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Show Spirit of Paris and Patmos Much Alike . a a & js ji yodd Awajts Coming of Another Seer I THE ISLAM D OF lr PATMOS, OFF THE 'vr5 v COAST OF ASIA 8 "-VNv MINOR, IM THE I ,4&VV AfcGEAH SEA, WHERE JOHN r' V N WROTE THE S V- , ' I REVELATION. J 'it-' ' pf A ? ' I ' ' York harbor a much decor.ited British g-eneral in a hiph adn-.l)i!sti-nti e post confessing- hin.-self baffled unless there shall arise a great spiritual leader for the race: Venizelos. the one man who is Greece's greatest anet, speaking wistfully of a spiritual rebirth ; another, a romantic figure trom the desert, a hero and a champion, cham-pion, talking- not of baitles, but of whence and how we may expect a new interpreter of the Eternal ; another, a powe-rful and wealthy business man with' whom 1 dined in Paris," freely declaring that the social tangle of the timos cannot be unraveled un-raveled unless tnere shall come a clear Voice calling- to the spirits of men. "This is the way, walk ye in ft"; others, American Ameri-can officers in France, ripened by then own pre at deeds, riusmg upon the possibility possi-bility of a Personality who niay merg-e the distracted and divergent minds of men Into one common purpose of prood will ; still another, himself a soldier saint, troubled to soul because in his America there had arisen no freat spiritual leader to call in prophet tones the nation back to iod. Tt would be less than honest journalism did 1 fail to report that amid the welter and turbulence, and discordance of world politics which is my present assignment, I find anions: thoughtful men of c very-creed very-creed and country a decided note of spiritual spir-itual wisi fulr ess and expectancy. We are too serious now for the mercenary and mechanical methods of a noisy evangelist uttering orly safe and remunerative sen- , rationalism; wo want a man from some ! Patmos who can Buy, "Thus saith the I J-ord." As democracy and its limitations spread the world's need of the one King becomes greater. beyond which his sou soared in longing , for his flock on yonder shore, he con- ceived of the New Jerusalem as a place j where there shall be "no more sea." i Prison That Became a Shrine. ! One man's present vision becomes an-I an-I other age's shrine; we make pilgrimage ; to the homes of our dead poets and starve or break the hearts of the living; so Pat-! Pat-! mos contains several buildings dedicated I to traditional association with its seer, j The monastery which marks the site of I his experience of the Revelation covers a ! cave where he sat at the time. We reject re-ject the tradition. Those refulgent images of the Apocalypse that bewildering wealth of daring figures, the teeming phrase-pictures, the spaciousness of it all come not from an underground cave, but from a mountain top, with sea and sky and cloud unrolled as a scroll before his transported vision. John had been laught in the school of a Master who loved the heights and the birds and the open air. He read in nature the mind of nature's Creator. Cre-ator. Pictures of the venerable, white-bearded, luminous-faced disciple, as he sat at eventide on a craggy height, come to mind as we gaze upon Patmos itself. "Was it on this grayest, gauntest peak that he used to tarry oftenest? Or did he choose the more central, softer one, rounded like Mcunt Tabor, because of memories of tho mountain that was daily Island of St. John the Divine, Di-vine, Described as Topaz in Sapphire Sea. (Copyright, Canada, by the New York Herald Company.) (Copvright, 1919, by the New York Herald Company All Rights Reserved.) By WILLIAM T. ELLIS. BY THE ISLAND OF PATMOS, IN THE AEGEAN SEA, May 2. Here is where the skies were opened to the eyes of John the Seer, and the man received his clearest revelation of the new heaven and the new earth. All about, set in a sea of glory, are the islands sung by poets ever since first Greece erected a civilization that has kept its shaping hand upon the centuries until now. It is not of these that I .muse as our ship passes among them, upon a radiant day in March, the effulgence of which brings our variegated passengers from between decks up into the sun to talk and sleep and sing and pursue their domestic arrangements. Even this near panorama of the human life of the east loses its thrall for the moment; for yonder, to our left, and showing with, cameo clearness as I lift my eves from my paper, is Patmos, the island of St. John and the Revelation. What Patmos Looks Like. Shining white in the sun upon the topmost top-most peak of Patmos is the monastery of fit John the Divine. Lower, out of sight, is the monastery of the Apocalypse, with its cave where John is said to have heard the Voice saving: "Write the things which thou hast seen, and the tilings which are, and the things which shall be hereafter." Hard bv, a thing of beauty at this distance, dis-tance, is "the ruined Hellenic acropolis of an ancient daw There is no green of forest for-est or vegetation upon the slopes of the mountains; but the barrenness is softened bv the distance. . Patmos Is a topaz Island set In a sapphire sap-phire sea. Of the Greek Inhabitants, wno live by collecting sponges, there is no trace; their homes are on tho other side of the island. There is no running water and only three or four wells. Ten miles long is Patmos. somewhat crescent in shape, five miles wide at its greatest width, and almost divided di-vided into two bv the waters, its conlinu-itv conlinu-itv being preserved by narrow isthmuses. It" is an island of mountains, whose bare, steen sides have been torn and eroded by in1 nv a storm, and whose feet are washed h- the waters of the Aegean. Very lovely iii the sunlight Is It from the deck of our slrp and I envv the French artist aboard who is sketching it, though he is more Interested in the adjacent island of -a-mos for its memories of t-'amos yine. 