The angel from the temple in heaven cried to him that sat on the cloud, "Thrust in thy sickle and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap: for the harvest of the earth is ripe." (Rev. xiv: 15.) When the corn was ripe in the Holy Land the messenger from the Sanhedrim carried the formal notice, and no one did reap until the word came. (Lightfoot.)

The Seven Vials of disaster (Rev. xvi.) are suggestive of the Seven Periods of woe predicted in the Book Sanhedrim, which should precede the advent of the world's deliverer.

As a study of Apocalyptic style it will be interesting to read John's description of the contents of the Seventh Vial in connection with a passage in the Sibylline Oracle. John writes (Rev. xvi: 18): "There were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before God to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent," etc. The Sibylline book reads: "From heaven shall fall fiery swords to the earth, and great torches shall come, shining into the midst of men. The all-producing earth shall be shaken in those days by the immortal hand; and the fishes of the sea, and all beasts of the earth, and the countless tribes of birds, and all the souls of men... shall shudder with awe before the immortal face. He shall break lofty peaks, and heights of huge mountains, and dark Erebus shall appear to all. Misty ravines in the high mountains shall be full of corpses; rocks shall stream with blood. . . . All the well-built walls of ill-disposed men shall fall to the ground.... Brimstone shall fall from heaven, and stone and hail abundant and dreadful.

"I saw an angel standing in the sun" (Rev. xix: 17) reminds us of the declaration of the Sibyl that from the sun God would send forth a King.

"The song of Moses (Rev. xv: 3), sung by the redeemed on the sea of glass glowing as with fire, Maimonides tell us, was sung in the daily service of the Levites in the court of the Temple, and from the Rabbinical commentary on the passage first recording it in Exodus, we learn that the Jews believed it would be sung again in heaven in the days of the Messiah.

The angel cast Satan "into the abyss, and shut it, and sealed it over him." (Rev. xx: 3, Revised Version.) In Targum Jonathan on Exod. xxviii: 30, we learn of a stone called Shetijah, with which the Lord of the world sealed the mouth of the abyss at the beginning.

"And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was

given unto them." (Rev. xx: 4.) In Yalkut Simeoni we read: "In future time the holy and blessed God will sit, and kings will place thrones for the great men of Israel, and they shall sit and judge the nations of the world with the holy blessed God."

The saints reign with the Messiah for a thousand years (Rev. xx: 4) is the answer to a very ancient expectation. During the thousand years of the Messiah the Jews supposed that He would renew the world, and raise the righteous dead. (Bab. Sanhedrim.)

Of the judgment books (Rev. xx: 12) the Jews said (Zohar on Genesis): "All the works which a man does in this world are written in a book, and they come into thought before the Holy King." Another notion is recorded in Bab. Roshhashanah: "At the beginning of the year three books are opened; one of the completely wicked, another of the completely righteous, and a third of those between both: the completely righteous are written and sealed immediately for life; the completely wicked are written and sealed immediately for death; the middlemost are in suspense, and continue from the beginning of the year to the day of atonement: if they are worthy, they are written for life; if not worthy, they are written for death." "The new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven" (Rev. xxi: 2) follows the Jewish fancy that the Tabernacle, the Temple, and the Holy City itself, in their earthly glory, are but the shadows cast upon the earth of their spiritual counterparts which exist eternally in the skies. "The holy blessed God shall renew the world, and build Jerusalem, and shall cause it to descend from heaven." (Rabbi Jeremias in Johar Gen.)

"Every several gate was one pearl." (Rev. xxi: 21.) In the Sanhedrim we read that God will bring precious stones and pearls of thirty cubits by thirty... and place them in the gates of Jerusalem."

"The street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass." (Rev. xxi: 21.) The Jews have a traditional belief that Paradise is paved with precious stones, giving a lustre as of flaming torches. (Sepher Avodah.)

"He that is filthy let him be filthy still... he that is holy let him be holy still." (Rev. xxii: 11.) Bab. Yoma on Levit. xi: 43 says: "If a man defiles himself a little, they defile him much; if below, they defile him above; if in this world, they defile him in the world to come; if a man sanctifies himself a little, they sanctify him much," etc.

The above citations will be sufficient to show the Rabbinical tone of the Book of Revelation, and to indicate the importance of the discussion as to the priority of these expressions. If the Jewish lore furnished John with certain figures of speech in which to make his new thought more intelligible, and by which to gain the attention of his Jewish readers, it no more lessens the value of the Book than steeples and domes lessen the glory of the sunlight which flashes from

them. It is on the line of the claim of Christian Scripture to be the illumination of what was dim and groped after by the ancient people. But, on the other hand, if the Rabbins borrowed from the Revelation, since they made no claim that Judaism was the perfecting of Christianity, the fact must utterly discredit the Talmud as either an historical or original contribution to human knowledge

II. THE MODERN SERMON.

BY PROF. GEORGE P. FISHER, YALE COLLEGE.

NO. II.

GENERALLY speaking, Protestant preaching has stood in the proper relation to the Scriptures. This, as was intimated in the previous number, is the fact respecting the Reformers. Their sermons, it is true, were doctrinal; but the doctrine was taken fresh from the divine word. They sought for the real sense of Scripture with grammatical and lexical aids, and were satisfied with that. Occasionally the old allegorizing habit has returned to infest the Protestant pulpit. To exorcise it absolutely has been found difficult.

