I believe the Apocalypse to be a complete and intelligible whole embodying a progressive revelation deliberately given by our Lord through the agency of angelic beings in a series of visions impressed on the inner consciousness of the seer. I am convinced that the purpose of the book was to supply the Church with the vision of the world and earthly life as they see them, whose consciousness is centered in the Spiritual and the Eternal, and that only when this standpoint has been attained will it be possible to put to proper use the rich treasures which scholarship supplies. This volume only claims to be a tentative effort to deal with some of the problems of the Apocalypse from this point of view.... From the Preface