THE OF THE LIVING AND NOTESRev_1:1. The revelation of Jesus Christ.—This may mean, “belonging to, or proceeding from, Jesus Christ,” or it may be the revelation concerning Jesus Christ; i.e., the partial unfolding of what He, as the living one, is doing, and will do, with His Church in the world. The mystery which has to be unfolded is this: for what purpose is the redeemed Church left in the world, and made subject to the varied influences of calamities, national changes, persecutions, and temptations? The revelation of the mystery is the present relation in which Jesus Christ is standing to His Church, and the purpose concerning it which He is outworking, and for which He is using these various, and apparently strange, instrumentalities. God gave unto him.—I.e., God permitted him to reveal so much as is in his book for the comfort and encouragement of the Church. The full mystery must ever be hid in God; but revelations may be made to men within limitations which the Divine wisdom provides. Under the Old-Testament economy, faithful souls were helped and cheered by partial disclosures of the Divine plans and purposes, through the agencies of the prophets; and in the New-Testament economy the discourses concerning the last things given by our Lord, the prophecies of St. Paul and St. Peter, and the Apocalypse of St. John, are analogous to the work of the older prophets. Shortly.—There can be no doubt that the apostle’s mind was full of the coming events of his own time, but these events are properly regarded as typical of the events which recur in every age, and are used by the Living Christ for the discipline of His Church. By His angel.—The visible agent in the Divine communication (Revelation 10:8, Revelation 17:7, Revelation 22:8, etc.). John.—The reason for calling himself “servant” rather than “apostle” does not appear; but that the author of the work is the beloved apostle seems to be beyond reasonable doubt. He is the apostle of Christ’s higher nature and living relations.Revelation 1:2. Bare record.—Or had already borne record. The expression seems to refer to St. John’s earlier work of teaching, if not to the gospel and epistles he had written. (Some regard the Apocalypse as his first work.) Prophecy.—A term used in the sense of “disclosure,” as well as “foretelling.” A prophecy may reveal a meaning; the time element is not essential to it. “Any declaration of the principles of the Divine government, with indications of their exemplification in coming history, is a prophecy. The prophecy gives us the rule, with some typical application illustrative of its method of working; after history affords us the working out of various examples.”MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 1:1-3 The Mission of Prophecy.—We are familiar with the fact that God never brings judgments on either nations, families, or individuals, without giving them previous warnings, and opportunities of repentance. It is equally certain, though by no means so fully recognised, that God does not give rewards and blessings to His faithful servants without first cheering them with promises and prophecies. Hope is a most inspiring and ennobling grace, and in every age God has held before His people something to hope for. The assurance and prophecies of Old-Testament Scripture were the cheer of God’s saints through long periods of depression and anxiety. For them the curtain of the future was lifted, and they saw something of the good time coming. As we apprehend the conditions of the Christian Churches, and especially the Gentile Churches, in the days of St. John, we can recognise the grace shown in thus sending them this revelation of things that “must shortly come to pass.” The commotions of that age might well seem overwhelming. The persecutions imperilled the Church’s life. What could bring cheer to fainting hearts like this assurance that the Living Lord was working amid it all in behalf of His Church? and this prophecy that, out of all the conflict, and the stress, the Church would come purified and perfected, a bride fit for the Sinless One? I. Prohpecy dispels all idea of chance as ruling the world.—It does not matter whether by chance is meant a series of accidents, or the outworking of fixed laws—prophecy, as a forthtelling and foretelling of things to come, makes it impossible to believe in chance, or mere law. There must be intelligence—and an intelligent One—discerning the future, and making it a moral power in the present. One verified prophecy would witness for the being of God. II. Prophecy delivers from all fear of the schemes of men.—If we could only look down, we should only see what men were doing. Those early Christians might easily become hopelessly distressed as they watched the schemes of men in their day. Prophecy delivered them, by making them look on, and see how vain men’s schemes would prove, and how certainly God was making the very wrath of men praise Him. The future, unfolded before them, showed plainly that God knew “how to deliver the godly out of (men’s) persecution.” III. Prophecy occupies the thought and heart of men with comforting considerations.—The best relief from the strain of what is, may be found in meditating on what shall be. We must live in our to-day for the doing of our duty. We may live in God’s to-morrow for the comfort and good cheer of our souls. There are lessons to be learned from the past. There are fears to be felt in the present. But there are hopes to cheer us in the pictures of the future God graciously gives. It is not healthy to dwell on the future as a mere storehouse of good things which we are going to enjoy; but it is healthy to dwell on the future as the time of the full and manifested triumph of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is the prophecy of this book. IV. Prophecy of what is to be acts as a persuasion to men to seek what must be now, if they are to share the good prophesied.—See Revelation 1:3. All God’s good things are ours—only on conditions; and those conditions are to be met now, in our present relations. There are endurances of present tribulation; steadfastnesses under present strain, witnesses amid present opposition; maintenances of loyalty, even at cost of suffering; and personal purities to keep while surrounded with defiling Paganism; and the prophecy of what is to be inspires to persistent endeavour. The prophecy that says we shall walk with Christ in white is a present incentive to getting white and keeping white. The revelation given to the Church through St. John is really a prophecy, and intended to have on the early Christians the usual moral power belonging to all Divine prophecies. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_1:1. Revelation of Christ in the Church.—The action of Christ is seen throughout the book. It is Christ who bids John write to the Seven Churches; it is Christ who opens the Seven Seals (Revelation 6:1); who reveals the sufferings of the Church (Revelation 6:9); who offers the prayers of the saints (Revelation 8:3); and delivers the little book to John (Revelation 10:1-11). Thus it is seen that, though the rise and fall of earth’s history is included in the revelation, it is a revelation also of a living person. It is not the dull, dead, onward flow of circumstances, but the lives of men and nations seen in the light of Him who is the light of every man, and the life of all history; and thus we learn that “only a living person can be the Alpha and Omega, the starting point of creation and its final rest.” The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of this prophecy as of all others.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter. The Christian Hope.—From the beginning of its history, humanity has lived in a state of expectation, of disquieting fears, and of glorious hopes. “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head”—this prophecy contains already an indication of the formidable struggles which are impending, and of the assured final victory. This expectation concentrated and purified itself in the heart of the people of Israel, which was ever attracted towards the future, and whose fervent aspirations were met on their upward way towards heaven by the prophecy which was descending from thence to meet it. Through Jesus this Divine aspiration became that of the Church; and the book of the Apocalypse is the precious vessel in which this treasure of Christian hope has been deposited for all ages of the Church, but especially for the Church under the Cross.—F. Godet, D.D. For the life of St. John, see Introduction to his epistles. TO CHAPTER 1Rev 1:1 A Legend about John.—The following is narrated by John Cassian, a hermit of the fifth century, and it is also told by St. Anthony and others. In his old age the apostle used to find pleasure in the attachment of a bird which he had tamed—a partridge. One day, as he held it in his bosom, and was gently stroking it, a huntsman suddenly approached, and, wondering that one so illustrious should take such a trivial amusement, he asked, “Art thou that John whose singular renown has inspired even me with a great desire to know thee? How, then, canst thou occupy thyself with an employment so humble?” The apostle replied, “What is that in thy hand?” He answered, “A bow.” “And why dost thou not always carry it bent?” “Because,” he answered, “it would in that case lose its strength; and when it was necessary to shoot, it would fail, from the too continuous strain.” “Then let not this slight and brief relaxation of mine, O young man, perplex thee,” answered the apostle; “since without it the spirit would flag from the unremitted strain, and fail when the call of duty came.”—Biblical Things. AND NOTESRev_1:4. Churches.—Or congregations. Asia.—The single province, not the whole Asia Minor. It may have been the province in which St. John had chiefly laboured. The Seven Churches are taken as types of the varieties in the churches which make up together the one Church. Seven is the perfect number. Him which is, etc.—God Himself. Note how jealously apostles guard against the possibility of being so interested in Christ as to lose the sense of God. Christ Himself never would come between souls and God, and He will not now. Seven spirits.—Or the one spirit, with differing manifestations. The Holy Ghost must be meant. It is difficult, however, to see why He should be represented as before the throne. Possibly the allusion is to the attendants about God’s throne who reverently agree in what God does.Revelation 1:5. Jesus Christ.—This combines His human name, “Jesus,” and His human office, “Christ,” i.e., Messiah. St. John is the apostle of the veritable humanity. Faithful Witness.—Alluding to the teaching work of His human life. First begotten.—R.V. first-born, which conveys the idea of the text. Christ was the first person born into that spiritual, eternal life, into which we must be born. Prince, etc.—True ruler of mankind, because King in the spiritual sphere, which must necessarily control the material. Bishop Carpenter well says: “The disposition to dwell on the future and more visibly recognised reign of Christ hereafter has tended to obscure the truth of His present reign. He is the real King of kings.” Washed us … blood.—Clearly a strong figure. Taken literally it carries no meaning, for nothing ever is, or can be, washed in blood. It will appear again and again in this book, and, indeed, elsewhere in the New Testament, that Christ’s “blood” stands as a figure for the strenuousness of His endeavour in carrying out His redemptive mission, which mission is figured as “washing us from our sins.” The sentence giving the key to the use of the term is this: “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin” (Hebrews 12:4).Revelation 1:6. Kings and priests.—R.V. “to be a kingdom, to be priests”; see 1 Peter 2:5. The service which Christ’s redeemed and cleansed ones are called to render is partly represented by the service of a king, and partly by the service of a priest.Revelation 1:7. With clouds.—Mark 14:62. Either as with a glory which must be tempered by clouds, or magnificently surrounded with clouds, or set against a background of clouds, so as to stand out most impressively. There is also the idea that, being in the sky, all eyes can be turned up to Him. But we should clearly see that Christ’s coming is figured, not described; indeed, it cannot be described in human language. Pierced.—John 19:34. Type of those who pierced Christ, in a spiritual sense, in every age.MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 1:4-7A Salutation, a Doxology, and a Prophecy.—It is important to notice distinctly to whom this book of Revelation is addressed. It is neither sent to the world in general, nor meant for the world in general; and it takes a point of view which makes it wholly incomprehensible to the world in general. It is altogether a mistake for men who have not the special illumination of the Holy Spirit, which belongs exclusively to the new, Divine life in men, to seek in the book of Revelation for any events or details of human history. The book is prepared for, and addressed exclusively to, the regenerate persons who are in the fellowship of seven particular Christian Churches, but to these Churches as representing the whole Church of Jesus Christ in that age, and so to the whole Church of Jesus Christ in every age. The book of Revelation is, strictly and exclusively, a Christian’s book. It is no disclosure of the progress of human history, even to him; it is the assurance—which is a most gracious and inspiring assurance to him—that the Living Lord Jesus is ruling, controlling, and using all the movements of men, all the calamities of nature, and even all the ills and evils brought in by men’s bad passions, for His purposes in the disciplining and perfecting of His Church. It is the book of Revelation of Christ’s triumph over all material and all human evils, in the interest of His Church. Keeping this in mind will greatly help our understanding of the book, which may properly be called “Christ in History for His Church’s sake.” I. The salutation.—“Grace and peace” are familiar to us as the Old Hebrew salutation, “Peace be unto you!”—instinct with the new Christian feeling which recognises peace to be dependent on grace. What is peculiar in this salutation is the threefold source from which St. John expects the grace and peace to come. 1. From God, the Being who is thought of as outside of and independent of time. “From everlasting to everlasting thou art God.” This thought of God must be seen in precise relation to the contents of the book. Such are the commotions and the woes of the human story, that men might easily be so unduly oppressed by them as to fear that they were even beyond God’s control. So St. John starts with such an assertion concerning God as involves His absolute superiority—beyondness. All the earth-story is but a day in His eternal years. The conflicts of earth are to Him but as a play fight of children to a father. He holds it all in control, and can give peace in the power of His grace. 2. From the representatives of the Church. “The seven Spirits which are before the throne” (see “Critical Notes”; and Special Note from Moses Stuart). It would be unnatural to bring in the Holy Ghost here, because of the attitude; because of the unnatural description,—“seven Spirits”—and because St. John does not usually deal with the work of the Spirit. He is the apostle of the Person of Christ, human, and glorified. God is thought of under figure of an Eastern king, seated on His throne, surrounded by His courtiers, who cheerfully echo His wishes, and join in wishing for the Church on earth “peace through grace.” 3. From the Son of God, as the mediatorial agent for administering God’s grace to His Church, and so bringing to it peace. Christ is presented in a threefold form, as Witness, New-Born, and Prince. This description must be seen in relation to the contents of the book, and then we see Christ as the Witness for God who prepares the Church for what is coming; as the first to possess that new spiritual life which is to be subjected to the strain of all these earthly associations; and as the Prince—Immanuel commissioned by Shaddai—to do the actual ruling and over-ruling of everything in the interests of the Church. II. The doxology.—Revelation 1:5-6. This is dealt with fully in one of the Outlines. We only notice here that praise is offered for (1) Christ’s self-sacrificing love; (2) for the cleansing which that self-sacrificing love effects; and (3) for the honour which Christ brings for those whom He has cleansed. Two things are desired for Christ; present honour—that honour and glory which come from full trust and loyal service; and final triumph, the hastening of the day when everything shall be put under His feet. The doxologies grow in strength in this book. Here twofold; in Revelation 4:9-11, threefold; in Revelation 5:13, fourfold; in Revelation 7:12, sevenfold. III. From prophecy.—Revelation 1:7. The explanation of this verse depends on our regarding it as indicating what Christ’s coming will be to the Church, or to the world. Probably St. John is briefly declaring what it will be to all who have not been cleansed by Christ from their sins. To Christians, Christ is presented as the Living One, who has come, who is here, and who is now working for them amid world-scenes. But what is Christ to the world? Only the coming One who comes for judgment. The picture of the coming fixes attention on the manifestation of Christ in the majesty and terror of surrounding clouds. Then it bids us see the upturned eyes, and hear the hopeless wail, of unrepentant humanity. For the Saviour of moral beings must become their Judge when His saving grace toward them has been finally despised and refused. Christ coming to a world of sinners can but be an appalling revelation to them. Seeing Him, they will know what they have lost, and what they have to fear. In the righteous dealings of God the good man cannot fail to coincide. “Even so, Amen.” But this must in no way be represented as gloating over the woes of the lost. What is right for God to do, is right for God’s servants to approve. And “shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Note on Revelation 1:4. “Seven Spirits”; so Revelation 3:1, Revelation 4:5, Revelation 5:6. In the second of these passages it would be possible to understand the names of seven chief angels (see Revelation 8:2); but here it would scarcely seem possible that creatures should be, not merely coupled with the Creator as sources of blessing, but actually thrust into the midst of His being, between the two Divine Persons. “The seven Spirits,” thus made co-ordinate with the Father and the Son, can scarcely be other than the Holy Ghost, who is known to us in His sevenfold operations and gifts, and who, perhaps, has some sevenfold character in Himself which we cannot and need not understand, but of which there seem to be intimations in the passages of this book referred to, and in Zechariah 3:9; Zechariah 4:10, by which these are certainly to be illustrated.—W. H. Simcox. M.A. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_1:4. The Number Seven.—It may not be inappropriate to note that Philo speaks of the number seven in its mystical import as identical with unity, as unity developed in diversity, and yet remaining one. The after recurrence in this book of the number seven is selected to support the thought of completeness and variety; the dramatic unity is preserved, though the scenes which are unfolded are amply diversified; and the seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven vials, are not three successive periods, but three aspects of one complete period, presided over by that one Spirit whose guidance may be seen in all ages and in diverse ways.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter. Seven Spirits.—There are three possible explanations of this term which claim our careful consideration. (1) It may mean God, regarded as a most perfect Spirit; (2) it may mean the Holy Spirit, endowed with a most perfect nature; or (3) it may mean the seven archangels, or presenceangels, who stand near the throne of God, and are (so to speak) prime ministers in the execution of His will. The Seven Spirits.—No one who has studied the mystic use of the number “seven” will wonder to find the infinitude of the power and the glories of the Holy Ghost expressed in the language, “the seven Spirits.” The Holy Ghost is described as “before the throne,” to convey, with the idea of equality, His continual procession from the Father and from the Son. There is another reason why the Holy Ghost is called “the Seven Spirits”—in that sevenfold action by which He works upon the soul of a man. I. The office of reproving or convincing.—“He shall reprove the world of sin.” To show us what we are, to make us feel sin, is the Spirit’s first work. II. The showing of Christ.—“He convinces of righteousness.” There is no other power that ever can, or will, reveal the Saviour to a sinner’s soul. III. The Holy Ghost comforts.—All the Spirit’s comfortings have to do with Jesus Christ. He never uses the commonplaces of man’s consolation. He makes Christ fill the empty place, and exhibits the loveliness of Christ’s person, and the sufficiency of Christ’s work. IV. The Holy Ghost teaches.—He admits the believer into those deeper hidden meanings which lie buried under the surface of the Word. He assists the memory and makes it retentive of holy things. There are none who teach like this Teacher, because He knows all things—not the lesson only, but the learner also. V. The Holy Ghost sanctifies.—He prompts every good desire and right thought. He gives the taste for spiritual things, and prepares the timid for the occupations and enjoyments of a higher world. VI. The Holy Ghost intercedes.—Not as Christ, who carries on His work without us and prays for us in heaven; but He inwardly, throwing Himself into the soul, prays. All true prayer in a man is the prayer of the Holy Spirit. VII. The Holy Ghost seals the soul.—He lays on the believer that stamp with the name and the image of God which every power in earth, or in heaven, or in hell, shall recognise. This is “the seven Spirits which are before the throne.” I thank God the “seven” are one and the one is “seven.” Where He fulfils one of His blessed offices, there, sooner or later, He will assuredly fulfil them all.—James Vaughan, M.A. Revelation 1:4-5. The Gifts of Christ as Witness, Risen, and Crowned.—So loftily did John, in his old age, come to think of his Lord. The words of the text are not only remarkable in themselves, and in the order in which they give these three aspects of our Lord’s character, but remarkable also in that they occur in an invocation in which the apostle is calling down blessings from heaven on the heads of his brethren. I. How do “grace and peace” come to us from the “Faithful Witness”?—“Witness” is one of St. John’s most familiar words. He received it from Christ Himself, who claimed to be, in an eminent and special sense, the Witness to the world. Witness of what? Mainly about God. All our highest, and purest, and best knowledge of God comes from the life, and conduct, and character, of Jesus Christ. The name “Witness” indicates the characteristic and remarkable manner of our Lord’s testimony. The task of a witness is to affirm; and our Lord makes His words stand on their own evidence, or, rather, depend upon His veracity. The name bears, too, on the ground of His testimony. A faithful witness is an eye-witness. That Christ claims to be in His witness concerning God. Is there not, then, grace and peace brought to us all from that faithful Witness and from His credible testimony? II. We have grace and peace from the Conqueror of death.—He is the “first-born from the dead,” the resurrection being looked upon as a kind of birth into a higher order of life. 1. The resurrection of Christ is the confirmation of His testimony. In it He is “declared to be the Son of God.” All the truth, and peace, and grace, and hope, which flow to us from the witness of Jesus Christ to the Father are neutralised and destroyed unless we believe in the resurrection from the dead. His words may still remain gracious and true in a measure, only all dashed with the terrible mistake that He asserted that He would rise again, and rose not. Strike away the resurrection, and you fatally damage the witness of Jesus. You cannot strike the supernatural out of Christianity and keep the natural. Moreover, faith in the resurrection gives us a living Lord to confide in. And in Him, and in His resurrection-life, we are armed for victory over that foe whom He has conquered. III. We have grace and peace from the King of kings.—The series of aspects of Christ’s work here is ranged in order of time, in so far as the second follows the first and the third flows from both; though we are not to suppose that our Lord has ceased to be the Faithful Witness when He has ascended His sovereign throne. 1. He is “Prince of the kings of the earth” just because He is “the Faithful Witness.” That is to say, His dominion is the dominion of the truth; His dominion is a kingdom over men’s wills and spirits: such rule rests upon His witness. 2. He is “Prince of the kings of the earth” because in that witness He dies, and so becomes a “martyr” to the truth. His dominion rests on love and sacrifice. He is the King because He is the Sacrifice. 3. Because He has risen again. His resurrection has been the step mid-way, as it were, between the humiliation of earth and death, and the loftiness of the Throne. By it He has climbed to His place at the right hand of God. He is King and Prince, then, by right of truth, love, sacrifice, death, resurrection. And King to what end? That He may send grace and peace. Is there no peace for a man’s heart in feeling that the Brother that loves him and died for him rules over all the perplexities of life, the confusions of providence, the sorrows of a world, and the corruptions of his own nature? Is it not enough to drive away fears, to anodyne cares, to disentangle perplexities, to quiet disturbances, to make the coward brave, and the feeble strong, and the foolish wise, and the querulous patient, to think that Christ is King, and that the Hands which were nailed to the cross wield the sceptre, and that He who died for me rules the universe, and rules me?—A. Maclaren, D.D. Revelation 1:4-6. The Song of the Forgiven.—Not every gift calls forth a song; but this gift of forgiveness is worthy of, and has obtained, one. I. This gift of pardon is necessary for the Church. II. It was purchased at a great cost. III. Love prompted its bestowment. IV. It is bestowed freely. V. Like all the benefactions of love, it is bestowed promptly. VI. It is all-inclusive. VII. It brings with it all other blessings.—R. A. Bertram. Revelation 1:5. Christ’s Present Love and its Great Act.—R.V. “Unto Him that loveth us, and looseth us from our sins by His blood.” I. The ever-present, timeless love of Jesus Christ.—St. John wrote nearly half a century after Jesus Christ was buried, and he proclaims, not a past love, not a Christ that lived long ago, but a Christ that lives now; and he speaks as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” This is unintelligible, unless we believe Christ to be Divine. He loves us with an everlasting love, because He is God manifest in the flesh. The Divine nature of the Lord Jesus Christ is woven through the whole of the book of Revelation, like a golden thread. Christ’s love, then, is (1) unaffected by time, for it is the love of One who is Divine. As of all His nature, so of all His love, we may be sure that time cannot bound it. And it is (2) not disturbed or absorbed by multitudes. He loveth us. It is (3) unexhausted by exercise, pouring itself ever out, and ever full notwithstanding. It is (4) a love unchilled by the sovereignty and glory of His exaltation. There is a wonderful difference between the Christ of the gospels and the Christ of the Revelation: But the nature behind the differing circumstances is the same. II. The great act in time which is the outcome and proof of this endless love.—“He looseth us.” The metaphor is that of bondage. We are held and bound by the chains of our sins. Christ looses them by “His blood.” The death of Christ has power to deliver us from the guilt and penalty of sin. His blood looses the fetters of our sins, inasmuch as His death, touching our hearts, and also bringing to us new powers through the Spirit, frees us from the power of sin, and brings into operation new powers and motives, which deliver us from our ancient slavery. III. The praise which should be our answer to this great love.—Irrepressible gratitude bursts into a doxology from St. John’s lips as he thinks of the love of Christ, and all through the Apocalypse we hear the shout of praise from earth or heaven.—A. Maclaren, D.D. Revelation 1:5-6. A Suggestive Doxology.—This is a doxology—a sudden outburst of praise. There are many such in Scripture, and they show that religion is a matter of emotion, and not of intellect only. St. John, in his vision of the redeemed world, saw that the mention of Christ’s name woke the heavenly song, and set the angels and the redeemed singing together His praise. In the doxology now before us, though we seem to have no more than St. John’s human feeling, we have in reality the praise of the rapt and entranced man, who seems to himself to be actually taking a place among the redeemed hosts, and only giving an earthly form and voice to the utterance of their heavenly song. The doxologies in which the redeemed Church takes part grow in fulness in the early chapters of this book of Revelation. In our text the doxology ascribes “glory and dominion.” The four and twenty elders ascribe “glory and honour and power.” All creation ascribe “blessing, and honour, and glory, and power.” And the angels, and the elders, and the four beasts, solemnly bow before the throne, offering a sevenfold, perfect adoration, and saying, “Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God forever and ever. Amen.” We have, in the text, the threefold marvel for which we should be ever praising Christ now, in our measure, as for this same threefold marvel the redeemed praise Him in the glory. I. The first marvel is, that He should love us.—“Unto Him that loved us.” St. John dwells on this as if it were a most surprising thing. It is characteristic of dependent and affectionate natures that they cannot understand why it is that they have become objects of love. No one dwells on the mystery of God’s love to sinful men as St. John does. His pleased, satisfied feeling, which so often finds expression, kept the beloved disciple in right relations with his Saviour. It made him feel every day in a clinging, humble, thankful mood. And that is the kind of mood we all need to win. It is a marvel indeed that Christ should love us. If we were lovable we might feel no surprise. But what are we to His all-searching view? Who but the Father could see anything attractive in the prodigal. In view of the actual tone and temper of our daily life, is it really a surprise to us that Christ should keep His arms of everlasting love continually about us? II. The second marvel is, that Christ should “wash us from our sins in His own blood.”—The cleansing power of the blood of Christ was one of this apostle’s most cherished ideas. The words of Jesus on the supper night, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with Me,” gave St. John a key-thought, which unlocked for him the mystery of the risen Christ’s continuous work, and explained the relation in which the redeemed ones must ever stand to Christ. That company of white-robed saints in heaven, is not a company of sinners, all of a sudden washed and cleansed. It is made up of sanctified sinners, whose Christian sins have been washed away by Christ, through the gracious agency of earthly tribulations. The figure of washing is a somewhat difficult one for us to apprehend, because one side—another side—of our Redeemer’s work, His justifying work, His work of setting us in a right standing with God, has been almost unduly pressed on attention. We may be helped by observing that washing is not so much an act as a process, and that it bears relation to stains on the garments, and foulness on the person. It is a prolonged business to get the foulness off, and the stains out; and several processes, and often severe ones, have to be gone through. Christ’s washing is to be distinguished from His forgiving and His justifying. “Ye are washed, ye are sanctified, ye are justified.” Justified, or set in a right standing before God. Washed, or cleansed from the defilements left from the old-time of sin and self-will. Sanctified, or positively endowed, clothed upon, with the beautiful and pure spirit of Christ. We can readily see how those who had been brought over from the defilements and moral corruptions of heathenism would deeply feel the marvel of Divine grace, shown in washing them from their sins. That they would be able to get fully rid of the relics of immorality and foulness, left from their old heathen life, must have seemed to them impossible; and so, for them to be actually clean at last, and dressed in the symbolic white robes, was to them the marvel of marvels. This much is easy in explanation of the figure; but what did the apostle mean by washing “in His own blood.” We do not wash things in blood. Even in Judaism, there was sprinkling with blood, but, in our sense of washing, neither garments, nor persons, nor sacrifices, were ever washed in blood. Perhaps this was the apostle’s meaning: Christ’s blood, as referring to His earthly work, stands for His sufferings, borne in carrying out His life-mission as man’s Redeemer—sufferings which were consummated in His offering Himself unto blood-shedding and death. And so Christ’s blood, figuratively used by St. John concerning His present work in the “heavenlies,” stands for His present efforts and suffering anxieties—up, as it were, to measures of blood—borne in carrying out the heavenly mission of sanctifying that is now entrusted to Him. Christ’s blood, when it is applied to His human history, stands as a figure for His strenuous earnestness, and sacrificing endeavours as a human Saviour. Christ’s blood, if it is applied to His present continuing life in heaven, stands as a figure for the strenuous earnestness, and sacrificing endeavours of His heavenly life, as our Intercessor, High Priest, and Mediator. We are “washed in the blood of the Lamb,” then, means this: We are actually now being cleansed from our pollutions, our corruptions, our evil inclinations, our easily besetting sins, by the present gracious working of the Living Saviour, who still works in us, even as He did on earth for His disciples, up to such measures as can only be represented by the shedding of His blood. “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin;” but Christ, our Lord, has so resisted, and is so resisting every day. He rolls over us, back and fro, His own great tribulum, the threshing roller of testings and sufferings, parting the chaff from the wheat. But have we watched Him at the rolling? Have we seen that the rolling is hard work to Him—straining work for Him? In His supreme concern for our washing and cleansing, He brings right over us, body and soul, the great threshing roller of tribulation, and will sacrifice Himself up to measures of blood, if He can but cleanse us from all sin, and make us pure grain, free and faultless. It is the marvel of marvels—Christ, the infinite Cleanser, is actually at work in our lives to-day; and the work is so hard that it even costs Him groans, and tears, and blood. III. The third marvel is, that He should make us “kings and priests unto God.”—The symbol of the washing naturally leads on to the symbol of consecration. God does not merely turn citizens and subjects into kings, and common people into priests. That would be a very little thing to count a marvel of grace. In the old Jewish thought, kings and priests were God’s “anointed ones”—anointed to some special service, as Aaron and David. And it is in just this concerning themselves that redeemed souls rejoice. They are, in the higher sense, king’s and priests, consecrated to God’s service, altogether set apart as His, having every power and faculty absorbed in His work. Will not that be a marvel for us, who have been so long busied with our own things—so busied that we could scarcely find even corners of our time and life for the things of God? At last we shall be wholly Christ’s, to serve Him day and night in His temple. We shall be kings and priests unto God, and in that find an all-satisfying heaven. Revelation 1:7. The Hope of God’s Church in all the Ages.—Sometimes we dwell on the hope of the Old-Testament saints. Christ, Messiah, was to them the coming One. To us, in that sense—perhaps also in a yet higher sense—Christ has come; that old promise has been fulfilled. And yet Christ is to-day what He has always been—the coming One. Can we profitably think of the ever-coming One? I. The hope, in the old Church, was Messiah’s coming.—The world, everywhere and everywhere, has its “Golden Age,” and it is always somewhere ahead. Men have always been heard saying to their fellows:— “Courage, boys, wait and see; Freedom’s ahead.”The world would sink into helplessness and despair without that hope. A soul is not lost till it has lost hope. A nation is not lost till it has lost hope. But how did the hope of the Jewish world differ from the hope of the poetical and imaginative world? Precisely in this: that it centred in a person. And the person was its manifested God. That hope in a coming person kept up faith in the living God. More than that, better than that, the hope kept up, day by day, the sense of living relations with the living God, and the conviction of the Divine presence and Divine interest. And this helps us to understand and to realise what our hope of Christ’s coming should be to us. II. The hope, in the modern Church, is Christ’s coming.—That is the “Good time coming” of which the Christian ever dreams and sings. But it is still true that the Christian’s hope differs from the world’s hope, just as of old. It centres in a person. Christian life is love to a person. Christian hope is being with the person we love. 1. See how the Christian’s hope keeps up faith in the living God. A faith scarcely needed in this age of “law,” and “material success.” 2. See how the Christian hope brings Christ into present relations with us. His coming is the consummation and issue of what He is now presiding over. We cannot hold the hope of Christ’s coming apart from the spiritual conviction that Christ is now with us. III. The Christian hope was held in a formal and material way in the apostolic age.—Indeed, it could then be held in no other. Pictures always come before principles. That was the child-age of Christianity. The Christian then “understood as a child.” The apostles took Christ’s words literally. They are not to be so taken, for “they are spirit, and they are life.” Apostles expected the return of the Lord in their day, and as a bodily appearance. Were they right? Certainly Christ did not come in their day, just as they expected. Nay, this further is true, Christ has never so come yet: and that could not have been His meaning; that must have enshrined His meaning. The truth is that our Lord put His spiritual meaning into a formal setting, and we have to find His secret. IV. The Christian hope gets a final statement in the book of Revelation.—Notice the sudden insertion of this verse, and St. John’s way of giving a thesis, or summary. He really wrote a book of illustrations of this double point. The Living Christ is always here, and yet is always coming into definite relations, for every emergency of His Church. He is ever working towards His own climax. Christ is always coming for— 1. Special help—of the faithful. 2. Special discipline—of the wayward. 3. Special judgment—of the wilful. These are illustrated in the epistles to the Seven Churches in Asia. The Christ who is the Coming One.—The story of the human race may be read as the story of the successive comings of God in Christ unto it. There have been— 1. Comings in sign and symbol, from the first symbol of the Cherubim set watching and guarding the way to the “tree of life.” 2. Comings in vision and dream, from the first vision to Abraham, who saw the smoking furnace and burning lamp pass between the severed pieces of the victims. 3. Coming in angel manifestation, from the three men whom Abraham led on their way to make due examination of the truth concerning Sodom. 4. Comings in the flesh: “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.” 5. Comings in the Spirit—according to the word of the Lord Jesus: “I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you.” 6. Comings in judgment: all human calamities are Divine visitations. 7. Comings in final judgment: “Inasmuch as He hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He hath ordained.” The last two of these comings seem to be more especially referred to in this text. Strange, and complex, and difficult to understand, is this book of Revelation. No real and satisfying key for the unlocking of its meaning and message, as a whole, has yet been found. We cannot so precisely recover the associations of St. John’s age as to know its excitements, controversies, and national perplexities, and set before ourselves the actual historical materials of the various visions. Indeed, we cannot be sure how much of it is historical, and how much symbolical. And we do not quite understand how Old-Testament images, such as are found in the books of Ezekiel and Daniel, can be put to New-Testament uses. There is an exaggeration and an extravagance about the forms of Eastern poetry, and even of Eastern prose, which sorely puzzles the more orderly and formal Western mind. The contents of the book appear to be a series of Divine judgments, running through the Christian ages; and the text affirms that Christ comes in all these judgments, and works His work of grace, for His people, and for His Church, by means of them. But this is a larger and more comprehensive view of Christ’s coming than is usually taken. I. Christ coming in judgments.—Fix these points: judgments in a man’s life, or in a nation’s life, the book of Revelation teaches us to regard as Christ’s coming. Christianity stands in the closest connection with all human calamity. Read the verse in this light. Clouds: the recognised symbol of calamity, regarded as Divine judgment. (See associations in Jewish history.) Sometimes “clouds” represent “mystery,” but usually “Divine calamity.” Every eye: we are not able to conceive how this can be one localised event. But it is the fact of the ages. Christ in judgment is universal. Every eye does see him. They who pierced: this is for a class. Only one soldier actually pierced; but plainly the words represent the Jews, as a nation, who crucified the Lord. They come into Christly judgments, and, indeed, are under such now. All kindred, etc: who also now come under the Christly testings, as the gospel is preached to them. Jesus is now the World-Test, the Administrator, the Judge. Humanity now stands before God in Christ; all judgment is committed to the Son. Christ does come constantly in judgments on men and nations. No sin ever goes unnoticed. Christ visits for every sin. Bereavement, failure, plague, storm, war, are never seen aright until they are recognised as Christ’s comings. It is true of all men. We need not shift our thoughts away to some appalling day in the far future. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked.” “The avenging Fates are shod with wool,” but it only silences, it does not prevent, their coming. II. Christ coming to judgment.—Once for all, to judge your life as a whole, when that life is complete. The “when,” the “where,” the “how,” of that final judgment can only be told us in figures. What we can get firm hold of is this: “Our life on the earth will be estimated by an infallible judge, and our future must depend upon the result.” We can also see, more or less perfectly: 1. That God in Christ will be the Judges 2. That the revelations which God has made to us will be the test. 3. That the disabilities under which men have been placed will all be righteously and graciously estimated. 4. And that all actions will be treated as revealing the will and heart from which they come. Then we ought to live in the clear sense of this twofold judgment relation of Christ. As we know Christ’s judgments, in the history of the ages, they have all been designedly corrective. And some are able to cherish the hope that even the final judgment will prove to be corrective, as all the others have been. No one may speak positively on a matter that is not clearly and fully revealed, but it is a sublime possibility that the final judgment may prove to be the judgment of the redeeming love and wrath—the “wrath of the Lamb.” Can we add “Christ the Judge” to our conception of Christ, and find that view of Him add to our confidence and our love? We have not seen the whole of Christ unless we have seen that judgment is committed to Him. Revelation 1:7. Coming with Clouds.—See Daniel 7:13. Accompanied or surrounded by clouds; for ìåôÜ (with) frequently indicates the relation of a thing with other things which accompany or surround it. The idea here is that He will come seated on a cloud as His throne or chariot, or at least in a cloud moving or conveying these. So God is said to be surrounded, in Psalms 18:11. The clouds are His chariot (Psalms 104:3). Compare also Exodus 19:16; Exodus 40:34; Isaiah 6:4; Isaiah 19:1; Ezekiel 1:4. The object of this figurative language is to show that Christ will come in a majestic and awful manner, as enthroned upon a cloud fraught with thunder, lightning, and tempest, and thus will execute vengeance upon His enemies.—Moses Stuart. Christ’s Return in Glory.—Did not the Lord declare, in the assembled sanhedrin, and at the very moment when His death was about to put an end to His presence upon earth, “I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven”? (Matthew 26:64). In that notable saying, Christ’s return in glory, as King and Judge—this latter is the idea implied in the symbol of the cloud—is closely connected with the fact of the Ascension. The reason is that in fact from this moment the office fulfilled by Jesus in the world’s history is that of establishing, by the instrumentality of preaching, and of the Holy Spirit, whom He sends forth from the seat of His glory, His kingdom in the earth, and of successively overthrowing all the obstacles which oppose themselves to its progress. His glorious appearance, when the close of this period of His working has been reached, will not be His coming—for that began to take place from the time of His ascension—but His advent. The coming of Christ takes place during the whole of the present age; it will only be consummated in the event which is called the Parousia, or advent. Accordingly, the sigh of the Church, and of the inspired bard, who prays in her name, is not, Come soon, but, more exactly and literally, Come quickly. This expression refers, properly speaking, not to the nearness of the arrival, but to the rapidity of the journey, though the former is the necessary result of the latter. This coming of Christ, from the time of the Ascension to the time of the Parousia, is therefore the true subject of the Apocalypse, just as His first coming, between the fall of man and the Incarnation, was the true subject of Old-Testament prophecy. “Behold, He shall come,” said the last of the prophets, at the highest summit of ancient revelation, speaking of the Messiah-Jehovah (Malachi 3:1). The history of the world, in its essential character, is summed up in these three sayings: He is coming; He has come; He will come again. It is upon this idea that the whole plan of the apocalyptic drama rests. In every journey we contemplate, as distinct from one another, the starting point, the journey itself, and the arrival.