presented by the prophet Isaiah, when in the commencement of his prophetic mission, "In the year that King Uzziah died," he had that sublime vision in the temple.30 Before his wondering gaze "the vail of the temple was withdrawn and the holy of holies discovered to the prophet's eyes, and he saw the Lord sitting as a king upon his throne actually governing and judging. His train, the symbol of dignity and glory, filled the holy place; while around him hovered the attendant seraphim, spirits of purity, zeal, and love, chanting in alternate choirs the holiness of their Lord; the threshold vibrated with the sound, and the 'white cloud' of the divine Presence, as if descending to mingle itself with the ascending incense of prayer, filled the house. The eternal archetypes of the Hebrew's symbolic worship were revealed to Isaiah; and, as the center of them all, his eyes saw the King, the Lord of Hosts, of whom the actual rulers from David to Uzziah had been but the temporary and subordinate viceroys. In that Presence even the spirits of the fire which consumes all impurities, while none can mix with it, cover their faces and their feet, conscious that they are not pure in God's sight, but justly chargeable with imperfection; and much more does Isaiah shrink from the aspiring thoughts he had hitherto entertained of his fitness to be the preacher of that God to his countrymen―he, a man of unclean lips, sharing the uncleanness of the people among whom he dwells. In utter self-abasement he realizes the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and the utter separation it makes between man and the holy God." 31

80 Isaiah vi

81 Sir Edward Strachey's Hebrew Polities, page 79.

Prophecy is really a grand epic, with many acts and a variety of scenes, but with a divine unity. Imagination can find in no human work so fine a field for its highest and purest conceptions. Christ is the great central personage in the extended poem, written by different hands, but always preserving the divine unities. His kingdom in all its fortunes, adverse and prosperous, is set forth. His own marvelous history from the manger to the cross, his providential government, and his final universal triumph and coronation in his own New Jerusalem, where his happy followers "need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light," "and there shall be no night there," are presented throughout the long poem, commencing in Eden and ending in the Apocalypse.

Dr. Schaff remarks of the Book of Revelation that it surpasses all the other prophetic writings in harmony, elevation, fullness, unity of view, progress of action, majesty of style, and, above all, in the direct relation of all parts of the picture to the central figure of the crucified and now glorified Christ, who rules the whole history of the world and the Church, and is alpha and omega, the beginning and the end. He goes on to say that "in a succession of visions and mysterious allegories it unfolds before the reader the great epochs of the kingdom of God on earth to the close of its earthly development. Its burden is the comforting truth that the Lord comes, the Lord fights, the Lord conquers and leads his Church through tribulation and persecution to certain victory and eternal glory." He also remarks that the value of the book is quite distinct from any

Dr. Schaff upon the Revelation.

human exposition of its prophecies; that it was not designed to gratify idle curiosity concerning the future, but for a practical, religious end. "Prophecy," he says, "in the nature of the case, remains more or less obscure until it is fulfilled. And as the Old Testament became clear only in the New, so the Revelation of John can be perfectly understood only in the triumphant and glorified Church. Still it bas been a book of consolation and hope to the Church militant in every age, especially amid her great persecutions and struggles; and it will remain so till the Lord come again in glory, and the New Jerusalem come down from heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. He who cannot lie assures his people, 'Lo, I come quickly. Amen.' And his people answer with the holy longing of a bride for her spouse, 'Yea; come, Lord Jesus!' " 32

* History of the Christian Church, vol. i, p. 108.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BIBLE IN THE WORLD'S LITERATURE.

HE Christian world is presenting an anomalous spectacle

THE

So

Bible never before widely distributed.

at the present hour. There never was a period when her sacred volume, embodying the world's faith and salvation, had so wide a distribution, or was exercising so mighty an influence upon the world's civilization and progress. Nations, both Christian and unchristian, that heretofore have forbidden the introduction of the Bible, have ceased their opposition, and the leaves from the tree of life for the healing of the nations are falling upon every land. In more than two hundred different languages the peoples of the earth are permitted to read the word of God "in their own tongue, in which they were born." By a divine conviction as to its authority and power, which unites nearly all the branches of the visible Church in wonderful harmony of sentiment and charity, the great societies of England and America are enabled to keep their groaning presses constantly in motion in the multiplication of editions of this marvelous book.

Bitter attack

upon it.

While all this is manifest, at the same moment we behold one of the fiercest, most systematic, and bitter attacks upon the Christian Scriptures in the three leading modern tongues English, German, and French carried on with extraordinary vigor, and with

some outward manifestations of a limited success.

66

"There

is," says an earnest writer in the British Quarterly Review, 'coming upon the Church a current of doubts deeper far and darker than ever swelled against her before-a current strong in learning, crested with genius, strenuous, yet calm in progress. It seems the last grand trial of the truth of our faith. Against the battlements of Zion a motley throng have gathered themselves together. Socinians, Atheists, doubters, open foes and bewildered friends are in the field, although no trumpet has openly been blown, and no charge publicly sounded. There are the old desperadoes of infidelity-the lost followers of Paine and Voltaire; there is the stolid, scanty, and sleepy troop of the followers of Owen; there follow the Communists of France, a fierce, disorderly crew; the commentators of Germany come, too, with pickaxes in their hands, saying, 'Raze it, raze it to the foundations.' There you see the garde-mobile, the vicious and vain youths of Europe. On the outskirts of the fight hangs, cloudy and uncertain, a small but select band, whose wavering surge is surmounted by the dark and lofty crest of Carlyle and Emerson. 'Their swords are a thousand,' their purposes are various. In this, however, all agree that Christianity and the Bible ought to go down before advancing civilization." The weight of this mighty movement, however, comes from within rather than from without the nominal Church. Unbelief at this hour is baptized, and aims her powerful blows against the very foundations of the Christian faith, in the pretense of laboring in the interests of Christianity herself. These sub

Foes under the garb of friends.