gospel and epistles in the calmness of tranquil contemplation and reminiscences of the past.  The visions of the Apocalypse he received “in the Spirit” (chap. 1:10; 4:2); that is, in a state of ecstacy; and, according to the plain language of the book, he wrote them down at the time, beginning, as we must suppose, with the second chapter, the introductory chapter and some closing remarks having been added afterwards.  The direction:  “What thou seest write in a book” (chap. 1:11, 19), does not indeed imply that he should write upon the spot; but that he did so is plainly indicated elsewhere:  “When the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write:  and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not” (chap. 10:4).  In entire harmony with this is another passage:  “And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth,” etc. (chap. 14:13); that is, “Write down now these words of comfort.”  The apostle, therefore, wrote down his visions one after another immediately after they were received.  When he wrote he was not in a state of unconsciousness, but of mental and spiritual exaltation above his ordinary condition.  To affirm that he could not have received this series of visions without being deprived of the capacity to record them at the time, would be to limit the modes of divine revelation by our ignorance.  If we cannot understand how the apostle could hear “in the Spirit” the voices of the seven thunders, and immediately prepare to write down their utterances, we ought, at least, reverently to receive the fact as stated by him.  To expect from one writing in such circumstances careful attention to the rules of Greek syntax and the idioms of the Greek language would be absurd.  Undoubtedly Plato in a like situation would have written pure Attic Greek, because that would have been to him the most natural mode of writing.  But the Galilean fisherman, a Jew by birth and education, fell back upon the Hebrew idioms with which he was so familiar.  Finally we must remember that, after the analogy of the Old Testament prophecies, this prophetic book is expressed in poetic diction.  It is full of images borrowed from the old Hebrew prophets, often spiritualized and applied in a higher sense.  Looking to the imagery alone, one may well call this book a grand anthology of the old Hebrew poets.  But the poetic diction of one and the same writer may differ widely from his prose style, as we see in the case of Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah.

If the above considerations do not wholly remove the difficulty under consideration they greatly relieve it.  The apostolic authorship of the fourth gospel and the first epistle of John is sustained by a mass of evidence that cannot be set aside.  That the same John also wrote the visions of the Apocalypse is attested, as we have seen, by the almost unanimous voice of antiquity.