—F. Godet, D.D. AND NOTESRev_1:8. Alpha and Omega.—First and last letters of the Greek alphabet, regarded as including all the letters between. So Christ bears relation to the whole story of humanity, from its beginning to its close. Recalling Revelation 1:4, we incline to refer this verse to God rather than to Jesus. R.V. has, “saith the Lord God.”MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 1:8 The Eternity of God.—It is thought by many that this must be a description of the Lord Jesus, and a distinct assertion of His divinity. But it would appear more simple and natural to regard it as a solemn repetition of Rev 1:4, especially as the words “the beginning and the ending” are of doubtful authority. Among the Rabbins the expression from à to Ù is a common one, employed to designate the whole of anything, from the beginning to the end. Stuart regards God as the speaker. But elsewhere (Revelation 1:17; Revelation 22:13) the same thing is directly asserted of Christ, whom we believe to be one with the Father in nature, but other than the Father in manifestation. We can form no proper conception of beings that had no beginning. We had; everybody with whom we have to do had; everything around us had. And it is almost as impossible for us to conceive of beings that have no ending. Everybody and everything seems to have a limited existence, and the apparently simple idea of the continuity of life our minds seem unable really to grasp. At least so far as the earth-life is concerned, everything has a beginning and an ending. See, then, what a sublime assertion of Divine superiority is made when we are required to form three conceptions of God. 1. He exists. It is all that can be said about Him. He is the “I am,” dependent on nobody and nothing, adversely affected by nobody and nothing. 2. He always did exist. Carry the story of the world back, if you will, through millions of ages, God was before the first age begun. What changes He must have seen! How little He is affected by changes that seem overwhelming to us! 3. He always will exist. To say nothing of the little story of that Christian age, the whole story of the world’s ages is as nothing in His sight. Egypt gone, Babylon gone, Rome gone, but God abides. The seemingly long history of the world—of humanity in the world—is but an episode in His eternity, and readily grasped in one vision by Him. What grounds of fear can that Church have which is His Church in the World? NOTES AND SERMON Rev_1:8. The Eternal Life of Christ in Heaven.—One fact confers peculiar interest on the book of Revelation. Christ speaks by His Spirit in all Scripture, but here we have Him speaking in His own person to the mortal followers He left behind Him. But a change has passed over Him since the times of Capernaum and Bethany. Yet, notwithstanding all the pomp of celestial grandeur, how remarkable is the minuteness of anxiety which the messages of this wonderful Being manifest! He is represented as walking in the midst of seven golden lamps, which are Churches, to typify His indwelling presence and pervading care; and each Church is warned with a precision and particularity that evince how impossible it is to evade His scrutiny or defeat His purposes of retribution. What His present relation may be to other worlds we know not, but we do know that His relation to us is as intimate and incessant as if no other object existed to occupy His thoughts. In His highest glory we are all personally interested. All His powers and privileges of being our eternal Governor, Guide, and Friend, are founded on the great declaration, “I am alive for evermore.” Christ, who “liveth for evermore,” is set forth in two great characters, in both of which His eternal life in glory is momentous to our interests. In relation to sin He is a mediator of justification and holiness; in relation to death and pain, He is the author of endless life and glory. 1. As regards the conflict with sin, He justifies and sanctifies. Both are based upon the redemption through blood: it is the sacrifice that gives our Mediator the right, either to vindicate or purify His faithful. (1) How, then, is the perpetuity of Christ in heaven connected with the work of our justication? In the epistle to the Hebrews we are shown the immeasurable superiority of the dispensation of Christ to the typical dispensation of Aaron. It shows us that the covenant of Christ is better, for it is a covenant of grace; the consecration of Christ better, for it was attested with the solemnity of a Divine oath; the tabernacle of Christ better, for it is the eternal heaven; the sacrifice of Christ better, for it alone can truly take away sins; the priesthood of Christ better, for it is everlasting, after the order of Melchizedek. The writer establishes the pre-eminence of the sacrifice and the priesthood, by insisting on the singleness of the sacrifice and the perpetuity of the priesthood. This priesthood of Christ, then, being perpetual, yet employing but a single sacrificial act, it must consist in a constant reference to that sacrifice of which His own blessed person stands in heaven as the undying memorial. He became human that He might save; His perpetuated humanity is, in heaven, the token and warrant of salvation, the vestment of the Divine priesthood; that we should be there recognised as blessed, it is enough that the Son of God be there recognised as a man. (2) The eternal life of Christ in heaven is yet more directly the fountain of blessing to us, in being the immediate source, not only of justification, but also of holiness; not only of gracious acceptance into the favour of God, but of all the bright train of inward graces by which that favour effectuates itself in us. It is the perpetual lesson of Scripture that we should fix our hearts in entire dependence on Christ Jesus. He suspends us on Himself for our whole spiritual existence; He will have us trace every emotion of faith, hope, and love, to His bounty. This communication of Himself is no less necessary in heaven than on earth. If the holiness be everlasting, the source that supplies it must be everlasting too. We have no reason to suppose that the dependence on Christ shall ever cease; our very exaltation shall be but to feel that dependence more nearly, to lean on that Arm more trustingly, to look up to those Divine Eyes with more affectionate confidence. He is “alive for evermore,” that He may be to us the everlasting fountain of our holiness. The abiding sanctity of His nature is the condition of ours. In the eternal laws of the Divine reason, it is decreed that Christ shall be the authorised dispenser of spiritual blessedness to His redeemed, that every grace shall flow through this channel, or cease to flow. II. Christ is “alive for evermore” as the eternal antagonist and conqueror of physical evil, pain, and death. He is the radiant centre of life itself, and happiness, to all that truly lives. He has the “keys of death and of Hades,” that is, He possesses the power of liberating from the bonds of death those confined in the intermediate state. Human death is the result of human sin. The eternal overthrow of sin, by the eternal life of Christ, involves the overthrow of that which is but a consequence of sin, and the conquest of death is the conquest of all—pain, disquietude, disease—that disposes to it, and in it ultimately terminates. First and second death are spoken of. Christ is the destroyer of one, the ruler and restricter of the other. The first form of death results on the sin of nature, and is therefore universal as it is; the second form, which perhaps is naturally the sequel or maturity of the former, is, by the mercy of God, restricted to unpardoned guilt. There is an eternal alliance, in the primitive counsel of God, between life and happiness. Even on earth, beings are made alive in order to be happy; this is the original law, and general rule. Scripture uses the word “life” to imply “felicity,” and “eternal life” to imply “eternal felicity.” Glorious alliance. It shall be bound eternally in heaven, when He who is “alive for evermore,” shall, in the power and diffusion of that life, spread around Him happiness with it coextensive and commingled. Every blessing that belongs to our inheritance centres in this great truth, that He who “was dead” is now “alive for evermore.” In Him newly born, we in Him die, rise, and ascend; our life is the reflection of His, if, spiritually quickened by Him, we too, like Him, are even now, and hereafter are destined yet more gloriously to be, “alive for evermore.”—W. Archer Butler, M.A. TO CHAPTER 1Rev 1:8. Alpha and Omega.—It would be both more correct and expressive to render this sentence, “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” In the Early Church these two letters came to be frequently used as symbols of Christ. Sometimes the letters were suspended from the upper arms of St. Andrew’s cross. Very many works of Christian antiquity were adorned with them. They were also worn on rings and seals, frequently in the form of a monogram. Shortly after the death of Constantine (A.D. 337) the letters were stamped on the current coin of the Roman Empire. The use of the symbol in the primitive Church amounted to a quotation of Rev 22:13, and was regarded as a confession of faith in Christ’s own assertion of His infinite and Divine nature. The Arians, who denied the divinity of Christ, avoided the employment of the symbol, but after the outbreak of that heresy its use became almost universal among the orthodox. It is worthy of remark that Alpha is once used by an ancient writer in the same sense as our A1. AND NOTESRev_1:9. Companion.—As having a full share in the experience of those who confess and serve Christ. Tribulation.—The work of the threshing roller (tribulum). The troubles and persecutions of Christ’s Church were, in the control of Christ, separating the chaff from the wheat. Kingdom.—Or recognised present rule of the Living Christ. Patience.—Or effort to bear, endure, and wait, which is becoming to those who know that Jesus lives. Patmos.—A barren island, now Palmosa, used by some Roman emperors as a place of banishment. No historic record of St. John’s exile has been found.Revelation 1:10. In the Spirit.—This means in a rapt, contemplative, absorbed state of mind; but such a state of mind may well be thought of as wrought by the indwelling Holy Ghost. It is the mood of mind which prepares us for spiritual visions. Lord’s day.—An important statement. What put St. John into this rapt condition was his meditation on the mystery and glory of his Divine Lord, as the Risen, and Living One. Great voice.—Thinking about Christ, he suddenly seemed to hear Him, and then even to see Him, in marvellous symbolic form.Revelation 1:11. For the Churches mentioned see notes on each epistle.MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 1:9-11A Sublime Commission.I. To whom did it come?—John; without any reasonable doubt, John, the beloved apostle. Certainly the most fitting of the apostles to deal with the new conception of the person, and present mission, of the Living Christ. But he puts in no claim to be heard on the ground of the insight which his mystical temperament brought him. He does not even claim on the ground of his apostleship. There is a great tenderness in his simple appeal to a common experience. It is as if he said, “You are in much anxiety and distress for Christ’s sake, and so am I. You are trying to be patient and trustful under the strain, and so am I. My experiences have brought to me most comforting and reassuring visions; I will tell them to you, so that you may be comforted by them, as I have been.” It is precisely the mission of those who have much common experience, and some unusual experience, in Christian life, to cheer and help their Christian brethren. Nothing brings soul so near to soul as companionship in tribulation, and fellow-experience of the need of Divine patience. II. Under what circumstances did the commission come?—St. John was at the time separated from his people and from his ministry. It was a time of forced seclusion, and lonely meditation, with such natural associations of sea and sky as might help to fitting moods. Take into due account St. John’s mystical temperament, meditative habits, recent trying experiences, sense of having a trust from Christ, and immediate surroundings, we can see that he was the fitting man to receive this commission, and that it came at a fitting time. Such a series of visions probably occupied the apostle for many weeks, and the series could only be maintained when he was undisturbed by immediate claims of duty. The strange times of life are often the great times of life. Illustrate Luther at the Wartburg, Bunyan in Bedford goal. III. What form did the commission take?—A series of visions, not in any chronological order, but apparently visions of the same scenes taken from different points of view. St. John received the commission from One whose voice was as arresting as a trumpet-call. But it was no vague blare of trumpet; it spoke in intelligible language, though using strange figures and symbols. IV. To whom was the message to be sent?—To seven particular Churches. Why to these? Possibly because they were grouped in one district, and bore one general character. Possibly because they had become the special “diocese” of St. John. Possibly because they would effectively illustrate the main varieties marking the Churches that make up the one Church of the redeemed. It is clear that our interest is not to be wholly absorbed by the particular epistles to particular Churches, since the message is to the whole Church of all the ages; and we have only to see that the various forms of strain and tribulation through which the Church passes are necessary, because the discipline must be adapted to a variety of conditions. And this variety of conditions is represented by the description of the states in which the Living Christ found these seven Churches. The Church has its own particular temptations and trials in each successive age. It may always cherish this assurance: in the hands of Christ they bear direct disciplinary relations to its particular weaknesses, or failings. Note on Patmos.—One of the Sporades, the south-eastern group of the islands of the Ægean. According to tradition, as given by Victorinus, St. John was condemned to work in the mines—which, if trustworthy, must mean marble quarries, as there are no mines, strictly speaking, in the island. Christians were sent to the mines (Roman Christians to Sardinia) at least as early as the reign of Commodus, and this was much the commonest punishment during the Diocletian persecution, in which Victorinus himself suffered. In St. John’s time it was commoner to put Christians to death. But the tradition is probably right: “deportation,” confinement, without hard labour, on a lonely island was then and afterwards reserved for offenders of higher secular rank.—W. H. Simcox, M.A. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_1:9. The Kingdom and Patience.—What wicked men have done with Divine Revelation as a whole, good men have done with that part of it which we call by itself “the Revelation.” You commonly divide the enemies of truth into such as believe more than they ought, and such as believe less than they ought. Superstition the crime of the first, infidelity the crime of the other. These are the errors that divide the readers of the Apocalypse. One order of readers goes too far, professing to understand so as to expound and clear up the whole of it; another order almost entirely pass the book by, as if the Canon never contained it. Never give to mysteries the go-by because they are mysteries. There would be nothing left for you to love, nothing to admire, if you banished all but what you could comprehend. Learn what you can, and follow on to know the mysteries of God’s words and ways. How came these two words “kingdom” and “patience” together, as if they properly belonged to each other? And how can we be “companions “with John in these two things? The first thing we have to admire is “the patience of Jesus Christ.” Was it to the glory forsaken before His death, or the glory inherited after His death, that the word “kingdom” alluded? The latter must have been intended. St. John could be no partner in the glory that preceded the Advent. Nor could any of us be companions in that glory. So that the kingdom was the “kingdom” that followed the “patience.” But the two epochs in Messiah’s career—the earthly and the heavenly, the atoning and the triumphing—seem, in the text, as if run into one another, as it were, without a break. Nay, the “kingdom” is actually put before the “patience,” to perfect the union between the dying and the living for evermore; to illustrate the hold He had upon His reward while He was earning it; the “joy that was set before Him,” supporting and staying His spirit while enduring the cross and despising the shame. These are the very twin doctrines of our salvation: that Jesus Christ suffered, else we are yet unforgiven; and that Jesus Christ now reigns after the suffering, else we preach in vain, and believe in vain. The “patience “takes away our sins. The “kingdom” preserves us from sinning. But if Jesus was manifested to take away our sins, He was manifested also to set us an example, so that, besides being believers in His kingdom and patience,” we are, in our degree, to share in both the one and the other. How may we become companions with Christ, as well as pensioners on His sacrifice? We are not glorified as soon as justified. We must be “made perfect through suffering.” And we, too, “have need of patience,” and in experience of tribulations we become companions in the patience of Jesus Christ. But there is no “patience” where there is not also the “kingdom.” As men we suffer; as redeemed men we sit enthroned. The servants of the Saviour live a double life. “As unknown, and yet well-known; as dying, and behold we live,” etc. Take, then, the patience, lest you mount too high; and take also the kingdom, lest you sink too low.—Henry Christopherson. John’s Banishment.—It has been beautifully said that his “banishment from his earthly home lifted him nearer a heavenly one; there he saw a glory he never witnessed in Jerusalem. So Martin Luther, during his confinement in Wartburg, translated the Scriptures, and had the enjoyment of a freedom and repose to which thousands outside were strangers” (Cumming). The banishment of John is not the only instance in which God has made the wrath of man to praise Him. “Satan is not always wise. For him it would have been better had he never persecuted Paul. He put him in prison, and there he wrote some of his beautiful epistles, which have done more for the world’s good than all his preaching. He had better, for his own interests, have never put poor John Bunyan in gaol, for there he wrote the book which has immortalised his name, and done, perhaps, more injury than any other work, save the Bible, to Satan’s kingdom.”—Thomas Jones. The Efficiency of the Passive Virtues.—Kingdom and patience! a very singular conjunction of terms, to say the least; as if in Jesus Christ were made compatible authority and suffering, the impassive throne of a monarch and the meek subjection of a cross, the reigning power of a prince and the meek subjection of a lamb. What more striking paradox! And yet in this you have exactly that which is the prime distinction of Christianity. Christ reigns over human souls and in them, erecting there His spiritual kingdom, not by force of will exerted in any way, but through His most sublime passivity in yielding Himself to the wrong and the malice of His adversaries. It is a kind of first principle, in a good life, that the passive elements, or graces of the Christian life, well maintained, are quite as efficient and fruitful as the active. Nothing discouraging need be said concerning what are called active works in religion, when we point out the efficiency of those virtues which belong to the receiving, suffering, patient side of character. They are such as meekness, gentleness, forbearance, forgivingness, the endurance of wrong without anger or resentment, contentment, quietness, peace, and unambitious love. These are gathered up in the comprehensive term “patience.” These are never barren forces; they are, in fact, the most efficient and most operative powers that a Christian wields, inasmuch as they carry just that kind of influence which other men are least apt and least able to resist. Power is not measured by exertion. A right passivity is sometimes the greatest and most effective Christian power. I. The passive and submissive virtues are most of all remote from the exercise or attainment of those who are out of the Christian spirit and the life of faith. All men are able to be active; but when you come to the passive, or receiving, side of life, here they fail. A true Christian man is distinguished from other men, not so much by his beneficent works as by his patience. In this he most excels and rises highest above the mere natural virtues of the world. Just here it is that he is looked upon as a peculiar and partially Divine character. Consider the immense power of principle that is necessary to establish the soul in these virtues of endurance and patience. Here is no place for ambition, no stimulus of passion. The Christian gets the power of his patience wholly from above. It is not human; it is Divine. Hence the impossibility of it, even to great men. It is chiefly by this endurance of evil that Christ, as a Redeemer, prevails against the sin of the human heart and subdues its enmity. Jesus said, “The prince of this world is judged,” as if the kingdom of evil were now to be crushed, and His own new kingdom established, by some terrible bolt of judgment falling on His adversaries. It was even so; and that bolt of judgment was the passion of the cross. We had never seen before the sublime passivities of God’s character, and His ability to endure the madness of evil. In the cross we see Him bearing wrong, receiving the shafts of human enmity, submitting Himself, in His sublime patience, to the fury of the disobedient, and so melting down by His gentleness what no terrors could intimidate, and no frowns of judgment could subdue. Men, as being under sin, are set against all active efforts to turn them, or persuade them, but never against that which implies no effort—viz., the gentle virtue of patience. We are naturally jealous of control by any method which involves a fixed design to exert control over us; therefore we are always on our guard in this direction. But we are none the less open, at all times, to the power of silent worth, and the unpretending goodness of those virtues that are included in patience. The submissive forms of excellence provoke no opposition, because they are not put forth for us, but for their own sake They move us the more because they do not attempt to move us. See how little impression is often made upon you by the most strenuous efforts to exert influence over you, and then how often you are swayed by feelings of respect, reverence, admiration, tenderness, from the simple observation of one who suffers well. How gently do these lovely powers of patience insinuate themselves into your respect and love. Notice some of the instructive and practical uses of the truth illustrated. 1. It is here that Christianity makes issue with the whole world on the question of human greatness. That is ever looked on by mankind, and spoken of, as greatness which displays some form of active power. It has never entered into human thought, unsanctified by religion, that there is or can be any such thing as greatness in the mere passive virtues, or in simply suffering well; least of all in suffering wrong and evil with a forgiving, unresentful spirit. Christianity is here alone, holding it forth as being, when required, the Divinest, sublimest, and most powerful of all virtues, to suffer well. 2. The office of the Christian martyrs is here explained. In the martyr ages we see a vast array of active genius and power, that could not be permitted to spend itself in works of benefaction to the race, but was consecrated of God to the more sacred and more fruitful grace of suffering. The design was, it would seem, to prepare a Christly past, to show whole ages of faith populated by men who were able, coming after their Master and bearing His cross, to suffer with Him, and add their human testimony to His. 3. We see how it is that so many persons are so abundantly active in religion, with so little effect, while others, who are not so conspicuous in action, accomplish so much. The reason is, that one class trust mainly to the virtues of action, while the others unite also the virtues of patience. 4. The reason why we have so many crosses, trials, wrongs, and pains, is here made evident. We have not too many occasions given us for the exercise of patience. 5. Possibly men not religious are averted from the Christian life more by their dislike of the submissive and gentle virtues than by any distaste of sacrifice and active duty.—H. Bushnell, D.D. TO CHAPTER 1Rev 1:11. The word “Church.”—St. John addresses his message to certain symbols or signs that were shown him in the vision when he was “in the spirit.” They were “seven churches.” The Greek word ecclesia is frequently translated by the English word church. It is not properly church, for church is an Anglicised term derived from a different Greek word, curiacon, which means the Lord’s place (or house). Ecclesia means originally a summoned assembly. An assembly, so called, was made up (if a quorum attended), held, and dissolved. In the New Testament, so far as affects this book, it seems to mean a body of people who have been invited, by an ordained apostle, presbyter, or householder, to worship God together in convenient places of meeting, and have accepted and acted upon the invitation. Ecclesia, not church, has a more spiritual meaning in Ephesians 1:22-23; Colossians 1:18. In these passages it includes all those who form the body of which Christ is the head, such as are elsewhere described as “called by God” to various duties and graces. In the Book of Revelation this latter sense of ecclesia is never used. If referred to at all, it can only be symbolically, but the more spiritual meaning need not be introduced. The English word church means an ecclesiastical building, and, metaphorically, all its “connection”—i.e., the baptized members of the Christian body who use it for worship. The word congregation means an assembly, and cannot properly be used to mean the “connection,” as a limitation to the baptized, either metaphorically or otherwise. AND NOTESRev_1:12. See the voice.—“See Him whose voice I heard.” Seven golden candlesticks.—Compare Zechariah 4:2-11. Lamp-stands would be a better term. Not one candlestick with seven branches, but seven candlesticks. The independence of the Churches of Christ is consistent with the unity of the Church of Christ.Revelation 1:13. Midst.—Middle, centre. Like unto.—So as to be immediately and distinctly recognised. “Son of Man” was Christ’s own name for Himself. It is used here because His glory might hide from view His oneness of sympathy with His people. Down to the foot.—Compare the long garments of priests. Girdle.—Put round the breasts as a sign of kingly repose, not round the loins, which would be a sign of toil. Christ is, as head of His people, the great Priest, and the great King. These—the garment and girdle—suggest His offices. Now we see His personal character and His power for fulfilling His offices. Each figure suggests absolute purity, in which lies perfect power.Revelation 1:14. White.—Compare scene at our Lord’s transfiguration. Flame of fire.—Which is white when it is full and strong.Revelation 1:15. Brass.—Which glows with whiteness in the furnace. Many waters.—Flowing down hill-sides, white with foam, the very sound of them in harmony with whiteness.Revelation 1:16. Seven stars.—See Revelation 1:20. In His light these glow with willingness. Two-edged sword.—Gleaming white. Sun.—So white no eye can gaze upon it. By and these figures the lustre of holiness and righteousness is signified.Revelation 1:17. As dead.—Compare Job 42:5-6; Isaiah 6:5. The realisation of the Divine presence, even in symbol, is profoundly humbling to the devout man.Revelation 1:18. I am alive, etc.—In this sentence is the key-note of the book. Hell and death.—Figures of all the forms of woe that can affect the Church. They are in the absolute control of the Living One, and are used by Him for His purposes.Revelation 1:20. Angels.—Either the ministers, or the guardian angels, of the Churches. It is, however, quite possible that they represent the angels appointed to conduct the discipline of each Church. Then what is asserted is, that the angel of discipline for each Church is absolutely held in the Living Christ’s hands, and does but work out His purpose of grace.Note on the “Seven Spirits” by Moses Stuart.—After dismissing the suggestions that either God, or the Holy Spirit, can be meant by this figure expression, Stuart argues in favour of a third possible meaning—that of attending or ministering presence-angels. Among the ancient fathers not a few embraced this view; such as Clemens Alex. Andreas of Cζsarea, and others. So among the moderns, Valla, Beza, Drusius, Hammond, and many others. The nature of the whole expression favours this view. The seven spirits before His throne naturally means those who stand in His presence, waiting His commands in the attitude of ministering servants; see and compare Revelation 4:5; Revelation 7:9; Revelation 7:15; Revelation 8:2; Revelation 11:4; Revelation 11:16; Revelation 12:10; Revelation 14:3; Revelation 20:12—which passages, although not all of the same tenor with the text before us, still decide that those who are before the throne are different from those on the throne. 2. Several passages in the Revelation go directly to confirm the opinion in question. E.g., Revelation 8:2, “I saw τοὺςἑπτὰἀγγέλους, who stand before God.” This is the first mention of these seven angels which occurs after the introduction to the book. The article τοὺς of course designates here the well-known seven angels, i.e. archangels, or presence-angels, which the reader was expected readily to recognise. Such a meaning is unavoidable, under such circumstances. Here also, I cannot doubt, is to be ranked the passage in Revelation 4:5. where the seven lamps burning before the throne are said to be τὰἑπτὰπνεύματατοῦΘεοῦ, i.e. the seven spirits. All the passages cited serve to show that the “seven angels” was a familiar idea with the writer; and that, in this respect, he only followed the common usus loquendi of his time. The book of Tobit introduces Raphael as saying, “I am … one of the seven angels.” The book of Enoch gives the names of the seven angels who watch. The word “watchers” is employed in the Syriac liturgies for guardian angels, or archangels. We find seven Amshaspends, or archangels, in the theosophy of Zoroaster.MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 1:12-20 The Symbolic Presentation of Christ in His Church.—There are two possible conceptions of the continuity of Christ’s life and ministry from the time of His resurrection. The usual thought of Him is of One who has passed into heaven, and there acts as Mediator, Intercessor, High Priest, for His people. That idea is specially elaborated in the epistle to the Hebrews. The less usual thought, but the one which is every day gaining more interest and importance, conceives Christ as actually having come again, as He said He would, and being actively engaged in His Church, for His Church’s good; but in spiritual, not in sensible fashion. So present, this vision represents— I. His place.—“In the midst of the seven golden candlesticks” (Revelation 1:13). In the centre, the middle, the very heart of the Church, so as to have full control, out to the circumference. II. His office.—This appears to be indicated by His dress (Revelation 1:13). The long robe, indicating the priest; the peculiar position of the girdle indicating the King. III. His character (Revelation 1:14-15).—The figures indicate absolute and dazzling, glistering, whiteness. Not merely a passive holiness, but an active holiness which makes holy. It shines and makes shining. IV. His mission.—Symbolled by the two-edged sword proceeding out of His mouth. He had to search the Churches, and solemnly declare the truth concerning them, however severe and humiliating it might have to be. Symbolled, too, in a countenance like the sun, withering up all falseness and evil. St. John’s fear in the presence of this symbolled Christ represents the fear which the Church always has when it realises that the Living Christ is inspecting it, and critically searching it. The response to St. John’s fear represents the response Christ makes to the Church’s fear. It may be stated in this way. Christ—the Living, Present Christ—compasses the Christian ages even as God compasses all ages. Therefore, Christ can fully control and use all the evil influences that may be affecting His Church, making “all things work together for good.” NOTES AND SERMON Rev_1:12. The Candelabrum of the Apocalypse.—This is a striking symbol of the Church. Herein we see— I. The position of the Church—without the veil. II. Its work.—To exhibit light—that is, Christ. III. Its unity.—Many lamps, but one light. IV. The source of its vitality.—Continually fed by the Holy Ghost. V. Its beauty.—Each branch richly ornamented. VI. Its value.—the candelabrum was gold—believers are Christ’s jewels. Application: 1. How great the honours! 2. How certain the safety, of believers!—R. A. Griffin. Revelation 1:13. Symbols of the Living Christ.—Here our Lord appeared to St. John, clothed in all the insignia which serve as emblems of the different aspects of His glory. It is specially important to notice that it is from this general picture of the glory of the Lord that the particular emblems in which He appears to each particular Church are drawn. “These emblems represent the qualities in virtue of which He will have power to do all that He announces to them.” The Symbolism of Numbers.—There is an alternation of praise and blame, answering to the even and odd numbers included in seven. The law according to which the Seven Churches have been disposed in the picture seems to be this: the numbers one, three, five, and seven, indicate the different degrees of the dominion of sin over the Christian life in a Church—its graduation in evil. The numbers two, four, and six, indicate, on the contrary, the different degrees of the victory gained by the work of God over sin—its progress in good.—F. Godet, D.D. Revelation 1:17-18. Christ Risen, Living, and Life-giving.—The point of interest in these verses is this: they present St. John’s full and final impression of the person of Christ. A revelation by vision of the Risen Christ was given to St. John, because he would be specially sensitive to visions, his mystical, meditative mood of mind enabling him most effectively to deal with this mode of revelation. Compare the visions given to St. Paul, as a sufferer in Christ’s service; and to St. Peter, as a leader into the larger truth. St. John’s gospel concerns the person of Christ. He is not mainly interested in what Jesus did, but in what Jesus was, and in the things which revealed what He was. The synoptists relate what Christ said and did, without having any argumentative purpose in their narrations—or we may say, they give us history for beginners, the record of facts; but St. John gives us history for advanced students, the philosophy of the facts. The explanation of St. John’s peculiar point of view is found— 1. In his nature, which may be compared with that of Mary of Bethany. 2. In the fact that he was brought to Christ by the personal influence of Christ. That fixed his lifelong interest upon Christ Himself. For many long years he had meditated on his theme, and, through his meditations, had kept the personal influence of the Living and Spiritual Christ strong upon him. And the heretical teachings of his day made him increasingly zealous to uphold views that honoured Christ; so he became the guide and helper of advanced Christians, who are spirituallyminded, mystical, and able to grow into discernment of those spiritual and eternal truths which underlie varying forms, and can gain expression through ever-varying forms. St. John can lead all who have the insight of love. It is well for us to keep in mind that Christianity, as a system, unfolded along two distinct lines. 1. Led by St. Paul, the doctrine of Christ’s work was gradually elaborated; and, 2. Led by St. John, the doctrine of Christ’s person. There is a Jewish way of reading the Crucifixion: there is a Pauline way, and there is a Johannine way. From this last point of view it appears as the great self-sacrifice. He laid down His life that He might take it again. St. John wants to know what the Crucifixion teaches concerning the person of Christ. There are three ways of treating our Lord’s resurrection: 1. We may collect evidences of it as an actual event in history. This is the familiar method of the ordinary ministry. The evidences include (1) Scriptural anticipations of it; (2) Christ’s prophetic words in relation to it; (3) historical facts concerning it; (4) historical results of it, in the martyr-witness of apostles, and in the founding of the Church. 2. We may endeavour to discover the doctrinal significance of it. Christian facts and truths have been shaped into systems; for the completion of every system, Christ’s resurrection is found to be absolutely essential. No Christian doctrinal system will hold together that denies it. 3. We may try to get at the spiritual significance of it, as a revelational experience through which Christ passed. Revelational, as carrying a revelation to us concerning Christ’s person. This last is St. John’s way. It is suggestive to compare the accounts of the resurrection-period in the synoptists with those given in St. John. What St. John felt had been taught him concerning the person and relations of the Risen Christ is embodied in our text, which records an immediate revelation made to the apostle, but as truly expresses the sanctified impression of more than fifty years of thought about Christ, and fellowship with Him. I. Christ as the Living One.—He has life in Himself. That life was in a human body. That life now is in a spiritual body. He is “Christ who is our life.” In what sense are we said to live? Distinguish the derived life of the creature from the absolute life of God. Compare the terms “Living one,” and “I am.” The manifested life is this Divine, uncaused, eternal life of God, set in human conditions and limitations. II. Christ as the Life-yielding One.—Explain that the Divine life could not be yielded. Absolute, unbroken continuity belongs to its very essence. The manifest life, the human life which was the agency of the manifestation, alone could be yielded. The heresy attributed to Cerinthus was but an imperfect, unworthy, and dangerous setting of a spiritual truth, which needs to be recovered, and worthily stated. The Divine Being, Christ, did not die, could not die; the “Man, Christ Jesus,” died. Word-settings constantly imperil spiritual verities. III. Christ as the Life-Resuming One.—“Am alive.” The idea which the apostles were likely to take up was that Christ was dead, because Christ’s body lay in Joseph’s new tomb. They had, therefore, in some outwardly evidential way, to be shown that His body was not He. It could be changed for a spiritual body, and He remain the same. He lives. It may be said, “Christ died.” And with equal truth it may be said, “Christ never died.” IV. Christ as the Life-Giving One.—“Keys of Death and Hades.” He who has only derived life cannot quicken life. You may pull a flower to pieces, but you cannot put it together again, and breathe life into it, though you have a derived life in you. He who has life in Himself can quicken life. Death and Hades for bodies are but types of all kinds of deaths—deaths of feeling, deaths of power, deaths of sin, deaths of backsliding, deaths of doubt; but from all deaths the Risen and Living One can quicken us. St. John saw Christ in the vision as He is, as He permanently is, the Living One who gives life; who is ever giving life; who has come that “we may have life, and have it more abundantly.” That is our Christ. That is Christ who “is our life.” The Self-description of the Risen Christ.I. “I am He that liveth”.—That word “liveth” is a word of continuous, perpetual life. It describes the external existence which has no beginning and no end; which, considered in its purity and perfectness, has no present, and no past, but one eternal and unbroken present—one eternal now. It is the “I am” of the Jehovah who spoke to Moses. “He that liveth” is the Living One; He whose life is The Life, complete in itself, and including all other lives within itself. If anything has come to us to make us think what a fragmentary thing our human life is, there is no greater knowledge for us to win than that the life of One who loves us as Christ loves us is an eternal life, with the continuance and unchangeableness of eternity. It is the thought of an eternal God that really gives consistency to the fragmentary lives of men, the fragmentary history of the world. II. “I am He that liveth, and was dead.”—Into that life of lives death has come—as an episode, an incident. When death came to Him it was seen to be, not the end of life, but only an event in life. It did not close His being, but it was only an experience which that being underwent. This is the wonder of Christ’s death. It was an experience of life, not an end of life. Life goes on through it and comes out unharmed. III. “I am alive for evermore.”—This existence after death is special and different. “Alive for evermore” is an assurance that in the continued life which has once passed through the experience of death there is something new, another sympathy, the only one which before could have been lacking, with His brethren whose lot it is to die, and so a helpfulness to them which could not otherwise have been, even in His perfect love. This new life, the life that has conquered death by tasting it—this life stretches on and out for ever. Think what that great self-description of the Saviour means, and what it is to us. What do we need, we men? Think of the certainty, yet mystery, of death. Christ’s words come to us, and at once death changes from the terrible end of life into a most mysterious, but no longer terrible, experience of life. Not merely is there a future beyond the grave, but it is inhabited by One who speaks to us, who went there by the way that we must go, who sees us and can help us as we make our way along, and will receive us when we come there. Then is not all changed? IV. “Have the keys of hell and of death.”—Hell, of course, means Hades, that unseen place, that place of departed spirits in which our creed expresses its belief. Christ, then, having experienced death, has the keys of death to open its meaning, and to guide the way through it for those who are to die like Him. It is because He died that He holds the keys of death. Can we not understand that? Do we not know how any soul that has passed through a great experience holds the keys of that experience, so that he can help those who have to pass through it? Having the keys of death and hell, He comes to us as we are drawing near to death, and He opens the door on both sides of it, and lets us look through it, and shows us immortality. What is it to be immortal and to know it? What is it to have death broken down, so that life stretches out beyond it—the same life as this, opening, expanding, but for ever the same essentially? 1. Think of the immense and noble freedom from many of the most trying and vexatious of our temptations, which comes to a man to whom the curtain has been lifted, and the veil rent in twain. 2. The whole position of duty is elevated by the thought, the knowledge, of immortality. 3. A new life is given to friendship, to all our best relations, to one another, by the power of immortality.—Phillips Brooks. Revelation 1:18. Christ in Glory.— 1. These are the words of our Lord, and they were spoken by Him in glory. Some have gathered together the sayings of Christ in different periods. For instance, His utterances during His Passion; His Seven Sayings from the Cross on Good Friday; His words during the great Forty Days of the Risen Life; and His words from heaven. The Church to-day does not direct our eyes to the empty tomb, but to the vision of Christ in glory. 2. The words were addressed to St. John—the disciple whom Christ had drawn near to Him, with St. Peter and St. James, in the Garden of Gethsemane; the disciple who stood, with Christ’s blessed mother, beneath the cross, and watched Him in His dying hours; who was last at the cross and early at the sepulchre; the disciple “whom Jesus loved” (John 13:23). Differences of substance and style between the Apocalypse and the fourth gospel are certainly not sufficient to justify the conclusion that it is not the same St. John who wrote both. 3. They were words of encouragement. John had another legacy besides that blessed one, Christ’s mother; he had the legacy of tribulation. He was realising the Lord’s prophecy, “In the world ye shall have tribulation” (John 16:33). He was partaker “in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.” He was an exile in the Isle of Patmos “for the testimony of Jesus Christ”—a wretched, barren, desolate spot; and then condemned to work in the mines, if the statement of Victorinus can be relied upon; at any rate, a solitary exile in a remote island. It was there the Lord appeared to His servant, to strengthen and sustain him. What do the words of the text teach us about Christ? What about ourselves? I. They point to Christ in Glory.