arriving at knowledge of an event by means of the consideration that it must, in respect of the time and manner of its experience, maintain the traditions of past experience." Illation is the discovery of a cause or an effect by means of associating with the phenomenon a number of other facts, and formulating some event which explains them all in congruity with past experience.

We have read the book with care, and are persuaded that Mr Hughes has so far made good his case. He has succeeded in pointing out a grave defect in logical method. His criticism of John Stuart Mill's logic, and specially of the Mills' "four methods," is unanswerable. But we are not sure that his own method is good, or that he has been able to remove the defect he has pointed out. We are not sure that his distinction between the "uniformity of nature and "continuity in nature can be maintained. Is it possible to conceive a uniformity which is not continuous, or a continuity which is not uniform ? Is not uniformity often put in these forms, our expectation of the constancy of Nature," our expectation that the future will resemble the past"? And if this be legitimate, the uniformity of nature implies its continuity. Other remarks of a similar kind might be made. We do not indeed see the necessity of bringing into logical method two new processes, nor need we burden ourselves with these two new names. The same end may be accomplished by a more ample recognition of the twofold process of science. Alongside of the description of the process. by which we are enabled to rise from one law to another until we arrive at the widest possible generalisation, we have to place the description of the process by which we recognise differences until we come at last to that particular scientific act by which we recognise what makes a thing a thing. Both processes are illustrated in any competent scientific text-book; though in works which describe logical method in general, the later process has dropped out of sight. This also seems to us to be what Mr Hughes has mainly in view. But his addition to our logical method does not seem to us to supply what is needed in order to remove the defect.

JAMES IVERACH.

Völter's Problem der Apokalypse.

Das Problem der Apocalypse. Von Dr Daniel Voelter, Professor an der Universität Amsterdam. Freiburg im Breisgau. Edinburgh and London: Williams & Norgate. Pp. viii. 528. Price, M.10. THIS work, even if it settles but few of the many questions it discusses, will for some time to come be an invaluable companion to those who take in hand the criticism or exegesis of the Apocalypse. In the history of this immemorially arduous task, the work

of the last twelve years certainly marks an important epoch.

For a generation or more previously the traditional date, which had been accepted since the utterance of Irenaeus on the subject, had been set aside in favour of internal evidence which, to the majority of critics of very opposite schools, appeared to fix the book within a very few years of the death of Nero, and prior to A.D. 70.

As the earliest Christian document outside the Pauline writings the date of which was common ground between scholars of conflicting views on most other points, the Apocalypse was agreed to be a priceless monument of early Jewish Christendom, in its transition form doubtless, and transplanted both locally and mentally from its Palestinian soil, but none the less fundamentally important as historical evidence for an obscure factor in the history of the Apostolic age.

The Neronic date of the Apocalypse fairly held the field, while yet the early tradition for a later date remained unaccounted for.

Since 1882 all has changed: the hypothesis either of a composite origin, or of successive editions of the Apocalypse, hinted at by earlier critics (Grotius, Schleiermacher, Schwegler, and others) has taken definite form, and challenges investigation as a preliminary to any use of the Apocalypse as historical evidence, or the adoption of any clue to its interpretation.

It was Dr Völter, in his work Die Entstehung der Apokalypse (1882, second ed. 1889), who first formulated the problem on its existing basis. He came forward with an hypothesis which in the work before us has been further elaborated, but which in its broad outlines remains unchanged. A Christian Apocalypse, comprising about four-sevenths of the present Apocalypse, and contained in cc. iv.-xix., was written, quite possibly by the Apostle John, in Palestine somewhere near the year 62. Just after the death of Nero, its author made some additions,—the ßißλapidɩov, x. 9, 10, -consisting roughly of chapters x., xi., xvii., and xviii., with a few verses elsewhere. This enlarged Apocalypse, written possibly in Aramaic, was brought to Asia Minor by a person, very probably [] Cerinthus, who during the reign of Titus subjected it to a recension; his main additions are xii. 1-10, and xix. 11–xxi. 8, with the exception of a few verses and the addition of a few more. Under Domitian a second editor inserted xiii. and other passages, embodying a vehement protest against the worship of the emperors. A third recension under Trajan, universalist" and monarchian in its spirit, is responsible for vi. 16 ("the wrath of the Lamb "), and a number of other small but very homogeneous additions. Last of all, the lingering reluctance of the Asian Churches to accept the Revelation was overcome by a final editor, who during the reign of Hadrian added the letters to the Seven Churches, the reference

