IF the Revelation of Saint John has any right to a place in the canon of the New Testament, it is reasonable to presume that its intention was to conform to that general purpose for which all divinely inspired Scripture is said to be given, namely, to “be profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” What peculiarly distinguishes it is that it clothes spiritual truth with a garb of mystery which, by challenging investigation, stimulates inquiry; which affords to the mind that solves its obscurities the satisfaction always to be found in the discovery of the recondite and difficult; which throws around prose realities the pleasing charm of poetry and art; and which, by connecting material things with a divine revelation, and thus linking together nature and the supernatural, attests the unity of the universe in which we are placed and shows the world about us and human history to be full of the presence of God. It would surely argue great presumption in any man to claim a perfect understanding of a book so marvelous as the Apocalypse, whose teachings are not for one age, but for all ages. Very confidently, however, it may be asserted that by the use of certain rules of interpretation many of its mysteries may be explained and its application to practical life and conduct be made evident. The reasonableness of these rules would be readily admitted if applied to any other part of holy writ; and hesitation to accept them here proceeds solely from that mistaken view of the design of the Revelation which isolates it from the rest of the sacred canon as something ♦anomalous and unique. So far is this from being the case that no book in the Bible can afford to stand by itself so little as the Apocalypse, inasmuch as there is no other into the fabric of which so much of the other Scriptures is intentionally woven. The impression which close study of it makes is that it was designed by its author to serve as a sacred clasp to bind together and hold in harmonious coherence the whole of God’s wonderful volume. ♦ “anomaioms” replaced with “anomalous” The principles of interpretation deserving special notice are four in number. 1. _The structure of the book itself furnishes some guide to its interpretation._ The opening chapters comprise brief letters, seven in all, which the author is directed to write to seven churches of Asia, the number indicating, not that these comprehended all the churches in that region, but that in them were represented all phases of religious life. These letters set before us both the spiritual state and the environment of the churches, and are advisory, monitory, reproachful, or comforting as the cases demanded.