LECTURE II.

JOHN IN PATMOS.

"I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ." REV. i. 9.

I MUST in this lecture continue the introductory remarks which I made last Lord's-day evening, on the peculiar position of him who was selected by the Spirit of God to be the seer of things that were, and the inspired prophet of things that were to come. On looking at the words which I have read, and at the era in which these words were recorded, I see two great kingdoms coming into collision, then prominent upon the stage of the world, and destined to throw up in that collision remarkable and startling aspects. The one kingdom was then in almost its meridian power, splendour, influence, and greatness; the last of the Cæsars, named Domitian, was its head. The other kingdom, in contrast to this, was then almost in its cradle; the last of the apostles, John, was its preacher, and its Sovereign was in the skies, and on the throne of his glory. These two kingdoms were present to the mind of John throughout this remarkable prophecy. The one had all the powers of Cæsar at its back-the other felt embosomed in the promises of Christ.

John was banished to Patmos for this crime-"the testimony of Jesus and the confession of his name." We are assured by contemporaneous writers, as well as records that have survived the age in which the Apocalypse was written, that to preach a religion new to the Roman empire was a crime branded by the name and chargeable with the guilt of sedition; and those who were thus guilty of preaching a new religion were sent to solitary and deserted places of banishment under the scepter of Cæsar. Among the rest John was banished to the isle of Patmos, where

he was obliged, at the age of ninety, to work in the mines and quarries for the profit of Cæsar, and as a punishment for the crime of which he was denounced as guilty. At this period John must have reached the age of ninety; and to be condemned to labour in the mines, or to excavate in the quarries of Patmos, under a heathen taskmaster, at such an age, was surely no slight punishment; and if John had not been sustained by bright hopes that spanned the chasm that lay between him and his home-if he had not had within him compensatory joys which Cæsar could not give, and which all the cruelty of Cæsar cut not crush-he had perished in the midst of his punishment, and, humanly speaking, the bright visions of the Apocalypse had been reserved for another seer to reflect on the church and on the world.

In order to give you some idea of Patmos, now called Patimo or Patmosa, I have borrowed two or three descriptions of it; one of the most interesting is that given by the Rev. Hardwell Horne, in his "Landscape Illustrations of the Bible," a work containing sketches of the principal places alluded to in the scriptures; he says: "Patmos, now called Patimo or Patmosa, is a small island in the Egean Sea, between twenty-five and thirty miles in circumference. Its aspect is forbidding and cheerless, and the shores are in most places steep and precipitate. The Romans used this barren spot as a place of exile; hither the Apostle John was sent for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus; and here he wrote the Apocalypse or Revelation which bears his name." This, I believe, is a mistake; the Apocalypse was written after he had escaped from, or was permitted to leave, the isle of Patmos. It is not known how long his banishment continued; but it is generally supposed that he was released upon the death of Domitian, which happened A. D. 96, when he retired to Ephesus. The acropolis or citadel of ancient Patmos was discovered in February, 1817, by the Rev. Mr. Whittington, on the summit of a hill which rises precisely on the narrow isthmus that unites the two divisions of the island, and separates the principal harbour from Port Merica. After some research he discovered very considerable remains of a large fortress. This rock or hill is not so lofty as that on which the modern town and monastery are built; but its singular situation between two ports render it

even more commanding. These remains lie on the northern side of the hill, and from the nature of the ground, the fortress must have formed an irregular triangle. The wall appears to have been seven feet thick, and the towers measure fourteen feet in front. The surface of the soil in its neighbourhood is much heaped with piles of ruins, and the whole area is thickly strewn with fragments of ancient pottery.