— 1. They may seem in this respect to antedate the Festival of the Ascension. Christ did not enter into glory—that is, did not visibly assume a glorious condition—on Easter Day. We know this by the narrative in the gospels. The glorious Form which appeared to St. John made him fall “at His feet as dead” (Revelation 1:17); but in the Risen Life, during the Great Forty Days, we read of no such manifestation. On the contrary, Christ is taken for the gardener. He stands, unknown, upon the shore; He joins the disciples on the road to Emmaus as an ordinary wayfarer; He dines with His disciples. No rays of glory emanate from His countenance or illuminate His garments. He does not force the human will to acknowledge Him by some overwhelming manifestation. When they saw Him on the mountain in Galilee, “some doubted” (Matthew 28:17). He reserved the light of glory till He entered the land of glory. He was “received up in glory” (1 Timothy 3:16). The Church seems to desire to set Christ before us in all His perfected glory in heaven, that our joy may be full; and our Lord Himself, in the same way, over leaps the interval between Easter and Ascension Day in the question to the two disciples: “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?” (Luke 24:26). 2. The text teaches us the sameness of Christ, the identity of His person: “I am He that liveth, and was dead.” The angels impressed the same truth upon the minds of the apostles at the Ascension: “This same Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). Our Lord not only speaks of Himself as the Living One, but also refers to His death: “and was dead.” I am the same you watched upon the cross. The waters of Lethe do not sponge out the marks of life on earth. Though in glory, the memory of the Passion was still fresh. He who was conceived and born of Mary, dwelt in Nazareth, preached in the towns and villages of Judζa and Galilee, died upon the cross, rested in Joseph’s tomb, went to “the spirits in prison,” vanquished death, and rose from the dead on the third day, is the same who sits in glory at the Father’s right hand. II. The text carries with it the conviction of our own identity hereafter.— 1. The truth which Easter teaches is that of our own immortality. There are many “indications” of man’s survival after death, but only one proof. The yearning for a life beyond the grave has been regarded as a witness to its existence, on the ground that nature’s desires are not futile. The consciousness that we are something more than flesh has been appealed to. The analogy of chrysalis and butterfly has been laid under contribution as suggestive. The moral argument is, that if there be a just God, the “cruel wrongs of time” must be rectified hereafter. The simplicity of the soul’s essence has been regarded as inferring its indestructibility, and the scientific doctrine that no force is ever destroyed. The goodness and purpose of God in creating man have seemed incompatible with a belief in annihilation. These and other indications of man’s immortality can be enumerated, all forming accumulative inference of great force; but the one proof is the resurrection of Christ. He rose from the dead, “the First-fruits of them that slept” (1 Corinthians 15:20), and He entered into heaven “to open the kingdom of heaven to all believers.” The doctrine of our resurrection rests upon the historic fact of Christ’s resurrection. Life and immortality have been brought to light through the gospel (2 Timothy 1:10). 2. Further, we see that Easter teaches that our immortality is personal. The same who lived and died shall rise again and live for ever. No other immortality, of a lower kind, can satisfy us. The immortality of matter, of force, of mind, of love, of fame, are mere shadows; the substance is the survival of the personal life. The memory links us with the past; it is a ground of identification: “liveth, and was dead.” And this carries with it the truth of recognition in another life. III. Lessons.— 1. Joy in the triumph of Christ over death and hell. 2. The realisation of a present Christ, who, though in glory, can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, through His experience of trial and temptation, of suffering and death, whilst on earth. 3. To rise from the death of sin to the life of righteousness, from the penitence of Lent to the new life of Easter-tide. 4. Through the grace of Easter communion to seek the virtue of perseverance, so as not to fall back into sin, but, like Christ, to be “alive for evermore.”—“The Thinker.” The Risen Saviour.—From death to life is the greatest possible transition, and this transition, in the case of Jesus of Nazareth, is the most marvellous as well as the most perfect. It is the only true victory ever won. Warriors conquer to be conquered. Tyrants rule with a rod of iron to fall under its stroke. All men that rise, rise to fall. From the dust we came, and to the dust we must return. But the text speaks of a final victory: “I am alive for evermore.” The aged St. John was an exile in the lone island of Patmos. He had been banished thither “for the word of God, and the testimony of Jesus Christ.” He was not there alone. John, “the beloved disciple,” and Jesus, the loving Saviour, have again met in a strange land. The visit of the Saviour was special, and John was elevated to heights of inspiration far above that which he had experienced before. He received visions and revelations of a transcendent nature. The whole panorama of the future passed before his eyes. He saw the rise and fall of empires. The terrible conflict between good and evil was waged in his presence. He saw the rise of the kingdom of the Messiah, and the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven. Patmos was the only place, and the banishment from Society the only condition, suitable to such a revelation. But the aged apostle needed the assurance that the old Master was communing with him. So he is led back to the impressive scene of the Crucifixion: “I am He that liveth, and was dead.” Some sixty years previously John stood before the cross, and for that long period he had preached Christ and Him crucified, in the cities of Asia Minor. He was drawn nearer to the Saviour than he had ever been before when he saw Him on the cursed tree. It was a time of sorrow, followed by a few days of painful suspense. But the spell was broken. The tidings came that Jesus was risen. Peter and John ran towards the sepulchre; John outran Peter, and was first at the grave. He found none there: the sepulchre was empty. Then, in the upper room, the tidings were confirmed, when His glorious form appeared, and the familiar Voice, was heard saying, “Peace be unto you!” Their hearts throbbed with that joy ever after. Finally, they saw Him ascend, and a cloud veiled Him, that they saw Him not again. There, on the road to Bethany, they knew that He was alive for evermore. John, in Patmos, felt that only one could have uttered the words of the text. To those who have afflicted their souls, and have deepened their sense of demerit in the garden and at the cross, we now say, Arise, wipe off your tears, remove the sackcloth of penitence, rejoice, and look at your Living Lord. I. Let us contemplate the resurrection of the Lord as a great historical fact.—It is the central fact of Christianity, and the key-note of apostolic preaching. If the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus is a myth, the gospel has no sun for a centre of light and heat. The sanhedrin spread the calumny that the disciples stole the body. If so, we ask, what became of the body? The disciples were a few poor fishermen from Galilee, without standing or confederates at Jerusalem. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were the only two persons of influence, in Jerusalem, who were in any way identified with Christ. Did they lend themselves to the fraud? Under the circumstances, and in such a climate, how was the removal and the re-interment of the body possible? Can you conceive of any band of men making a sacrifice of every comfort, and facing a frowning world, with its torture and death, to propagate a conscious fraud? We turn away in haste from the absurdity. Another supposition has been started: that the death of Jesus was only apparent. This incredible view received its birth from two cases of crucified persons restored to life, mentioned by the historian Josephus. Leaving aside the flat contradiction which even the sanhedrin would give to such a supposition, how was it possible to restore animation after the spear-wound in His side, and the long hours of interment? This hypothesis is a greater absurdity than the first. We mention a third supposition: that the various appearances of Christ to His disciples after His death were visions, or apparitions. In France the effort has been male to prove that Christianity owes its potency to the morbid condition of Mary Magdalene—yea, to the hallucination of a nervous woman. In Germany, Straus and others, with more apparent decency, have endeavoured to build up something like an argument on the power of vision, arising from a strong desire to see Jesus. When it is said that he appeared to the eleven, to Paul, and to more than five hundred brethren at once, we are simply to understand a mental vision, arising from the feeling of hero-worship. But we have so much supposition to make that the most elementary principles of psychology must be discarded to do so. We must suppose between five and six hundred persons to be exactly of the same temperament and expectation, so that they had precisely the same mental vision. These persons are credited with sincerity by the holders of this view; but, if so, the world would question their sanity. We have briefly stated absolutely all that has ever been advanced against the great fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. How flimsy! Human credulity even rejects all such suppositions. The resurrection of Christ is a significant fact. It brings to light the truth that there is a living and personal God—that He presides over human affairs. A revelation of His will is made, in which He has promised a Saviour for mankind. That Saviour is no other than His own Son. The resurrection verified the life of Jesus. St. Peter, looking at the perfection of that life, has said of death, “It was not possible that He should be holden of it.” Life is greater than mortality, and moral law is superior to the decay of nature. The natural order of creation is that life is stronger than death, otherwise spring would never follow winter. By analogy, a life of so much purity and force as that of Christ could not be holden of death. St. Paul speaks of the priesthood of Jesus as possessing the “power of an endless life”; and again the fact of the resurrection is confirmed by the abiding vitality of the Saviour’s life as witnessed in the lives of thousands. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” The death on the cross is followed by life everlasting, both to the Holy Victim and to them that believe on Him. The miracle of the resurrection is the comment on the life which preceded it; it is the illumination of words spoken, deeds done, and sufferings borne. But, dear brethren, our thoughts run past these weighty considerations to the sacred Person Himself. We are ready to leave all prospects of life and happiness on one side, to welcome from the tomb the Friend of Sinners. “I am He that liveth.” Oh, word of joy! The raptures of our hearts know no bound—Jesus lives. II. We further observe that henceforth the Living Christ is the object of our faith.—Having been buried with Him in death, we rise with Him into newness of life. But to rise into fellowship with the Living Christ, our faith must soar above the mere belief in historical Christianity. This sublime condition of fellowship implies association in thought with the risen Saviour. The person of Christ, not in form, but in fact, must engage our heart. Purity of thought, concentration of thought, and intensity of thought, alone can lead us to the living association with Jesus. The faith of the believer receives its strongest impetus from the fact that He who was dead is now alive. It imparts to the gospel its higher degree of life. Bodily presence we cannot have, neither do we realise each other’s love and service by presence always. Bodily presence creates mental absence. The Christ of the Resurrection became more real to the disciples than the Christ of the Crucifixion. Thomas believed because He saw, but “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” The Christian must realise more the power of faith. That faith increases in power as he lives near the Living Christ. Stand by the cross, and your faith works within a definite circle; but stand by the Risen Lord, and faith touches no circumference. The gospel, re-enacted in the heart and life, is our work. His marvellous teaching must speak to us with a living lip. We must lay hold of His hand to keep pace with His example. The power to destroy sin comes from fellowship with His sufferings. If we are compelled to go from the cross to the tomb, we need not linger there long, for He is in the upper room. Then we journey with Him to Emmaus, that He may open to us the Scriptures, and kindle the fire of His love within our breast. In Galilee also we receive our commission to work out life’s plan. Lastly, He is gone within the veil. The King of Glory has triumphantly entered, and is seated at the Father’s right hand. Will He think of us again? Hark to the sound of holy voices, singing His praise! See the golden crowns which are cast at His feet in honour of His person! Will He think of us again? Yes, oh, yes! He ever liveth to make intercession for us. The delightful life of daily and hourly communion with our living Saviour cannot be enjoyed by a mere contemplation of the fact that He is risen. The Holy Spirit is the true revealer of the Spiritual Christ. This truth was distinctly taught to the Church by the Saviour. We may have a very sincere desire to have the presence of Christ with us daily, but that blessing can only come through the Holy Ghost. The Spirit gives us the sight of the risen Lord. We cannot now hear Him speak except we have the ear circumcised by the Spirit. Heaven is far away from earth; He who fills the space between is the Spirit of God. “Spirit of purity and grace,Our weakness, pitying, see;Oh, make our hearts Thy dwelling place,And worthy Thee.”III. And, lastly, we observe that the resurrection of Christ is the open door of immortality.—“But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept.” These are the words with which we seek to succour the hearts of the bereaved. They are words of comfort in the deepest sorrow. The resurrection of the Lord shows that life is more than the animation of the organism of the brain. As animation moves the material form, so does life wear animation as a garment. But under it all is the living spirit. We are now unable to speak of the body that shall be: we are content with the promise that it will resemble His glorious body. The most astonishing words ever uttered by human lips are these: “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” Those who are in Christ are in life. The vision which was given to Hosea represents the Saviour at the gates of Hades, demanding the release of the prisoners: “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death; O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction; repentance shall be hid from Mine eyes.’ ” He has taken the keys of helan from the hands of Pluto, and has opened the gates of the dark world. The first thought which engrosses our mind is the release of those who have entered from our side. To the aged there are many. Some of them are very near to our hearts. See the Risen Saviour standing at their grave, as He stood at the grave of Lazarus, saying, “Come forth.” Blessed thought: we shall see them again. Then comes the other thought, that we must soon enter the valley of death. It will not be long ere these bodies will lie in their graves, when the shades of death will hide from us everything earthly. His resurrection will throw light on the other side. Think for a moment of the glorious sight which the resurrection of Jesus suggests, when, in the last day, He will turn the key to open millions of graves. To-day the churchyard is the quiet resting place of many—the most peaceful spot on earth. But the day will come when the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised, incorruptible. We fear not death, for we have witnessed the death of Jesus; we dread not the grave, for we have been at the grave of Jesus. There is a resurrection into spiritual life, before the body can come up from the grave, fashioned after the body of His Glory. “It is not death to flingAside this mortal dust,And rise, on strong, exulting wing,To live among the just.”—“Weekly Pulpit.” Easter Joy.—The Easter season is a time of great joy for all the children of God. 1. They rejoice on account of the completeness of the work of salvation. For when Christ had risen from the dead, He thereby had fully paid the wages of sin. God has accepted the death of His Son in the place of our death, and therefore has given us life. 2. All Christians rejoice on account of the excellent witnesses and testimonies concerning the resurrection of Christ. He appeared no fewer than ten different times after His resurrection, and on one occasion was seen of five hundred (1 Corinthians 15:5). He conversed and ate with His disciples alone (Acts 10:41). He permitted Himself to be touched by them (John 20:25; 1 John 1:1). Evidence of this kind admits of no contradiction. Even now He still furnishes the proof that He is alive by living in us (Galatians 2:20). 3. Christians rejoice in Easter because they have been given the seal and security of the gracious forgiveness of sins, of peace with God, so that they can, without fear, approach God, and know that He will come to them. 4. Christians rejoice because the resurrection of Christ is for them a comfort in death. Christ has sweetened death for the believers, has sanctified the grave, and they, too, shall enter into eternal life. 5. Christians, for these reasons, make it a special point to celebrate Easter-day by rejoicings of the heart, by meditation and prayer, and contemplation of the great things which God has done for them. 6. They strive daily to rise from the dead spiritually, to throw aside sin and evil deeds, and sanctify their lives to the service of God.—G. H. Schodde, Ph. D. Symbol of the Keys.—As to keys, and the associated idea of unlocking, one need but compare Psalms 9:13; Isaiah 38:10; Matthew 16:18, in order to see that the Hebrews ascribed to the underworld or region of the dead doors or gates—imagery borrowed from the doors of sepulchres. In like manner the great Abyss has doors to be unlocked (Revelation 9:1; Revelation 20:1-3). The Rabbins say that God has reserved four keys to Himself, which He has not committed to any of the angels—viz., the key of rain, of aliment, of the sepulchre, and of parturiency. Wet-stein has many citations which show how common this sentiment was among them. If it were prevalent when the Apocalypse was written, and John had any respect to it in the passage before us, it would furnish another particular in which he ascribes to the Saviour the prerogatives of the Godhead.—Moses Stuart. The Living Lord.—The Isle of Patmos is of undying interest to the Christian Church. Yet it is not the kind of interest that makes us want to visit the lonely place. Perhaps we should understand the book of Revelation better if we could study it among the very scenes that helped to give tone and shape to the writer’s imaginations. Patmos is a rocky and bare island of the Ζgean Sea. On account of its stern and desolate character it was used under the Roman empire as a place of banishment. “As the coast is approached from the sea, it is found to be high and comprising many promontories and bays, which give to the whole a very irregular appearance. The only port that is used is a deep bay, sheltered by high mountains on every side but one, where it is protected by a projecting cape. Above the landing place is a small village, comprising about fifty habitations, and situated on the edge of a vast crater, sloping off on either side, like the roof of a tiled house.” The famous grotto, or cavern, where the apostle is said to have written the book of Revelation, is situated on the face of the hill about half-way between the town and the port. A traveller helps us to realise the scene on which the banished apostle must often have gazed. “The time when the island appears in its best position is during the rising and setting of the sun. Whether viewed in dim perspective, through grey and silvery mists, or amidst hues of liveliest purple, the isles and continent of Greece present their varied features, which neither pen nor pencil can adequately portray. Picture an evening sun, behind the towering cliffs of Patmos, gilding the battlements of the monastery of the Apocalypse with its parting rays—the island, surrounded by inexpressible brightness, seeming to float upon an abyss of fire, while the moon, in milder splendour, is rising full over the opposite expanse.” A poetic soul could not fail to be affected by the influence of such surroundings. To the lonely man came wonderful visions, weird as ever were given to the prophets of the olden time. But the first, the introductory vision, which was the key to all the rest, was the vision of the Risen, Living, Glorified, Present-working Master and Lord, whose name John loved to bear, and for whose sake John was then a banished and persecuted man. Then, and always, the key to everything is fuller apprehension of the person and the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. One thing above all others we desire, even as did the apostle Paul before us: that we may “know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings.” We must know Him in the exercise of Christian thought. St. John knew Him with the aid of suggestive symbolic representations. But what he came to know we can learn from him; and it was this: Christ bears present and saving relations to men through all the progress of human history. Jesus lives. He has come again to the world. He is in the world. He is adequately endowed for the conflict with evil. He is living Saviour; Captain of salvation. The text is a part of Christ’s own explanation of the symbols in which He had presented Himself to the beloved St. John. We notice— I. The mystery behind Christ.—“Was dead.” This is the assertion of a fact which carries the profoundest significance with it. It brings to mind the most wonderful event that ever occurred in human history. Not most wonderful, even, as the death of an innocent man by torturing crucifixion, but most wonderful as the submission to human death of one who was the Son of God, with power. It is not only an historical fact, it is a cherished memory that is full of gracious influence. Thoughtful souls are never made so gentle, so tender, as when they meditate in full view of Him who died. But why, when Christ is showing Himself as the Living One, does He recall His death? It must have been to call back to St. John’s mind His veritable humanity. Nothing stamps a man as a man more than the fact that he will have to die; “there is no discharge from that war.” We know Jesus Christ was a real brother-man, for He died. It was also necessary for Christ to qualify the glorious vision in which He appeared to St. John, or it might so absorb his attention as to keep away from his thought the competency of Christ for the work which He had to do as the Living One. He who died must have passed through a life before He died, and so He must have gained actual and full experience of our human needs and sorrows, and must be able to succour the tempted, and to redeem His Church from all evil, seeing “He was in all points tempted like as we are.” But the place taken by Christ’s death in His own representation of Himself needs our special notice. He does not put the death first. The greatest, and most important, of all truths for His Church is this: “I am He that liveth.” The second truth is: “I was dead.” The apostle Paul apprehended the same relative position of the two truths when he wrote, “It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” Only as we set these two truths in their right relations can we apprehend one of the deeper meanings of Christ’s death. It was the experience, and the obedience, through which He gained both the right and the fitness to be the “bringer-on of sons unto glory.” For that work He was “made perfect through suffering.” Gaining His fitness to be the ever-living Saviour lights up the deeper meanings of the life of Christ as well as of His death. It helps us to understand that salvation is His personal work. It is only a part of the truth to say, “He has saved us”; the rest of the truth is this: “He is saving us.” “He is able to save unto the uttermost.” His healings of the sick, and lame, and leprous, when He dwelt among men, and “wore earth about Him,” do but show what He can now do in souls. He is “alive for evermore,” and we can come to Him, soul-blind, soul-lame, and receive, direct from Him, healing and life. II. The glory in Christ.—“He that liveth.” “Am alive for evermore.” This is no mere assertion of His resurrection from the dead. It is the declaration, “I am the living One.” As in the days of His flesh, our Lord affirmed that “He had life in Himself.” He was “the Life.” In Christ’s continuous, eternal life, that human death was only an episode. “When death came to Him, it was seen to be, not the end of life, but only an event in life. It did not close His being, but it was only an experience which that being underwent. That spiritual existence which had been going on for ever, on which the short existences of men had been strung into consistency, now came and submitted itself to that which men had always been submitting to. And lo! instead of being what men feared it was, what men had hardly dared to hope that it was not—the putting out of life—it was seen to be only the changing of the circumstances of life, without any power over the real principle of life—any more power than the cloud has over the sun that it obscures, or than the ocean has over the bubble of air that it buries fathoms deep, but whose buoyant nature it cannot destroy, nor hinder it from struggling towards, and sometimes reaching to, the surface of the watery mass that covers it. That was the wonder of Christ’s death. He passed into it for love of us. And as He came out from it, He declared its nature. It is an experience of life, not an end of life. Life goes on through it and comes out unharmed.” This is shown us in the vision of Him who “liveth, and was dead.” But to St. John’s mind that visioned Figure might seem to be an appearance only, a symbol, a picture-teaching. He must learn that it was but the garment, the setting, the manifestation of a real, living Being; only figured in this way in order to help St. John, and us, to realise what Jesus Christ still is, and what are the relations in which He still stands to His Church, and what is the work that He still has to do, in the Church, and in the world. And is not this truth, that Christ is the “Living Saviour,” a new revelation, even to us? So strangely Christian doctrine strives to gather our supreme interest about our Saviour’s death; and once a year we break loose to glory in the Risen and Living Christ of the Easter memories. Christian doubts and fears too often cling about the Saviour dead, and we cannot rise into the heaven of our hope in the Living One, and sing away our fears. And sometimes our strange Christian infirmities even make us wish Him dead; for we do not want a Saviour who is actually working now, cleansing now, finding out the sin-stains in His people, washing them away, and seeking to make His people “whiter than snow.” So it is the ever-new gospel we need to hear again to-day: Jesus lives. More than all He was to His disciples, in the days of His flesh, He is to us. His relations to them were really spiritual relations, but they were illustrated for them by actual bodily associations. His relations with us are spiritual relations, and they are illustrated for us in the records of His human life with His disciples. If we can enter into the inner mysteries, then we say, Christ has come again, even as He promised. Indeed, He never really went away. He only passed out of sense apprehensions. He is here: free from bodily limitations; His name is still “Emmanuel Jesus,” “God with us,” saving us—not “who has saved us”—“from our sins.” III. The present mission of Christ.—“Have the keys of hell and of death.” I need not explain that “hell” here is really “Hades,” the resting place of disembodied spirits; nor need I tell you more than that the “keys” are the symbol of authority. The steward in possession goes about with the keys hanging from his shoulder, as the sign of his office. But it cannot surely be the present glory of Christ, that He has merely to open the gates of death, and rule the spirits in Hades? This is teaching by figure and symbol. Just as leprosy is taken as the type of all diseases, so “death and hell” stand as types of all the forces that resist the progress of Christian life in the individual, and the extension of Christ’s Church. “Death” stands as the representative of all the material forces; “Hades” stands as the representative of all the immaterial, unseen, spiritual forces; for we wrestle against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” When we see “death and hell” standing for all the material and spiritual oppositions to the progress of Christ’s Church, we begin to understand why Christ was figured to St. John as the “infinitely white One,” who is white, and liveth to make white. The full figure is given in the first chapter, as bearing relation to the whole Church, and its entire circle of needs. And then Christ is visioned in parts, those sides of Christ’s living power being chosen which bear direct relation to each of the Seven Churches—to the weaknesses, the sins, and the perils, of each. This is the truth shining forth from our text: the White Christ is alive, and is working to make His Church white, as He is white. Are you a seeker for salvation? See! Christ liveth, and can save you. Are you a Christian, battling with sin! See! you do not struggle alone; Christ is with you in the fight. Are you a Christian in the world of peril and temptation? See! the Hebrew youths were safe, even in the fire, when one was with them like unto the Son of God. To the Church, groaning under the burdens of her disability we say, Let her arise, shake herself from the dust, and win her victories, for her Lord lives, He “is alive for evermore.” Resurrection in Retrospect.—The true explanation of the extreme distress and perplexity of our Lord’s disciples lies in this: the resurrection of Christ they could not understand, they could not believe. And this condition of mind continued till the event actually took place. But what a difference there is between resurrection in prospect and resurrection in retrospect! No change in any recorded history or any known biography is more startling. The whole mind of the Christian disciples, in reference to the resurrection of their Lord, is suddenly transfigured, and that which they looked forward to dimly, timidly, unwillingly, they now look back upon with undoubting and exulting confidence. It has been said— 1. That there was a fraud: Christ did not really rise, but His disciples practised a deception. But falsehood in one thing does not fit a truthful and genuine religion; and falsehood does not make men brave. 2. That the death of Christ was an imaginary death. But Christ prophesied and expected His death; and the physical conditions narrated involve actual death. 3. The belief in the resurrection was the result of a waking dream. But there is no conceivable basis for any such idea in the record. We cannot separate the thought of our own resurrection from the thought of that rising of Christ; nor ought we to separate them. At present our resurrection is in prospect, and we know not what it will be. But it will not be so always. The time will come when all will be behind us—when all the past will be clearly known and well remembered. Then it will be resurrection in retrospect. We shall look back on the life we led here. This we know as to the future, that if we are true Christians we shall then be with Him “who liveth, and was dead, and is alive for evermore”; and “because He liveth, we shall live also.”—Dean Howson. The Keys of Hell and of Death.I. The keys symbolise sovereignty.—And the sovereignty referred to is in the hands of Christ. He is the Everlasting One who was dead and is alive again for evermore. Upon Christ’s head “are many crowns”; in Him are vested many sovereignties. Nature is His, for He made it. Mind is His, for He created it. Angels are His, for they worship Him. Men are His, for He redeemed them. The Church is His, for He purchased it with His own blood. And over all is He the Supreme Ruler. There is not an atom or a force of nature; not a form or function of life; not a type or order of intelligence; not a nation or grade of moral being; not a condition or circumstance of existence;—over which His throne flings not its shadow or shelter. It is of the sovereignty of this ascended, triumphant, glorified, and enthroned Jesus that the Spirit speaks in this sublime portion of Holy Writ. Here you have the range of His Kingship; the province of His empire; the process of His government; the antagonisms with which He wrestles; the methods by which He puts down all rule and authority—curbs the rage of men, confounds the schemes of hell, rolls back the swelling billows of error and vice, conserves the truth, enshields His Church, and finally sits enthroned upon the homage, reverence, and love, of a redeemed and glorified humanity! Among the antagonisms of that humanity, death, in form most hideous; death, with its most terrific symbols and enginery; death, with its cruel mockings;—threatens to extinguish the race. Christ knows and feels all this. And that there might not be a moment’s misgiving or shadow of anxiety, He reveals Himself, clothed in attributes and belted with potencies which qualify Him for all the emergencies which await the Church of the future, till time shall be no longer. He knows her, for He ever walks in the midst of the golden candlesticks. Her members droop and die; He is alive for evermore. Her foes wield the dread sceptre of destruction, but they know not that it is under Him, and because of His permission, and subject to His control, that they waste and lay low the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts; for “He has the keys of hell and of death.” II. Christ is sovereign of death.—“He has the keys of … death.” That death is not an outlaw we might anticipate, seeing that there is nothing around us not subject to law. Life, in all its beauties, melodies, and beatitudes, is everywhere and always under law. Shall it be that such an agency as death shall act defiant of law? When we remember the agonies which it can extract; the energies which it can paralyse; the hopes which it can blast; the homes which it can disrupt and desolate: how it can revel in ruin and banquet upon groans, and quaff the chalice filled with tears wrung from poor widows’ and orphans’ hearts; how, with dread might, it can strew earth with the wreck and spoil of noble manhood and cultured womanhood; how, in a moment, the result of long, long years of the training of character for the highest service of humanity can be frustrated;—then we ask again, “Is death an exception to the general fact that law prevails throughout God’s universe?” Can it be that such a monster is loose, with no hook in his jaw and no bridle to his power? Does not He, who guides Arcturus, wheels the comet, rides upon the whirlwind, rims in old Ocean, chains the fire-fiend, enkindles and extinguishes the volcano; who bids the seasons from their palaces in the heavens march forth to fling their treasures over the habitable earth;—does not He control and order this overshadowing hierarchy of death? Yes! thanks to His ever-blessed name, “He has the keys … of death!” He is King of kings, and the “King of Terrors” is but a vassal prince, without right of independent sovereignty, and altogether subject to Him who in His own person conquered death and the grave. He opens the gates of death and no man shuts. He shuts and no man opens. No saint or servant of His can die, but as He permits it. Not a foothold is there for Chance. Within the domain of death, unknown to Him, the grave cannot seize another victim. No march of spoliation can death steal upon the hosts of God’s elect. Their Captain is all-vigilant, and, should the unauthorised arrow fly, His shield shall turn and shiver it. “He has the keys of death.” III. He has also the keys of Hell.—“Hell,” or Hades, here refers to the invisible world of spirits. The sovereignty of this invisible world owns Christ’s sceptre. It is within His empire. Who dare compute the myriads on myriads congregated there! And they are all there living! “All live unto Him.”—J. O. Peck, D.D. Revelation 1:20. Holding the Stars.—The hand that holds the seven stars is as loving as the hand that was laid in blessing upon the little children. The face that is as the sun shining in its strength beams with as much love as when it drew publicans and harlots to His feet. The breast that is girt with the golden girdle is the same breast upon which John leaned his happy head.—A. Maclaren, D.D. The Angels of the Churches.—This title appears to have been borne by the ministers of the synagogues among the Jews. The business of this officer, who was always called a bishop of the congregation, was to offer prayers for the whole assembly, to which the people answered, “Amen,” and to preach, if there were no other to discharge that office. The reading of the law was not properly his business, but every Sabbath he called out seven of the synagogue, and on other days fewer, to perform that duty. The angel stood by the person that read, to correct him if he read improperly. He took care also that worship was performed without disorder and with all regularity. By a name probably borrowed from the synagogue the bishops and pastors of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor are termed the “angels” of the Churches. It is very reasonable to suppose that Paul alludes to this name when he says that women ought to be covered before the angels (1 Corinthians 11:10). Bishops, or ministers of Christian Churches, are often called “angels” by the earlier writers. It is, however, better to regard the angel of the Church as the ideal embodiment (so to speak) of the Church, rather than any particular official. “The angel of the Church would be the spiritual personification of the Church—the Church, seen in its heavenly representative, and seen, therefore, in the light of those splendid possibilities which are hers if she holds fast by Him who holds the seven stars. The General Idea of the Picture of the Seven Churches.—It contains the portraiture of all the shades and, in a manner, the statistics of all the spiritual states, either of good or evil, in which Christianity on earth may find itself. The Lord chose, in order to characterise these seven degrees, the Churches of the country in which John lived, which embodied most perfectly these seven types. The number seven indicates here, as it always does, a totality. But the idea of the book is that of a simultaneous, not that of a successive, totality, as those think who see in these seven Churches the portraiture of the principal phases of the history of the Church. One may, doubtless, by taking up this latter standpoint, succeed in bringing out some ingeniously conceived points of harmony, but they always have a somewhat arbitrary character. Besides, the subject itself of this first part is against such an interpretation. It is the starting point of the Lord’s progress which should be here indicated; this starting point is the state of the Church at the time of the vision, and not the unrolling of its future history, which is contained rather in the subsequent visions.—F. Godet, D.D. The Universal Church.—We are introduced, in chaps. 2, 3, to the Universal Church under the presentation given of seven Churches of Asia selected for that purpose. These Churches are so selected that they present us with a picture of the various elements that make up the Church’s life. We see her in herself and in her relation to the world; in her strength and in her weakness; in her steadfastness and in her declensions; in her prosperity and in her sufferings; in her outward poverty and in her true riches; in the distinction existing between the real and nominal followers of Christ within her borders; in the just indignation of her Supreme Head against the one, and in His leading the other to the full possession of His own triumph in the presence of His Father and their Father, of His God and their God.—W. Milligan, D.D. TO CHAPTER 1Rev 1:18. The Classical Idea of “Hades.”—The Greek word “Hades” in the New Testament, and the Hebrew word “Sheol” in the Old Testament, are used in the most general sense to denote the state of the dead, including the grave as the residence of the body, and the world of spirits as the abode of the soul. The Hebrew idea of it is perhaps most fully given in Job 10:21-22. But it may be interesting to compare the pagan notion from which the word “Hades” is taken. The name was given by the ancient Greeks and Romans, and especially by the poets, to Pluto, the god who was supposed to preside over the infernal regions. He is represented as being the son of Chronos and Rhea, the husband of Persephone, and the brother of Zeus and Poseidon. He bore the character of being a fierce, cruel, and inexorable tyrant, dreaded by mortals, who, when they invoked him, struck the earth with their hands, sacrificed black sheep in his honour, and in offering their sacrifices stood with averted faces. The grim Hades shuts up the shades of the dead in his dark domains. His wife Persephone shared the throne of the lower world with her cruel husband. And not only did Hades rule over infernal regions; he was considered also as the author of those blessings which spring from the earth, and more especially of those rich mineral treasures which are contained in the bowels of the earth.CHAPTER 2 OF CHURCH AND NOTESRev_2:1. Angel.—If this be taken as the chief pastor of the Church, it is quite? possible that Timothy is the person addressed. Holdeth.—As a figure for exercising dominion over, having power over. Walketh.—Is present among Christian societies and exercises particular inspection over them. Ephesus is first addressed, as the chief city of the district.Revelation 2:2. I know.—Often used to denote approbation or complacency. Works.—Perhaps “all developments of character,” but better treated as a general term, which is explained as embracing “labour” (strain) and “patience.” The word “labour” here means “labour carried on unto weariness.” “Patience” here expresses the brave and persistent endurance of the Christian. Canst not bear.—Or cannot do with; cannot put up with. Evil.—κακούς Evil ones. Perhaps the morally evil were specially in mind. Found them liars.—For St. Paul’s warning of false teachers, see Acts 20:28-31. Tried is a strong word. Thoroughly tested their pretensions. Apostles.—Involving claim to direct Divine authority. They were probably Judaisers, either of the antinomian or the Gnostic type. The word translated “liars” is ψευδεῖς—false. They who made false claims would be sure to teach false things. They could be tested (1) by comparing their teachings with those of St. Paul; (2) by recalling the characteristic features of heretical doctrine, as described by him; and (3) by the moral and spiritual influence which their teachings were found to exert.Revelation 2:3. Not fainted.—Or, not been wearied out, though the strain has been long continued. See the word translated “labour” in Revelation 2:2. “They had toiled on to very weariness, without wearying of their toil.”Revelation 2:4. Left.—Let go. “I have it against thee that thou givest up the love thou hadst at the beginning.” The first love may be (1) their first fervour of love to Christ; or (2) their former spirit of benevolence and kindness toward all men. Stuart inclines to the second explanation. Plumptre says: “Whether the ‘first love’ is that which has God, or Christ, or man, for its object, I am not careful to enquire, for the true temper of love or charity includes all three.”Revelation 2:5. Fallen.—The height of Christian attainment gained has to be maintained. To be satisfied with a lower level is to fall. Do the first works.—This is possible at once. To restore the feeling may not be possible at once; but resuming the works puts us in the way of the restoration of the feeling. Or else.—Lit. “but if not.” Will come.—Am coming. Remove thy candlestick.—A providential and spiritual visitation of Christ is meant. “The judgment threatened was determined by the symbolism of the vision. The lamp was not burning brightly. If it were rekindled and trimmed and fed with oil, well. If not, there would come on it the sentence which falls on all unfaithfulness, and the lamp should be removed. The Church which had not let its light shine before men would lose even its outward form and polity, and be as though it had never been” (Plumptre). A few huts only remain on the site of ancient Ephesus.Revelation 2:6. Nicolaitanes.—A branch of the Gnostics who held it to be lawful to eat meats offered to idols, and who practised fornication. They traced their origin to Nicolas, one of the seven deacons, but there is no clue to the assumed connection between them. They were the antinomians of the Asiatic Church. Some think the word is but a Greek form of the name Balaam, or as symbolical of Balaam, and so Nicolaitanes was equivalent to Balaamites.Revelation 2:7 The Spirit.—τὸπνεῦμα. Yet the Living Christ is the speaker throughout. “The mode of transmission to the Churches is, however, by the Spirit, in His dispensation, ‘giving utterance’ to John.” Remember, however, that to Christ’s human nature the Spirit was imparted without measure. Tree of life.—Figurative description of eternal life (see Genesis 2:9). “The promise of the tree of life is appropriate (1) to the virtue commended: those who had not indulged in the license of the Nicolaitanes shall eat of the tree of life; (2) to the special weakness of the Ephesians: to those who had fallen and lost the paradise of first loving communion and fellowship with God is held out the promise of a restored paradise, and participation in the tree of life” (Bishop Boyd Carpenter).MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 2:1-7A Church Weak in the Springs of Life.—We are treating the book of Revelation as a spiritual rather than as a historical book. Not anxious to fit it to any history, or to find events that seem to match its symbols, but purposing to find what suggestive spiritual and practical applications can be made of the symbols. In this and the following chapter is the picture of the Living Christ, the searching White Christ, moving among His Churches, carefully inspecting them. And what He notices, and remarks on, in these seven representative cases, may help us to discover what, in the Churches of to-day, must be grieving Him who would have them white as He is white. I. The Living Christ accepts the fact that His Church on earth is a fighting Church. (Compare St. Paul’s address to the elders of Ephesus, Acts 20:28-30.) That the enemies of the Church are mainly within itself is seen in all these seven cases. The chief wrong is always some wrong in themselves. Outside evils and temptations are easily over-mastered when the internal spiritual health and vitality are well maintained. The Living Christ is not content with surface impressions; He goes to the very root of the evil. He sees— 1. Inconsistency—the failure to harmonise spirit and conduct. 