'M near yet not a bottle to be had. he sighs'. ' Bane of One, Boon of All. Clouds fleecv and fleeting, as graceful as the "tills that swing mid cinde annul the rocks, and of over changing shape and stiggcstlveness. hang ovei ratnms; and in the distance they wrap the head ot Samos's hiuhest mountain lil" an Egyptian Egyp-tian woman's nebulous veil. What lorms and similes did the clouds suggest to the lonelv companion mid must intimate friend of J.-sus, as in his old age he waited in banishment upon these heights? Alter he had become John the ngert he had been sent hither by the Roman Kmprror Do-miCan Do-miCan for preaching the gospo.; and what was meant for ins punishment became the whole world's boon. H"re were r;L-len r;L-len bv John's pon the words 01 .-nmt.;rl . which are spoken at ev.;ry OhnsUan tu-neral tu-neral the world around. I ne lon.M island , became a place of outlook and uplook. ; where above the dashing of t ic sun against the rocks, 'the voice of nianv j waters" the venerable exile, whose bod had wasted while his soul grew great. I heard the messages of another w.-r.d. I Not until the island is seen does tne place-character of the Hook of the Kev- I elation appear. Set amid those 00 Mriu j waters, with the end.ess c-.arm o, t.nt and j motion, it was inevitable that the a pes- , t's book should abound in a :! csi.ms to J the'sca, "a sea of glass." 'a s.a of fire-'" that' at sunset surely and thm Ivans,. were the walls of his prison. in the eye of the Master and Hts company com-pany as they walked the flowery paths of Galilee? Whatever John's favorite spot, it commanded the ever-changing aspect of sea and sky, with the Hellenic islands, which were associated in thought with the pagan deities, destined to fall before the name of Him whom the seer, in exultation of rapt vision, called "King of kings and Lord of lords." Even Rome, whose prisoner John was, had not been able to conquer the gods of Greece, but had taken them over into its Pantheon. Greater than Rome was the New Jerusalem, whom the rapt disciple saw, with, prophetic vision, coming com-ing down from heaven. Though a solitary soli-tary exile, he bore ever with him the sense of conflict which his environment suggested. . The Geography of Revelation. This place sense is clearly shown in the Apocalypse by the addresses to the seven churches. Readers of the Eible ordinarily look upon the seven churches of the Revelation Rev-elation as being as other-worldly and as spiritual as the seven stars and the seven vials and the seven angles. To John, alone with his thoughts, they were real and tender memories. Every one of them was an actual company of disciples, many of whom he knew by name, in cities lying a short distance across the water, on the mainland of Asia Minor. His feet had trodden the streets of every one of the cities. Because their Christians Vere hia personal flock they were, in a way, all the world lo him. The traveler today may visit every one of the cities of the seyen churches of Asia; I myself have been in most of them Ephesus first, John's own dear Ephesus, now a mighty ruin, with a church bearing his name; Smyrna, still a great city, and much in the discussions of the peace conference; Philadelphia, a living community amid ancient debris, built about a wonderful spring; Sardis, where Princeton university conducted excavations ex-cavations before the war; Laodicea, Per-gamos Per-gamos and Thyatira, ruins with squalid Turkish villages hard by. Even the inspired in-spired writer of Revelation could not escape es-cape the influence of his personal associations asso-ciations and affections. The shepherd note sounds wistfully in his book's messages mes-sages to the seven churches. From Patmos to Paris. Because in the light of the eventide of ig jfe a life so spiritual that it was deemed worthy to have a clearer glimpse into the supernatural realm than had been vouchsafed to him in young manhood, along with Peter and James and Jesus, on the mountain of Transfiguration John saw "a new heaven and a new earth" eomtnentator.s and preachers and teachers have dwdt for centuries only upon the revelation of a new heaven. Nowadays we accept also the vision of a new earth which he envisaged. Because C''tians look for heaven they work for earth. nh the zest of a new appronension of truth, the church and her children have leaped to the task of creating a new earth, one that shall be free, safe, just and happy. In that faith and for that goal a great war has been fought and won; and even more difficult tasks in the realm of statecra ft a nd human: t aria niam are being be-ing faced and accomplished. The connection con-nection between Patmos and Paris is not difficult to trace. John's dream has lu-en long in coming to realization, but It j is on the way. As I sit and pondtr and lean on th ship's rail, painting the picture of receding reced-ing pa t mos on my memory. strange thoughts anil recollections crowd into my j musings. This island, one o:" the precious sites of nil the wor'd, represents far more than certain shapes nnd suhsta'i'-e any other is! a nd herr-abo'its is quite as ' interesting from the genealogical or scenic I or historic stand po.nl. Patmos m".-uis a man and a vision; and one man's vision has, ever stm e the world began, been a greater thing tha n yoj of ri: ies or armies o r events. Is not the deepest cry of our own perplexed day for a seer, a prophet, a man to whom t.-.re has been civen a vision of a new heaven and a new earth? What the Sultan Said. It w.i tvt a few days ago that 'he fil-; fil-; tan of Turkey, hirr self the accepted ,-pir-I ileal head of i''-yi Moslems thrown - j out the w f-rld, told me of his ypp.rnt.c I for a prophet to come fro;;: 'od to ao j ?.:ight the 3Tumbii:,g tett of the- world. In . 1 this he was but or- of a cczen w.ri. j w hom i have com ersoxi since leaving N;w |
