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'things are passed away.' And he that sitteth on the throne said, ' Behold, I make 5 'all things new.'

And he saith, Write: for these words are faithful and true. And he said unto me, They are come to pass. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit these things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But for the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part shall be in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone; which is the second death.

And there came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls, who were 9 laden with the seven last plagues; and he spake with me, saying, 'Come hither, 'I will shew thee the bride, the wife of the Lamb.' And he carried

The New

me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and shewed me Jerusalem

the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: her light was like unto a stone most precious, as it were a jasper stone, clear as crystal: having a wall great and high; having twelve gates, and at the 12 gates twelve angels; and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel: on the east were three gates; and on the north three gates; and on the south three gates; and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. And he that spake with me had for a measure a 15 golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof. And the city lieth foursquare, and the length thereof is as great as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs: the length and the breadth and the height thereof are equal. And he measured the wall thereof, a hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of an angel. And the building of the wall thereof was jasper: and the city was 18 pure gold, like unto pure glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, chalcedony; the fourth, emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, topaz; the tenth, chrysoprase; the eleventh, jacinth; the twelfth, amethyst. And the twelve gates 21 were twelve pearls; each one of the several gates was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass. And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God the Almighty, and the Lamb, are the temple thereof. And the city hath no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine upon it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb. And the nations shall walk amidst the light thereof: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory into it. And the gates thereof shall in no wise be shut by day (for there shall be no night 25 there): and they shall bring the glory and the honour of the nations into it: and there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he that maketh an abomination and a lie: but only they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.

River and

Tree of Life

And he shewed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of 22 the throne of God and of the Lamb, in the midst of the street thereof. And on this side of the river and on that was the tree of life, bearing twelve manner of fruits, yielding its fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no curse any more: and the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be therein: and his servants shall do him service; and they shall see his face; and his name shall be on their foreheads. And there shall be night no more; and they need no light of lamp, neither light of sun; for the Lord God shall give them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.

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EPILOGUE

SEVEN LAST WORDS

And he said unto me, These words are faithful and true: and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly come to pass.

*

And behold, I come quickly. Blessed is he that keepeth the words of the prophecy of this book.

And I John am he that heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things. And he saith unto me, See thou do it not: I am a fellow-servant with thee and with thy brethren the prophets, and with them which keep the words of this book: worship God.

*

And he saith unto me, Seal not up the words of the prophecy of this book; for the time is at hand. He that is unrighteous, let him do unrighteousness still: and he that is filthy, let him be made filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still: and he that is holy, let him be made holy still. Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to render to each man according as his work is.

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I am the Alpha and the Omega,

The first and the last,

The beginning and the end.

Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have the right to come to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city. Without are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the murderers, and the idolaters, and every one that loveth and maketh a lie.

*

I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright, the morning star.

And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And he that heareth, let him say, Come. And he that is athirst, let him come: he that will, let him take the water of life freely.

I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto them, God shall add unto him the plagues which are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and out of the holy city, which are written in this book.

He which testifieth these things saith, Yea: I come quickly. Amen: come, Lord Jesus.

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with the saints. Amen.

LITERARY INTRODUCTIONS

ΤΟ

THE BOOKS OF SCRIPTURE

OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY

THE History of the People of Israel as presented by themselves, this is the formula which expresses the spirit of this portion of the Bible. It will be understood. that this is something different from the History of the People of Israel in another sense of the term: according to which their historical books are subjected to analysis, with a view to harmonising discrepancies, appraising authorities, filling up gaps from independent sources of information, and by a variety of means arriving at the actual facts and their connections. The latter is the function of the historical critic. But to appreciate the history of a great people as they themselves understood it is an interest of universal literature.

It might seem that such a purpose as I have described is easy of attainment; the Bible, with historical books extending from Genesis to Chronicles, is in the hands of all: they have but to read. To read is easy; but to read with full appreciation is made difficult by certain differences in the form in which books are presented to the eye in ancient and in modern literatures. The differences, it is true, involve no great mystery; they are such as an intelligent reader can correct for himself. But it is also true that such mental checking hampers the faculty of appreciation; books under such circumstances will be read, but not read with a zest. The constant necessity of mentally allowing for difference of literary form makes such reading resemble the use of a microscope with an imperfectly adjusted focus; by thinking it is possible to make out what the blurred picture should be, but the observer's attention wearies, and all the while a turn or two of a wheel would give clear vision. To assist such mental adjustment to the form of biblical literature is the aim of the Modern Reader's Bible.