2. Inefficiency—the failure to rise to a high standard of Christian life, or to meet the higher spiritual obligations. 3. Influence of false teachers, regarded rather as the source of moral than of merely intellectual mischief. The conflict of Christ’s Church must partly be with circumstances and with persecutors; but the real importance of their influence lies in the strain put on Christian motive, and the injury done to Christian character. Christ does not expect present perfection in His Church. He does expect “overcoming,” which is the pursuit, step by step, of perfection—steady progress, by advancing triumphs, towards perfection. Christian life should be a series of victories, small and great. II. The Living Christ may notice a wavering, changeable spirit in a Church.—This is the point of importance in the inspection of this Church. The Searching Lord found out that they were not actually what they had been. Surface appearances were, indeed, the same, but they had “left their first love.” The history of this Church may be reviewed. First, certain disciples of John the Baptist had taught a reformed Judaism. Then came the eloquent preaching of Apollos. Then the instructive work of Aquila and Priscilla, and then the three years’ ministry of St. Paul. The Church was greatly attached to the apostle, but in the epistle to Timothy there have been found signs of what seems to be a change of feeling toward him. And this may suggest one meaning of the expression, “thou hast left thy first love.” There was much that deserved commendation in the Church at Ephesus. It must be borne in mind that it was a very difficult city to live a Christian life in. It was Eastern; Diana’s great Temple was there; it was noted for its superstitions and magical arts. The Living Christ was able freely to praise their (1) works, (2) patience, (3) zeal, (4) good motive. But if the tone of Christ’s praise is carefully estimated, it will be seen that He observed an intensity in these things, which itself indicated a sense of flagging soul life. Over-activity is a bad sign. Though surface things seemed right, there was weakness in the springs of life. There were signs of a serious change in them. Changed feeling towards St. Paul showed a changed state of soul; they were not keeping soul-steadfast. How did this changeableness, fickleness, come about? 1. Partly it was due to natural disposition. Fickle people need to watch themselves, and their varying moods, with unusual care. Impulsive people seldom have also staying power, and they soon flag. 2. Partly it resulted from the influence of circumstances. The strain of continuance is always trying, and the subtlety of false teachers undermines Christian vitality. 3. The neglect of private soul-culture leaves the inner life to flag. Such neglect often follows from undue absorption in worldly things. Application may be made to the sin and peril of the changeableness that is so sadly characteristic of Christian Churches nowadays. The signs of it are (1) craving for excitement; (2) wanting to be made to feel; (3) distaste of quiet spiritual influences. When a man has lost his soul’s love and life, he tries to make up for the loss by ceremonies, or singing, or revivals. Men should ask themselves this question: How is it we want to be revived? Why are we not keeping up our high standard of Christian life? III. The Living Christ encourages wrestling with this weakness by promising permanency to them who overcome.—“Eating the tree of life.” See the tree in the Garden of Eden; and the tree figured later on, in this book of Revelation, which bore twelve manner of fruits, and these every month, so that it was permanently refreshing, sustaining a continuous high life and vigour. “Overcoming” includes (1) recognising the evil, as evil; (2) returning upon a better spirit—humility—new purposes—dependence; (3) watching against new failures. In all such recovery the Living Christ helps, fixing the new and better way into a permanency of goodness. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_2:1. The Seven Stars and the Seven Candlesticks.—This vision is the natural introduction to all that follows, and, indeed, defines the main purpose of the whole book, inasmuch as it shows us Christ, sustaining, directing, dwelling in, His Churches. The words of the text are meant to set forth the Churches and their servants, the Churches and their work, the Churches and their Lord. I. We have in the symbol important truths concerning the Churches and their servants.—“The seven stars are the angels of the seven Churches.” The word “angel” means messenger, and it is applied to priests, and, in one passage, to an officer of the synagogue. It does not mean here a supernatural being, but the minister, or spiritual pastor, of the Church. 1. The messengers are rulers. They are described in a double manner—by a name which expresses subordination, and by a figure which expresses authority. And this perfectly embodies the very essential characteristic of all office and power in Christ’s Church. Dignity and authority mean liberty for more, and more self-forgetting, work. Power binds its possessor to toil. But to be servant of all does not mean to do the bidding of all. The service which imitates Christ is helpfulness, not subjection. Neither the Church is to lord it over the messenger, nor the messenger over the Church. 2. The messengers and the Churches have at bottom the same work to do. Stars shine; so do lamps. Light comes from both—in different fashion, indeed, and of a different quality; but still, both are lights. These are in the Saviour’s hands, those are by his side; but each is meant to stream out rays of brightness over a dark night. So, essentially, all Christian men have the same work to do. The ways of doing it differ, but the thing done is one. We have all one office and function, to be discharged by each in his own fashion—viz., to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus. 3. The Churches and their messengers are alike in their religious condition and character. The messenger, or minister, represents the Churches completely. The religious condition of a Church, and that of its leaders, teachers, pastors, ever tend to be the same, as that of the level of water in two connected vessels. There is such a constant interaction and reciprocal influence, that uniformity results. II. The Churches and their work.— 1. The Church is to be light. Light is spontaneous, suggesting the involuntary influence of character. Light is silent and gentle, though so mighty. Light is self-invisible; revealing all things, it reveals not itself. The source you can see, but not the beams. So we are to shine—not showing ourselves, but our Master. 2. The Church’s light is derived light. Two things are needed for the burning of a lamp: that it should be lit, and that it should be fed. In both respects, the light with which we shine is derived. Reflected, not self-originated, is all our radiance. A derived and transient light is all that any man can be. The condition of all our brightness is that Christ shall give us light. And the soul kindled by Christ must constantly be supplied with the grace and gift of His Divine spirit. 3. The Church’s light is blended, or clustered, light. Each of these little communities is represented by one lamp. And that one light is composed of the united brightness of all the individuals who constitute the community. They are to have a character, an influence, a work, as a society, not merely as individuals. A Church is not to be merely a multitude of separate points of brilliancy, but the separate points are to coalesce into one great orbed brightness. III. The Churches and their Lord.—His strengthening and watchful presence moves among the Churches, and is active on their behalf. That presence is a plain literal fact, however feebly we lay hold of it. He is with us, to hold up and to bless; to observe, to judge, and, if need be to punish. And He is the same loving and forbearing Lord whom the apostle had learned to trust on earth, and found again revealed from heaven.—A. Maclaren, D.D. Christ’s Presence in His Church.—There is a subject of unusual interest suggested by the attitude in which the Living and Infinitely White Christ is represented as standing, and the relations which He is represented as actually bearing to the “stars” and the “candlesticks,” which are the symbols of the Church, and its ministry. “The seven stars are the angels of the seven Churches; and the seven candlesticks are seven Churches.” That subject is, the actual presence, and practical working, of Christ, in His Church of every age, and in His Church of to-day. To put it in another form: Does the Living Christ still reserve to Himself, even into this nineteenth century, His executive and administrative, as well as His legislative, rights? Those rights He certainly did exercise in the first Churches of the redeemed, for the Church at Ephesus is called to recognise Him in this way—“These things saith He that holdeth the seven stars in His right hand, He that walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks.” I. The actual presence of the Living Christ with His Church is the Church’s most precious truth.—It always, and everywhere, has been recognised as such. So far as theory is concerned, the living headship of Christ has always been the Church’s theory. What we have to complain of is, not that the truth has ever been really lost, but that it has so often been buried, and therefore practically lost. The constant work of the Christian ages has been recovering lost truths, and getting neglected truths estimated at their right value. If the truth of the actual presence of Christ in His Church to-day were a new truth, it could not be true. It is only a half-buried old truth; one that has been covered over with the dust of men’s formulζ; one that claimed the first place, but was soon pushed back into a second, when ecclesiastics grasped the duties and rights of Him who is “above for evermore”; and then into a third, when men made so much more of getting into the kingdom than of the conduct becoming to those in the kingdom. I want to show you that Christ’s permanent abiding in His Church was the true Messianic expectation; it was our Lord’s own anticipation, and it was the realisation, and the teaching, of His apostles. We may possibly come to see that the indwelling and presiding “Holy Ghost” of the Church of the redeemed is simply the form under which this presence, and consequent presidency, of the Living Christ is now to be recognised by us. Christ, spiritually present, and spiritually working, is the Holy Ghost. There are three possible thoughts that we may cherish concerning the continuance of Christ’s life beyond His human death on the cross. We may think of Him as simply alive again, as men, we assume, will be alive again after the great resurrection-morn. Or we may think of Him as altogether removed from earthly scenes, dwelling away in the heavenlies, and there wholly engaged in what may be found necessary for the completion of His redemptive work. Probably most Christian people cherish this thought of the Risen Christ, to the exclusion of all others. To them He is the great High Priest; the Advocate with the Father; the Angel of the Covenant. He is there, and only there, in the “Temple not made with hands.” But there is another thought of Him, which it would be a new inspiration to us to cherish. He is back again amid mortal scenes. He is as really, nay, more really, here with us now, than when He seemed to live in our homes, eat our food, and speak our words. He went away in order that He might come and abide. He went away from our senses that He might come to our souls. The Church is His Temple; in it He dwells and rules. All is spiritual, the Church, the Temple, the rule; but then, the spiritual is the real, the material is only the picture and the seeming. It is this truth concerning Christ that heroic souls have kept alive through the long Christian ages of struggle and of error. It is this truth which is now every day getting into clearer light. It is this truth which is destined to revolutionise Christianity—not the Christianity of Christ, that only needs restoration, but the Christianity that men have made for themselves out of the revelation that has been given to them. The key-note of the Christianity of the future will be, Christ come; Christ here; Christ spiritually present; Christ saving now; Christ sanctifying now; Christ ruling now. Really, to-day “holding the stars, and walking among the candlesticks.” 1. It is the truth foreshadowed in Messianic picture-teachings. Men would make less of particular Messianic psalms, and Messianic prophecies, if they more clearly saw that the Mosaic dispensation was, in its very essence, Messianic. It is but the expression, fitted for the times, of the primary idea of the “theocracy”; and the “theocracy” was but the preparatory picture-teaching of Christ’s spiritual rule over His Church and in His Church. By the term “theocracy” is meant, God’s immediate and direct rule. Without delegation, or mediation, or intervention, He, actually present with them, controlled, instructed, guided, rewarded, punished, the Jewish nation. That material rule fitted to the times, but it prepared the way for a spiritual realisation of the spiritual truth that it embodied. Christ is God, spiritually present in His spiritual Church, spiritually ruling, and ordering, and sanctifying. 2. And this is the relation He would sustain which was anticipated by Christ. We cannot be surprised to find it held in reserve by our Lord during the earlier part of His ministry. It would have been of no use whatever to speak of a spiritual presence to His disciples while they were so full of worldly ideas and expectations. He had to wait until some beginnings of spiritual apprehension were made by at least some of them. And yet there are many indications that it was always in His thoughts, and hints of it were given when plain words could not be spoken. When He referred to His coming rejection and death, He usually closed His remarks with an allusion to His resurrection, as if He would set the disciples thinking what He would be to them in that risen life. When He came to them in the grey and misty morning, walking upon the sea, He evidently intended to help them towards realising His presence with them in other than sense conditions. That was a stage in His education of them to the apprehension of the unseen. When He had only the chosen band around Him in the upper room, He could speak more freely than He had ever been able to speak before. He felt the closing of the earthly, sensuous relations. He knew what a strain it would be to those disciples. And therefore He bent all His effort to the work of cheering them by the repeated assurance that it would be no real loss to them; it would, indeed, be the most real gain. They might at first think that it was another one who would come to be in them, and to abide with them for ever; but presently it would seem clear to them that Him they called the “Holy Spirit” was, in deepest reality, Jesus Himself with them in a spiritual way, fulfilling His own gracious word, “I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you; the world seeth Me no more, but ye see Me.” And then that strange coming into vision, and passing out of vision, of the Resurrection day, was His most gracious way of loosening their hold on His bodily presence, and clearing their apprehension of His spiritual presence. And when they saw Him go up from earth, and the cloud hid Him from their sense-view for ever, His last words were in their souls, and they were left to think out, and feel out, their wondrous meanings: “Lo, I am with you all the days.” 3. And this truth of Christ’s present spiritual abiding in His Church was distinctly the realisation, and the teaching, of His apostles. St. Peter stood by the bedside of sick Ζneas, and spoke as if Jesus was actually there; he could see Him, and Ζneas might if he would look aright. “Ζneas, Jesus Christ, maketh thee whole.” It is firmly asserted that, on certain occasions, “the power of the Lord was present to heal.” In the great crises of St. Paul’s life, Christ’s presence with him and ruling of his course, was revealed to him in personal visions. In such a chapter as the third in the epistle to the Colossians, every act and effort of the Christian life is directly referred to Christ’s present inspection: everything is to be done “as unto the Lord.” And the one purpose of the book of Revelation is to associate the Living, Spiritual Christ, in a very direct way, with all the growth, the sins, the frailties, the conflicts, the sorrows, the varied experiences, of His Church. The key-note of the book is struck in the first chapter. The Christ presented in such suggestive symbols is not the Christ of the heavenly places—how the book is misconceived when that idea is unduly pressed!—it is the Christ of the Churches—the presiding Spirit of the Churches; it is the infinitely White One with the sword, who “holds the stars in His right hand, and walks among the candlesticks”; who presided over every movement of the Churches of that day, Ephesus, and Smyrna, and the rest; who presides over every movement of His universal Church in all the ages. II. The Living Christ, spiritually present, stands in a twofold relation to His Church.—The one relation is universally admitted; the other is generally obscured, misrepresented, neglected, and imperilled: and to some is entrusted the work of recovering, and setting forth afresh in view of men, the imperilled relations. Every human government has two functions, legislative and administrative. It makes laws, and it provides the machinery for carrying out its laws, actually presiding over their administration. A curious relic of the idea that the Sovereign actually executes her own laws is found in the ceremony of opening the Assizes in our county towns. The judges are met, on entering the town, with a state ceremony, as if they were actually the Queen. The Assize is opened on the assumption that it is the Queen herself who is going to try, and condemn or acquit, the prisoners. The fiction of her presence is constantly maintained, and her executive, as well as her legislative, rights are preserved. The right of the Lord Jesus to make laws for His Church is never disputed. The Pope of Rome is but the Vicar of Christ, and he is as zealous as we can be of the legislative claims of his supreme and sovereign Lord. But the assumption is that He only makes the laws, and makes them away up in heaven, and commits the carrying out of His laws to some delegates here on earth. It is supposed that He committed the carrying out of His laws first to St. Peter, through him to the Pope, through the Pope to the bishops, and through the bishops to the priests. And so we have on earth now, not Christ, but a Church, which is supposed to represent Him, and carry His authority. Or we may say that, while the legislative rights of Jesus are duly honoured, He is thought of as having surrendered His executive and administrative rights. He keeps Himself now altogether in the heavenly spheres—He is not here; and His Church, or rather a certain order of priests in His Church, consider they have the right to take His place and do His work. Now you can clearly see the principle for which contest has been variously made through all the Christian ages—the principle for which again, in our day, a holy fight must be waged. As to particular methods of organising Churches, special arrangements of ministry, or systems of government, we have nothing whatever to say. Let every man find out what is best for him, and let every man give me full liberty to find out what is best for me. “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” Only we take our stand here; we draw the line here. No plan, no system, must touch the real, present, practical administrative rights of the Lord Jesus. No scheme must even seem to shut Christ up in heaven, and keep Him seated on His throne. No effort must be made to teach that Christ has put his royal rights into commission, so that we can now have no direct dealings with Him, but must deal with priest, or bishop, or earthly sovereign, or Roman Pope, who claim to speak in His name. It is not some fact of a bygone age that He once held the stars in His right hand, and once walked among the candlesticks. It is the fact of the hour; it is the truth of to-day. He is the executor of His own laws. He does now actually Himself hold the stars in His right hand, and walk among the candlesticks. The history of Christianity is really the story of man’s varied efforts to establish a mediatorship between Christ and men. There must be none. There can be none. Christ is mediator between man and God. But Christ’s relation to man is direct. There must be no attempt to push in any mediation between Christ and the soul. The history of Christianity is the heroic story of the struggles of men who fought for, and died for, the administrative rights of Christ. Their conflict took a variety of forms, but the essence of it always was the resistance of all human mediatorship between Christ and His Church. Revelation 2:4. Losing First Love.—The first love had gone out of their religion; there was a tendency to fall into a mechanical faith, strong against heresy, but tolerant of conventionalism. Their temptations did not arise from the prevalence of error, or the bitterness of persecution, but from a disposition to fall backward, and again do the dead works of the past. There was not so much need to take heed unto their doctrine, but there was great need that they should take heed unto themselves (1 Timothy 4:16; compare Acts 20:28). When there is danger because earnestness in the holy cause is dying out, and the very decorum of religion has become a snare, what more fitting than to be reminded of Him whose hand can strengthen and uphold them, and who walks among the candlesticks to supply them with the oil of fresh love (Revelation 2:1)? The decay of love is the decay of that without which all other graces are as nothing (1 Corinthians 13:1-3), since “all religion is summed up in one word, Love. God asks this; we cannot give more, He cannot take less.” Great as the fault is, it is the fault which Love alone could have detected. Can any one more touchingly rebuke than by commencing, “Thou no longer lovest me enough”? There is at present, in the Ephesian Church, little outward sign of decay; they have resisted evil and false teachers; they have shown toil and endurance; but the great Searcher of hearts detects the almost imperceptible signs of an incipient decay. He alone can tell the moment when love of truth is passing into a noisy, Pharisaic zealotism; when men are “settling down into a lower state of spiritual life than that which they once aimed at and once knew.”—Bishop Boyd Carpenter. The True Problem of Christian Experience.—There are many disciples of our time, who, like the Ephesian disciples, are to be warmly commended for their intended fidelity, and are yet greatly troubled and depressed by what appears to be a real loss of ground in their piety. They are compelled to sigh over a certain subsidence of that pure sensibility, and that high inspiration, in which their discipleship began. The clearness of that hour is blurred, the fresh joy interspaced with dryness. I. The relation of the first love, or the beginning of the Christian discipleship, to the subsequent life.—What we call conversion is not a change distinctly traceable in the experience of all disciples, though it is, and must be, a realised fact in all. There are many that grew up out of their infancy, or childhood, in the grace of Christ, and remember no time when they began to love Him. Even such, however, will commonly remember a time when their love to God and Divine things became a fact so fresh, so newly conscious, as to raise a doubt whether it was not then for the first time kindled. In other cases there is no doubt of a beginning, a real, conscious, definitely remembered beginning, a new turning to God, a fresh-born Christian love. What is the import of such a state? what its relation to the subsequent life and character? It is a character begun, a Divine fact accomplished, in which the subject is started on a new career of regenerated liberty in good. But it is not a completed gift, which only needs to be held fast. It is one of God’s beginnings, which He will carry on to perfection. In one view, indeed, it is a kind of perfect state—a state resembling innocence. It is free, it is full of God, it is, for the time, without care. In this flowering state of beauty the soul discovers, and even has in its feeling, the sense of perfection, and is thus awakened from within to the great ideal, in which its bliss is to be consummated. The perfection conceived, too, and set up as a mark of attainment, is something more than a form of grace to be hereafter realised. It is now realised, as far as it can be. There is a certain analogy between this state, paradisaically beautiful, pure, and clean, and that external paradise in which our human history began. Still, the probability that any one will continue in the clearness and freshness of his first love to God, suffering no apparent loss, falling into no disturbance or state of self-accusing doubt, is not great. Where the love is really not lost, it will commonly need to be conquered again, over and over, and wrought into the soul by a protracted and resolute warfare. A mere glance at the new-born state of love discovers how incomplete and unreliable it is. An angel, as it were, in feeling, it is yet a child in self-understanding. The significance of the first love, as related to subsequent life, is twofold. In the first place, it is the birth of a new, supernatural, and Divine consciousness in the soul, in which it is raised to another plane, and begins to live as from a new point. And, secondly, it is so much of a reality, or fact realised, that it initiates, in the subject, experimentally, a conception of that rest, that fulness, and peace, and joyous purity, in which it will be the bliss and greatness of his eternity to be established. In both respects it is the beginning of the end; and yet, to carry the beginning over to the end, and give it there its due fulfilment, requires a large and varied trial of experience. II. The relation of the subsequent life, including its apparent losses, to its beginning.—The real object of the subsequent life, as a struggle of experience, is to produce in wisdom what is there begotten as a feeling or a new love, and thus to make a fixed state of that which was initiated only as a love. It is to convert a heavenly impulse into a heavenly habit, to raise the Christian childhood into a Christian manhood. The paradise of first love is a germ, we may conceive, in the soul’s feeling, of the paradise to be fulfilled in its wisdom. At first the disciple knows very little of himself. At first nothing co-operates in settled harmony with his new life; but if he is faithful, he will learn how to make everything in him work with it, and assist the edifying of his soul in love. A great point is the learning how to maintain his new supernatural relation of sonship and vital access to God. And through the same course of experience, he conceives more and more perfectly what is the true idea of character. At first, character is to him a mere feeling or impulse—a frame. Next it becomes a life of work and self-denial. Next, a principle—nothing but a matter of principle. Next he conceives that it is something outwardly beautiful—a beautiful life. Character is at last conceived as a life whose action, choice, thought, and expression, are all animated and shaped by the spirit of holiness and Divine beauty which was first breathed into his feeling. A great point to be gained in the struggle of experience is to learn when one has a right to the state of confidence and rest. By a similar process he learns how to modulate and direct his will. His thinking power undergoes a similar discipline. At first he had a very perplexing war with his motives. The new love kindled by the Spirit has to maintain itself in company with great personal defects in the subject. And his temporary failures may occasion great distress. Still, the process of God is contrived to bring us round, at last, to the simple state which we embraced, in feeling, and help us to embrace it in wisdom. The beginning is the beginning of the end—the end, the child and fruit of the beginning. The fact, then, of a truly first love, the grand Christian fact of a spiritual conversion or regeneration, is no way obscured by the losing experiences that so often follow. On the contrary, its evidence is rather augmented by these irregularities and seeming defections. And, if it be more than nothing, then it is, of all mortal experiences, the chief; a change mysterious, tremendous, luminous, joyful, fearful—everything which a first contact of acquaintance with God can make it.—H. Bushnell, D.D. Revelation 2:7. Overcoming.—Life on the earth for moral beings is not what we would have made it, if we had been entrusted with the making. Why should it cost such conflict for moral beings to win, and keep, goodness? For it does. “The path of sorrow, and that path alone,Leads to the place where sorrow is unknown.”That is a truth concerning our life on the earth which there is no gainsaying. Nothing, indeed, that is really worth having is easy to gain. That which costs nothing always proves to be nothing worth. St. Paul speaks of the battle of life, and shows us how to win it. St. John speaks of our “overcoming.” The fight is a continuous and prolonged one. We never end it, save with the ending of our earthly life. This fact, this truth, is freshly and vigorously impressed by the message of the Living Christ sent to the Churches of Asia. These seven messages tell what the Living Christ watches—us in the fight; us fighting. These seven messages tell what the Living Christ will do. Reward those who overcome. I. All of us have something to wrestle with and overcome.— 1. Something preventing our success in life. Often we say that circumstances hinder us. Nay, the truth is this: we will not fight. 2. Something preventing our surrender to Christ. Something we persist in clinging to, something we will not wrestle with and master. 3. Something preventing our union with His Church. 4. Something preventing growth of character. It often is something in the self, in the natural or educated disposition, that makes our great fight; some weakness of character, some besetting sin, some unworthy habit. Or it may be something in our surroundings, our place of business, our companionships, our pleasures. It may be something of sin or temptation, as it meets us out in life. Whatever it may be, we are not to be overcome of evil, but to overcome evil with good. II. There is only one way in which we may hope to overcome.—There are self-reliant ways that men try. They trust in vows, resolves, character, efforts. But life sternly deals with all merely self-efforts, and refuses to let man reap a moral victory in his own strength. There is really only one way. The fight must be waged under the leading of the great Captain of Salvation. By the sign of the cross we conquer, or, to use a Scripture figure, we “overcome by the blood of the Lamb.” David conquered Goliath because the wisdom and strength of God were upon his wisdom and strength. St. Paul could do all things “through Him who strengthened him.” We may be “more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” It is a spiritual fight, and for it we can have our Lord’s spiritual presence—and this presence as help for the small things of life. III. Gracious rewards await those who overcome.—There is nothing for those who never knew what it was to fight. But the rewards of victors in the moral conflict can only be presented to us in figures. The messages to the Seven Churches indicate that the reward will be precisely adapted to each precise fight, and each precise victor. But, whatever else may be said, the smile and acceptance of Jesus is the one all-satisfying reward. 1. Ephesus—fading, or lost, life of love. Reward: the quickening and sustaining tree of life. 2. Smyrna—test of martyrdom (Polycarp). Reward: “Not hurt of second death.” 3. Pergamos—failing purity. Reward: gift of the White Stone. 4. Thyatira—outward heathen temptations. Reward: mastery over influence of evil. 5. Philadelphia—the steadfast. Reward: made a pillar, with Christ’s great Name inscribed upon it. 6. Laodicea—the self-satisfied. Reward: sit beside Christ, the King of the lowly. It should be our joy that we are in the Lord’s war, and under the Lord’s eye, and assured of the Lord’s acceptance. Then, every day, and everywhere, let us be fully determined that we will “overcome.” The Symbol of Eating of the Tree of Life.—Prominent as this symbol had been in the primeval history, it had remained unnoticed in the teaching where we should most have looked for its presence—in that of the Psalmists and the Prophets of the Old Testament. Only in the Proverbs of Solomon had it been used, in a sense half allegorical and half mystical. (See Proverbs 3:18; Proverbs 11:30; Proverbs 13:12; Proverbs 15:4.) In connection with the revival of the symbol in the Apocalypse, it may be noted— 1. That it was the natural sequel of the fresh prominence that had recently been given to the thought of Paradise. 2. That the writings of Philo had specifically called attention to the tree of life as being the mystical type of the highest form of wisdom and holiness—the fear of God (θεοσεβεία) by which the soul attains to immortality. We trace, in other things at least, the indirect influence of Philo’s teaching on the thoughts and language of St. John, and as we must assume that all imagery is adapted, even in the words of the Divine Speaker, to the minds of those who hear, there seems no reason why we should not admit the working of that influence here. It may be asked, however, What is the meaning of the symbol, as thus used? How are we to translate it into the language of more abstract truth? And here, if I mistake not, the more developed form of the symbol, at the close of the Apocalypse, gives us the true answer: “The tree of life bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations” (Revelation 22:2). The leaves and the fruit obviously represent, the one the full and direct, the other the partial and indirect, workings of that eternal life which St. John thought of as manifested in the Incarnate Word. The “healing of the nations,” the elevation of their standard of purity and holiness, of duty and of love—this has been the work of that partial knowledge which the Church of Christ has been instrumental in diffusing. Its influence has counteracted the deadly working of the fruit of the other tree of “the knowledge of good and evil,” which we trace as due to a wisdom that is earthly, sensual, devilish. But to “eat of the tree of life” implies a more complete fruition, a higher communion and fellowship with the source of life. And here, therefore, I cannot but think that the promise of the Judge points to the truth that He is Himself, now, as ever, the “exceeding great reward” (Genesis 15:1) of those that serve Him faithfully; that the symbol veils the truth; that “this is life eternal, to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent” (John 17:3).—Dean Plumptre. Legends Concerning the Tree of Life.—In an old, rare book, called “Adam’s Repentance,” it is said that Seth, the third son of Adam, went to the gate of Paradise at the request of his dying father, and there received from the angel in charge three seeds of the tree of life, which he put in the mouth of Adam when he buried him. From these grew three saplings, from which were taken the wood for Moses’ rod, and that by which the waters of Marah, in the desert, were sweetened. The temple of David was also built of the wood of these trees, and the bench on which the heathen Sibyls sat when they prophesied the coming of Christ. Moses’ rod was planted in Canaan, and also became a tree, from which the cross of Christ, the new tree of life, was made, and the eternal life, lost in Adam, regained. This legend is fully portrayed in a picture on the altar of a Church in Leyden. It is, perhaps, founded on a simpler story told by Sozomen, the ecclesiastical historian, that at Hermopolis, in Egypt, stood the tree Persis, the fruit, leaves, and bark whereof possessed wonderful healing qualities. When the Virgin Mary, on her flight to Egypt with the infant Jesus, rested under this tree, it bowed its whole length in humble reverence to Jesus as the true Lord of life and health. The arbor vit�, familiar to us, is sculptured on Egyptian tombs, as a symbol of belief in another existence beyond the grave. In the Middle Ages it was said that whosoever would eat of the wood of this tree of life would be preserved from weakness and decrepitude, and would be rendered invincible as Achilles. It was also said that to eat of its foliage would cause one to forget all hunger and care. TO CHAPTER 2Rev 2:1. Ruins of Ancient Ephesus.—Let us go with the traveller, as he journeys over the scenes of Asia Minor—of which Homer, Hesiod, Ζschylus, and Euripides, sang, and of which Herodotus and Xenophon wrote—scenes of ancient myths, of high adventure, of sacred narrative,—scenes where Pagan mythology recorded its wonders, and where gospel doctrine claimed its triumphs; and let us rest for a moment with him as he surveys, in the ancient district of Lydia, on the borders of the Ζgean Sea, a poor Turkish village, bearing the modern name of Aiasalϋk. From the eminence upon which that hamlet stands, built of materials in which are constantly to be seen traces of a more dignified antiquity, the eye wanders over immense heaps of chaotic ruin in the valley below. These masses of ancient masonry are partly overgrown by the wild luxuriance of an almost tropical vegetation, and only the serpent, the lizard, and the scorpion, are at home on the spot. The elegant forms of Corinthian architecture, shafts of Ionic columns, and the less graceful remnants of later Roman days, may be traced amidst the inextricable confusion. A considerable river (the Cayster), the waters of which were originally clear as crystal, having broken loose from its bounds, wanders at will amidst the ruins, and converts the whole into a malarious swamp. Here and there a corn-field offers a contrast to the surrounding desolation, yet only serves to make that desolation more marked and emphatic. Among other remnants of the past are the ruins of an ancient theatre, whose circular seats, uprising one above another, may still be traced, whilst numerous arches remain witnesses of its former grandeur. But though the broken masonry is most extensive, not an apartment remains entire. No Christian dwells in its vicinity; there is no certainty as to the site of any one of the buildings which gave to the city its peculiar character. Confusion has done its utmost work. Such are the ruins of ancient Ephesus. Its position and prospects have undergone a total revolution; “the very sea has shrunk from its shores.” Everywhere are visible the traces of the spoilers’ hand. The columns which once adorned its temples, and which were the envy of the beholder, were removed by Justinian, to ornament the church of Sophia, in Constantinople. Barbarians pillaged all that emperors had spared; and as the traveller gazes upon the fallen fortunes of so much antecedent magnificence, he shudders at the too visible fulfilment of the threat, “I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.” While all trace of the temple of Diana has been lost, Chandler relates that he found amongst the ruins of the city an inscription, commencing as follows: “Inasmuch as it is notorious that, not only among the Ephesians, but also everywhere among the Greek nations, temples are consecrated to her, and sacred portions,” etc., which strikingly illustrates the address of the town clerk of Ephesus: “Ye men of Ephesus, what man is there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a worshipper of the great goddess Diana” (Acts 19:35)?Revelation 2:7. Overcoming.—As on some battlefield, whence all traces of the agony and fury have passed away, and harvests wave, and larks sing where blood ran and men groaned their lives out, some grey stone, raised by the victors, remains, and only the trophy tells of the forgotten fight; so that monumental word, “I have overcome,” stands to all ages as the record of the silent, lifelong conflict.—A. Maclaren, D.D.Tree of Life.—Comparing this verse with Christ’s declaration to the penitent thief, “To-day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise,” Parkhurst maintains that the tree of life is not an emblem of any agent through which Christ bestows blessings, but that it symbolises our Lord Himself. So, following out the idea, he points out that the cherubim, after Adam was expelled from the Edenic paradise, were set to guard the approaches to the tree of life: the time had not yet come for Christ to be manifested in the “glory of His work of redemption.” In Luke 23:31 we find that Christ alludes to Himself in His attitude of a sufferer as “the green tree”; that is to say, He was under the constant influence of the spirit of God, and brought forth the fruit of perfect holiness in His Divine manhood. AND NOTESRev_2:8. Was dead and lived again (R.V.).—Both the death and the return to life are assigned to a past time. The appropriateness of this presentation of Christ lies in the fact that the epistle was addressed to a persecuted Church, exposed even to the peril of martyrdom. They, even as their Lord, might have to go “through death to life.”Revelation 2:9. Works.—Omitted in R.V. Tribulation.—Trench explains the origin of this word (“Study of Words,” p. 8). Poverty.—Attendant on the persecution. When turned out of the synagogue, on becoming Christians, Jews were often deprived of their property. Rich.—In character, and Divine approval. Blasphemy.—A term usually and properly applied to God; here meaning “reviling,” “insult,” “calumny.” Synagogue of Satan.—With simple meaning of congregation of deceivers. “A company of people bearing the image of Satan, copying his example, doing his work, and supporters of his rule.” Here Satan is treated as the ideal deceiver, who represents these deceivers. No argument in relation to his personality can safely be drawn from such figurative expressions as these.Revelation 2:10. Devil.—Representing the informers against, accusers of, the Christians, and persecuting magistrates. Prison.—The first degree of punishment. Tried.—In the sense of tempted to apostatise. Ten days.—Not literal ten days; the expression is figurative, and means a strictly limited and relatively short time. Faithful.—Constant, persistent. Death.—θανάτου suggests here a violent death. Crown of life.—I.e., eternal life as a crown, or sealing of the faithfulness. See 1 Peter 5:4; 2 Timothy 4:8.Revelation 2:11. Second death—Compare Revelation 20:6; Revelation 20:14, Revelation 21:8. It points to a death other than the death of the body. It is used in the Chaldee paraphrase. Carpenter says: “The life of the spirit is the knowledge of God (John 17:3); the death of the spirit, or the second death, is the decay or paralysis of the powers by which such a knowledge was possible, and the experience of the awfulness of a life which is without God.”MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 2:8-11 Cheer for the Faithful.—He who spake in parables, as the human Christ, speaks in figures and symbols as the Living Christ. Smyrna, now “Ismir” is still an important commercial city of Ionia, with a population of some hundred and twenty thousand. It claims to be the birthplace of Homer. The vine was much cultivated; Dionysos, the God of wine, was worshipped, and intemperance was the characteristic sin of the inhabitants. Dionysos represents the productive, overflowing, intoxicating power of nature, and of this, wine is the natural and appropriate symbol. The association of Polycarp with this epistle is very uncertain, but his martyrdom may be used as illustration. Perhaps he was ordained by St. John; he succeeded Bucolus as bishop of Smyrna, and was martyred A.D. 156, or 157, in the reign of Marcus Antoninus. Evidently the one thing specially noticed by the Living Christ, when inspecting this Church, is its heroic endurance of outward persecution. It was severely subject to the strain of circumstances, and bore it nobly and well. Smyrna suffers for the sake of its culture (as Job did); other Churches suffer as discipline for correction. It is important to face the fact, that a godly individual may be called to suffer simply as an agency to secure his higher culture; and it is equally true that a Christian Church may be put into circumstances of grave anxiety and distress, with a view to securing its spiritual culture. I. The figure in which the Living Christ appears to this Church.—“The first and the last, which was dead and lived again.” The key-note of the epistle is this: Christ died to live again—to live truly. You die, and you too shall live again—shall live indeed. (Some think the figure may be suggested by the legend of the violent death, and the resurrection, of Dionyses; but see Revelation 1:17-18.) II. The things noticed in this Church by the Living Christ.—The word “works” is best understood, not as active, energetic, enterprising works, but as suggested by the two following and explanatory terms, “labour,” or strain, bearing, and “patience,” the virtue of the sufferer. The “works” of Smyrna were passive-bearing rather than active-doing. The Living Christ finds no ground of open complaint; and yet, the very fact that there was need for disciplinary and culturing trouble to do a gracious work in the Church, implies some imperfection. The Living Christ saw three things. 1. The tribulation the Church had to endure. 2. The poverty of circumstances which the tribulation involved; and 3. The insults offered by the bigoted Jewish party. Each of these troubles would be hard to bear; the three together made a hard lot indeed. The question of supreme interest to Him who inspected the Church was this: “Would they live—as they might live—by getting from under the pressure of these evils? Or were they willing to die—die to self, as they might die—by nobly yielding to bear them? If they would live by denying Christ, then they would die to the eternal life. If they would die, by suffering for Christ, then they should live to the eternal life. Illustrate by the familiar picture, “Diana or Christ?” Matamoros, the Spanish martyr, is reported to have said, “I purpose, to be steadfast to the end, be that what it may.” III. The message sent to the Church by the Living Christ.