tabernacle in the wilderness (xi. 1, 19; vi. 9; viii. 3; xi. 19; iv. 6). The song of the redeemed is the song of Moses (xv. 3). The plagues of Egypt appear in the blood, tire, thunder, dark- ness and locusts (ch. viii.) “The great earthquake of ch. vi. is taken from Haggai; the sun becoming black as sackcloth of hair and the moon becoming blood (ch. viii.) from Joel: the stars of heaven falling, the fig-tree casting her untimely figs, the heavens departing as a scroll (ch. viii.) from Isaiah: the scorpions of ch. ix. from Ezekiel: the gathering of the vine of the earth (ch. xiv.) from Joel, and the treading of the wine- press in the same chapter from Isaiah.” So too the details of a single vision are gathered out of different prophets or different parts of the same prophet. For instance, the vision of the glorified Redeemer (i. 12-20). The golden candlesticks are from Exodus and Zechariah; the garment down to the foot from Exodus and Daniel; the golden girdle and the hairs like wool from Isaiah and Daniel; the feet like burnished brass, and the voice like the sound of many waters, from Ezekiel ; the two-edged sword from Isaiah and Psalms; the countenance like the sun from Exodus; the falling of the seer as dead from Exodus, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel; the laying of Jesus’ right hand on the seer from Daniel.
“ Not indeed that the writer binds himself to the Old Testa- ment in a slavish spirit. He rather uses it with great freedom and independence, extending, intensifying, or transfiguring its descriptions at his pleasure. Yet the main source of his em- blems cannot be mistaken. The sacred books of his people had been more than familiar to him. They had penetrated his whole being. They had lived within him as a germinating seed, capable of shooting up not only in the old forms, but in new forms of life and beauty. In the whole extent of sacred and religious literature there is to be found nowhere else such a perfect fusion of the revelation given to Israel with the mind of one who would either express Israel’s ideas, or give utter- ance, by means of the symbols supplied by Israel’s history, to the present and most elevated thoughts of the Christian faith ” (this note is condensed from Professor Milligan’s “ Baird Lec- tures on the Revelation of St. John”).