This island is described by Mr. Emerson (who visited it a few years since) as having every appearance of being of volcanic origin, and consisting of a rugged rock, with a sprinkling of soil, and a slight covering of verdure, which, with the sterility of the earth and the baking heat of the sun, is so crisp as almost to crumble in the hand. Here are very numerous churches, many of which are opened only on the anniversary festival of the saints to whom they are respectively dedicated. The modern town of Patmos, which is the only one on the island, and the monastery of St. John, crown the summit of the hill, about three-quarters of an hour's walk from the seashore, and which commands a very extensive prospect over the surrounding islands. The monastery consists of a number of towers and bastions, having much more the air of a military than a monastic edifice. It is said to have been erected by St. Christodoulos, in honour of the Apostle John, and under the auspices of the Byzantine emperor, Alexis Comnenes, in the year 1117, in order to serve at once as a residence for the brethren of St. John, and as a protection to the inhabitants against the incursions of pirates. It now contains accommodation for a numerous society of monks, who are under the protection of the bishop of Samos. By the special permission of the Grand Mufti of Constantinople, they enjoy the rare privilege of a bell to summon the brethren to their devotions, while all the other religious foundations in the East-the monastery on Mount Athos not excepted-are forced to convene their inmates to prayers by the striking a hammer against a crooked bar of iron. This much-envied privilege of the monks at Patmos is ascribed to the high veneration in which the Turks are said to hold the memory of St. John. Like most of the other Greek churches, the church belonging to the monastery is gaudy, without either taste or elegance. But the vestibule and the in

terior are painted with semi-Chinese heads of Christ and the apostles, and the Parragia, or Virgin Mary, appears in every corner. The library of the monks contains a few printed books, chiefly the works of the Greek fathers, and also a considerable number of manuscripts, which seem to have been assorted and preserved with care. The hermitage of St. John lies about midway between the beach and the convent; it is approached by a rugged pathway, one side of which encloses, or rather is formed by the sacred cave in which the evangelist wrote his Revelation. Before the erection, according to Mr. Emerson, it must have been rather an exposed situation, as it is pierced but a very slight way into the rock; and as the monks carry on a very profitable traffic by disposing of pieces of the stone for the cure of diseases, a great portion of the present excavation may be attributed to their industry. Two chinks in the rock above are pointed out as apertures through which St. John received the divine communications. They are deemed to be incomparably sacred, and in point of sanctity are second only to the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem. The inhabitants of Patmos are about 4000 in number, and their appearance is perfectly consonant to the barren aspect of the island: the men being clothed in dirty cotton rags, and the women (who are handsome) being literally bundles of filth!

Such is the description of Patmos, the scene of the exile of St. John, as it has been given by modern travellers. The present inhabitants of Patmos seem to have some perception at least of the claims of Christianity; but in the days of St. John it is supposed there was not a single Christian in the isle to associate with him, or to fulfil the condition of the promise, " Where two or three are met together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." But one rejoices to know, that when there is no visible assembly of the saints of God, there is a chancel-the holiest one in the universe-the chancel of a regenerated heart— in which Christ delights to dwell, and which he consecrates by his presence, and from which he receives the acceptable worship while he pours down his benediction on the worshipper; teaching us that wheresoever there is a Christian there Christ is. In the dark and dreary crypts in which the martyrs have pined, in the

Mammertine prison at Rome in which the apostles are said to have been imprisoned, in dens and caves of the earth, on barren moors, upon the ocean's bosom-wheresoever there is a child of God, there the Lord of glory delights to be present, to comfort, to strengthen, and to sustain him.

John, placed in this isle, you may easily conceive, must have had, during and after his toils, many interesting reflections. Let me suppose that he looked, in the first place, around him; he there saw on every side a desert isle, the type of a world that sin had polluted by its touch, and yet the norm of a world that he who came to redeem it shall retrieve and remake. In that barren isle John could hear the echoes of that voice which said, "Behold, I make all things new," and could see reflected in it, by the eye of unfainting hope and firm faith, all the splendours and glories of the New-Jerusalem; and the recollection that he had a franchise that admitted him to be a citizen of the Jerusalem above, compensated him for the pain and punishment felt in being an exile from the cities and the sway of the sceptre of the rulers of this world. Are any of you oppressed and broken down by a thraldom that is only exceeded by the drudgery of John in the mines of Patmos ?-in John you have a companion in tribulation. There are subterranean mines in London, cellars below shops, which have been described to me, in which the young menmany of them my countrymen-are doomed, not by Domitian, who had some mercy in his composition, but by mammon, who has none, or by his slaves, who perhaps call themselves Christians to drudge and toil and die. If I address any such this evening, I say, use the means of amelioration if they are within your reach, and wherever there is a Christian you will have one that sympathizes with you; but when that amelioration cannot be, try and draw into that subterranean scene of drudgery and toil bright visions of that better city in which there shall be no sin, and therefore no sorrow, but where all are free, and holy, and happy forever.

We can easily believe that John not only looked around him, but that he also took a retrospect of the past. Situated in Patmos, he may have recollected sixty years before, when Jesus rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and took his seat at his