—It was the anticipation of further strain, to which the Church would be subject, and a gracious warning in relation to it. “Prison and death;” not relief, but more trial. “Ten days;” the figure of completeness as a test, but implying a limited time. But the warning blends with encouragement and assurance. “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.” It seems that the priests of Dionysos were presented with a crown; but the crown that Jesus gives is a crown of life. The story of the martyrdom of Bishop Polycarp closes with the words, “By his patience he overcame the unrighteous ruler, and received the crown of immortality.” IV. The provision which the Living Christ makes for those who overcome.—“Not be hurt of the second death.” That expression, “second death,” is not to be found in either the gospels or the epistles. Here is a strange thing: they were to conquer by yielding, to overcome by dying. “Death”—the consummation of persecution and suffering, is the prominent figure of this message. Christ suffered unto death, and gained His victory through death. They were to be “faithful unto death,” and so they were to be secured from the “second death.” The first death is death unto self. The second death is death unto God. Suffer the first, and you are saved from the second. In this we find but a repetition of our Lord’s earthly teachings, for He said, “He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it.” See the principle illustrated in the Church at Smyrna, regarding Bishop Polycarp as its type. He was aged when arrested. He was offered his life if he would sacrifice to the Emperor. And though he was aged, life was precious. He died unto self, and lives unto God. See the principle illustrated in a Church of to-day. A Church may have to pass through times of outward trouble as correction, but it is also true that the purpose of the trouble may only be culture. Can it bear? Can it suffer? Can it even be crushed, and, as it were, die? If it can, what shall it win? Show what features of the higher Church-life can be won only through the experience of well-borne suffering. There are martyrs who do not die—who are just heroic endurers. And, both as individuals and as Churches, we need to think of ourselves as those who serve Him who died to self, and lived, and lives, to God. Note on Dionysos.—The tutelary deity of Smyrna was the god of wine, who represented the productive, overflowing, and intoxicating power of nature. The story of the violent death and subsequent resurrection of this god was particularly celebrated by the people of Smyrna, and there may be a reference to this in the figure chosen to represent Christ. “Was dead, and is alive again.” The priests who annually presided at the celebration of the resurrection of Dionysos were persons of distinction, and at the end of their year of office they were presented with a crown. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_2:9. Poverty in the Early Churches.—Persecution has its heroic side, and under its stimulus men may do and dare much; but when, in addition to this, there is the daily pressure of ignoble cares, the living as from hand to mouth, the insufficient food and the scanty, squalid clothing of the beggar, the trial becomes more wearying, and calls for greater fortitude and faith. We do not sufficiently estimate, I believe, this element in the sufferings of the first believers. Taken for the most part from the humbler class of artizans; often thrown out of employment by the very fact of their conversion, with new claims upon them from the afflicted members of the great family of Christ close at hand or afar off, and a new energy of sacrifice prompting them to admit those claims; subjected, not unfrequently, to the “spoiling of their goods” (Hebrews 10:34);—we cannot wonder that they should have had little earthly store, and that their reserve of capital should have been rapidly exhausted. Poverty brought with it some trials to which those who had been devout Jews (Israelites) before their conversion, and who had not ceased to claim their position as such, would be peculiarly sensitive. In the synagogue which they had been in the habit of attending, and which there was no reason for their at once forsaking—perhaps even in the assemblies of Jewish disciples, which still retained the old name and many of the old usages—they would find themselves scorned and scoffed at, thrust into the background, below the footstool of the opulent traders in whom a city like Smyrna was sure to abound (James 2:2-3). The hatred which the unbelieving Jews felt for the name of Christ would connect itself with their purse-proud scorn of the poor and needy, and “those beggars of Christians “would become a byword of reproach.—Dean Plumptre. Revelation 2:10. Faithful. Christian Faithfulness.—Bishop Polycarp was martyred A.D. 168, long years after the book of Revelation was written, but his story glorifies the place (see “Illustrations”). In most of the other messages, complaint and commendation are blended. In this to Smyrna there is no complaint. The point of the message is, that this Church must expect unusual trouble. And that is God’s frequently allotted experience for the unusually devout: the better souls are the very ones that respond best to the holy, refining fires; fine gold is most worth refining. Their trouble was to take three forms: the despoiling of their goods, peril of life, and calumny, or slander. Some would be cast into prison. The great “tribulum,” the mighty threshing roller of persecution, would go over their heap of wheat, to and fro, back and again, through the ten long years of Marcus Antoninus’ reign. Man would say, It is overwhelming, crushing. Christ says, the tribulum of God never crushes; it only, with strong hand, separates the chaff from the wheat, that the wheat may be gathered into the garner. I. Our Lord’s call to an afflicted Church.—“Be faithful,” even to death-limits. In all His dealings with His people, our Lord is ever more anxious about them than about their circumstances. We are worried and anxious about our circumstances, but Christ is not. His anxiety concerns our moral and spiritual state. Nothing relieves us, in times of distress and pain, like this thought: my Lord wants me to be right; and that explains why persecution abides, why misunderstandings will not get corrected, why pain cannot be taken away, why the “thorn” stays, and we are thrown wholly on the “strengthening grace.” The Living Christ does not send to Smyrna saying, “I foresaw persecution and slander threatening you, and I warded it off.” He does not even, when it comes upon them, put forth miraculous power for its removal. He leaves the great providential workings alone, but calls upon His people to be noble in the very midst of suffering. “Be thou faithfull.” “Faithful” is a familiar Scripture term used concerning men, and even used of God. Abraham was faithful. Moses is “faithful in Mine house.” Samuel was faithful to be a prophet of the Lord. “Who is so faithful as Daniel?” “Hananiah was a faithful man.” “Judah is faithful with the saints.” “Timothy is faithful in the Lord.” “Tychicus is a beloved brother and faithful minister.” “Antipas was My faithful martyr.” God is spoken of as “the faithful God who keepeth covenant”; and “we are to commit our souls to Him as unto a faithful Creator.” Christ is “the Faithful Witness,” and His people are “saints and faithful brethren in Christ Jesus.” The figure in the word is that of “keeping covenant.” Those who are in covenant take mutual pledges and come under mutual responsibilities. To meet those responsibilities and fulfil those pledges is to be faithful, and so the word applies to all positions of service or ministry, since all such are really covenant-positions. And we have entered into solemn and everlasting covenant with Christ. He has entrusted to us His truth, His rights, His work in the world. Every one of us lies under this holy burden, unless we be reprobates. Then, being faithful means: 1. Faithful in keeping the truth entrusted to us. It does not matter how few or how simple you make the great primary truths and principles of Christianity to be, there certainly are some truths which are characteristically Christian—that is, which have been brought to light and set forth in the world of human thought by Jesus Christ as the essential first principles of what is called the Christian system. If men do not accept these, they may call themselves by what name they please, they are not Christians. The fundamental revelation of Christ is the Fatherhood of God. This discovers the helpless, prodigal condition of man. And it prepares the way for a redemption of love, wrought by God Himself, operating, in the sphere of the senses, by the manifestation of the Son in our world, and, in the spheres of mind and soul, by the grace and power of the Holy Ghost. And the test of the acceptance of this revelation, this whole circle of truth, is the view that is taken of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the Early Ages, again in the Middle Ages, and yet again now in our day, our faithfulness to the Christian truth is tested by our answer to this question concerning Christ, “Whose Son is He?” And the answer must ring out clear as the midnight hour from cathedral chimes: He is “God manifest in the flesh.” “The Word was God.” “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” We may yield a large and generous liberty to men in relation to the forms and terms in which they set the truth in Christ. But we have a trust: in regard to it we must be found faithful. We would “earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints,” the faith of Christ, who is God; of Christ, who is Man; of Christ, who has atoned; of Christ, who does redeem; of Christ, who ever lives; of Christ, who is “Head over all things to His Church”; of Christ, who will one day “judge the world in righteousness.” 2. Faithful in manifesting the spirit that is becoming to Christ’s servants. For there is a spirit, a tone, an atmosphere of mind and feeling, which is peculiarly becoming to Christianity; a spirit which times of trouble, and especially times of calumny, misunderstanding, and slander, such as Smyrna passed through, seriously affect. In this, too, the Living Christ bids us “Be faithful.” The spirit becoming to us is comprehensively called love. Jesus bade His disciples “Love one another.” And St. Paul elaborates the great Christian grace in writing to the Corinthians (chap. 13). How readily those Christians at Smyrna might lose love and brotherhood when conflict of opinion and persecution arose and “a man’s foes were they of his own household”! How difficult to keep calm, gentle, loving, when their very good was evil spoken of, and malignant Judaisers blasphemed them for their liberty in Christ! They might hold fast by the Christian truth and yet lose the Christian spirit, and so prove themselves unworthy followers of Him who, “though He was reviled, reviled not again, though He suffered, threatened not”; of Him who, dying on a cruel cross, prayed for His murderers, saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” passing out of life full of heavenly, Divine charity. Perhaps it is the very hardest thing we have to do in life, to be firm to the truth, manly in stating settled convictions, brave to point out public wrongs, and yet not lose love, or fail from the Christian spirit when our work is misunderstood, our purpose maligned, and slanders abound which must not be followed and fought through. Happy indeed is he who at such times may “in patience possess his soul;” unto whom God gives the grace of patience and gentleness, that he may be found faithful, “hoping all things, enduring all things.” 3. Faithful in doing that work of grace in the world which Christ wants carried through. For a Church has no right to exist, save as it is an active, working Church. A Christian man has no right to his Christian comfortings and hopes, save as he is an active, working Christian. There are spheres for every one of us. We must find for ourselves what ours is. Nobody can tell us. Having found our sphere, the text has its message for us: “Be thou faithful.” Our work may be witness, prayer, influence, giving, teaching, writing, ministry, or other form of service. But faithful is by no means to be confused with successful; and yet, so full of business ideas, that is very much how we read His meaning. It is not the grandest thing in life to be successful. Success is the false idol-god of this age, and strives hard to take the place of the Lord Jesus. No man ever sees the nobility of human life until he learns to put success second, and faithfulness first. Very often that very thing on which men have pityingly gazed, and called it a failure, God has regarded as among the noblest achievements of the sons of men. II. For the faithful ones Christ keeps the holy reward, the crown of life.—Bound four together at the stake, the nobles of Madagascar glorified God in the fires, “faithful unto death”; and as they died a lovely rainbow spanned the scene, and crowned those heroic souls. Forth from the conflict in Olympic and Isthmian games conquerors went, with circlets of ivy, or of parsley, twined about their brows; crowned, men called it, and they meant, sealed as conquerors, recognised as conquerors, stamped as kingly among their fellows, attested as heroes Worthless enough in itself, the parsley wreath expressed so much; and the city of him who wore it woke to feel its exceeding honour, and when he returned from the games, flung wide open its gates, nay, even sometimes made a new way through its walls, for him who seemed to them too noble to enter as might commoner men. And Christ gives no crown that may arrest attention for its own value. He gives one which shall be for earth and heaven, the sign of conflict maintained and victory won. The life of faithfulness shall be crowned with acceptance and permanency. The struggle for righteousness shall be crowned with the eternal seal of righteousness. The work for the glory of a completed obedience shall be sealed with the seal of sonship, and the welcome for the “blessed of the Father.” This is Christian life in its progress: being faithful. This is Christian life in its ending: being faithful unto death. And this is Christian life passed through into the unknown: crowned with the crown of life. The Reward of Faithfulness.—Learn that the religion of Christ— I. Requires faithfulness.—To be faithful in religion means that the believer should make use of all his powers on behalf of— 1. Religion. 2. Religion in the circle in which God has placed him. 3. Religion according to God’s will. II. Requires personal faithfulness.—Because every Christian— 1. Has a personal work to accomplish. 2. Is endowed with power to accomplish his own work. 3. Is under a personal obligation to be faithful. III. Requires continual faithfulness.—Because— 1. The work is great. 2. The time is short. IV. The religion of Christ rewards this personal and continual faithfulness.—The reward is— 1. Precious—“a crown.” 2. Glorious—“a crown of life. 3. Durable—“life.” 4. Personal—“I will give thee.”—J. O. Griffiths. Revelation 2:11. Second Death.—(See Revelation 20:14-15).—The imagery of the fiery lake, like that of the worm and the flame of the Valley of Hinnom, may be but imagery, but it points, at least, to some dread reality which is veiled beneath those awful symbols. What that reality is we may infer from St. John’s conceptions of the higher life. If the first death is the loss of the first or earthly life, then the second death must be the loss of that knowledge of God which makes the blessedness of eternal life—and that loss is, at least, compatible with the thought of continuous existence. What possibilities in the far-off future were shadowed forth by the mysterious words that “Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire”! As though they were to be robbed of their power to destroy, and were punished as the great enemies of God and man. How far those who were cast in with them might even there be not shut out from hope, it was not given to the seer of the Apocalypse to know, nor did he care to ask. It was enough for the faithful sufferers under persecution, who overcame in that conflict with the plurima mortis imago, to which they were exposed, to know that this was all that their enemies could inflict on them, and that the “second death” should have no power over them.—Dean Plumptre. Revelation 2:11. The Three Deaths of Scripture.—In the New Testament, death is spoken of in three different senses. For it is regarded as simply a separation from some form of life; which modern science acknowledges to be a strictly accurate view to take of death. In scientific language, it is the cessation of a correspondence with some special environment. There is, first, physical or temporal death, which is simply separation from this present outward world, the end of our correspondence with our physical environment. There is, next, spiritual death. Here the environment is God, and death means separation from the light of His love. “To be carnally minded is death” (Romans 8:6); “You, who were dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). And, lastly, there is the death to sin, the exact converse of the latter—separation from the devil and his works, through the life that is in Christ Jesus. “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:11). “He that is dead is freed from sin” (Romans 6:7). TO CHAPTER 2Rev 2:8. Smyrna.—This celebrated city is situated on the Mediterranean Sea, about forty miles north of Ephesus. It has a population of nearly 130,000, of whom 25,000 are Greeks, 10,000 Jews, 8000 Armenians, and the remainder chiefly Turks. It has twenty mosques, but the Turkish power is declining. The poppy and convolvulus are much cultivated, the latter yielding a valuable drug known as “scammony.”The Beauty of Smyrna.—“The first sight of Smyrna, especially when approached by sea, must produce a strong impression. It presents a picture of indescribable beauty. The heights of Mount Pagus and the plain beneath, covered with innumerable houses; the tiled roofs and painted balconies, the domes and minarets of mosques glowing and glittering with the setting sun; the dark walls of the old fortress crowning the top of the mountain, and the still darker cypress groves below; shipping of every form and country covering the bay beneath; flags of every nation waving on the ships of war and over the houses of the consuls; mountains on both side of stupendous height and extraordinary outline … tinted with so strong a purple, that neither these nor the golden streaks on the water could safely be attempted to be represented by the artist; at the margin of the water on the right, meadows of the richest pasture, the velvet turf contrasted with the silvery olive, and covered with cattle and tents without number;—all this will at once tell the traveller that he sees before him the city extolled by the ancients under the title of the lovely, the crown of Ionia, the ornament of Asia. It will remind the Christian that he is arrived at Smyrna, the Church favoured so much beyond all the other Churches of the Apocalypse; the only city retaining any comparison with its original magnificence. Ephesus the mart of all nations, the boast of Ionia, has long dwelt in darkness, as though she had not been; the streams of her commerce, like her own numerous ports, are all dried up. Where once pro-consuls sat at Laodicea, now sit the vulture and the jackal. At Sardis, where once a Solon reminded Cr�sus of his mortality, the solitary cucuvaia awakens the same reflection; and if Philadelphia, Thyatira, and Pergamos continue to exist, it is in a state of being infinitely degraded from that which they once enjoyed. Smyrna alone flourishes still. Her temples and public edifices are no more; but her opulence, extent, and population, are certainly increased.”—Arundel.Revelation 2:10. Faithful unto Death: Polycarp. When Polycarp, an ancient Bishop of the Church at Smyrna, was brought to the tribunal, the pro-consul asked him if he was Polycarp, to which he assented. The proconsul then began to exhort him, saying, “Have pity on thine own great age. Swear by the fortune of Cζsar. Repent: say, ‘Take away the atheists’ ”—meaning the Christians. Polycarp, casting his eyes solemnly over the multitude, waving his hand to them, and looking up to heaven, said, “Take away these atheists,” meaning the idolaters around him. The pro-consul, still urging him, and saying, “Swear, and I will release thee: reproach Christ,” Polycarp said, “Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He hath never wronged me; and how can I blaspheme my King who hath saved me?” “I have wild beasts,” said the pro-consul, “and will expose you to them unless you repent.” “Call them,” said the martyr. “I will tame your spirit by fire,” said the Roman. “You threaten me,” said Polycarp, “with the fire which burns only for a moment, but are yourself ignorant of the fire of eternal punishment reserved for the ungodly.” Soon after this, being about to be put to death, he exclaimed, “O Father of Thy beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ! O God of all principalities and of all creation! I bless Thee that Thou hast counted me worthy of this day and this hour, to receive my portion in the number of the martyrs, in the cup of Christ. I praise Thee for all these things. I bless Thee, I glorify Thee by the eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ, Thy well-beloved Son; through whom, and with whom, in the Holy Spirit, be glory to Thee, both now and for ever. Amen.”Ignatius.—Having been sent, bound, to Rome, the Roman prefect caused it to be announced that on a given day Ignatius would fight with wild beasts in the Colosseum. Into the building, which would accommodate eighty-seven thousand spectators, we are told “the whole city” gathered to witness the bloody spectacle. When he was in the amphitheatre, turning to the people, as one who gloried in the ignominy which was before him, Ignatius cried out, “Romans, spectators of this present scene, I am here, not because of any crime, nor to absolve myself from any charge of wickedness, but to follow God, by the love of whom I am impelled, and whom I long for irrepressibly. For I am His wheat, and must be ground by the teeth of beasts, that I may become His pure bread.” When he had uttered these words, the lions, being let loose, instantly flew upon him and devoured him altogether, with the exception of his larger bones; thus fulfilling his prayer that the beasts might be his sepulchre, and that nothing might be left of his body; Christ receiving greater glory from the sufferings of His servant than would have followed from his escape from the wild beasts. Thus perished one who, a short time previously, feared that he was wanting in love to Christ, seeing that he had not then been thought worthy of the crown of martydom.Hooper.—Bishop Hooper was condemned to be burned at Gloucester, in Queen Mary’s reign. A gentleman, with the view of inducing him to recant, said to him, “Life is sweet and death is bitter.” Hooper replied, “The death to come is more bitter, and the life to come more sweet. I am come hither to end this life, and suffer death, because I will not gainsay the truth I have here formerly taught you.” When brought to the stake, a box, with a pardon from the queen in it, was set before him. The determined martyr cried out, “If you love my soul, away with it! if you love my soul, away with it!”A Greek Christian.—“A Turk had prevailed by artifice upon a Greek Christian, twenty-four years of age, to enter his service, abandon his faith, and embrace the tenets of Mohammed when he assumed the costume of a Mussulman. On the expiration of his engagement the Greek departed for Mount Athos, in Macedonia, and was absent about twelve months, when he returned to Smyrna; but, his conscience having reproached him for the act of apostasy of which he had been guilty, he proceeded to the Turkish judge, threw down his turban, declared he had been deceived, and would still live and die a Christian. Every effort was made to prevail on him to continue in the principles of Mohammedanism, by offering him great rewards if he did, and threatening him with the severest penalties if he did not. The Greek, having rejected every bribe, was thrust into a dungeon and tortured, which be bore most heroically, and was then led forth in public to be beheaded, with his hands tied behind his back. The place of execution was a platform opposite to one of the principal mosques, where a blacksmith, armed with a scimitar, stood ready to perform the dreadful operation. To the astonishment of the surrounding multitude, this did not shake his fortitude; and although he was told that it would be quite sufficient if he merely declared he was not a Christian, rather than do so, he chose to die. Still entertaining a hope that the young man might retract, especially when the instrument of death was exhibited, these offers were again and again pressed upon him, but without effect. The executioner was then ordered to peel off with his sword part of the skin of his neck. The fortitude and strong faith of this Christian, who expressed the most perfect willingness to suffer, enabled him to reach that highest elevation of apostolic triumph evinced by rejoicing in tribulation; when, looking steadfastly up to heaven, like the martyr Stephen, he loudly exclaimed, ‘I was born with Jesus, and shall die with Jesus’; and, bringing to recollection the exclamation of that illustrious martyr in the cause of his Divine Master, Polycarp, in this very place, he added, ‘I have served Christ, and how can I revile my King who has kept me?’ On pronouncing these words, his head was struck off at once.… The head was then placed under the left arm (after the Mohammedan is beheaded, the head is placed under the right arm, and in this manner he is interred) and, with the body, remained on the scaffold three days exposed to public view, after which the Greeks were permitted to bury it.”A Brave Boy.—A company of boys in Chicago once endeavoured to force a boy to go with them into a garden to steal fruit. He persisted in his refusal to go with them. They threatened to duck him in the river unless he consented, but he remained firm His tormentors then forced him into the water, and wickedly drowned him, because he would not steal. There was the true hero, and the genuine spirit of a martyr. One of the local printers furnishes the following paragraph in relation to him:—“His father is one of our most worthy and estimable Norwegian citizens. He is a member of the Evangelican Lutheran Church, His little son, though but ten years of age, had given such true evidences of piety, and he was so intelligent and consistent in every respect, that he had also been admitted as a member of the same church. His seat in the Sabbath school was never vacant, and his lessons were always learned.” It is proposed to erect a monument to his memory. Who will say that children are too young to love and obey the truth? Honour to the noble boy who was willing to die rather than sin against God.The Young Drummer.—In one of the late wars a little drummer boy, after describing the hardships of the winter campaign, the cold, the biting, the pitiless wind, the hunger and the nakedness, which they had to endure, concluded his letter to his mother with the simple and touching words, “But, mother, it is our duty, and for our duty we will die.”Crowns for Conquerors.—Among the Romans, with other military honours and recompenses, rich and splendid crowns were publicly bestowed upon the illustrious conqueror, and upon every man who, acting worthy of the Roman name, had distinguished himself by his valour and his virtue. In the triumph of Paulus Ζmilius, after taking king Perseus prisoner, and putting an end to the Macedonian empire, there were carried before the conqueror four hundred crowns, all made of gold, and sent from the cities by their respective ambassadors to Ζmilius, as a reward due to his valour. How beautiful and striking, then, are those promises which assure us that the Saviour shall confer crowns of immortal glory upon His persevering saints, and that before the host of angels and an assembled world!—Kennett. AND NOTESRev_2:12. Sharp sword.—Suggesting unusual severity of asserting, and unusual severity of dealing (see Revelation 1:16; also Ephesians 6:17). “On the one hand, it was to smite that it might heal, cutting to the quick, reaching the conscience, laying bare the hidden depths of each man’s life. On the other, it was also quick and powerful to smite and to destroy.Revelation 2:13. Thy works.—Better omitted, as in Revelation 2:9. Satan’s seat.—Or “throne.” Reference may be to the worship of Ζsculapius, under the symbol of a serpent; but Sinclair, on the ground of recent excavations, gives the suggestion that the phrase refers to the great altar of Zeus Soter, carved with the wars of gods and giants, which Attalus set up to commemorate his victory over the Gauls—the last great triumph of Hellenism over barbarism. Another suggestion is, that the phrase merely indicates that Pergamos was, in a special sense, a home of the Satanic spirit of persecution. It may be better, however, to keep the idea of deceiver associated with the term “Satan,” and destroyer associated with the word “Devil.” Antipas.—Probably short for Antipater; a man not otherwise known. Martyr.—Strictly witness; but bearing witness unto death. The death of one of them reveals the severity of the persecution under which all passed. (The legend concerning Antipas cannot be traced earlier than the fifth century, and then legends of martyrs were freely invented.)Revelation 2:14. Doctrine of Balaam.—Which was this: if you cannot get your own way by open disobedience to God, get it by scheming; get it through offering gratification to human passion. Nothing can be baser, or more demoralising, than this “doctrine of Balaam.” “Israel could not be cursed, but they might be made to bring a curse upon themselves by yielding to sin.”Revelation 2:15. Nicolaitanes.—These people encouraged Christians to join in the idolatrous feasts of their neighbours, on the plea that to the spiritual man there can be no sin in any merely bodily, animal action. It is true that sin is in the will, but it is known by its expression in acts. I hate.—δμισῶ. Probably should be ὁμοίως, in like manner.Revelation 2:16. Repent.—Addressed either directly to the angel or to the loyal ones in the Church. Them.—Those: embers who are yielding to surrounding evil influences. The discipline must be severe on them, and an anxiety for the whole Church.Revelation 2:17. Hidden manna.—Figure for the Divinely-provided, spiritual food, with which loyal souls are nourished. White stone.—Sign of acquittal. See in “Main Homiletic” account of the “tessara hospitalis,” which explains the secrecy and value of the new name written upon the stone. New name.—That which betokens their adoption into the family of God; a new character, new position and privileges.”MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 2:12-17A Church Flagging in its Duty.—Of this Church there is much complaint, and much need for stern discipline. Two evils were imperilling its very life. Christ deals with them hopefully, because they were yet in their early stages, and undeveloped. Only a few were really bad. Pergamos, or Pergamum (the original of the word “parchment”) was in the province of Troas, Asia Minor, some sixty miles north of Smyrna. It was not a commercial city, but its hill formed a natural fortress. It was the seat of the worship of Ζsculapius, the god of healing, who was symbolled as a serpent, and represented by a live serpent which was kept in his temple. There is a legend about this god to the following effect: On one occasion, in the house of Glaucus, whom he was to cure, while he was standing absorbed in thought, a serpent entered, and twined round his staff. He killed it, and then another serpent came in, carrying in its mouth a herb with which it recalled to life the one that had been killed. Ζsculapius henceforth used that herb, with healing effects, on man. But an elaborate system of magic grew up around this god, attended with deceptive practices. Pergamos became a focus of idolatrous worship, and could be described as the place “where Satan’s seat is.” Outward circumstances of temptation, rather than of trouble, are represented in the picture of this Church. Under pressure of these temptations the Church has partly yielded; but it does not seem to have recognised the seriousness and peril of this partial yielding; and therefore the Living Christ must come to it with the dividing and revealing two-edged sword. I. A Church faithful to the truth.—“Hast not denied My faith.” Antipas was probably the proto-martyr of the Asiatic Churches. “I know thy works.” We would like Christ to judge us by our Church activities alone; but He always seeks to judge the soul that is behind the activities. Christ takes due account of our disabilities—“where thou dwellest”; but not so much to excuse failure as to show that He expects energy. Only noble souls are put in dangerous places; they are honoured even as is the “Forlorn Hope” of an army. (The “Nicolaitanes of Rev 2:15 are best apprehended as the Antinomians of that day.) II. A Church failing from its duty.—Its practice was by no means so good as its profession. Some were going wholly wrong. Balaam and the Nicolaitanes are introduced as types of the two serious evils affecting this Church. 1. Unrestrained feastings, or self-indulgence in food. The story of Balaam which is specially brought before us here is given in Numbers 31:16. Over-mastered by God, Balaam became a revengeful schemer, and taught Balak to show friendliness, and get the Israelites to mix with his people at the idol-feasts, whose great characteristic was riotous self-indulgence. This evil took a refined form in the early Church, and St. Paul had to advise on the question of eating meat which had been offered to idols, if a Christian was invited to a feast by a heathen friend. The difficulty was based on the Eastern idea of communion by eating. Fulness of self-indulgence in eating and drinking still involves the hopeless ruin of Christian piety. 2. Unrestrained passions, or self-indulgence in sexual relations. In Balaam’s day this over-feeding, and these idol associations, led to sadly immoral relations between Israel and Moab—relations that were in open and wilful opposition to the conditions of the Jehovah-covenant. In connection with this, bring in the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, which supported immorality by its assertion that self-indulgence is not sin in the regenerate. There have been known cases in which men who were living in open immorality have persisted in coming to the Lord’s Table. But such men always have been, and are to-day, the canker of the Church. The sign that a man is a saved man is his wanting to be righteous, and trying to be righteous. A Christian absolutely must be self-restrained in matters of bodily appetite and passion. III. A Church encouraged to become steadfast in holy living.—“Eat of the hidden manna,” to satisfy the feast-feeling. The figure may be based on the legend that Jeremiah hid the Temple pot of manna. Manna is Divinely-provided food—spiritual food. The addition of “hidden” makes it clear that it was not such manna as was provided for Israel—not something to satisfy merely bodily appetite. The point is this: overcome, and hold in wise restraint bodily appetite, and Christ’s reward will be the culture of spiritual appetite, with abundant supply of spiritual food. “White stone and new name,” to satisfy the love for human relations. When houses of public entertainment were less common, private hospitality was the more necessary. When one person was received kindly by another, or a contract of friendship was entered into, the tessera hospitalis was given. It was so named from its shape, being four-sided: it was sometimes of wood, sometimes of stone. It was divided into two by the contracting parties; each wrote his own name on half the tessera. Then they exchanged pieces, and therefore the name or device on the piece of the tessera which each received was the name the other person had written on it, and which no one else knew but him who received it. It was carefully prized, and entitled the bearer to protection and hospitality. The idea is, that human friendships and relations should become wholly pure, freed from carnal strain, sanctified, heavenly, the friendship of purified souls. “In heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels.” Overcoming carnal tastes will surely go with culture of the spiritual tastes, so that we shall prefer the “hidden manna,” and see glory in the “white stone.” Every Christian, and every Christian Church, is expected to wear the “white flower of a blameless life.” NOTES AND SERMON Rev_2:14. Doctrine of Balaam.—“Things sacrificed to idols,” εἰδωλόθυτα.” Every convert from heathenism would acknowledge that he was bound to abstain from any participation, direct or indirect, in the false worship which he renounced at baptism. But the question, What acts involved an indirect participation? was one that gave rise to a perplexing casuistry, and yet could not be avoided. Was the convert to go out of the world, and turn from all social gatherings but those of his own community? Was he to refuse to join in the public meals, at inns, or elsewhere, which travel made almost indispensable? If he did so refuse, he cut himself off, not only from the pleasures, but from the duties and opportunities of family and social companionship. Yet if he accepted the invitation, there was the risk that he might be eating of the flesh of sheep or ox which the host had himself sacrificed, as a festive thank-offering, to Zeus or Apollo, or that the wine which he drank might have been poured out as a libation. If he did so eat, was he not, in “eating of the sacrifice,” a partaker in the worship, eating the flesh and drinking the cup which belonged to the demons that he had learnt to identify with the gods whom the heathen worshipped (1 Corinthians 11:20). Yet another case presented itself, which followed the convert even to his own home. Of the sacrifices that were offered in heathen temples the greater part became the perquisite of the priests. When they had more than they could consume themselves, they sold it to the meat-dealers of the market. The Christian convert, therefore, could never be sure that what he bought had not been thus offered, and the sensitive conscience was harassed with the tormenting thought of an unknown and involuntary transgression, which yet brought with it defilement and condemnation. The Jew might avoid the danger by dealing only, as for the most part, Jews deal now, with a butcher of his own persuasion; but this implied a more settled and organised society than that of most Christian communities in the early days of the Church’s life, and many years would probably pass away before the convert was able to meet with a Christian butcher. On the other hand, in most cases the Jewish butcher would probably refuse to supply him; or, if that were not the case, would only do so under the restrictions (to the Gentile burdensome and vexatious) of the Mosaic law of clean and unclean meats. (See the discussion of this difficulty in 1 Corinthians 10:14-33.) Those who are condemned by this message are precisely those whom St. Paul urges, on grounds of a moral expediency so high that it becomes a duty, to refrain from the exercise of the right and freedom of which they boasted. It was to be expected that some, in their self-will, would harden themselves against the appeal; that they might even use St. Paul’s name, and boast that they were more consistent with his principles than he was himself. This, we know, was what Marcion and his followers actually did when they claimed a true liberty for themselves; and Marcion may well have had forerunners among the Gnostics of the apostolic age.—Dean Plumptre. Revelation 2:17. The New Name.—The giving of new names is not uncommon in the bible; e.g., Abraham—Israel—Boanerges—Peter. The new name expressed the step which had been taken into a higher, truer life, and the change of heart, and elevation of character, consequent upon it. Such are known in the world by their daily life, their business, their character; they are known above by the place they hold, and the work they are doing in the great war against evil. No man knoweth the characteristics of the growth of the character, the spiritual conflict in which the work is done, and the features of that change which has been, and is being, wrought, except he who experiences the love, the grace, and the tribulation, by which his spirit-life has grown.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter. TO CHAPTER 2Rev 2:12. Pergamos.—Pergamos, a celebrated city of Mysia, in Asia Minor, and for one hundred and fifty years the capital of a powerful and independent kingdom of the same name, is situated about sixty-four miles north-west of Smyrna. It was the residence of the Attalian kings, and a famous seat of Eastern learning, having a noble library, containing two hundred thousand volumes. The advantages of its situation, near the sea, and commanding an extensive plain, rendered it a place of great importance. The acropolis, or citadel (which was always the most ancient part, and the stronghold, of Grecian and Roman cities), stands on a hill two hundred feet above the plain, now crowned with its ruins, amongst which those of a castle or fortress, resembling those at Smyrna and Ephesus, covering the whole summit, and including about eight acres, stand prominent. It was built in the more prosperous times of Pergamos, though much of its present form is of a later date. The town afterwards became more extended, and the modern one lies in part on the slope of the hill, but principally in the plain. Among the antiquities of Pergamos may be mentioned the remains of the temple of Minerva, which rose on a high area, and was unrivalled in sublimity of situation, being visible from the vast plain and the Mediterranean Sea. Its columns now lie in a lofty heap. With a descent almost perpendicular, on the north and west sides is a very narrow valley, with a rivulet, over which, at one extremity, the great aqueduct of one row of lofty arches is constructed, and at the other a pile of massive buildings, which, filling the whole breadth of the valley, was the front and grand entrance into an extensive amphitheatre, … the most complete edifice of the kind in Asia Minor. Here, at times, by retaining the waters of the rivulet, a Naumachia, or place for the exhibition of a mock sea-fight; was formed; while at others, when the arena was dry, and the stream confined within its narrow bounds, it was used for chariot, gymnastic, and other exercises. Of the site of the royal palace of King Attalus, celebrated for its beautiful prospect (and therefore probably occupying an elevated and commanding position), nothing can be positively asserted. Once there was at Pergamos the celebrated temple of Ζsculapius, which was also an asylum, and the concourse of individuals to which was without number or cessation. They passed the night there to invoke the false deity, who communicated remedies either in dreams or by the mouth of his priests, who distributed drugs and performed surgical operations.Revelation 2:17. The White Stone.—We have here an allusion to an ancient mode of indicating approbation and acquittal, as described by Ovid:—“A custom of old, and still ordains,Which life or death by suffrage obtains;White stones and black within urn are cast,—The first absolve, but death is in the last.”This ancient custom was something like our modern balloting, or voting by white and black balls. The White Stone promised by our Lord seems to mean full and complete justification at the great day, through His glorious imputed righteousness. Some interpreters refer to the ancient custom of acquitting an accused person by the jurors placing a white pebble in the balloting box. Thus the Christian, at the last great assize, shall receive, not the black stone of condemnation, but the white stone of salvation, through the merits of Him who died for sinners. The white stone has also suggested the token of triumph allotted to the victor at the Olympic games, entitling him to a triumphant reception on his return home. There is another tessera, or white stone—the tesseragladiatoria. Before a young man could appear as a gladiator in the great public games, he had to pass through a long and severe process of training. During that time he went under the name of tiro, or apprentice. When he made his first public appearance in the arena, if he proved victorious, he received an oblong tablet of ivory (tessera gladiatoria) as a reward and sign of his proficiency, on which was written his name, that of his master, and the day of his first fight and victory. He was then admitted to the rank of the spectati (distinguished persons). The name of tiro was dropped, and his new name of spectatus was inscribed upon his tessera. The tessera gladiatoria may not be so attractive in itself as the tessera hospitalis, but there is no objection to the employment of a symbol by St. John which is used by the apostle of the Gentiles. And, then, it fits the case, which the other does not. There is the change of name, the new name being more honourable, and commanding greater privileges, than the old. And this white stone is given as a reward of victory—of a victory, it should be observed, not in a single brief contest, but which was the crown and finish of a long and self-denying course of discipline. AND NOTESRev_2:18. Thyatira.—Situated between Pergamos and Sardis. Inscriptions show that it contained many corporate guilds, one being that of the dyers. Apollo was specially worshipped, as the sun-god, under the Macedonian name of Tyrinnas. Son of God.—This name solemnly affirms His Divine power, as well as right, and prepares for the promised bestowment of power, in Revelation 2:26. Eyes.—A figure representing His omniscience, and especially the intensity of its searching. Feet.—Figure representing the firmness of His tread who comes in judgment. Feet of Chalcolibanus. An aspect of stern sovereignty marks this epistle.Revelation 2:19. Work.—Divided into two sets—active: charity and service; passive: faith and patience. Ephesus had failed in the second set? this Church was stronger in the second than in the first. It would seem that on the passive side they were even weak; permitting things that put them in peril.Revelation 2:20. Woman Jezebel.—More exactly, “thy wife Jezebel.” Probably a party in the Church is referred to which was led by an unscrupulous woman. It is necessary to remember that traditions had grown up around the person of Jezebel, and these, rather than the actual history, are referred to. Seduce my servants.—The teachings of St. Paul show how liberty in sensual indulgence, in its two forms, was a cause of constant anxiety in the Early Churches.Revelation 2:22. Bed.—Of sickness and suffering. The figure is in keeping with the sin, and suggests a fitting and answering punishment.Revelation 2:23. Children.—Her disciples; those who take up with her teachings, and follow her ways. Death.—In forms that would clearly indicate Divine judgment.Revelation 2:24. Deep things.—Probably these heretical teachers boasted of knowing the deep things of God, so they are satirised as the deep things of Satan. Other burden.—See Acts 15:28, seqq.Revelation 2:26. My works.