. And God is no less merciful, doubtless, in what he withholds than in what he imparts.