ecstasin in spiritu patitur ; conuersatur cum angelis, aliquando etiam cum Domino, et uidet et audit sacramenta, et quorundam corda dinoscit, et medicinas desiderantibus submittit. lam uero prout scripturae leguntur aut psalmi canuntur aut allocutiones pro- feruntur aut petitiones delegantur, ita inde materiae uisionibus sub- ministrantur”’. When John’s soul is stirred to creative vision or prediction, it is usually something he has heard or read in Daniel or Ezekiel which is moving on the face of the waters. But the form taken by some of the oracles cannot be explained simply from the sacred scriptures, and it is therefore necessary to define sepa- rately and more precisely each of the features which have been just mentioned, even though the former necessarily involves the latter.
(a) The mind of a prophet like John is, in Wordsworth’s phrase, “a feeling intellect,’ which instinctively embodies ideas in symbols. Thought rises before it in pictorial shape. Symbols are idea and picture at once; they embody beliefs and are also realities of a kind. Conceptions clothe themselves in vivid representations which are effective either on account of their traditional associations or from the aptness of their contemporary allusions, though it is often difficult for a modern reader to fathom their origin in the writer’s mind or to estimate the precise relation between the figurative element and the definite idea which that element is intended to enshrine.! The difficulty is doubled when, as in the present case, we have occasionally to deal with an ecstatic experience. The material to be interpreted includes the reflective working of the prophet’s mind upon a previous mental condition, the literary presentment (with some expansions, rearrangement and embellishment) of what he remembers to have seen in the exalted moments of rapture, together with the impressions produced by these upon his later con- sciousness. The Apocalypse is not a continuous vision. In garts, it is not a vision at all. There are rhapsodies in it, but it is not a rhapsody. Occasionally the prophet speaks as a counsellor, or writes as an editor of earlier fragments, or calculates the future in terms of traditional eschatology. The very elaboration with which the details and design of the book are worked out precludes any idea of it as a mere transcript of visions written when the seer’s memory was fresh, even though some phrases were set down as re- flective or editorial glosses. At the same time, the nucleus and the origin of the book are inexplicable apart from the presupposition of
10Qn this power of the poetic Eastern imagination, at certain stages of culture,
to fill sensuous forms with a higher content, see some admirable remarks in Caird’s Evolution of Religion, i. 287 fi.