—Not the works of any self-willed teacher. There must be simple and supreme loyalty to Christ, and that involves loyalty to everything that is self restrained and pure. Christ gives power over self and sin. Over the nations.—This is a figure of speech. The individual triumph over all individual and all combined immoral forces and influences is pictured as a rule over riotous and violent nations (Compare Psalms 2). “Those who, like their Master, refused to win power by doing homage to wrong (Matthew 4:3-10), would share the nobler sway which He now established.” Morning star.—Used of Christ Himself in Revelation 22:16. “The symbol of sovereignty on its brighter and more benignant side, and therefore the fitting and necessary complement of the dread attributes that had gone before.”MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 2:18-29 Praise and Blame for Thyatira.—Lydia, the first Christian convert in Europe, was a purple-seller of this city of Thyatira, which was famous for its dyeing works, especially for purple or crimson. Inscriptions found on the spot bear witness to the existence of a guild, or corporation, of purple-sellers, with which Lydia may have been connected. The city stands on the river Lycus, and it is situated on the borders of Mysia and Ionia, a little to the left of the Roman road from Pergamos to Sardis. It was founded by Seleucus Nicator after the Persian Empire had been destroyed by Alexander the Great. From the names that appear on their monuments, the inhabitants seem to have presented a greater mingling of races than was commonly to be found, and included Macedonians, Italians, Asiatics (in the narrower sense of that word as including the inhabitants of the pro-consular province of Asia), and Chaldζans. The chief object of their cultus was Apollo, worshipped as the sun-god, under the Macedonian name of Tyrinnas. An interesting discovery, in connection with the religious rites of the city, materially helps in explaining the allusions made in the epistle. Outside the walls stood a small temple dedicated to a Sibyl, a woman who was supposed to have the gift of prophecy. This temple, or church, was in the midst of an enclosure, called the “Chaldζan’s Court,” and the Sibyl, who was called Sanbethe, is sometimes said to be Jewish, sometimes Chaldζan, and sometimes Persian. The inference to be drawn from this is, that some corrupted Jews of the dispersed tribes had introduced from Chaldζa or Persia a religion which was a mixture of Judaism and heathenism. It is not improbable that this Sanbethe, or her school, had at Thyatira a place dedicated to the promulgation of a religion which was an admixture of Orientalism and Judaism, with some importations from the Greek and Roman rites, and even with some kind of appropriation of Christian ideas, forming altogether a system similar to those which the various sects of Gnostics soon afterwards established. And, this supposition being correct, it is then easy to see how Jewish Christians of the Church of Thyatira might be affected with this heresy, and fail to offer to it the opposition which it ought to have received from a Christian community. Dr. Tristram describes the present city, and its surroundings, as seen when approaching it from Pergamos. “Diverging a little to the right, the broad valley of the Hyllus opens to view, and as we look down in spring or summer, we see before us a panorama resembling in kind, though not equal in extent and grandeur to, the traveller’s first glimpse of Damascus. The eye tracks across the plain the silver thread which marks the course of one of the effluents of the Hyllus; and in the centre are the crowded white roofs of a widespread Turkish city, with here and there a minaret towering in the midst, and many a clump of tall cypresses raising their funeral plumes on high; while the whole is girt with a fringe of orchards, and watered gardens, over which the silver mist, drawn down by the sun, hangs in a thick, quivering cloud. This is Akhissar, ‘the white castle,’ the ancient Thyatira.” That city, or rather the Christian Church in that city, was in the immediate Divine inspection. All about the rites of Apollo, and all about the seductions of Sanbethe, was known to Him who “walketh among the golden candlesticks.” We may see (1) the form in which the Living Christ is presented in His relation to this Church; (2) the things in the Church life which He could commend; and (3) the things which caused Him grave anxiety, and called for His severe reproof. I. The form in which the Living Christ presents Himself to this Church.—The general symbolical appearance of the Living Christ, as present in His Church, is given in the first chapter, and certain portions of the description are taken to indicate the special relation of the Living Christ to each particular Church. We Westerns speak so little in the language of symbols, that it is often difficult for us to understand them, or to get their precise adaptations. Two things in the figure of the Living White One are recalled to mind in presenting the message to Thyatira: “Who hath His eyes like unto a flame of fire, and His feet like fine brass,” or burnished brass (R.V.). In the first chapter the symbol is given in a fuller form: “His eyes were as a flame of fire, and His feet like unto burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace.” The eyes of flame seem to indicate a severity of inspection; and the feet like burnished brass may indicate the determination to tread down the evils which the searching eyes may discover. “The feet of Chalcolibanus”—that is the peculiar word used—“shall crush the enemies of God as though they were the vessels of a potter.” Dean Blakesley thinks that the special description was determined by the character of the worship of Apollo in this city. He thinks there was a statue of Apollo, of gold and ivory, or of wood or marble, richly gilt; that this shone with a dazzling brightness, and that the “eyes like a flame of fire, and the feet like fine brass” were meant to present the image of the Lord of the Churches as yet more glorious and terrible. There is certainly a tone of severity, as well as of searching, in the epistle. A purpose to burn up, and tread down, the moral evils which were so seriously imperilling the life of the Church. There are some evils in Church life which must be dealt with vigorously. No gentle hand will do. They are corrupting forces, and must be trampled down. If we may take the idea of this prophetess Sanbethe morally corrupting the people with her idolatrous and immoral system, we can well understand that Christ’s inspections of that Church must be as with a flame of fire, and His dealings with that Church as the treading of burnished feet. We should never hesitate to associate the holiest severities with the Lord Jesus Christ. The very perfection of love makes it stern and severe against all wrong-doing, and especially against all evil that is doing an actively corrupting work. Its activity must always be met by a more than answering activity of goodness, in resisting and rooting it out. II. The things in the Church life at Thyatira which the Living Christ could commend.—It is interesting to notice that they were very much the things which St. Paul could commend in writing his letter to the Philippians. “Loving ministrations, patient endurance, warm-hearted faith, the more feminine graces of the perfect Christian character.” But when this is seen, the sternness of the closing portion of the epistle to Thyatira is explained. The Church needed to be aroused. The sterner, masculine graces were called into exercise by the Church’s peril. It is a serious mistake for a Church to develop “active” graces to the neglect of the “passive”; but it is as perilous a mistake for a Church to settle down into the enjoyment of Christian peace and Christian privileges, heedless of moral evils that may be making serious inroads upon it—as perilous a mistake to develop only “passive” graces, feminine graces, to the neglect of those that are manly, active, and strong. There is a righteous zeal against evil which Churches should exhibit; and Christ puts into His Church the power and the right to judge and condemn. These are the things in the Church at Thyatira upon which the Living Christ can look with complacency. “I know thy works, and thy love, and faith, and ministry, and patience, and that thy last works are more than the first.” Three things seem to be expressed in these terms: 1. Service; 2. Character; 3. Growth. 1. Service. The Living Christ saw this Church realising the ideal of a Christian Church in its “works” and “ministry.” The works may, indeed, suggest “good conduct” as the expression of sincere and active faith; but it seems better to take it as meaning works of charity, and works of witness for the truth in Christ. Then “ministry” would mean loving readiness to serve and help one another in all the various anxieties, distresses, sufferings, which constantly come into the human lot, and which even made a special experience in those early Christian days. That is always commendable in a Christian Church. Its members ought to “love one another” in the sense of being ever ready to minister to one another. And its members ought all to recognise that they are put in trust with the gospel, and are bound to witness to it by attractively holy living, and by all gracious persuasions. In the Church of Christ, the voice—the inspiring voice—of the Living Lord should ever be heard saying, “Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain. This is praiseworthy. Thyatira was a working Church; it was found working in all-loving ministries, within its circle, and in all loving service beyond it. 2. Character. Three words are used to indicate their high level of Christian attainment, but all three belong to the feminine, or passive, graces: Love; Faith; Patience. If we find other names for them, we may call them Gentleness; Dependence; Submission;—the very things that are essential to all Christian character that can be called “beautiful.” Things that give the Christian professor a certain kind of strength—a very admirable kind of strength, but not precisely that kind of strength which is required in dealing with public evils, moral evils. Christ’s commendation ever rests upon gracious character. Of that we may be sure. It is, indeed, one supreme purpose of the communion of saints to cultivate saintliness of character, the “holiness without which no man shall see the Lord” or win the loving approval of Him who is ever walking amid the candlesticks. The Church’s concern is the character of its members. The Church’s safety lies in the character of its members. The Church’s power is the witness made by the character of its members. 3. Growth. This is indicated in the singular expression, “and that thy last works are more than the first.” This was a great thing to say. For a Church to stand still is for a Church to go back. Its only security lies in its keeping going forward. It is full of comforting for this Church at Thyatira that Christ could recognise advance and growth; because that is precisely what both Churches and individual Christians are usually altogether unable to recognise for themselves. They cannot institute befitting comparisons. To them the past of Christian life and feeling is apt to loom large, and the present can seldom be estimated fairly. It is full of good cheer for us, too, if Christ sees that our present is an improvement on the past; if the last is better than the first. Very encouraging is the Divine estimate of the loving, devout, ministering, and almost saintly, Christians at Thyatira. One almost wishes it had not been necessary to turn and deal so severely with evils which, if not actually in the Church, were closely and perilously related to it—did, indeed, affect some, and perhaps some of the principal, members of it. III. The things which caused the Living Christ grave anxiety and called for His severe reproof.—We must satisfy ourselves with a general understanding of the mischievous influence that was at work, and not dwell too closely on the figures of speech that are employed to describe it. It is clear that there was some mischief-making Jewish Christian teacher in the town; and it seems to have been a woman professing occult powers. She is likened to Jezebel, and her influence is likened to that of the Ph�nician priestess and princess, who brought the degrading rites of Astarte into the land of Israel, and wholly corrupted the people who should have been “holy unto the Lord.” Whatever this woman’s teachings may have been intellectually—and of that we can form no sufficient judgment—their influence was bad, very bad, morally. She evidently taught that the Christians were in bondage, and needed liberty. They were an isolated section of Society, and took no part in the so-called pleasures of Society. They had scruples about their eating, and scruples about their relationships, and they needed to have these scruples put away, and just to be men and women, with passions and pleasures like other men and women; they needed to be able to eat what they liked to eat, and to do what they liked to do. This was the practical result of Sanbethe’s licentious and idolatrous teachings, permissions, and example. How far this degrading influence had gone does not quite appear. The message seems to indicate that the elder or pastor of the Church, and a goodly number of the members, had kept themselves from the evil influence. The Living Lord says this: “To you I say, to the rest that are in Thyatira, as many as hare not known, this teaching.” Some, let us hope a great many, were “faithful among the faithless found.” Dean Plumptre suggests that the “Agapζ, or love-feasts, of the Church were stained, as the hints in 2 Peter 2:13-14, and Jude Revelation 2:12, not obscurely intimate, with the perpetration of fathomless impurities, in which this so-called prophetess was herself a sharer,” as well as the leader. What we need to see, is, that idolatry finds, and ever has found, its congenial atmosphere in self-indulgence and licentiousness; that even false and unworthy presentation of Christianity finds, and ever has found, its support in an intellectual and moral liberty, which has always tended to generate into licence, and that Christianity—the Christianity of Christ—can only live in a pure moral atmosphere, and may always be judged by “the fruits unto holiness,” which it produces wherever it is established. The religion which does not tend to make pure lives, pure homes, pure Churches, and pure Society, has no right to be called Christianity. But the point of impression for the Church at Thyatira, which has its practical application for us, is this. The evil in its midst must not be left alone. It must not be left to grow into ruinous power. It must be dealt with vigorously, and at once. It must be resisted manfully. The Living Christ lays “no other burden” upon them, but he does lay that burden. Relative to the moral evil in its midst, whatever form it may take, every Church of Christ must be manly. It must be Christly as the Christ who drove out the money-changers and dove-sellers when they defiled the holy Temple. And they who, striving against all moral evil in their midst, “overcome,” have this for their reward. The Christian life in them gains the full development; the strong things are harmoniously cultured with the gentle. They win authority as well as submission; are now nourished all round into the entire image of Christ, and become strong to resist evil, and to witness for purity, as Christ was strong. To him that overcometh is given the “morning star,” the sign of victory over all darkness, all night—everything evil. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_2:20. Jezebel.—The best editors decline to adopt the reading “thy wife.” The name of Ahab’s idolatrous wife is here plainly a symbolical name. Except in Jehu’s taunt (1 Kings 9:22), which need not be meant literally, there is no evidence whatever of Jezebel’s unchastity. A great point of this is, however, made in Peter Bayne’s poem on Jezebel. It would seem to be the intimate relation which the woman adverted to sustains to the Church that appears to give occasion for the appellation τὴνγυναῖκάσου. The woman in question, whose proper name (probably from motives of delicacy) is withheld, was evidently one who assumed the office of a public teacher (καὶδιδάσκει), and gave herself out (for so it is said) as an authorised προφῆτις. Revelation 2:24. Depths of Satan.—The heretics condemned in the preceding verses were doubtless a sect of those who called themselves Gnostics, probably at this time, certainly in the next generation. They contrasted knowledge of the “depths,” or “deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10), with the faith of the orthodox in the plain, simple doctrines that were openly preached to the world. The Lord answers that the depths of knowledge that they attained were depths, not of God, but of Satan.… It is to be remembered that the Gnostic systems of the second century, and probably those of the first also, included a strange mythology of half personified abstractions, and it may be that the Lord rather identifies one of these with Satan than substitutes the name of Satan for that of God. It appears from Iren�us that the Gnostics of his time talked of the “deep things of Depth,” as well as the “deep things of God.” It is curious that the phrase, “the depths of knowledge” is quoted from the great Epbesian philosopher, Heraclitus: possibly it was owing to his influence that such notions found a congenial home in Asia Minor.—W. H. Simcox, M.A. TO CHAPTER 2Rev 2:18. Thyatira.—“The appearance of Thyatira, as we approached it,” says Arundell, “was that of a very long line of cypresses, poplars, and other trees, amidst which appeared the minarets of several mosques and the roofs of a few houses at the right. On the left, a view of distant hills, the line of which continued over the town; and at the right, adjoining the town, was a low hill, with two ruined windmills. Thyatira is a large place, and abounds with shops of every description. The population is estimated at three hundred Greek houses, … thirty Armenian, and one thousand Turkish; nine mosques, one Armenian, and one Greek church. We visited the latter; it was a wretchedly poor place, and so much under the level of the churchyard as to require five steps to descend into it.… We intended to give the priest a Testament, but he seemed so insensible of its worth that we reserved it, as it was our only remaining copy, and bestowed it afterwards much better. Very few of the ancient buildings remain here; one we saw, which seems to have been a market-place, having six pillars sunk very low in the ground. We could not find any ruins of churches; and, inquiring of the Greeks about it, they told us there were several great buildings of stone under ground (which we were very apt to believe, from what we had observed in other places), where, digging somewhat deep, they met with strong foundations that, without all question, have formerly supported great buildings. I find, by several inscriptions, that the inhabitants of this city, as well as those of Ephesus, were, in the times of heathenism, great votaries and worshippers of the goddess Diana. The city has a very great supply of water, which streams in every street, flowing from a neighbouring hill.… It is populous, inhabited mostly by Turks, … few Christians residing among them; those Armenians we found here being strangers who came hither to sell sashes, handkerchiefs, etc., which they bring out of Persia. They are maintained chiefly by the trade of cotton wool, which they send to Smyrna, for which commodity Thyatira is very considerable. “It is this trade,” says Rycaut, “the crystalline waters, cool and sweet to the taste and light on the stomach, the wholesome air, the rich and delightful country, which causes this city so to flourish in our days, and to be more happy than her other desolate and comfortless sisters.” Hartley remarks, “The buildings are in general mean, but the place in which we are at present residing is by far the best which I have yet seen.… The language addressed to Thyatira is rather different from that of the other epistles. The commendations are scarcely surpassed, even in the epistle to Philadelphia, while the conduct of some was impious and profligate. The Church thus exhibited a contrast of the most exalted piety with the very depths of Satan.”CHAPTER 3 AND NOTESRev_3:1. Sardis.—Modern, Sart; once the capital of the old Lydian monarchy, now a village of paltry huts. Seven Spirits of God.—Most writers see in this the endowment of Christ with the Spirit, so as to be judge in His Church. But this idea involves unduly pressing the word “hath,” which more naturally suggests “hath in control” than “hath in possession.” Stuart understands our Lord presented here as having the seven presence-angels under His control, or at His disposal—having them as His attendants and the ministers of His will. In whatever sense “hath” is applied to the “seven Spirits” it is applied to the “seven stars.” Art dead.—Spiritually; a figure for being in a cold and lifeless state (Matthew 8:22; Romans 6:13; Ephesians 2:1; Ephesians 2:5; Colossians 2:13).Revelation 3:2 Watchful.—Wakeful; the opposite of the present drowsy condition of the Church. Lit. “become watching,” “become as one who watches.” Things which remain.—Implying that some things had died out, and that some things were dying out, through neglect and disuse. In getting back energy for flagging things, there might come also restoration of lost things. Perfect.—Or up to the standard, “fully done, in weight and tale and measure.”Revelation 3:3. Hold fast.—Compare the counsel to Timothy (2 Timothy 1:14; 2 Timothy 2:2). As a thief.—Unexpectedly, so as to find thee in a wholly unprepared state. (See Matthew 24:43; Luke 12:39; 1 Thessalonians 5:2; 1 Thessalonians 5:4; 2 Peter 3:10; Revelation 16:15.)Revelation 3:4. Names.—This is thought to imply a Church roll. It may, however, only be a figure for “persons.” Defiled their garments.—“Clean white garments are very natural emblems of innocence. Hence, to be clothed with polluted garments, i.e. garments soiled and stained, is an emblem of a character which is soiled and polluted.” (See Zechariah 3:3, seqq.) Those are described whose outward lives had been free from impurity.Revelation 3:5. Be clothed.—Or shall clothe himself (περιβαλεῖται). Book of life. Roll, or register, of the citizens of heaven. Names are blotted out of city registers when death occurs, or when crime is committed, and forfeiture of privilege ensues. Confess his name.—See Matthew 10:32; Luke 12:8.MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 3:1-6 Death and Life and Peril of Life in a Christian Church.—There is scarcely more than a doubtful allusion, in this epistle, to the secular or religious conditions of the city of Sardis. That some of the members of the Church had not “defiled their garments” implies that there was some peculiar peril of moral defilement in their daily associations. There are ruins of a stately temple still remaining, which was dedicated to the mother-goddess Cybele; and her “worship, with its eunuch priesthood and its orgiastic rites, was one which tended, as much almost as that of Dionysos or Aphrodite, to sins of a foul and dark impurity.” The city was a very interesting one. It was famous for its purple dye, for its coinage, and for the manufacture of a compound metal, known as electrum. It was the ancient capital of the Lydian monarchy, and through its agora, or market-place, flowed the Pactolus, with its golden sands. But this epistle directs exclusive attention to the Christian Church in Sardis, and it is chosen as one of the seven Churches to receive direct messages from the Living Christ, because it was, in some way, a typical, or representative, Church; and in connection with it may be illustrated the universal Divine dealings with Churches that answer to this type. In what, then, is this Church a type of certain Christian Churches which may be found in every age? Its most marked peculiarity, the consequences of which the searching Spirit of Christ discovers and brings out to view, is, that the Church had been left for years in quietness and peace. It had not been touched by any of the persecutions that had afflicted sister Churches. The members lived as citizens in the esteem of their neighbours, not rousing opposition by any active resistance of the heathenism around, but, perhaps in an exaggerated and unworthy way, “following peace with all men.” The apparent consequence was a look of well-to-do-ness; a general prosperity; much orderliness of public service; fair charities; and conditions that seemed to indicate healthy Christian life. Sardis had the name and repute of a living Church. But there are peculiarly subtle influences always bearing upon individuals, and nations, and Churches, that go on a long time in undisturbed and prosperous quietness, with no changes to put virtue to the proof, and no warfare to put noble qualities to exercise. The supreme moral peril for a man is found in years of continued and unqualified worldly prosperity. The supreme test of a nation comes in prolonged periods of peace. And Churches that never know storm, or stress, or strain, are in grave danger of dropping down into listlessness and worldliness. The one thing that the individual, the nation, and the Church, lose in periods of unbroken outward material prosperity, is spiritual life, soul life. Bodily life, material life, social life, thrive well under such conditions, and they may come even to simulate, or stand instead of, spiritual life; but souls grow in times of conflict and trial. Pressure of distress, affliction, or evil, forces the soul into the activity in which alone it can thrive. Of some it is said in God’s Word, and in a very striking way, “Because they have no changes, therefore they forget God.” Life—soul life—cannot do with long-continued smoothness and ease. The law is an ever-working one, “Through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom.” “The path of sorrow, and that path alone,Leads to the place where sorrow is unknown.”The prophet Jeremiah illustrates the truth by a very suggestive figure: “Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity; therefore his taste remained in him, and his scent is not changed” (Jeremiah 48:11). The Church in Sardis, then, is a type of those Churches that have known years of unbroken outward prosperity and peace. We always are disposed to make mistakes about such Churches, and to over-estimate their spiritual condition. The Living Christ, who “walketh among the candlesticks,” makes no mistakes. Let us see what He may be finding, to-day, to be the truth concerning such Churches, by what He found to be the actual, rather than the apparent, state of the Church in Sardis. In dealing with the previous Churches, we have seen that, in each case, the Living Christ is pictured as present in a precise relation to the conditions and needs of the Church. That is equally true in this case. We have to be assured that He is never deceived, or carried away by mere appearances. He goes in behind the show of things to the inward reality. He can searchingly search. He can deal with motives. He can test for signs of spiritual life. So He is figured, in relation to Sardis, as having the seven Spirits, or the perfect Spirit of God. He has the Divine eye, which the psalmist felt. “searched and knew him,” and which the Christian teacher spoke of as “discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart.” The Church in Sardis might be so satisfied with itself that it would find it hard to believe it could be as Christ declared it was. Let them know, then, that the Living One, who moved among them, saw secrets with absolute precision, for He had the seven Spirits of God. There can be no appeal from His searching inspection, and unhesitating decision. But that is not all the figure in which Christ is presented to this Church. He is also “He that hath the seven stars.” Now, the “stars” are the angels, or ministers, of the Churches; and this allusion to the Living Christ as having, or holding, the stars in His right hand, is evidently intended to suggest that He meant to subject the minister of this Church in Sardis to an unusually searching test. It was possible that he might be found as spiritually dead as were the average of the members of the Church. It might even be that his yielding to subtle, worldly influences had sealed the spiritual death of the Church. “His faith, as well as the faith of the Church, may have sunk into a superficial, though perhaps an unostentatious, state.” And if so, it was well that the Divine rebukes should seem, in a very direct way, to be pointed at him. In the inspection of this Church notice— I. The Living Christ does not stop with mere signs of life.—There is almost an abruptness in the way in which they are mentioned, and brushed aside. “I know thy works, that thou hast a name, that thou livest.” “These things bring you men’s praise, and even men’s confidence, but I am not interested in them; I want to know what is behind them.” The show and the fame of Christian life is not always a genuine expression of spiritual life. Many a consumptive patient makes a brave show of life when he is just dropping into the grave. Other things besides spiritual life can secure the commonplace goodness of a man, and of a Church. A moral man may not be a Divinely quickened man. An apparently healthly Church may have really lost its vitality. The leaves of the tree do not fall at once when the fresh springs of sap are stopped in their flowing. Presently, if there be no sustaining life, the signs of life will surely fail. But when the Living Christ searched the Church in Sardis, and its minister, the evil, the spiritual death, was only in its beginnings. The tone of His address is more than usually severe. The conditions were subtle. The discovery of the insidious evil was physician’s work. The seeming flush of health really was but the hectic flush of disease. The very little, dull, but steady, pain and swelling, of which no notice was taken, was the sign of cancerous growth, and a living death. Signs of life in a Church! Services maintained; numbers increasing; propriety of conduct winning public respect; generous meeting of responsibilities; service of charity to the poor; kindly sympathies with one another in times of sorrow;—Christ, the Living Christ, passes them by, with a glance of approval; they are good as far as they go. He goes in behind them to test the vitality, the spiritual life, of which they should be the expression. And He may have to say, “I know thy works; thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead.” “In Sardis there had been no open scandals. It was still recognised by the other Churches as a living and true member of the great family of God—was even, it may be, winning their admiration for its seemingly energetic vitality. And yet the chill and the paralysis, which were the forerunners of the end, were slowly creeping in upon its life; death, not life, was already master of the position, the dominant characteristic of the Church as a whole, and perhaps of its spiritual ruler in particular” (Plumptre). II. The Living Christ is anxious about flagging life.—Nothing can be done by agencies within the Church’s control for those in the fellowship who are quite spiritually dead. There is no hope for them, save in the awakening trump of some direct Divine dealing. But, while this may be the condition of a few, the Living Christ fixes attention on those whose vital force was but failing—who were but beginning to die. And the searching Eye noticed that it was on certain sides of Christian life that they had begun to die, as trees show signs of hastening death in particular branches. This, however, only made their spiritual condition the more perilous, because they might easily be satisfied with the things into which spiritual life still streamed, and might fail to see the significance of the death that was doing its work in other things. When we live, crediting ourselves with, and getting the credit of, superior piety, it is very easy to blind ourselves to the actual conditions of spiritual peril in which we are found. But there is hope in dealing with those whose spiritual life is only flagging. The Living Christ bids them “establish the things that remain” alive, but “are ready to die.” He tells them that He had not found their works perfect, they were not good, not alive, all round the tree, and the death in some of the branches would inevitably spread to all the other branches. And He solemnly warns them—with a most arousing warning—that when deadly disease stealthily creeps upon a man, and is left unchecked, it has a way of leaping upon him at last, and clutching him with one hopeless grip. They will find it even so with flagging, diseased, deteriorated, spiritual life. “If, therefore, thou shalt not watch, I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.” Plumptre says: “The angel of the Church is called to wake up from his slumbers, and then to strengthen in himself the energy, the zeal, the love, the hope, the faith, which were so nearly dying out. In doing this he could not fail to help the persons, also, in whom this flagging of all spiritual vigour had been most conspicuous, or, in the language of the epistle to the Hebrews, ‘to lift up the hands that hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees.’ ” III. The Living Christ recognises those in the Church who are truly and healthily alive.—For such there always are, even in a spiritually decaying and dying Church. The Lord always has His “remnant.” In a prosperous Church they are often found among those who are poor in this world’s esteem. And almost always they are found among the severely afflicted ones—those who have the trials and persecutions in their own personal experiences, which the Church, as a Church, may so perilously lack. They are always the salt of the Church, the hope of the Church. And they are sure to gain the loving recognition of the Living Lord who “walks among the candlesticks.” But the description given of the sign of life in them which their Lord recognises is singular and suggestive. “Thou hast a few names in Sardis which did not defile their garments.” They walked the foul highways of immoral Sardis clean. But the suggestion is not one of merely careful, watchful walking—one of mere ordering of conduct and relationship. It reminds us of Christ Himself, who walked the earth in spotless white, though He touched the leper and ate with sinners. He had such vigorous life in Him that neither His soul nor His body could take stains. That is the idea of the undefiled few. They have such vigorous spiritual life that as they go to and fro among defiled men and things they take no stains; they throw off all infections; cleanness and health are guaranteed to them by vigorous life. And these shall “walk with Christ in white.” They shall come into such a near and sympathetic fellowship with Him as only they can know who are alive as He is alive. If it be true that death creeps on from a spot to a limb, and from a limb to a vital organ, we need not miss seeing the answering truth—that life is active to resist encroaching death. Every really living Christian in a Church is an active, energetic power. The undefiled few preserve, as does the salt; they work as does the leaven; they spread as does life; they fight evil and death, even as the White One Himself ever did, and does. The hope of every Sardis lies in her present, searching Lord, and in her “undefiled few.” IV. The Living Christ encourages effort to recover life by giving gracious assurances and promises.—“To him that overcometh” the stealthy, insidious influence of this prolonged Church prosperity and peace, that braces himself to resist the evil, and nourishes his soul-life into healthy vigour and activity, these assurances come. “He shall be arrayed in white garments”—a fitting array for the white-souled, and for the servants of the White Christ. Their whiteness shall come out and clothe them, and so take the attention of men and be a powerful witness for Christ. Their “name shall not be blotted out of the book of life,” as the names of the dead citizens must be, and the names of the dying citizens are in peril of being. And the Living Christ shall find His personal pleasure in them. He shall speak about them to His Father and to the angels; glad in those who are quick, and strong, and healthy, in that Divine life they have through Him. “I will confess his name before My Father, and before His angels.” “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith” unto the Church in Sardis. Beware, lest any of you succumb to the oppressive moral atmosphere that is around the Churches of Christ in these days of national prosperity, wealth, worldliness, and peace. In that atmosphere, spiritual life finds it hard to thrive. It has this subtle influence upon us: it nourishes self-indulgent life, mental life, artistic life, and even a sort of philanthropic life; and Churches are so easily deceived with these things, and induced to call them spiritual life. And then the real spiritual life moves slowly in the veins of the Church, and then it becomes stagnant in places, and then it mortifies. He who hath the seven Spirits of God looks at the facts, not at the seeming, and behold, He must say this: “I know thy works, that thou hast a name, that thou livest, and art dead.” Dead in places, dying in other places—only a few parts really alive. What an alarming picture of a Christian Church! This is the arousing warning given to it: “Remember, therefore, how thou hast received and didst hear, and keep it and repent. If, therefore, thou shalt not watch, I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.” Resist the creeping lethargy, arouse yourselves, shake off the sleep of hastening death. Be among those who overcome and live, and, because alive, walk the earth with the Living, White Christ. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_3:1. A Name to Live.—It is the reputation for piety possessed by the Church at Sardis which is referred to. Living with the credit of superior piety, it was easy to grow satisfied with the reputation, and to forget to keep open the channels through which grace and life could flow, and to fail to realise that the adoption of habits of life higher than those around them, or those who lived before them, was no guarantee of real spiritual life; for, as Mozley says, “the real virtues of one age become the spurious ones of the next.… The belief of the Pharisees, the religious practice of the Pharisees, was an improvement upon the life of the sensual and idolatrous Jews whom the prophets denounced. But those who used both the doctrinal and moral improvements as the fulcrum of a selfish power and earthly rank, were the same men, after all, as their fathers, only accommodated to a new age.” Self-satisfaction, which springs up when a certain reputation has been acquired, is the very road to self-deception. The remedy is progress, forgetting the things behind, lest, looking with complacency on the past, moral and spiritual stagnation should set in, and spiritual death should follow.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter. Seven Spirits of God.—The Spirit is thought of, to use the later terminology of the Nicene creed, as the “Giver of life,” and of all its sevenfold gifts; the seven Spirits of chaps. Revelation 1:4 and Revelation 5:6 were but forms of that Divine life which He—one, yet manifold—imparted. He also “hath the seven stars,” which represent the guides and teachers of the Church; He is able, that is, to bring together the gifts of life, and the ministry, for which those gifts are needed. If each star shines with its peculiar radiancy, it is because it is under the power and influence of the sevenfold Spirit; if it has no life or light, and ceases to shine, there is the danger of its falling away from its place in that glorious band and becoming as one of the “wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever” (Jude Revelation 3:13).—Dean Plumptre. True Church Life.—The Church to whom this statement was made was that of Sardis, and the remarkable thing is that this strong condemnation is pronounced while yet no flagrant vices are charged upon its members. They appear to have been sound in creed, respectable in conduct; yet, after all, they were dead. I. There are certain things which secure for a Church a good name, which yet are no sure indications of spiritual life.— 1. Numbers may give a name to live while yet there may be death. 2. Wealth may give a name to live. 3. The absence of immoral conduct is no sure indication of life. 4. A sound creed is no indication of a Church’s life, because it may have been departed from, or a Church may put the creed in place of the Saviour, or its members may have gone soundly to sleep upon its sound creed. II. A sure indication of life is the fruit.—“I know thy works.” The threefold test of a Church’s life is— 1. Works of faith. 2. Works of love. 3. The patience of hope. The patience of hope is the work of hope. “If we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” This patience is not simply quiet waiting, it is also active perseverance. Hope is the mainspring of effort, and a hopeful Church will be a persevering Church, with no such word as weariness in its vocabulary.—W. M. Taylor, D.D. Revelation 3:4. The Undefiled Few.—To the Church in Sardis the message is one of almost unmingled reproof. Christ is represented as having the seven, or perfect, Spirits of God, therewith looking this Church through and through; going in behind the appearances of life, discerning the beginnings of spiritual death. Sardis was a tree fair to look upon, with leaf and flower; but the blight had stricken it—the blight of worldliness and self-indulgence. But that Eye, which is so quick to detect the evil, is yet more lovingly quick to discern the feeblest traces of good. “Even in Sardis” that Eye rested on an undefiled few, who were steadfast in heart, who were clinging to Him in trustful love, who were trying to walk the soiling streets of Sardis with unspotted garments. Such as they Christ will never pass over in forgetfulness; such true and earnest hearts need great comfortings; they shall have them, if need be, from the very lips of Jesus. To such He says, “They shall walk with Me in white, for they are worthy.” I. The undefiled few.— 1. The figure used of unstained garments indicates those who have not brought disgrace upon their Christian professions by their outward life. This is, indeed, only one of the lowest forms of Christian virtue. 2. But more than this is meant. Sardis was famous, even among the degraded cities of that day, for the abandoned profligacy of its inhabitants. In comparison with those around them, their garments were undefiled. 3. There is yet a deeper reference here. The truly undefiled are they who keep up their integrity of heart, amidst all the faintings and fallings of their life. II. Their present power.—In every branch of life, or phase of history, you find God has had a few who were leaders—leaders of thought, opinion, enterprise, active effort, and pure living. These are the salt, preserving the rest from corruption. Such was the service of the few in Sardis. III. Their future glory.—This appears to embrace two things: 1. They who struggle after goodness now, shall find themselves settled in goodness then for ever. 2. Above all, these undefiled few shall have a communion with Christ of an extraordinary intimacy and preciousness. “They shall walk with Him in white.” Walking in White.—White can hardly be called a colour. It is the soul of a thing shining through a simple and transparent medium. White shows the purity that a thing is. Illustrated by the white cactus. White is the emblem of innocence for children, and virtue for the redeemed. Illustrate priests in white. Church dressed as Bride—snow, wool, pure spring flowers. The text is in the book of Revelation. Can that book be won for Christian uses? The key to it is white, whiteness. Explain the prologue as a thesis worked out in the book. Compare the gospel of St. John, which has a similar beginning thesis. The first chapter is the vision of the Living, White Christ. He is with His Churches. He finds that they are all not-white. He is ever with them, to make them white. He uses the varied forms of earth-tribulation as His agents. As the process goes on through the ages, we get occasional glimpses of the heavenly, and there some sanctified wholly. The book closes with the vision of the Holy City for the holy ones, and the cry to Jesus to hasten the perfecting of His work. I. We are not white.—St. John says, “If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” It is the fact concerning us all, that we “have not kept our garments unspotted from the world.” We could not bear the searching of the full sunshine, or the testing of the spring-time. The White One searches all who are satisfied with themselves—searches words, thoughts, affections, tone, relations. How severe His searchings are, is seen in His messages to the Seven Churches of Asia. Ephesus had left its first love, Smyrna needed tribulation. There were a few things against Pergamos. Thyatira was self-indulgent. Sardis had a name to live, but was dead. Philadelphia had but “a little” strength.” Laodicea was lukewarm. However self-satisfied we may be, revealing times are sure to come, which humble us in the dust. This is our severest testing. True whiteness will not take stains, any more than Christ took leprosy. The only thing that can be said of us is, we have not been among stains. Who of us is clean every whit? II. Christ is white.—Let us say, was white, that we may feel His was a human whiteness; and that whiteness, kin to us, He has carried above. This is the impression left by the scene of the Transfiguration. This impressed the apostles. They speak of Him as “holy, harmless, undefiled.” He “did no sin.” This is the point of the vision seen by St. John. God could see no stains on Him, though He walked earth’s highway. Man has tried his utmost to find stains on Christ; and what, at the most, do they ever find? Destruction of the swine, egotism, whip of cords, cursing of fig-tree. Do not say He was white because He was God. He was white as man. Then there must be a secret in His human whiteness. It was His sanctified Will. The blood is the physical life. The Will is the moral life. The blood must be pure. The Will must be right. Our trouble is that our Will is not right, therefore stains come and stay. III. Christ is working to make us white as He is.—He wants it. It is the aim of His infinite love. In our deep hearts we want it. Why do we so love white flowers? Have you lost the present, living, cleansing, saving Christ out of your life? Are you only resting in something He once did? Then you have not learned the lesson of the book of Revelation. Then you have not seen the supreme glory of Christ. He maketh white. He is making white. In two ways. 1. As sunshine make sails look white. 