at first sight, confine yourself to periodical literature.  As for finding yourself in a new world, is it not good sometimes to do that?—­to discover how vast the universe of mind, as well as of matter, is; that it contains many worlds; and that wise and beautiful souls may and do live in more worlds than your own?” Much has been said of the obscurity of Mr. Maurice’s style.  It is a question whether any great thinker will be anything but obscure at times; simply because he is possessed by conceptions beyond his powers of expression.  But the conceptions may be clear enough; and it may be worth the wise man’s while to search for them under the imperfect words.  Only thus—­to take an illustrious instance—­has St. Paul, often the most obscure of writers, become luminous to students; and there are those who will hold that St. Paul is by no means understood yet; and that the Calvinistic system which has been built upon his Epistles, has been built up upon a total ignoring of the greater part of them, and a total misunderstanding of the remainder:  yet, for all that, no Christian man will lightly shut up St. Paul as too obscure for use.  Really, when one considers what worthless verbiage which men have ere now, and do still, take infinite pains to make themselves fancy that they understand, one is tempted to impatience when men confess that they will not take the trouble of trying to understand Mr. Maurice.

Yet after all, I know no work which gives a fairer measure of Mr. Maurice’s intellect, both political and exegetic, and a fairer measure likewise, of the plain downright common sense which he brought to bear on each of so many subjects, than his Commentary on the very book which is supposed to have least connection with common sense, and on which common sense has as yet been seldom employed—­ namely, the Apocalypse of St. John.  That his method of interpretation is the right one can hardly be doubted by those who perceive that it is the one and only method on which any fair exegesis is possible—­namely, to ask:  What must these words have meant to those to whom they were actually spoken?  That Mr. Maurice is more reverent, by being more accurate, more spiritual, by being more practical, in his interpretation than commentators on this book have usually been, will be seen the more the book is studied, and found to be what any and every commentary on the Revelation ought to be—­a mine of political wisdom.  Sayings will be found which will escape the grasp of most readers, as indeed they do mine, so pregnant are they, and swift revealing, like the lightning-flash at night, a whole vision:  but only for a moment’s space.  The reader may find also details of interpretation which are open to doubt; if so, he will remember that no man would have shrunk with more horror than Mr. Maurice from the assumption of infallibility.  Meanwhile, that the author’s manly confidence in the reasonableness of his method will be justified hereafter, I must hope, if the Book of Revelation is to remain, as God grant it may, the political text-book of the Christian Church.