word for sword see on Luke ii. 35. Two-edged is, literally, two- mouthed. See on edge, Luke xxi. 24. Homer speaks of poles for sea-fighting, “clad on the éip (croua, mouth) with brass.”
Countenance (dys). Used by John only, and only three times: here, John vii. 24; xi. 44. Not general appearance.
Shineth (gaiver). See on John i. 5.
In his strength. With the full power of the eastern sun at noonday.
This picture of the Son of Man suggests some remarks on the general character of such symbols in the Apocalypse. It may be at once said that they are not of a character which tol- erates the sharper definitions of pictorial art. They must be held in the mind, not as clearly-cut symbols which translate themselves into appeals to the eye and which have their exact correspondences in visible facts, but rather in their totality, and with a dominant sense of their inner correspondences with moral and spiritual ideas. To translate them into picture is inevitably to run at some point into a grotesqueness which im- pairs and degrades their solemnity. This is shown in Albrecht Diirer’s sixteen wood-cuts illustrative of the Apocalypse.* Pro- fessor Milligan goes too far in saying that these are only grotesque. One must be always impressed with Diirer’s strong individuality, “lurking” as Lord Lindsay remarks, below a mind “like a lake, stirred by every breath of wind which de- scends on it through the circumjacent valleys;” with the fer- tility of his invention, the plenitude of his thought, his sim- plicity and fearlessness. But his very truthfulness to nature is his enemy in his dealing with such themes as the Apocalyptic visions; investing them as it does with a realism which is foreign to their spirit and intent. Take, for example, “the four riders” (Apoce. vi.). The power is at once felt of the on- ward movement of the three horsemen with bow, sword, and
* “Die Heimlich Offenbarung Johanis:” published in 1498,