2. As washing makes white paper in the paper mills. The book of Revelation describes God’s tearers, and chemicals, and rollers. (1) The great Son cannot bear to see any stains on His brothers. Therefore He refines, as silver is refined, seven times. (2) The great Son wants His own purity for every brother. His is purity within. We are anxious about a covering robe. The robe of immortality lets the white (that we have become) shine through. This, then, is Christ’s present work in us—His sanctifying of tribulation. He is getting our Wills turned wholly to righteousness. Death-time is the final process in the cleansing of the Will. In recognition of this, we get white wreaths for the dead. Christ’s glory for the future is this: we shall be clean, as He is. He can work on to secure that end. He can make us suffer in securing that end. And we ought to respond to His working in us. Triumph for the sin-stained is the Christ-won, everlasting, white robe. What becomes of bodies or of garments that keep on getting stained, and never get washed? It suggests the future of all who are out of Christ. Revelation 3:5. Erasure of Names from, the Book of Life.—“A process of erasure is ever going on, besides the process of entering. When the soul has finally taken its choice for evil; when Christ is utterly denied on earth and trodden under foot; when the defilement of sins has become inveterate and indelible;—then the pen is drawn through the guilty name; then the inverted style (stylus) smears the wax over the unworthy characters; and when the owner of that name applies afterwards for admittance, the answer is, “I know thee not: depart hence, thou willing worker and lover of iniquity!”—Dr. Vaughan. Christ’s Book of Life.—I. Christ has His Book of Life, a register and roll of all who shall inherit eternal life.— 1. The book of eternal election. 2. The book of remembrance of all those who have lived to God, and have kept up the life and power of godliness in evil times. II. Christ will not blot the names of His chosen and faithful ones out of this Book of Life.III. Christ will produce this Book of Life, and confess the names of the faithful who stand there before God and all the angels.—He will do this as their Judge, when the books shall be opened; he will do this as their Captain and Head, leading them with him triumphantly to heaven, presenting them to the Father.—Matthew Henry. TO CHAPTER 3Rev 3:1. Sardis Famous for Toys.—“The games of children are pretty nearly the same the world over. Wilkinson has described some of the toys of the ancient Egyptians, found among the ruins and tombs of that remarkable land. Similar remains are found in various parts of Western Asia, the more graceful being the work of the Greek race, and of their nearest neighbours in the western part of the Peninsula. Sardis, the capital of Lydia, was celebrated of old for its manufacture of children’s toys, as Nuremberg is in Germany now. In that same region a great variety of articles in terra-cotta are found, exhibiting no little taste in the imitation of nature’s models. Miniature horses, cattle, dogs, fish, chickens, lions, and deer, an ass with its pack-saddle, dolls with arms and legs that could be moved by the pulling of a string, comic figures, or caricatures of hunch-backs, deformed negroes, satyrs, and idiots; also whistles, marbles, and many other things in a sufficiently good state of preservation, which compare well with similar products of our modern civilisation. The religion of Islam, indeed, forbids such representations now, yet it cannot prevent little girls playing with dolls, nor boys amusing themselves with mimic horses, sheep, and carts, nor both from eating the sugar birds, horses, and men of the candy-seller, himself a Muslim.”—Van Lennep.A few mud huts, inhabited by Turkish herdsmen and a mill or two, contain all the present population of Sardis.Revelation 3:5. White the Royal Colour.—Most persons believe that purple was the colour of royal robes in our Lord’s day. So the author believed when, riding over the valley of Sharon, he saw a lily in bloom, and was satisfied that it must be a genuine facsimile of the New-Testament flower. On dismounting from our horse, we found its rich velvet corolla to be of a dark purple. “There,” we exclaimed, “is the lily that vied with Solomon in his glory.” But careful investigation has compelled us to give up our impression. We are satisfied that the royal colour of all the monarchs in our Lord’s day was white. The Persian mingled the blue with the white (Esther 8:15; confirmed by Xenophon). Solomon’s royal attire, when visited by the Queen of Sheba, was white (Josephus, I. Revelation 8:7; Ecclesiastes 9:8). The high priest, on the great day of atonement, wore a robe of white linen (Exodus 28:2; Exodus 28:40). Mordecai’s was blue and white, with a crown (Cyropedia, lib. viii. 23). Alexander entered Jerusalem robed in white. Our Lord, in coronation robes, appeared in white on Mount Tabor. The kings slain were so many that their robes made the battle-field “white as the snow in Salmon” (Psalms 68:14). Herod’s robe was resplendent with silver tissue, woven through the linen (Acts 12:21; Josephus). Angels who appear to Cornelius, and were seen at the sepulchre, were clothed in white, and the saints, advanced to thrones and crowns, wear white coronation robes as kings and priests unto God (Revelation 1:6; Revelation 3:5). “Shushan, the Persian word for lily, signifies white” (Gesenius). Pilate clothed our Lord in a purple robe (worn of Roman nobility). Herod clothed Him in a white robe (Greek, “gorgeous,” or “shining”), Luke 23:11. AND NOTESRev_3:7. Philadelphia.—Situated at the foot of Mount Tmolus, and named after Attalus Philadelphus, King of Pergamos. It was a centre of the wine trade. Holy and true.—ἅγιος, not ὅσιος. It represents the holiness of consecration rather than that which is ethical and indwelling. The word “true” implies that He will be sure to keep His word. Key of David.—See Isaiah 22:22, Access to, and control over, the house of David, i.e. the regal house or palace, is plainly designated by the key; in other words, regal dominion is its meaning. Christ’s actual management and control in His Church are implied. Openeth, etc.—With reference to occasions and opportunities of service. An opportunity of Christian service should be thought of as a Christ-opened door. In at such doors His Church must be ready to enter.Revelation 3:8. Open door.—For the figure compare Acts 14:27; 1 Corinthians 16:9; 2 Corinthians 2:12; Colossians 4:3. An opening for some form of missionary work is clearly suggested. The safety of a Church lies more truly in enterprising service than in self-culture. The healthiest Church is the most active one. No man can shut it.—So they need not fear the opposition indicated in Revelation 3:9. Little strength.—This is praise, not covert blame. “The point is that his strength is not great, not that he has a little left in spite of the strain upon it” (Simcox). Thou hast some energy. Plumptre thinks “the words point to something in the past history of the Church of Philadelphia and its ruler, the nature of which we can only infer from them and from their context. Some storm of persecution had burst upon him, probably, as at Smyrna, instigated by the Jews, or the Judaising section of the Church. They sought to shut the door which he had found open, and would have kept so. They were strong, and he was weak; numbers were against him, and one whose faith was less real and living might have yielded to the pressure. He had kept the Word unmoved by fear of man.”Revelation 3:9. Synagogue of Satan.—The antagonistic Jewish section; but the term suggests that they were doing their evil and hindering work in a secret and underhand way, as if they were serving Satan, the deceiver. Worship before thy feet.—As suppliants in a time of grievous distress. The idea is that troubles were at hand which would ruinously affect both Jews and Christians, but rest so heavily on the Jews that they would be glad to gain the help and defence of the Christians.Revelation 3:10. Hour of temptation.—Trial which severely tests faithfulness. Terrible persecutions burst on the Churches, arising from heathen panic and suspicion.Revelation 3:11. Take thy crown.—That which is reserved for the faithful combatant. “Perseverance is essential to the final reward of the Christian.”Revelation 3:12. A pillar.—A figure from the use of pillars in supporting ancient temples. The classical architecture involves the use of pillars. See Galatians 2:9. “What pillars are to a temple, literally considered, the like will such Christians as those in Philadelphia be in the spiritual temple built by the Saviour.” The idea of established, permanent goodness is suggested. And the man who proves strong under strain is made a strengthener and supporter of others. My new name.—Inscriptions were often made on pillars, and they have been actually found on the sides of the four marble pillars which survive as ruins at Philadelphia. The allusion is to the golden frontlet inscribed with the name of Jehovah (Revelation 22:4; see also Revelation 9:4; illustrate by Exodus 28:36). Stuart says: “The name of God, inscribed on one’s forehead, designates the generic idea of one devoted to objects and purposes spiritual and heavenly; the name of the New Jerusalem marks the peculiar city to which the conqueror belongs; the new name is that which is peculiar to the Christian as such—to a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. With such a distinction impressed upon him, or at least borne upon the frontlet of his mitre, the conqueror would be recognised and acknowledged by all as entitled to his place in the New Jerusalem.”MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 3:7-13A Church Above Censure.—Godet says: “No church receives richer praise than Philadelphia, the sixth; it seems as if she had but one step to make in advance to obtain her admittance into the church triumphant.” Three facts connected with Philadelphia may be noted, as having some historical interest: 1. Like Sardis, it had severely suffered from the great Asiatic earthquake in the reign of Tiberius. 2. That of all the Seven Churches it had the longest duration of prosperity as a Christian city, and is still a spacious town, with the remains of not less than twenty-four churches. 3. That of all the seven its name alone appears in the catalogue of modern cities. We may assume that the address was sent directly to, and in precise adaptation to, a particular person, the “angel of the Church”; but he is to be regarded as the embodiment of, and representation of, the whole Church. I. A Church with an ability.—“Thou hast a little strength.” And He recognises the “little” who never “breaks the bruised reed nor quenches the smoking flax.” The little strength suggests that the Church had been subjected to severe strain, but had not lost its vitality. It had been weakened, but it had not lost hold. The difference between this and other Churches lay in this: the Living One saw them weakening and losing vitality; He saw this one keeping its life and trying to get its full strength. Their light was going out; its light was trying hard to keep in. It is precisely that “little strength” which Christ still looks for. It is the sign of ability; it is a basis of possibilities—a sphere in which Divine grace can hopefully work. Churches cannot but feel the strain of circumstances and persecutions, they cannot but be weakened thereby. But they need not wholly fail. Evan under the extremest pressure they can keep a “little strength.” II. A Church with an opportunity.—“I have set before thee an open door.” That figure distinctly indicated special opportunities for engaging in the missionary work of the Church. It is a special honour for a Church to have such opportunities; but it is also true that in the generous missionary activities of a Church are to be found the best security for its continued vitality. The Church alive enough to do earnest Christian work is alive enough to resist the influence of evil. Recalling the texts in which the figure of the open door is used, Plumptre says: “In all these cases the open door refers to the admission of the Gentile converts into the great house of God, the widening opportunities for the mission work of the Church which the providence of God placed in the preacher’s way. That phrase must, in the nature of things, have become current in the Churches which owed their very existence to the labours of St. Paul; and when it came to the ear and was recorded by the pen of St. John, it could not fail to recall the same thought and to signify the same thing.” No greater sign of Divine approval can come to a Church than the opening before it of larger and wider possibilities of usefulness. III. A Church with a security.—“I also will keep thee.” God always is to His people as they are to Him. He meets them, responds to them; is always as they are, but always better to them than they are to Him. “With the merciful Thou wilt show Thyself merciful.” Keep the faith, then; God will keep the promise. The keepers will be kept ones. “He who had ‘kept the word of the endurance of Christ,’ the message which bade him endure, should in his turn be ‘kept’ from (or in) that hour of trial or temptation, the ‘fiery trial’ of 1 Peter 4:12, which was about to spread over the ‘whole world’ of the Roman Empire.” IV. A Church with a fixity.—“Will I make a pillar.” The main idea of a pillar is of a thing put to an important and responsible service, and permanently kept to the doing of its work. Goodness is sure to get permanency. And good work, missionary service, shall gain continuity. Nothing shall hinder the work of the Church, and it shall be its joy to keep at work. Of this we may always be sure: more work comes as our reward for faithfulness in using opportunities given. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_3:7. Key of David.—Some early commentators saw in this key the key of knowledge which the scribes had taken away (Luke 11:52), and understood this expression here as implying that Christ alone could unloose the seals of Scripture and reveal its hidden truth to men. In support of this they refer to Revelation 5:7-9. The fault of the interpretation is that it is too limited; it is only a corner of the full meaning. He who is “the True” alone can unlock the hidden treasures of truth. But the use of the word “David,” and the obvious derivation of the latter part of this verse from Isaiah 22:22, points to a wider meaning: Jesus Christ is the true Steward of the House of David (compare Hebrews 3:2; Hebrews 3:5-6). The faulty, self-seeking stewards, the Shebnas of Jerusalem and Philadelphia, vainly claimed a right of exclusion from synagogue or church, where Jesus, the God-fixed nail in the sure place, upon which the bundle of earth’s sorrows and sins might securely be suspended (Isaiah 22:23-25), the Eliakim of a greater Zion, had the key of the sacred and royal house. In this the chamber of truth was one treasure, as the chamber of holiness, the chamber of rest, the chamber of spiritual privileges, were others. In other words, though in a sense, the keys of spiritual advantages are in the hands of His servants, “He still retains the highest administration of them in His own hands.” The power of the keys entrusted to apostles gave them no right to alter “the essentials of the gospel, or the fundamental principles of morality.”—Bishop Boyd Carpenter. True Mora Strength.I. Its connection with Christ.— 1. He recognises it (Revelation 3:7). A glorious and faithful description of Christ is this. He is holy, true, supreme. 2. He honours it (Revelation 3:8). He is the key of all spheres, and opens a sphere of usefulness for the morally strong. 3. He imparts it. He is the moral power. All true moral strength is derived from Him. What power He had over circumstances, Society, temptation! II. Its influence over error (Revelation 3:9).—These Jews were of the “synagogue of Satan.” He had synagogues then; he has churches and chapels now. The general idea is that false religion shall pay homage to Christian moral power, which comes in contact with it as (1) a morality; (2) an institution; (3) a theology. It appeals to man’s craving after self-interests, worship, truth. III. Its future reward.— 1. Preservation (Revelation 3:10). The strong in truth and Christ have ever been, and ever will be, supported in trial. 2. Visitation (Revelation 3:11). Death comes to usher us into everlasting blessedness. 3. Exaltation (Revelation 3:12). Three ideas here: 1. Stability—pillar. Utility—a pillar is a support. 3. Divinity—“write upon him the name of My God.”—Caleb Morris. Revelation 3:11. “Behold, I come quickly.” Possibly the bishop of the Church at Philadelphia was Demetrius (John 3). If this is the case, we have before us a holy man, who, probably, was not a very resolute one, and was placed in a position of much difficulty. Such a bishop had, as a rule, two kinds of difficulties to contend with. There was a fermentation of thought on the frontiers of the apostolic Church in which Jewish and heathen ingredients were constantly producing one or another form of so-called Agnostic error—one phase of which is described in the epistle to the Colossians, and another phase in the epistles to Timothy and Titus; and this was a constant subject of anxiety to the primitive rulers of the Churches of the Lesser Asia. Besides those dangers from within, there was the constant danger of popular violence, or of official persecution, from without. Each Jewish synagogue, and, still more, each heathen temple, was the centre of a strong anti-Christian fanaticism which might at any moment arouse the passions too violently to be appeased with anything short of bloodshed. Demetrius—if he was the bishop—had hitherto made head against the anxieties around him. Hitherto he had kept the Word, he had not denied the name of Christ, he had the promise which past faithfulness always commands, while, at the same time—since no such promise can suspend man’s freedom to rebel or to obey—he is warned of the urgent duty of perseverance. If our Lord’s words are understood of His Second Coming, it is obvious that we must assume the good bishop of Philadelphia died without witnessing their fulfilment—nay, he has been in his grave for something like eighteen centuries, and our Lord has not yet come to judgment. The event has shown that the predictions uttered by our Lord at the close of His ministry referred only remotely to His Second Coming, and immediately to the destruction of Jerusalem. But this saying of our Lord, “Behold, I come quickly,” cannot have referred to the destruction of Jerusalem; and yet, if it meant the Second Advent, the bishop of Philadelphia did not witness the fulfilment of it, and it is still unfulfilled. St. Peter warned Christians that this delay would be used in after times as an argument against Christianity. The scoffers would probably rest rather on the indefinite postponement of Christ’s coming, than on any supposed intrinsic impossibility attaching to it. St. Peter meets this by reminding us that God necessarily looks at time in a very different way from that in which man looks at it. To man it seems that an event will never arrive which has been delayed for some centuries, and so that judgment, long apprehended, but long delayed, will not really take place at all, but may well at once be classed among the phantoms of a morbid and disordered brain. With God it is otherwise. Long and short periods of time do not mean to Him what they mean to us. “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years.” To us “long” and “short” are only comparative epithets; they mean a comparison of some given period of time with some other which we have before our minds. To God a period may be little enough by comparison with the standard of eternity. “Quickly” is a relative term, which may mean one thing when man uses it, and another when it is uttered by the Eternal Being. In death our Lord comes to each of us. There are two things about death which are full of meaning, and which do not admit of any sort of contradiction. The first is the certainty that it will come to each of us some day; and the second is the utter uncertainty of the day on which it will come. When the end before us is so certain, and the date of its approach so utterly uncertain, man’s true wisdom cannot be doubtful. It is a matter on which the most clear-sighted philosophy and the most fervid religious faith are entirely agreed: it is to sit easily to the things of time; it is to keep the eye fixed on that which will follow after time; it is, day by day, to untwine the bands and cords which scenes and persons among whom we live here are constantly winding around our hearts, that we may be ready at a short notice to quit them for the world in which all is lasting and all is real. Duty will not be done less thoroughly because done while conscious that this is a passing scene, since, if it is done rightly, it will be with an eye to that higher existence for which it is a preparation. The expected coming of Christ throws a flood of light upon various aspects of human existence. We are struck with the insignificance of life. If Christ’s coming means anything, it means the introduction of a life which has no end. The coming of the Lord means that all the wrong-doing and the passions on men, which create so much misery, will have had their day. It means the exercise of man’s highest powers to the fullest extent of their capacity, the beginning of an existence in which thought and heart and Will will rest in perfectly ecstatic satisfaction on their one true Object, and an existence which will last for ever. If a large number of human beings are disposed to look almost exclusively upon the darker side of life here, there are others who regard it chiefly as an opportunity for enjoyment, and often of lawful enjoyment. The pleasures of sense, kept within limits, do promote happiness. But the devotion to the pleasures of sense is an illusion which will vanish at the coming of the Lord Jesus. Many value wealth as a means of gratifying ambition. They value the consideration and respect which are paid to high position. The coming of Christ is the coming of One who has taken the measure of human life, and Who, by His incarnation and His death, has put His own mark and certificate on real greatness. Many devote themselves to knowledge of polite letters. That pleasures of intellect are higher than those of sense, and even higher than those of public life, is sufficiently indisputable. But the seat of true enjoyment or happiness is not in the intellect; it is in the heart. There are those to whom the service of God, manifested in His blessed Son, incarnate, crucified, and risen for man, is the main object of human life—men who, living in this world and doing their duty in it to the best of their power, yet are not of it; men who set their affections on things above and not on earth, and look forward to the day “when He who is their life shall appear,” in the humble hope that they too will appear with Him in glory. For them Christ’s message is sent: “Behold, I come quickly; hold fast that which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.”—Canon Liddon. Revelation 3:12. Monuments in. Heaven.—In every one of the seven epistles to the Churches our Lord describes his correspondents as so many warriors. Nothing is promised but to “him that overcometh.” What is the promise announced by the Captain of our salvation to him who has bought a sword, and finally achieved a victory? I. Some great change must be wrought in men before they could suitably be likened to pillars in a temple.—More is made in Scripture of the vanity of the soul by nature than of the body by nature. We shall do wrong unless we take the benefit of the contrast between what sin makes us, and what Jesus Christ makes us. If the Christian is a pillar, we must not imagine he is a pillar of support, as being necessary to the temple. The pillars are to be thought of as pillars of commemoration. Monumental pillars were reared in the Grecian cities of Europe and of Asia, within the temples of their gods, to celebrate a battle and announce a victory. The monument was sanctified by the temple, and the temple was adorned by the monument. The simple, bold doctrine of the similitude amounts to this, that a good man, in glory, will preserve the fame of his victories fresh in the memories of eternity; he himself will be the monument of past battles, past conquests. The Christian will live on, to tell his own tale among the ranks of the redeemed. The Christian warrior, in truth, never dies, for, the moment when he drops his sword on the bloodred plains of the Militant Church, without a moment of inaction he passes to chronicle his prowess in the Church Triumphant. II. The assertion that the good man in glory will be his own monument must nevertheless, be qualified.—How far have we got? Only to the point that a warrior in Christ’s army shall be, in heaven, a memorial of the battles he fought on earth, just as the pillars in the temple preserved the exploits of the ancients; only with this great difference, that the pillars of antiquity have long since been removed, but the pillars of the Church will remain for ever. But what, after all, is a pillar? Has the marble monument done anything? If you think of the marble is it not wholly and entirely as the workmanship of the artist who chiselled and fashioned it? You really look at the characters on the sculpture; you look at the names of the men to whom the marbles are inscribed. When it is said that the Christian will be a monument to himself, what is “himself”? Who is he? Is it to the honour of the man that the pillar will be set up in the temple? What of the inscription on the pillar? If the monument is not for itself, for whom is it? God’s name is first on the monument. “I will write upon him the name of My God.” Then comes the name of the city of God, the new Jerusalem. And then the new name—“Immanuel, God with us.” The source of your victory, the motive of your victory, and, last and best, the Author of your victory. I am to fight the good fight of faith only because upon me, if I conquer, three other names will be inscribed above—God; Heaven; Immanuel. My only, or chief, reward is to be, that I shall display to the myriads of God’s creatures the exceeding riches of His grace. This would be no promise to others, but to the child of God it is the sweetest and richest of all.—Henry Christopherson. Gibbon says: “Among the Greek colonies and Churches of Asia, Philadelphia is still erect—a column in a scene of ruins—a pleasing example that the paths of honour and safety may sometimes be the same.” The Pillar a Monument.— 1. He shall be a monumental pillar in the temple of God; not a pillar to support the temple (heaven needs no such props), but a monument of the free and powerful grace of God—a monument that shall never be defaced nor removed, as many stately pillars erected in honour to the Roman emperors and generals have been. 2. On this monumental pillar there shall be an honourable inscription, as in those cases is usual. (Illustrate by the names inscribed on the Arc d’Etoile in Paris). On this pillar shall be recorded all the services the believer did to the Church of God, and there shall also be put the new name of Christ, the Captain of His salvation.—Matthew Henry. TO CHAPTER 3Rev 3:7. Philadelphia.—“We arrived at Allah-Shehr, the ancient Philadelphia.… entering the town through chasms in the old wall, but which, being built of small stones, did not appear to be particularly ancient: the passage through the streets was filthy in the extreme, though the view of the place, as we approached it, was extremely beautiful, and well entitled to the appellation of the ‘fair city.’ … We walked through the town, and up to the hill on which formerly stood the acropolis. The houses were mean in the extreme, and we saw nothing on the hill but some walls of comparatively modern date. On an adjoining hill, separated from the first by a deep fosse, or a narrow ravine, were similar fragments of walls; but we observed a few rows of large square stones just appearing above the surface of the ground. The view from these elevated situations was magnificent in the extreme; highly cultivated gardens and vineyards lay at the back and sides of the town, and before it one of the most extensive and richest plains in Asia. The Turkish name, ‘Allah-Shehr’—‘the city of God’—reminded me of the Psalmist: ‘Beautiful for situation is Mount Zion,’ etc. We returned through a different part of the town, and, though objects of much curiosity, were treated with civility; confirming Chandler’s observation that the Philadelphians are a ‘civil people.’ It was extremely pleasing to see a number of turtle-doves on the roofs of the houses; they were well associated with the name of Philadelphia. The storks retain possession still of the walls of the city, as well as of the roofs of many of the houses. We called upon the bishop at three o’clock, who received us with much kind attention.… At five o’clock we accompanied him to his church; it was Palm Sunday, and the service extremely long. I could not help shedding tears at contrasting this unmeaning mummery with the pure worship of primitive times, which probably had been offered on the very site of the present church. A single pillar, evidently belonging to a much earlier structure, reminded me of the reward of victory promised to the faithful member of the church of Philadelphia—‘Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go no more out; and I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God.’ ”—Arundell.Revelation 3:12. Pillars in Temples.—Turner, in his “Nineteen Years in Polynesia,” records the views entertained by the Samoans in reference to a future state. In that state the chiefs were supposed to have a separate place allotted them, called Pulotu. The house, or temple, of the great king of these subterranean regions was supported, not by pillars of wood or stone, but by columns of living men—men who on earth had been chiefs of the highest rank. Chiefs, in anticipation of death, were often pleased with the thought of the high honour which awaited them, of being at once the ornament and support of the mansion of the great chief of their Pulotu paradise. What a striking coincidence have we here with the language of Scripture, and one which throws an additional interest around our instructions, as we read the words of Him who exhorted His people to perseverance by the cheering declaration, applicable to all, high and low, rich and poor, “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God”! AND NOTESRev_3:14. Laodiceans.—The city of Laodicea was situated on the banks of the Lycus, near Hierapolis and Colossζ. Archippus was possibly the angel of this Church, in the sense of being its chief pastor. Laodicea received its name from Laodice, wife of Antiochus, the second King of Syria, by whom it was re-built and beautified. Amen.—Here only used as a personal name. Faithful.—In the sense of trustworthy (see Revelation 1:5). “Trench suggests the three things necessary to constitute a true witness. He must have been an eye-witness of what he relates, possess competence to relate what he has seen, and be willing to do so.” But the assertion is here made in view of the severity of the message sent to this Church. However searching and severe, it is assuredly faithful and true. Beginning of the creation.—See Colossians 1:15. This may mean, the first of a new spiritual creation, or the Author of creation—the material world being conceived of as due to the agency of the Divine Son; or the first created being; or the beginning (in the active sense) of the creation; i.e., the Creator of all things—primary source of all creation. The appropriateness of this declaration concerning Christ comes to view as we realise the special temptations of this Church to the worship of inferior divinities. “Like Colossζ, this Church was exposed to the risks of angelolatry, of the substitution of lower principalities and created mediators for Him who was head over all things to His Church.”Revelation 3:15. Cold nor hot.—Plumptre suggests that it was specially exposed to the chilling and enervating influence of wealth. To passionate and intense natures there is nothing so irritating as the “superior” man who can always keep the happy medium, and never gets excited about anything. Wealthy people are especially tempted to take things easy, to take even their religion easy. “The term ‘hot’ denotes the temper of fervent love, a love that warms and animates the whole life, the temper, we must remember, of the apostle who records the message.” The term “cold” simply implies the absence of enthusiasm. “The tepid temperature has, as its physical effect, the sickening sense of nausea, and in its moral aspect causes, in most earnest minds, a loathing that is not roused by the state described as ‘cold.’ ”Revelation 3:17. Sayest.—In a spirit of blind self-confidence. Rich.—Lit. “I am rich, and have gotten riches.” The repetition implies satisfaction in the riches (Hosea 12:8). Wretched.—The worst kind of hypocrites—hypocrites without knowing it. There is no more subtle peril than self-deception concerning our spiritual condition—the self-deception that comes of self-confidence.Revelation 3:18. Buy of me.—There is perhaps a touch of irony here. Gold tried.—Lit. “fresh burnt from the fire.” Eye-salve.—Collyrium was the common dressing for weak eyes.Revelation 3:19. Rebuke and chasten.—See Proverbs 3:11; Hebrews 12:5. Zealous.—Implying rousing themselves out of their careless, lukewarm temper.Revelation 3:20. Stand at the door.—Compare Son 5:2.Revelation 3:21. My throne.… His throne.—Both to be treated as figures. “The promise of sharing the throne is the climax of an ascending series of glorious promises, which carry the thought from the Garden of Eden (chap Revelation 2:7) through the wilderness (Revelation 3:17), the temple, (Revelation 3:12) to the throne.” The conquerors in the strife are, “in some sense which we cannot as yet fathom, made partakers of the Divine Nature” (2 Peter 1:4)—sharers in the holiness, the wisdom, the love, and therefore in the glory and the majesty, which have been from everlasting.”MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 3:14-22A Self-Satisfied Church.—The city of Laodicea was situated between Philadelphia and Colossζ. It was either actually founded, or re-built, by Antiochus II., the King of Syria, and named after his wife, Laodĭ ?cι. In St. John’s day it was celebrated for its wealth, which was derived chiefly from commerce. In the interest of the apostle Paul, the Church in Laodicea was associated with the Church in Colosse. Neither of those Churches, however, seem to have enjoyed his personal ministry, for writing to the Colossians he says, “For I would have you know how greatly I strive for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.” (Colossians 2:1). He refers to an earnest Christian work which one of His disciples, Epaphras, had done in Laodicea and the neighbouring towns, and the form in which he sends his message to Archippus suggests that this person was the angel, or minister, of the Church at Laodicea (Colossians 4:12-17). The tone of St. Paul’s references indicate considerable anxiety concerning the spiritual condition of the Church, and we can well understand that, under the enervating influence of increasing wealth, the evils that he noticed and feared grew into perilous strength in the latter days of St. John, and gave occasion to the most cutting and reproachful of the seven epistles. The key-note to the moral condition of this Church is found in its wealth. It was not disturbed by heresies, or broken up by persecutions. Its members were in comfortable circumstances. The services could be maintained without strain, there was nobody in the Church of a contentious disposition to disturb the peace, so they had drifted into an easy going way, and satisfied themselves with simply keeping things up to a fair average level. Their full strength went into their weekly money-getting, and they got through their Sabbath obligations and duties as respectably and as easily as they could. It would be very possible to find an instance of just such a Church in these days of ours; for Laodicea is a type, and a type as distinct as either of the others to which attention has been drawn. It is full of suggestion to us that the Living Christ, moving to and fro among the Churches, is arrested by the actual condition of this apparently prosperous Church. It reminds us that He who has the seven Spirits of God is never deceived by the appearance of prosperity in a Church, but searchingly estimates its tone, and mood, and temper, and may thus discover and reveal a condition of things which will altogether surprise the members of the Church, who may expect commendation, and have to receive severe reproaches and warnings. We have seen that some particular feature of the vision of the Risen and Living One is taken, in order to point the application to each Church. Here He who walketh among the candlesticks is figured as “the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.” Amen is not elsewhere used as a personal name. It means, “verily,” and is the firm assertion that a thing is true, and so it can be made a proper name, and stand for Him who is the truth. The word the Living One had to speak to this Church would surprise and humiliate it. And the very first response that the Church would make, when it received the message, would be this: “It is not true; it cannot be true.” The very possibility of such a response must be anticipated, and guarded against, so the epistle begins with the solemn declaration that it comes from Him who is the absolute and indisputable truth, the “Amen, the faithful and true witness.” Dean Plumptre thinks that the words “faithful and true witness” should be regarded simply as the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word “amen.” It affirms the competency of the Living One to make this testimony, seeing that He combines in Himself all those qualifications which a witness ought to possess. The other form in which the Living One is presented is more difficult to explain. “The beginning of the creation of God.” It is probably the solemn assertion of His absolute and perfect knowledge of all things, from the very beginning. From Him nothing is hid. Effort has been made to explain this term by comparing it with the figures found in the epistle to the Colossians—“First-born of every creature,” “first-born from the dead”—and by assuming that the Laodicean Church was exposed to the temptation of worshipping inferior principalities. But this is to bring in a set of new ideas, unrelated to the point of the Divine message. He who is truth, sees truly, and witnesses truly, has something to say to which this Church is bound to give good heed, however it may surprise and distress them. I. And what is the message?— 1. It is a searching revelation of the Church’s unrecognised weaknesses. And the first thing noticed is its listless indifference. It was lukewarm about everything. It was dying, as Churches can die, of moderation and respectability. It might, in its apparently sound and safe prosperity, be the envy of other Churches. Its very evenness, its persistently keeping at a dead level, was a supreme offence to Christ. Nobody in the Church brought any disgrace upon the Christian name, but nobody brought any particular honour upon the Christian name. The Church did not make the holy and inspiring witness of consistency in keeping at a high level of Christian attainment and service. It was simply easyful, indifferent, content to go on, aiming at nothing and doing nothing. The “lukewarm are neither earnest for God, nor utterly indifferent to religion. They are perhaps best described as those who take an interest in religion, but whose worship of their idol of good taste, or good form, leads them to regard enthusiasm as ill-bred and disturbing; and who have never put themselves to any inconvenience, braved any reproach, or abandoned any comfort, for Christ’s sake, but hoped to keep well with the world, while they flattered themselves that they stood well with God.” Such a state of lukewarmness is unreal and sickly, and yet thinks that it is a true and healthy state. Carlyle calls it “the hypocrisy which does not know itself to be hypocritical.” 2. But the Living Christ, in searching this Church, does not stop even with thus showing the fact of its condition. He reveals the root of the evil, in the spirit of self-satisfaction which has gained power in the Church, and has eaten out its heart of love and zeal for Christ. “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches, and have need of nothing.” Dean Plumptre says: “The underlying grounds of the condemnation, the secret working of this tepidity of the soul, are brought before us in these words. It is clear that the imagined wealth here is that of spiritual, not temporal, riches. In regard to the latter, the boast would probably have been true, and would have called for no such stern contrast. And yet it is not the less true that it was the possession of the riches of this world that made the Laodicean angel and his Church so satisfied that they had the riches of the other. They took the ‘unrighteous mammon,’ not only as a substitute for the ‘true riches,’ but almost as a proof that they possessed them. Outward ease and comfort took the place of inward peace; prosperity was thought a sure sign of Divine approval. We cannot read the history of the Church of Christ, or look around us, or retrace our own experience, without feeling that it has often been so, both with Churches and individual men. Lethargy creeps over them; love is no longer active; material success, multiplied endowments, the power of giving money as the one embodiment of love to God or man—these have been the precursors of decline and of decay.” The man who is in a comfortable and well-satisfied frame of mind, because all his material wants are thoroughly provided for, can seldom be brought to believe that his spiritual state can possibly be wrong. And it is precisely the same with a Church that experiences years of steady and unbroken prosperity; it becomes so hopelessly satisfied with its spiritual state, that it resents even the searching appeals of the ever-living Head of the Church. And there is no condition for the individual and for the Church so dangerous as that self-satisfied frame of mind. In spiritual things it has need of nothing. Its spiritual state is quite satisfactory to itself, and unless that self-satisfaction can be broken up, and the truth of its spiritual condition revealed to it, that self-satisfaction will surely bring its doom. 3. With an almost withering severity, the Living Christ declares that the self-satisfaction the Church was nourishing as to its spiritual state was but a sign of its moral blindness. If they could see facts, they would see that, as a Church, they were “poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked. They were not even, as they assumed, keeping to a fair spiritual level. They had sunk low: they had lost tone. They thought themselves rich, but where were their spiritual riches? Could they show them when called upon to do so? Where were their spiritual garments? Could they appear clothed in them when called upon to do so? The Living Christ suddenly calls upon them to bring forth the signs of their spiritual life. They can find none, and now their blindness is forcibly removed, and they are compelled to appear before Him as they are, and to see themselves as they are, poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked. What a humiliation!” The sin of this Church came out of its being too comfortable. It was not serious enough about anything. And this is often the secret of self-centredness. It satisfies a man with his narrow circle of interests—which, like the famous chamber-prison of fable, is ever narrowing and narrowing, until at last it crushes all life worth living out of the man. II. And what is the advice given by the Risen and Living Lord?—“I counsel thee to buy of Me gold refined by fire, that thou mayest become rich; and white garments that thou mayest clothe thyself, and that the shame of thy nakedness be not made manifest; and eye-salve to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see.” Precisely the work for the sake of which the Living Christ is ever moving among the Churches is the rehabilitation of the spiritual life of the Churches. The condition of this Church was bad, but it was not hopeless. Something could be done. Provision for the recovery of position, and health, and spiritual tone, were at command. That provision can be supplied only by the Church’s awaking from her lethargy, beginning really to care for its spiritual condition, mourning over the condition into which it had allowed itself to drift, and making fresh, direct, personal applications to her Lord for reviving and restoring grace. In his “Holy War” Bunyan pictures Mansoul awakened to recognise the Laodicean state into which it had fallen, filled with zealous anxiety, and sending messengers, with pleading entreaties, to her absent Emmanuel. “Buy of Me,” as only we can buy of Christ; with penitence, and zeal, and prayer, and holy yearnings, but without money and without price. “The gold” which Christ will thus “sell” to him who seeks it—the treasure of holiness, and peace, and joy—is that which has been “tried in the fire”; and this, as in all like cases, implies chastisement and suffering. The “white garments” that hide the shame of nakedness, the true holiness of life which alone prevents the exposure of that “inner vileness” of which even the saints of God are ever painfully conscious, are those which have been made white in the blood of Christ, which symbolises suffering. The “eye-salve” which gives clearness of vision, does so, not without the pricking smart that clears away the blinding or beclouding humours. And the counsel is urged by this gracious persuasion; the Living One who rebukes them, loves them, and rebukes them because He loves them. For love can never let sin alone when it finds sin in the objects of its love. And the love that rebukes will not stop with rebuke; it will go on to chastening, it will be followed by discipline that may secure full deliverance from the sin. The very familiar Revelation 3:20 receives its proper explanation only by observing its insertion at this precise point of the epistle. It is usual to sever it entirely from its connection, and to regard it a figure of Christ’s seeking admission to the human heart. And that may be justifiable, but it was not in the mind of this writer, nor does it bear direct relation to the subject of this epistle. In Holman Hunt’s suggestive picture, “The Light of the World” is represented as an august person, artistically and symbolically arrayed, standing with a lamp in his hands under a midnight sky, on the outside of a walled enclosure, the entrance-gate of which is barred. He stands as one who has knocked over and over again, and received no answer; and you observe that the wild vine and bramble have grown over the gate, showing how long and resolutely it has been closed. But in this epistle the Christ is the Living White One standing at the door of a Church. He has come to deliver His searching and arousing rebukes. He stands, as it were, outside to deliver His rebuke; and now He waits—“stands at the door and knocks”—waits to see if the Church will respond aright, and give Him welcome to do His cleansing and reviving work. He will not at once begin His chastenings. They must come if the Church does not fittingly respond to reproof and rebuke. But He will wait—hopefully wait. “Judgment is His strange work, mercy is His delight.” He would so much rather work the recovery of the Church with its will than against it. But there is a very remarkable change in the appeal of Christ as He stands waiting. His rebuke and counsel had been sent to the Church. His appeal is directly addressed to each and every individual member of the Church. “If any man hear My voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and He with Me.” The responsibility of rightly answering the reproof of Christ is made to rest on each single person. It could easily be shifted off, and made to appear the general duty of the Church. Christ demands that it shall be the direct answer of each man. The recovery of a lethargic and lukewarm Church is the recovery of its individuals, one by one. The promise to the overcoming soul and overcoming Church is the full enjoyment of the highest spiritual privilege, the privilege that can only be enjoyed by the most spiritually-minded. “I will give to him to sit down with Me in My throne; as I also overcame, and sat down with My Father in His throne.” NOTES AND SERMON Rev_3:14. Laodicea.