THE TITLE OF THIS BOOK.

In our authorized version of the Bible, this last book is correctly translated “Revelation.”  It is otherwise designated “The Apocalypse,” by simply Anglicising the Greek title,—­Apokalupsis.  A distinguished modern divine, Doctor Seiss, has furnished the public with a novel interpretation of the title.  But it is remarkable that he does not propose an interpretation at all; he merely gives what he conceives to be a correct translation.  It is this:—­“The Book of the Unvailing of Jesus Christ!” In this singular translation two things are transparent,—­affectation of scholarship, and the (proton pseudos) the cardinal error of Millenarianism.  Learned men, however, are not devoid of fancy.  Of this fact those who are historically designated Millenarians have given many illustrations from the primitive ages down to our own time.  The Doctor’s rendering of the name of this book discloses the predominant idea conceived in his imagination and cherished there, that Christ is to appear upon earth in glorified humanity at the beginning of the millennium, and that the Apocalypse is intended chiefly to apprize the church and the world of this momentous event.

“The unvailing of Jesus Christ,” indeed!  Why, the Lord Jesus Christ was revealed,—­“unvailed” to the faith of our first parents in the promise of the “woman’s seed” as every intelligent Christian knows, (Gen. iii. 15.) We are assured that “to him give all the prophets witness,” (Acts x. 43.) Abraham rejoiced to see Christ’s day, (John viii. 56.) His advent in the flesh was so well known that Old Testament believers spoke of him familiarly as of “Him that was to come,” (Matt. xi. 3.) Surely he was “unvailed” to his disciples all the time that he went in and out among them before his death.  And after his resurrection he appeared unto them the third time,—­“was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:  after that he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once,” (1 Cor. xv. 5, 6.) After his ascension Stephen “saw Jesus standing on the right hand of God,” (Acts vii. 56) How preposterous then, since the whole Bible “unvails” the Saviour, to insinuate that the specific object of the Apocalypse is to unvail Jesus Christ!

That Doctor Seiss and those who endorse his mistranslation, or, as it ought to be called, his false exposition of the title to this book, do totally misapprehend and misinterpret the mind of the Holy Spirit, is further evident from the obvious import of the plain words in the first verse;—­this “Revelation of Jesus Christ, God gave unto him.”—­Christ.  Did God the Father “unvail” Christ to Christ himself?  How gross the absurdity!  We do not transgress the law of charity in pronouncing as impious, such manifest “wresting of the Scriptures.”  Moreover, the declared object of this book is to “show unto God’s servants things,—­(not