Preface

IT HIS is not a volume of sermons; had it been, I should have tried to be more direct and more concrete. Originally it was a series of separate studies contributed to the pages of the “Expositor.” At the suggestion of the Editor I have collected these, added to their number, and brought them out in book form. Any of the chapters can be read apart from the others.

By “Sidelights from Patmos” I mean some¬ thing equivalent to “flashes of modern suggestion from the ancient Apocalypse.” I have called them sidelights to show that I am not giving an exposition of the Book of Revelation, nor of any part of that book. I am rather a recipient than an actor. I receive and photo-VI

graph certain luminous impressions that come to me occasionally and from separate points. I believe the design of St. John in Patmos was to state the principles which would regulate the good time coming. He wishes to indicate what in any world would be to him the consummation of happiness. He does so, some¬ times in sober language, sometimes in allegoric symbols. I have made a few selections, both from the sober language and from the allegoric symbols, with a view of testing the adaptation of the picture to our modern ideas of optimism. The one question I wish to consider in these otherwise disconnected chapters is whether St. John’s ideal is still our ideal, whether we should still accept his principles as those which should regulate the good time coming.