It must be confessed that there have been times when the Scriptural character of sermons has been more an appearance than a reality. There have been preachers and schools of preachers who have thought that a due regard to the Bible required them to interlard their sermons with very frequent citations from its pages. Thus a veneer of Scripture has been made to cover thinly a material of a very inferior sort. The Puritan preachers, in the earlier age of Puritanism, were the best and most effective preachers in England. But even Puritan preachers—as any one will see who will examine their printed discourses-fell into the habit of linking together verses of Scripture, the effect being to make a printed page a curious mosaic of italics and Roman letters. That is a truly Scriptural sermon which develops and brings out fully and freshly the contents of the text. Among recent preachers, F. W. Robertson in his best discourses has nobly exemplified this merit. One who attentively reads these sermons will be struck anew with the riches of meaning which are contained in passages of Scripture that he before may have poorly appreciated. To explore the Word, to believe that stores of precious truth are hidden away in it, is the first obligation of a preacher. Thus, and thus only, can he hope to impart a constant life and freshness to his weekly dis

courses.

At times under Protestantism, the Scriptural character of sermons has been impaired by a prevalent doctrinalism. This was true in the scholastic period of the Protestant churches in the seventeenth century. Lutherans and Calvinists alike fell into the mischievous practice

of theologizing in the pulpit, which had been the characteristic sin of the later medieval preachers. Polemical attacks and defenses, subtle arguments, wire-drawn distinctions, played a great part in the literature of the pulpit. It must be said, that the fault of preaching in New England, from the middle of the last century to the middle of this, was its doctrinal, or metaphysical character. This fault was lessened from the circumstance that the congregations were largely made up of men and women of strong intelligence. Yet, at present, whatever defects cleave to sermons, it can be truly said that educated preachers are, as a rule, more careful and critical interpreters of Scripture than were their predecessors.

Another excellence of the true sermon is, that it shall be unaffectedly religious-flow out of a living experience of the Gospel. The preacher, if he would reach the heart, must speak from the heart. This is the only secret of genuine unction. In certain times and places the religious side of Christianity, the centre of its life, has fallen more or less into the background. Preaching, though not dissonant from the teaching of the Bible, has assumed an ethical, at the expense of its evangelical, character. There were noble preachers who came out of the Latitudinarian school of Cambridge-the school of More, Cudworth and other illustrious thinkers. Of those preachers, Tillotson was probably the foremost. In many respects they vastly improved the prevalent style of pulpit discourses. Bishop Burnet has given a very interesting description of this class of divines. They cast aside the pedantic and prolix style which was in vogue among the Puritans, and spoke in pure manly English. The result was, that their churches were filled, and a great part of London, the stronghold of Puritanism, was drawn after them. Yet one misses in the preachers of the Tillotson school that devoutness and fervor which had marked the discourses of such men as Baxter and had given them signal power. The defect to which we refer appears in a much greater degree in the German preachers of the school of Reinhard, in the closing part of the last and the earlier portion of the present century. Preaching under the influence of the Kantian school turned into homilies on topics of moral philosophy. This has been the besetting sin, it need not be said, of Socinian preaching at all times.

Unction may be wanting in preachers whose theological tenets are sound, but in whom piety has no just proportion to natural gifts and powers. A typical example is Robert South. He was a clear-headed theologian; on doctrinal topics he reasons clearly and, in the main, soundly. His celebrated sermon on "Man in the Image of God" is in many respects a masterpiece, although, in his description of Adam and of Paradise, he goes beyond the warrant of historical fact. In vigor and raciness of style he excels almost all other English preachers. No one could sleep under such harangues. On topics-for

example, ethical topics-where prejudice is not enlisted, he is not less instructive than incisive. Witness his sermon on lying. But his lack of humility, his partisan temper, the savage tone of his invective, and the absence of devoutness are very serious blemishes in his discourses. One temptation of preachers has ever been, to substitute for simple evangelical fervor the arts of rhetoric. Secular oratory, in its inspiring motive and characteristic spirit, differs from the eloquence that is proper to the pulpit. Yet the great and sublime topics of Revelation afford ample opportunity for oratorical effort, which, even though it be not artificial, does not spring from the love and humility of the Christian disciple. There may be orthodoxy of doctrine, there may even be pungency of rebuke, and yet the hearer may simply admire, without being practically moved. It is one thing to wonder or even to be thrilled, as a spectator: it is another thing to be affected with compunction, or inspired with new faith in the verities of the Gospel. The French school of preachers in the age of Louis XIV. were remarkable men. They fill well their own niche in the gallery of the great men of the Augustan period in France; but they are tainted with the rhetorical vice to which we have alluded. It is said of Louis XIV. that he remarked to Massillon: "I have heard many great orators, and been satisfied with them; but when you spoke, I was very dissatisfied with myself." Notwithstanding this eulogy, in Massillon's most famous discourses-that, for example, on The Small Number of the Elect-one is disagreeably reminded of the classical orators of antiquity. The glow and elevation are felt to have, in great part, a mundane source.

It has sometimes happened, that where intellectual ability of a high order, evangelical earnestness and extraordinary eloquence are conjoined, comparatively small results have followed upon preaching. This may be owing to an absorbing interest on the part of the preacher in his themes, and a comparatively small degree of interest in his auditors. In John Foster's very suggestive delineation of Robert Hall, this character is ascribed to that distinguished preacher. Foster describes Hall as so absorbed in his subject that it would seem as if, in case his auditors were silently to withdraw, one by one, the eloquent discourse would have gone forward in the same way before the empty pews. That the effects of Hall's preaching were disproportionately small, when one considers his large and varied gifts, is probably to be accounted for by the peculiarity to which Foster refers.

The long list which might be made of preachers who, within the memory of those who are still living, have been eminent in their calling, proves that power in the pulpit is not passing away. In Germany the influence of Schleiermacher upon preaching was second only to that which he exerted upon theological thought. The attraction of his pulpit discourses in Berlin drew all classes within the walls of