On the

to Patmos, the most remarkable references to the Tveûμa, and the highest Christology of the book (A and N, the Aóyos in xix., &c.). Assuming the legitimacy of the problem, it must be said that Dr Völter's solution of it outruns all possibility of certain knowledge. Such a detailed analysis as his must remain in the region of hypothesis but perhaps it is a good thing that hypothesis should be presented in as clear-cut a form as possible, and this Dr Völter has certainly done. But the interval between his first essay and the present volume has seen many contributions to the problem, and, with the partial exception of Erbes (1891), Volter can scarcely boast of a solitary supporter of his own scheme. The best-known rival is Vischer, as to whose attempt (1886) readers of this review need no information. It may be here useful to register the broad divisions of opinion. Of the ten or more scholars who accept the general idea that the Apocalypse is a composite work, Völter and Erbes, and, in so far as he entertains the possibility at all, Mr G. A. Simcox (p. 234), are the only defenders of its exclusively Christian origin. The rest assume a Jewish, non-Christian element. To Vischer and Pfleiderer, and, with modifications, to Weyland, the Christian element has been grafted on a Jewish original. other hand, Sabatier (Origines littéraires de l'Apoc. de St Jean, 1887), Weizsäcker, Schön, and Spitta (Die Offenbarung des Johannes untersucht, 1889) assume in common a Christian original, amplified from independent and perhaps earlier Jewish sources. To enter into the details of this maze of hypotheses, or to follow Dr Völter through his elaborate discussion of them, is, of course, outside the scope of this notice. His plan, which makes the book as heavy reading as it is useful for reference, is to go through the Apocalypse section by section, first giving an abstract of the contents; then an account of the treatment of the section by the several critics; lastly, his own construction. The book would certainly have gained in effectiveness by a less exhaustive and cumbrous treatment, but Dr Völter has preferred completeness, and has gained it at some expense of nerve and "go." The most readable and interesting section is the last (pp. 447-528), where he gathers up the results, going through each of his six strata in turn, discussing the purpose, character, and homogeneity of each, and estimating their respective relations to the Old Testament, both Hebrew Text and Greek Versions (a most important matter), and to the other New Testament books, as well as to extra-canonical apocalypses.

I have aimed at putting fairly before the readers of this review the leading features of Dr Völter's book; to give a more definite idea of it without an inordinate amount of detailed discussion is not easy. I must content myself with giving general impressions on a few detached points. The book is ably written, and the dis

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cussions of individual points are often sober and convincing (e.g., pp. 82, 83, 429, &c.). In particular, his strictures on Vischer's method appear reasonable. In a work which in its present form is Christian through and through, it is surely the right method to ask, not whether this or that section can have been originally Jewish, but can it not have been written by a Christian? I can see nothing (not even cc. xi., xii.) in Vischer's original Jewish document which is intractable to the latter test. But Völter appears to greater advantage in criticising the systems of others than in working out his own. It creates an uneasy feeling to find our author setting aside inconvenient evidence by airy assumptions of interpolation, even where any shadow of documentary evidence is lacking. When we find his plausible analysis of the Apocalypse keeping company with the abjudication of 1 Cor. xi. from St Paul (p. 438), with the assumption of interpolations at Gal. iv. 26, 1 Cor. xv. 25-28, and, to say nothing of Philippians and Colossians, with the bringing down of 1 Thessalonians to the time of Hadrian (p. 520) or later, we are rudely reminded that what rank as verisimilia in Holland are not always what we should describe by that name. A number of passages, again (e.g., pp. 168, 29, 40, 58, 207, 404), involve assumptions with regard to the relations of the Imperial Power to Christianity in the first century which require reconsideration in view of recent discussion on the subject. I miss in Dr Völter's discussion of the references to persecution of Christians any adequate appreciation of the present phase of the historical question as affected by the researches of Mommsen, Neumann, and Ramsay.