There are three points in which the historical books of Scripture differ in their outward form from modern histories. One relates to the special matter which, in any elaborate work of history, is used to supplement the main narrative, and which a modern book presents in the form of appendix and notes. Let a reader open a volume of Hallam. He will find on successive pages three lines, eight lines, twenty lines, of text in bold type, and below double columns of closely printed matter, not to speak of an appendix at the end of the chapter. Let the reader imagine such notes and ap pendix introduced into the text at their proper places, and printed without distinction of type: would any one read such a Hallam who was not compelled? The historical books of the Bible abound in such special matter-genealogies, statistics, documents— and in our Bibles there is nothing to separate them from the continuous narrative; in one important section, if my analysis is correct, the supplemental matter is threefourths of the whole. I do not so far break with the ordinary arrangement as to use the form of notes and appendix: I make it a principle in no case to disturb the order of biblical paragraphs. But I have made such distinctions of type as will be impossible to mistake; the reader can, if he is intent on the narrative only, pass over the subsidiary matter, or he can come to it with the required change in the character of his attention, and then resume the narrative without break or confusion.

But the biblical narrative itself is not all of one kind: distinction must be made between narrative that is historic and narrative that is epic. To many the term 'epic' will seem strange in such connection: one reader understands epic as fiction, another associates it with a special branch of poetry, of which Homer and Virgil are types. Such limitations of the word are survivals from the narrowness of early critics, who used the Greek poets as a Procrustean bed to which the variations of other literatures were to be adapted. In its essence epic is narrative which appeals - not, as history, to our sense of information and the connections of things but to our creative imagination and the emotions associated with poetry. To such an effect matter

of historic fact, just as much as purely imaginary incident, may lend itself; it is a question of the mode of presentation. It is true that in Greek and other literatures epics are usually found to be in verse. But the great peculiarity of Hebrew among the world languages is the fact that it bases its verse system upon a thing which also belongs to prose - the parallelism of sentences; in such a language prose and verse overlap, and also there is an overlapping between the literary forms which associate themselves with prose and verse. It is therefore only what might be expected when we find that there is no verse narrative in Scripture, but what of epic there is has the outer form of prose. When these misunderstandings are removed, how is it possible to question the epic character of the great episodes which stand out with such distinctness from the surrounding history? To my own thinking there is no more ideal example of epic story anywhere to be found than the account of Joseph and his Brethren, with its varied interest of character, of incident, of picture, and of story movement. Not less ideal is the Story of the Plagues of Egypt: each incident, as it were, hewn out of the rock of historic narrative with a few epic strokes of description, while against the succession of wonders in the background are ever coming out into greater relief the contrasted heroic figures of Pharaoh with the hardening heart and Moses the deliverer, until the antagonism clashes in the final catastrophe. Ideal again, but of a different type of epic, are the strange adventures of David under the persecution of Saul; of yet another type, the long-drawn episode of Absalom's Rebellion. And when we have the giant figure of Elijah, sole against the organised worship of Baal, must the heroism cease to be epic simply because it is of a spiritual order? The counterparts of these stories would in other literatures have been poems, with matter invented for literary effect. The Hebrew epics are portions of the national history, fitted into their proper place in the narrative; and the elasticity of the Hebrew language has caused them to be attracted to the prose form of the surrounding matter. The literary appreciation of the Bible will then require a different mental attitude to these different kinds of narrative. The slightest warning of the difference will be sufficient; and I have done no more than separate the epic stories by a title for each.*

There is a third point in which Scripture history needs adjustment to the outer form of modern books. Even an essay or a sonnet is improved by being presented in its true form. History differs from these in being lengthy, and the mental grasp of the whole is proportionately more difficult, unless the effort of sustained attention is assisted by indications of plan, of divisions, and connections. The books of the Bible from Genesis to Chronicles, would make a work a little longer than that very long book entitled Green's Short History of the English People. In the work of Green constant assistance is given by the disposition of chapters and sections; only to read over the table of contents gives a clue which will carry the reader through the intricacies of the whole. How far the original writers or arrangers of biblical history were from the thought of such assistance, is well seen in the fact that the titles in the Hebrew Bible to the books of the Pentateuch are simply the first words of each. In the English Bible the titles of the books, mostly from the Septuagint, are fairly descriptive of the matter; but they contain no suggestion of the relation of each to the whole, and there is a total absence of larger groupings. In this presentation of Scripture then I have ventured, independently of all other divisions, whether of verses, chapters, or books, to arrange in what seem natural and logical sections, and indicate by a title the relation of each part to the whole.

The portion of the Bible devoted to history seems to present a singularly clear

*It will readily be understood that these two kinds of narrative, so widely separated in some cases, in others shade off into one another until a section of a book partakes of the nature of both. I have had a reason in my own mind for each classification, and sometimes I have stated the reason in the notes. In any case, the slightness of the mode adopted to distinguish the two will reduce the practical effects of a wrong classification to a minimum.

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