On the whole the proper attitude toward the results submitted to us in the present book would seem to be one of reserve. The ingenuity and fair-mindedness with which the system is argued out step by step does not overcome one's sense of one-sidedness and readiness to adopt precarious assumptions on the writer's part. That the question must be studied with full recognition of " Apocalypse" as a characteristic form of Jewish literature,-that our Apocalypse is one of a class, although as a vehicle of religious thought and feeling very far above its class, will be generally allowed. That both the book itself (i. 1, 3; xxii. 6) and the analogy of prophecy, to say nothing of reasonable principles of historical exegesis, postulate the closest correlation of the book to the history of its age, and that this correlation wherever identifiable is a certain guide to the date of the book as a whole and of its several parts, is to the present reviewer an elementary axiom. Accordingly, if cogent grounds demand a composite origin for the Apocalypse, well and good. But so many of the historical references appear still to leave room for doubt, and the purely internal tests of recension seem so

It

open to other interpretations, that I think sober and unprejudiced scholarship will for mere prudence sake continue to treat the Apocalypse as a homogeneous work until criticism has reached a more final result. Dr Völter's surest tests of "Bearbeitung" are apparently the passages characteristic of the penultimate revision, marked by the correlation of a high Christology with a religious cosmopolitanism contrasting strongly with the strictly Jewish-Christian horizon of the older strata (p. 87). The passages are, among others, v. 6, 9, 11-14; vi. 16 ("the wrath of the Lamb"); vii. 9-17; and the main ground relied on for their segregation is the adoration of the Lamb, and his close identification with God. is true that the assignment of the passages in question to a separate recension was not part of Völter's hypothesis in its original form; but he has all along regarded them as manifest interpolations. But his test will scarcely satisfy any but those who take the Ebionism of the original apostles for granted, and in any case imports a subjective element into the whole basis of the construction. Without at all disputing the possibility of some facts in the composition of the Apocalypse which may do justice to the internal grounds for an early and the external tradition of a late date, I read Völter's pages, like those of Vischer, with interest rather than with conviction. It may be worth while to mention one or two points of interest bearing on questions of detail. The four horses of ch. vi. correspond to calamities in the latter part of Nero's reign, beginning with a defeat of the Romans under Paetus by Vologeses I. in 62. The rider on the white horse is accordingly not to be understood of Christ as in xix. 11, which verse Völter ascribes to a later hand. The martyrs of ch. vi. are those of the year 64. is Galba, the beast who was one of the eighth being of course Nero. of uncertain date, reflect a popular belief that on his return Nero would take vengeance on the Imperial city. The Woman clothed with the Sun, whose glories Völter is tempted to explain with Dietrich (Abraxas, 1891) from the Greek myth of Leto (p. 168), is part of the third stratum or first recension," where Völter suspects the hand of Cerinthus. The difficult Messianic chapter xii. is explained by reference to the theology of Cerinthus, as also is the section xix. 11-xxi. 8, which Völter regards as the direct continuation of xii. 1-10. He insists, as he is perfectly entitled to do, on the testimony of Caius and the "Alogi" connecting Cerinthus with the Apocalypse. But in selecting these particular passages as Cerinthian in their Christology he challenges a jealous scrutiny of the grounds for a conclusion so repellent to ordinary Christian prepossessions.

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The sixth emperor of xvii. 10 the six and is to come back as Verses 16, 17, an interpolation

The war of the beast (xii. 17) against the seed of the woman