—A Church of which the state is described in the darkest colours, and whose future seems to be compromised. She is threatened with immediate rejection—“Spue thee out of My mouth.” There is here mote than an expression of indignation; it is one of disgust. Laodicea has fallen as low as a Church can fall, while still bearing the name of a Church.—F. Godet, D.D. Revelation 3:15. Hot.—The heat commended by implication is not the “self-conscious, galvanised earnestness which, in days of senile pietism, passes for zeal. It is an earnestness which does not know itself earnest, being all too absorbed in its work. It is self-forgetful, and so self-sacrificing, rather than ambitious of self-sacrifice. It is, in short, kindled of God, and sustained by converse with the Divine One.”—Bishop Boyd Carpenter. Revelation 3:17. Self-deception.—Why should a man repent of his goodness? He may well repent, indeed, of his falsehood, but unhappily the falsehood of it is just the thing he does not see, and cannot see by the very law of his character. The Pharisee did not know he was a Pharisee. If he had known it he would not have been a Pharisee. The victim of passion, then, may be converted—the gay, the thoughtless, or the ambitious; he whom human glory has intoxicated; he whom the show of life has ensnared; he whom the pleasures of sense have captivated;—they may be converted, every one of them; but who is to convert the hypocrite? He does not know he is a hypocrite; he cannot, upon the very basis of his character; he must think himself sincere; and the more he is in the shackles of his own character, i.e., the greater hypocrite he is, the more sincere must he think himself.—Mozley. TO CHAPTER 3Rev 3:14. Laodicea.—This city was originally called Diospolis, and afterwards Rhoas. It was re-built and beautified by Antiochus II., King of Syria, and named after his wife Laodicι, by whom he was subsequently poisoned. In Roman times it was a very principal city among those of the second rank in Asia Minor. It suffered in the Mithridatic war, but ere long recovered; it was also well-nigh destroyed by a great earthquake, A.D. 62, but was repaired by the efforts of its own citizens, who asked no help from the Roman Senate. Laodicea was in Southern Phrygia, called Phrygia Pacatiana, not far from Colossζ, and about six miles south of Hierapolis. It was distinguished from other cities of the same name by being termed Laodicea on the Lycus. Its commerce was considerable, being principally in the wools grown in the neighbouring district, which were celebrated for their fine texture and rich hue. A village, called Eski-hissar, stands amidst its ruins.Revelation 3:19. God’s Love in Affliction.—It is rerelated that a poor but worthy inhabitant of Paris once went to the bishop of the place, with a countenance beclouded and a heart almost overwhelmed. “Father,” said he, with the most profound humility, “I am a sinner—I feel that I am a sinner—but it is against my will. Every hour I ask for light, and humbly pray for faith, but still I am overwhelmed with doubts. Surely if I were not despised of God He would not leave me to struggle thus with the adversary of souls!” The bishop thus consoled, with the language of kindness, his sorrowing son: “The king of France has two castles in different situations, and sends a commander to each of them. The castle of Montelberry stands in a place remote from danger, far inland; but the castle of La Rochelle is on the coast, where it is liable to continual sieges. Now, which of the two commanders, think you, stands the highest in the estimation of the king: the commander of La Rochelle, or he of Montelberry?” “Doubtless,” said the poor man, “the king values him the most who has the hardest task, and braves the greatest dangers.” “Thou art right,” replied the bishop. “And now apply this matter to thy case and mine, for my heart is like the castle of Monielberry, and thine like that of La Rochelle.”Revelation 3:20. Christ at the Door.—The love of Christ has to come to sinful men with patient pleading and remonstrance, that it may enter their hearts and give its blessings. Some of you may remember a modern work of art in which that long-suffering appeal is wonderfully portrayed. He who is the Light of the world stands, girded with the royal mantle clasped with the priestly breast-plate, bearing in his hand the lamp of truth, and there, amidst the dew of night and the rank hemlock, He pleads for entrance at the closed door which has no handle on its outer side, and is hinged to open only from within. “I stand at the door and knock. If any man open the door, I will come in.”—A. Maclaren, D.D.Knocking at Doors.—The gates of the rich and the doors of the caravanserais and other large buildings have a knocker made of a bent bar of iron hung by a hinge, so as to strike upon a broad-headed nail. Otherwise there is always a ring set in the door, by which it is pulled to, and this is used as a knocker by striking it against the door with the open palm. Officers of justice rap on the doors with the ends of their staves of office, and some people, impatient of delay, try to make more noise by striking the door with a stone. The sleep of Orientals is proverbially heavy, and loud and repeated knockings at doors are sometimes heard at the dead of night, accompanied by the reiterated shouts of some belated traveller.—Van Lennep. AN AND NOTESRev_4:1. Saw.—Observed, not specially “looked up.” Opened.—Set open. Trumpet.—Revelation 1:10. Which said.—The voice is put for the person speaking.Revelation 4:2. In the spirit.—Implying a rapt state of mind, absorbed wholly in the things now unfolded. Compare St. Peter’s “trances,” and St. Paul’s “visions.” “It is implied that he was caught up through the open door into heaven, and saw what was going on above.” Compare the conception of Dante’s poem. Throne.—See 1 Kings 22:19. A similar description of the throne of God may be found in the book of Enoch, xiv. 17–23. See also Ezekiel 1; Daniel 7. He who sat on the throne is not named (see Jewish reticence in relation to the sacred Name), but “He is kept before us in the whole book, to remind us that the great world-drama moves forward ever under the eyes of the ruling One.Revelation 4:3. Jasper.—The ancient jasper was the translucent stone now known as chalcedony, a dark, opaque green (Exodus 28:20; Revelation 21:19). This colour is, however, unsuitable as a description here. In the later reference the jasper is spoken of as “clear as crystal,” and then the brightness of the jasper blends with the red glow of the sardius, which is a red carnelian, fiery in colour. Together the images denote the powerful splendour which beamed from Him who sat on the throne. Compare Ezekiel 1:26-27. Rainbow.—Symbol of Divine mercy, beautiful in itself, and veiling the splendour. Emerald.—Green. “The iris is compared to it here, because the modified and mild colour of green apparently predominates in the rainbow.” Ancients felt very strongly the relief given to the eye by looking at it.Revelation 4:4. Elders.—“The representatives of Christ’s Church and people—of those whom Christ calls His friends” (John 15:15). Two sets of twelve. The Christian Church of St. John’s day was a Jewish Christian Church. The two sections are represented in the one set of elders: not Jews and Christians as distinct bodies. White.—Note the importance of this symbol of purity throughout the book. “They are the glorified embodiment and representatives of the people of God.” (Stuart prefers to explain the number by the division of the priesthood into twenty-four classes which David made.) Crowns.—With the robes denoting their king-priestly character.Revelation 4:5. Proceeded.—ἑκπορεύονται, continually proceed. See the associations of the giving of the Law on Sinai (Exodus 19). Thunder and lightning are our most impressive nature suggestions of the Divine majesty and power. “By these are signified the instructions of God’s law, the encouragement of His promises, and the warnings of His judgments.” Lamps of fire.—I.e. seven resplendent, glorious beings, all radiant, like burning torches, or lamps. Or it may be a symbol of the Divine Spirit, whose sevenfold gifts are spoken of.Revelation 4:6. Sea of glass.—Figure from the “sea” that was in front of Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 7:23, etc.). This temple has a real sea in front of it. It is suggested that fickle, movable waters represent the unguided, unreasoning, and unprincipled thoughts of men. By analogy, the calm, glass-like sea represents those counsels of God, those purposes of righteousness and love, often fathomless, but never obscure, always the same, though sometimes glowing with holy anger, like unto crystal, resplendent and pellucid. The pavements, or, as we say, floors, of palaces and elegant houses of the East are constructed with expensive and splendid materials. Here the idea is that the pavements or floors are all of precious and diaphonous stones, appearing to him who should walk upon them pellucid, like the waters of the ocean. In the Koran, Belkis, the Queen of Sheba, is represented as supposing the pavement on which she walks in the audience-hall to be a sea (Moses Stuart). Four beasts.—Living beings. Their position in relation to the throne is not clear. They were either the supports or ornamentation of the throne. Full of eyes.—Teeming with. Easterns indicate greatness and variety of power by multiplying representations of the organ. (Curiously enough, the Fathers regard these beasts as representing the Four Gospels, which had no recognised existence in St. John’s day). Perhaps they represent animate nature. But it is more probable that, as they take precedence even of the crowned elders in their ceaseless worship, they represent redeemed humanity, Birks says: “They seem to represent four distinct classes, each federally united among those blessed saints who occupy the foremost places in the kingdom of glory.” For Stuart’s view see “Suggestive Notes.”Revelation 4:7. “Four beings hold a primacy in the world: among created beings, man; among birds, the eagle; among cattle, the ox; among untamed animals, the lion. The characteristics of these four chiefs of creation unite to make a perfect picture of the spirit of true service, which should be brave as the lion, patient as the ox, aspiring as the eagle, intelligent as man.” The number four is, in the Apocalypse, almost always associated with the earth.Revelation 4:8. Six wings.—Compare Isaiah 6:1-4. Full of eyes.—Compare Ezekiel 1:18; Ezekiel 10:12; Zechariah 3:9. Multiplicity of eyes may symbolise vitality and vigilance. Within.—This may mean, inside their wings; and these eyes were seen when the wings were spread. Almighty.—Heb. in Isaiah, “God of hosts.”Revelation 4:9-10. Beasts give glory.—The idea of this and the following verse is, that when the redeemed Church realises the voice of creation in its worship, it reverently joins in the worship. “All Thy works praise Thee in all places of Thy dominion, and Thy saints shall bless Thee.” See the ascriptions of praise to Jehovah in 1 Chronicles 19:10-13; Psalms 96:2-3; Psalms 96:7-10. Cast their crowns.—Alford compares Tacitus, Ann., XV. 29:3, 6, where Tiridates lays down his crown before the image of Nero, as a token of homage for his kingdom. The future tenses, “shall worship,” “shall cast,” indicate what is often and customarily done in heaven. Simcox suggests that the tenses in this book may be accommodated to the rules of Hebrew rather than of Greek grammar.“Thus concludes this magnificent exordium to the principal visions of the book. Chap. 5 is intimately connected with it, but it is rather to be regarded as a special proem to chap. 6–11, than as a proem to the book at large. The impressive nature of the scene presented in chap. 4 cannot but strike the mind of every intelligent reader. The holy seer was duly prepared, by such an august vision, for the disclosures which follow, and the mind of the reader can hardly fail to be prepared, also, to look for them with deep interest. It cannot escape even the most unobserving, how greatly this whole scene resembles the inaugural theophanies in Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1” (Stuart).MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 4:1-11 The Eternal Throne and its Surroundings.—From the very first, and still, there will be found a side of peril in the very intensity with which the Lord Jesus Christ is presented to us. He may take our attention off from God, and seem to stand in front of Him. Our Lord Himself recognised this possible evil, during His earthly life. He might absorb too fully the interest of His disciples, and therefore we find Him, in His conversations with them, constantly putting His Father, as it were, in front of Himself. The apostles show precisely the same anxiety. They will not let the interest of men stay with Christ. He leads men to God. By Him they believe in God. Remembering how jealous the Jews were of the primary truth of the Divine unity, we can easily see that it would have been a fatal objection to Christianity if it could be reasonably shown that it put Christ in the place of God. Essentially Christ is God; but revelationally, and for particular purposes of manifestation, He is apprehended as the Son of God, and as Son, He must not be confused with the Father, or, in any sense, put in His place. This important distinction explains this introductory vision of the eternal glory of God. The seer has brought the Lord Jesus Christ vividly before us as the Living, White One. He is going to deal with the present activities of that Living One in the Church, and in the world in which His Church is set. He will be filling all our thoughts with Christ. But there must be no possibility of mistake, no possibility of our even seeming to put dishonour on God, or showing Him any slight, or failing to recognise His supreme relations with the actual, present work of Christ. So the vision of this chapter is given, and God is seen receiving the absolutely sole worship of the representatives of all creation, animal and human. He is God alone. Heaven is visioned as the sublime palace of the eternal King, and a door is set open so that we may enter the audience-chamber; and we may well be awed by the magnificence, the sublimity, of the scene. I. The throne.—To this much attention is given in Eastern Kingdoms. (For Solomon’s throne, see 1 Kings 10:18-20). The stability of this throne is even more impressive than its splendour. However shifting and changing may be the panorama of events recorded in this book, that throne remains the same. Heaven and earth may pass away. That throne abides. It cannot be moved, because “righteousness and judgment are its habitation.” Carefully observe that no attempt is ever made in Scripture to describe Him who sitteth on the eternal throne. He must ever simply be to us the “I AM.” “Existence—uncaused, independent existence.” II. The supports of the throne.—The four living creatures, as the representatives of all creation. The honour and dignity of God is the supreme concern of every living thing. His throne is upheld by their needs, which God alone can meet; by their trustings, which are its buttresses; and by their service in their spheres, which witnesses to their Master. III. The front of the throne.—Two ideas are suggested in connection with the sea of glass. 1. The shining pavement is like solidified water. 2. The brazen sea, in front of the temple, indicated the need for purity in all who came to worship. The former idea is the more probable one, and only a figure of magnificence is intended. Or the idea of waving sea, settled into glassy stillness, may suggest the sublime peace of God’s eternal presence. “Where, beyond the voices, there is peace.” IV. The courtiers.—Four and twenty elders. Officers were always in the royal presence at Eastern Courts, and these often represented the provinces of the country, or dependent nations. The elders stand for the Church as at present redeemed. The full chorus of creation rises now to God; but the full chorus of humanity does not rise yet. It is but the chorus of a portion. V. The worship.—The point to notice is, that God’s praise is begun by creation; taken up and ennobled by the redeemed Church, but perfected only when all are redeemed, and the completed Church can join the song of Nature, and so all the earth “praise God.” NOTES AND SERMON Rev_4:1. An Anticipative Triumph-Song.—The fourth and fifth chapters are to be regarded as a song of triumph sung even before the contest begins, and conveying to us an assurance of what will be the issue. It will not be forgotten that this is elsewhere the manner of St. John. Before the great contest delineated in the fourth gospel, which begins at chap. 5, we have the victory of the Redeemer over Nicodemus, the woman of Samaria, and the Galilean nobleman. When speaking, in his first epistle, of the struggles of Christians with the world, St. John uses the words, “And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith” (Revelation 5:4). He does not speak of the weapons with which the Christian soldier prepares himself for the battle, but of the “victory” with which, as if it were his armour, he is, from the first, equipped. In other words, it is St. John’s manner of thought to sing his song of triumph before the fight begins, and that is exactly what he does in the fourth and fifth chapters of the Apocalypse.—W. Milligan, D.D. A Vision of the Glory of God.—The fourth chapter is a vision of the glory of God. His throne is supported by four living creatures, and twenty-four elders fall down before it. These are the representatives of Nature and of the Church. The former represent the forces of nature, which, in the ancient religions, sat upon the throne, personified in the Pagan deities, but which, in the monotheism of the Bible, play a more modest part, and are employed in bearing up the throne of God—that is to say, in establishing His kingdom. They are represented by the four living creatures which are supposed to be the chefs d’�uvre of the animal creation—the lion, the bull, the eagle, and man. The twenty-four elders represent the Judζo-Christian and the Gentile Church, twelve for each of these two moieties of the primitive Church, in conformity with the types of the twelve patriarchs, the twelve tribes, and the twelve apostles.—F. Godet, D.D. Revelation 4:3. The Rainbow Symbol.—The discovery made of the Divine mercy in the covenant of grace refreshes the mind as the green relieves the eye from the fatigue and glare of other colours. “In the arched iris spanning the Divine throne the ancient Church beheld an emblem of the Divine severity, blended with love; in it she saw the dark showers of His judgments, gilded by the bright beams of His mercy. The heavenly Bow spake to her of the Deluge, the shipwreck of the world for sin; it spake to her also of calm and sunshine after the storm.”—Wordsworth. Being in the Spirit.—He was in a rapture, as before (Revelation 1:10), whether in the body or out of the body we cannot tell; perhaps he himself could not: however, all bodily actions and sensations were for a time suspended, and his spirit was possessed with a spirit of prophecy, and wholly under a Divine influence. The more we abstract ourselves from all corporeal things the more fit we are for communion with God; the body is a veil, a cloud, and a clog to the mind in its transactions with God. We should, as it were, forget it when we go in before the Lord in duty, and be willing to drop it, that we may go up to Him in heaven.—Matthew Henry. Eastern Abstraction.—It is well to remember that Easterns have a power of mental abstraction—of separating themselves for a time from their bodies—which is quite inconceivable to Westerns. Illustrate by the experiences of Yogis, Brahmans, Buddhists, and even Dervishes. Revelation 4:6. The Throne and the Living Creatures.—The whole imagery is to be conceived of thus: The throne on which the Divine Majesty is seated rests upon four living creatures, who form its animated and moving basis. Instead of being like the throne of earthly kings, i.e., resting upon inanimate and lifeless substances, its support is constituted of living, moving, rational creatures, ever watchful, and ever ready to move, as Ezekiel says, like “a flash of lightning” (Ezekiel 1:14). These living creatures are represented as endowed with forms which are symbolical and highly significant. They are “full of eyes”; i.e., they are ever wakeful and watchful, looking every way, seeing everything, and ready to move in any direction. They are, taken as a whole in respect to their ultimate design, symbolic of the all-pervading power, providence, and government, of God, who uses them as His instruments. The first has the appearance of a lion; and the lion is the king of wild beasts, and an image borrowed from him is indicative of power, strength, sway. The second is like to an ox; and this is the most valuable of tame beasts, and the image of patient and useful labour. The third has the face of a man; and this is indicative of reason and intelligence. The fourth is like to an eagle; and this indicates velocity, and far-sighted and penetrating vision. The special meaning of these symbols is not to be applied immediately, or directly, to the attributes of God Himself, but to be regarded as primarily indicative of powers possessed by the ζῶα. Yet the ζῶα thus constituted, are themselves symbolic of the attributes of the Godhead. These living bearers of the Almighty’s throne, as the author represents the matter, serve Him with great power, with patient obedience, with quickness of intelligence and reason, and with a rapidity and perspicacity which may indeed be compared to that of the eagle, but of which this king of birds is, after all, only a faint image. The same may in truth be said of all the other symbols; but then, imperfect as they are, they are the best which the natural world could afford, and are therefore chosen by the author with good reason. The ultimate meaning is: God is everywhere present, and executes His purposes by an agency powerful, wise, unremitted, and speedy whenever speed is required.—Moses Stuart. Revelation 4:8. The Unity of God.—God is one. The unity of any being contains two ideas. 1. Oneness in number, whereby it is parted from all other beings without itself. 2. Oneness within itself, as opposed to every other compound.—Bishop S. Wilberforce. THE OPENER OF THE SEALED AND duly conserved the honour of the one and only Lord God Almighty, attention can be again fixed on the ministry of the Living Christ. He has been presented under symbols bearing relation to His work in the Church; now He is present under symbols bearing relation to His place and rights in heaven. He is conceived of as there, “highly exalted,” and “having a Name above every name”; because “He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross”; because He “poured out His soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors, and bare the sin of many.” Christ in heaven is the accepted Sacrifice, and therefore figured as a slain Lamb. That is not His figure for earth. Here he is the present Sanctifier through the control of all the discipline of human life. Here He is presiding over the carrying through of His redemptive mission. If this distinction be fittingly apprehended, some of the apparent incongruity between the several figures of the Redeemer will be relieved. We must see Him as God sees Him, and then He is the slain Lamb. We must see Him as the Church sees Him, and then He is the Living Sanctifier, through discipline, and even through judgments.Revelation 5:1. Book.—That it should be written on both sides implied abundance of matter. “It represents the history of the conflicts of the Church from St. John’s days to the day of doom” (Wordsworth). Most modern writers generalise, and suppose that it is the book of God’s counsels. But this is too vague. “Conflictus et triumphos Ecclesiœ reser at futuros” (Bede). It is, in precise relation to the subject about which St. John is writing the book which contains the mystery why the Church is left in the world, and called to bear the brunt of such calamities, temptations, and persecutions, and the present work of the Living Christ—a work entrusted to Him because He has offered a perfect and infinitely acceptable sacrifice of Himself—in the Church for the sake of the world, and in the world for the sake of the Church. The Divine purposes concerning the Church and the world are a secret, and they are symbolised by this sealed book. “The roll is not the Apocalypse so much as the book of those truths which are exemplified in the Apocalypse, as in a vast chamber of imagery” (Carpenter). Seals.—See Isaiah 29:11; Daniel 12:4. Note that the seals are placed in such positions that the contents can be gradually disclosed in an ordinary way. When the first seal was broken, the manuscript could be unrolled until one came to a second seal, and so on. But this idea must not be unduly pressed, so as to involve the historical and chronological order of the book of Revelation.Revelation 5:2. Strong angel.—Suggesting that the proclamation was made throughout the whole realm of existence. His voice reached from utmost East to utmost West. Worthy.—Either on the ground of personal dignity or of extraordinary services. The term certainly implies moral fitness.Revelation 5:3. Look thereon.—So as even to make a guess at its contents.Revelation 5:5. Lion, etc.—As the lion is regarded as king among animals, so Christ is Lion, King of the tribe of Judah (see Genesis 49:9). Root.—Or sprout (Isaiah 11:1; Zechariah 6:12). Prevailed.—Conquered. Christ acquired the power to open the book by His great endurance, struggle, and victory (see Philippians 2:6-10). The right belongs to Him alone, because He alone had suffered and conquered in doing and bearing the holy will of God. To open the book was at once the honour and privilege God gave to His accepted Son, and the work which His experience brought Him the ability to perform.Revelation 5:6.—Omit words “and lo!” Lamb, etc.—The word used means “a little Lamb.” It was in the middle front of the throne. Remember that St. John records the title given to Christ, “Lamb of God” (John 1:29; John 1:36; Isaiah 53:7). Had been slain.—With marks which showed it had been slain in sacrifice, and offered to God. Compare our Lord showing the marks of His crucifixion in hands and side to doubting Thomas. The death-marks are the sign of the completion of that life-sacrifice which is infinitely acceptable to God, and proves Christ to be fitted to undertake the further and final stages of the redemptive work. Seven Spirits.—Sign of perfect competency.Revelation 5:8. Harps, etc.—To give expression to the praises and prayers of the world-wide and age-long Church of Christ. The prayers of the saints are expressions of confidence in Christ, as undertaking this new trust—the sanctifying of the Church He has redeemed. Its prayer is embodied in the word “come” and in the sentence “come quickly.”Revelation 5:10. Shall reign on the earth.—As sharing the victory Christ will surely win. “They reign with and in Christ, but they also reign on the earth. Christ gives them a kingship, even sovereignty, over themselves—the first, best, and most philanthropic, of all kingships. He gives them, too, a kingship on the earth among men, for they are exerting those influences, promoting those principles, and dispensing those laws of righteousness, holiness, and peace, which in reality rule all the best developments of life and history” (Carpenter).Revelation 5:11. Ten thousand, etc.—Lit. “myriads of myriads” (see Daniel 7:10).Revelation 5:12. Power, etc.—This is the most complete of the doxologies. A sevenfold doxology. An expression of the highest adoration that language can express.Revelation 5:13. Under the earth.—Possibly an inclusion of the holy dead. In the sea.—Better, “on the sea.” Unto Him that sitteth … unto the Lamb.—“This linking of the Lamb with God as the Throned One is common throughout the book. Here they are linked in praise; in Revelation 6:16 they are linked in wrath; in Revelation 7:17 they are linked in ministering consolation; in Revelation 19:6-7, they are linked in triumph. In the final vision of the book the Lord God and the Lamb are the temple (Revelation 21:22), and the light (Revelation 21:23), the refreshment (Revelation 22:1), and sovereignty (Revelation 22:3), of the celestial city.”Note on the “book.”—The reason why a book is chosen for the symbol in this case will be very apparent to a careful reader of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Book of Life has a limited significance, and is employed only in respect to the state of individuals, whose weal or woe, life or death, depends on what is recorded therein. But in the present case the book before us contains a record of the secret counsels of God—i.e., hitherto secret in regard to the Christian Church and its enemies. Texts which make use of the like imagery may be found in Malachi 3:16; Psalms 139:16; and probably Deuteronomy 32:34 (Moses Stuart).MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 5:1-14 The Acknowledgment of the Champion’s Rights.—“The fifth chapter pictures the glory of the Lamb, Jesus sacrificed and risen again. In His hands is a roll made up of seven leaves, and sealed with seven seals; this book contains the Divine decrees which are about to be put into execution, with regard to the world. These two circumstances—that the Lamb is entrusted with it, and that it is He who successively breaks its seals—evidently signify that it is He who is to be the executor of the designs of God; accordingly, He is represented as possessing the seven eyes and the seven horns; that is to say, the fulness of omniscience and of omnipotence, without which He could not accomplish this Divine work” (F. Godet, D.D.). I. The champion.—The figures employed in Revelation 5:5 indicate His representative character. He who has undertaken to deliver man from the thraldom of sin, and has gloriously succeeded, is the very one to whom may be entrusted the further work of delivering men from the consequences of sin, and from the influence of evil surroundings. The Champion may be still entrusted with champion’s work. II. His rights.—The successful general considers he has rights to new commissions; rights to the full confidence of his sovereign. Rights are won by (1) proofs of ability; (2) faithfulness; (3) experience. There are rights of reward; but, to noble souls, the best reward is further and larger trust. III. The acknowledgment by God.—Take the passage in Philippians 2 : as fully unfolding this, and Isaiah 53 as anticipating it. No one could be so profoundly interested in the redemption of humanity as He who has successfully carried through the first stage of it. Nobody could be so fully in the secret of the Divine love, or so fully in sympathy with the Divine purpose. So to Him is entrusted the sealed book. IV. The responsive acknowledgment of all creation.—Indicated by the worship and praise of the representatives of all animate being. There is recognition of the dignity of the new trust; and there is recognition of the hope for humanity that lies in the further mission of the Lamb that was slain. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_5:1. The Glorified Christ.I. The solution of the mysteries of God.— 1. The book in the right hand. God always works by a plan. Characteristics of this plan—order, completeness, duration. 2. The book sealed. Its secrets hid. 3. Christ the revealer of the mysteries of God. This is true in relation to history—to the soul. The purpose of the Christian life is to reveal His glory and promote it. II. The object of worship.—Christ worshipped by the redeemed.—R. Vaughan Price, M.A. What was the Book?—Numberless interpretations have been offered. It is the Old Testament; it is the whole Bible; it is the title deed of man’s inheritance; it is the book containing the sentence of judgment on the foes of the faith; it is the Apocalypse; it is part of the Apocalypse; it is the book of God’s purposes and providence. There is a truth underlying most of these interpretations, but most of them narrow the force of the vision. If we say it is the book which unfolds the principles of God’s government—in a wide sense, the book of salvation (Romans 11:25-26), the interpretation of life which Christ alone can bestow—we shall include, probably, the practical truths which underlie each of these interpretations; for all—Old Testament and New, man’s heritage and destiny, God’s purposes and providences—are dark till He who is Light unfolds those truths which shed a light on all. Such a book becomes one “which contains and interprets human history,” and claims the kingdoms of the earth for God.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter. Revelation 5:6. The Vision of the Slain Lamb.—This is one of the Scripture sentences that has a holy fascination for pious, meditative souls. The figure under which it presents our Lord is exquisite with its tender suggestions. The gentleness and the sacrifice of the “Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world,” come fully into view. The soul gains a holy nearness to her Lord, and a kindling of new affections, by the aid of such a painfully beautiful symbol. Of all the visions that may come to renewed souls, none can surpass this one, the “vision of the Slain Lamb.” We treat this subject meditatively as a spiritual preparation. An exposition of the passage, as it stands connected with the book of Revelation, is beyond our purpose. We do not presume to treat it exhaustively; we shall feel as deeply as any one how much has been left unsaid. But sometimes we may more easily reach the very heart of truth by the way of meditation than by the way of study and research; and at sacramental seasons we want to get quite away from the bustle of Biblical controversy into the “desert place” where we can be quiet, and, in the holy stillness, find “Jesus only.” A few words will suffice to give a general idea of the purpose of this book of Revelation. On the ground of His completed obedience and perfected work on earth, the New Testament teaches us that the Lord Jesus Christ is constituted Mediatorial King, and appointed to preside over the whole work of the redemption of the human race, and, indeed, the entire creation, from the consequences and dominion of sin. We are to think of our Lord as now engaged in this most blessed work, carrying out His great commission in the individual life, in the Church, in the world, and in heaven. A sublime work, whose full issues will only be revealed in the “day of Jesus Christ.” But it is altogether too complicated and too vast a matter to be set down in plain human language. Human words will not reach “to the height of this great thought.” And yet, in some way, the Church must receive assurance that her Lord liveth, reigneth, and is working out His beneficent purposes through all the changes of the ages, the rising and falling of nations, the calamities of famine, pestilence, and war, and the prosperities and persecutions, declinings and reformations, of the Church. Christ uses for this purpose prophetic figures; He tells the story of the Christian ages in the highest forms of poetry and parable; paints it in visions which spiritual insight may fill up and translate, as the ages pass on. Setting however, this one thing in constant prominence, as though He would fix permanently the outlook of His Church. Christ reigns. Christ works. Everything that happens is known to Him. All things, however strange they may seem, work towards His final redemption ends. “I am He that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of Hades and of death.” In this great faith His Church must live, labour, and die. The key to the prophecy is given to us, we think, in some of the opening sentences of the first chapter. “Behold, He cometh with clouds”; not, He shall come merely in some great day of manifestation, but He “is coming,” always coming; He does come to every occasion of the Church’s need, to every new circumstance, both of the Church and of the world. Whatever may happen, believe that Christ has come, and is there, in the very midst of it. Separate your Lord from nothing that concerns you or your fellow-men. Is it persecution? Christ is come, Christ is there. Is it national calamity? Christ is come, Christ is there. Is it the falling of the Church into perilous errors? Christ is come, Christ is there. Is it abounding antichrists of scepticism, luxury or indifference? Christ is come, Christ is there. And His victorious powers will yet be displayed, when death and hell, man’s last enemies, are “cast into the lake of fire.” The times will often be very hard, the outlook very dark, and Christians will need much patience and faith; but they may expect and prepare for the struggle. John tells them he is their “Brother and companion in tribulation”; and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, the kingdom whose characteristic virtue is the patience of faith that clings hard to this great fact in the darkness and in the light—“Jesus lives,” “Jesus is here.” So the Christian soul ought to have its abiding vision of the present Saviour. And thus arises the question which our text is designed to answer—at least, in part. If we are to have a vision of Jesus, how are we to figure Him? It seems that we are to conceive of Him as directly related to His Churches, and to their spiritual life and progress, under the figures that are given to us in the first chapter of this book, as the powerfully, searchingly pure One—the fire that burns unto whiteness for the consuming of the Church’s sin. But we are also to conceive of Him more generally in His mediatorial sovereignty, and this we may do with the aid of the figures of our text, standing as the central Person of all creation—a Lamb with marks of slaughter on Him, and endowed with all power and authority in His perfection of horns and perfection of eyes. “In the midst of the throne, and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.” We fix, then, attention on the Lord Jesus Christ, as Christian souls ought to apprehend Him. Observe His form, His marks, His attitude, and His place. I. His form.—“A Lamb.” We are very familiar with the way in which animals are regarded as types of character. The lion, for instance, represents for us majesty and force; the fox dexterity and cunning. Our Lord used the characteristic qualities of animals in commending virtues to His disciples, saying,’ “Be ye wise as serpents, harmless as doves.” It is the business of poetry to observe the instincts of animals, and trace their analogies with the virtues and vices of men; and prophecy, such as we have in our text, is kin to the highest poetry; it finds its only befitting expression in figurative and symbolical terms. There are certain ideas universally associated with the “Lamb.” It is the common symbol of gentleness, innocence, and obedient meekness. The word used by John, however, is a peculiar one, carrying these ordinary notions and something more—something of unusual tenderness and endearment, as if this Lamb won our Love, and took at once His place in our heart. We lose something of the strength of the actual word used when we translate it, in the only words possible to us: “dear little Lamb.” Perhaps our best addition to it would be the word “precious,” reminding us of Peter’s words: “Unto you that believe He is precious.” Then we may read our verse, “In the midst of the throne stood a precious Lamb, as it had been slain.” The symbol is used in connection with two others. Before John saw Christ Himself, the angel had spoken of Him in very striking terms “The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the Book and to loose the seven seals.” These three figures show that He who might prevail to open the Book was no other than the Messiah of the older prophecies. “Lion of the tribe of Judah” is the prophecy of Jacob, uttered far back in the patriarchal times. “Root of David” is the prophecy of the middle ages of the Jewish Church. And the “Lamb slain “reminds us at once of the evangelical prophet Isaiah, and his familiar words, “He was led as a lamb to the slaughter.” The chief relations in which Christ stands to us seem indicated in these triple figures: Lion, Root, and Lamb. As the Lion, He is our Ruler and Head. As the Root, He is our Life, whence all vitality is drawn. As the Lamb, He is our Exemplar, the model of the conduct that would worthily express the life lived in Christ’s kingdom. Model of conduct and character that may stand the testing of uttermost sorrow and sacrifice. A Lamb led meekly even to the shearing and the slaughter. The expected Messiah was a Lion and a Root. These figures helped men to the knowledge of Him: but, behold, when He is fully revealed, when we see Him as He is, a new figure appears. We looked for a Lion and a Root, and we see a Lamb, with slaughter-marks and blood-stains on Him. And yet, though the change causes a passing shudder, this Lamb figure is the one for Christ that is so deeply true, so attractive, so satisfying. It embodies the very highest and most spiritual conceptions of Christ we can have. His glory is the glory of character. The Lamb-like purity, His fleece never once sullied with a sin-stain; the Lamb-like gentleness, neither “striving, nor crying, nor letting His voice be heard in the street”: the Lamb-like obedience, knowing nothing but His Father’s will, lead wheresoe’er it may. It may seem at first as though His glory was His work of redemption and sacrifice; but soon we begin to feel that not even His work must hide us from Himself. “Be hold the Lamb of God!” This is the all-satisfying vision. It is the fitting figure for Christ’s character, but it is the equally-fitting figure for Christ’s office. As “mediatorial King” He is the Lamb. This is the symbol of His reign. He rules in righteousness. He wins by yielding. His force is gentleness. His commands are, “Hear and obey.” He dignifies the “passive graces” of character. He bids us look away from the mighty things that take men’s eye, to discern the secret, gentle, lamb-like forces of love, trust, patience, forbearance, submission, and hope, which are fast redeeming the world. Would you, then, see Christ, would you get a vision of Him to your soul? Behold the window opened in heaven, and a “Lamb as it had been slain.” Your Lord is a Lamb, and remember He is— “Lord of lambs, the lowly;King of saints, the holy”II. His marks.—“As it had been slain.” He retains, in heaven, the marks of His slaughter, and by the holy signs we may know Him who have these soul-visions of Him now. Slaughter is surely the right word for the cruel and dreadful death He died. To spiritual vision, indeed, it rises to the height of a sublime sacrifice; the smoke of that perfected obedience in death rose up to God to win an infinite acceptance. This Lamb was in Divine purpose “slain before the foundation of the world.” “He that hath redeemed us to God by His blood.” By “the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” But, to human apprehension, it was still a slaughter, leaving blood-stains, and five holy wounds. “Hath He marks to lead me to Him,If He be my guide?In His hands and feet are wound-prints,And His side.”I know nothing that touches the soul like this sight of Christ, which we should ever keep before us. A Lamb, as if it had been slain. A modern poet has shown how his deepest heart was reached by it:— “I saw, in a vision of the night,The Lamb of God, and it was white;White as snow, it wander’d thro’Silent fields of hare-bell blue,Still it wandering fed, and sweetFlower’d the stars around its feet.“Then suddenly I saw again,Bleating like a thing in pain,The Lamb of God, and all, in fear,Gazed and cried as it came near,For on its robe of holy whiteCrimson blood-stains glimmer’d bright.Oh, the vision of the night!The Lamb of God! the blood-stains bright!”ROBERT . Thomas knew his Lord by the marks, which told He was, indeed, the crucified One. And we who see Him now in the visions of the soul, we must keep in sight those marks, and so feel sure that it is, indeed, He, the “Man of love, the Crucified.” For this is a part of Christ’s hallowed influence upon us, as we bring Him into close and living relations. We see Him who was “slain for us.” We feel Him near “who loved us, and gave Himself for us.” We “consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, that we be not weary or faint in our minds.” And what influence shall the abiding presence of those slaughter-marks have upon us? Surely they should keep us ever humble; what are we, that our redemption should have cost so much as this! They should be a voice pleading for an all consuming, self-mastering love for Him that died. They should bring us to a hearty submission unto Him who, by agony and shame, has won the right to rule. They should call upon us continually to accept of the Christian life as a sacrifice; following Him cheerfully, and saying, “It is enough for the disciple that he be as his Master, and the servant as his Lord.” Believe in the Living Christ. He is the Lamb. But never fail to observe that it is as if He had been slain, and “Learn of Christ to bear the cross.” III. His attitude.—“Stood.” Not now lying down, slaughtered, and dead; but standing, raised again, with but the sad marks left behind of all that is now passed through and done. Once the fainting Head bowed, and they loosened the piercing nails, and bent down the rigid limbs, and lay the poor body out, and folded the spices round, and lifted it upon the bier, and carried it into the garden tomb. Then the Lamb of God was lying crucified, slaughtered, dead. But not thus is He to be seen by our spiritual vision now. “No more the bloody cross; the nails and spear no more.” We have not to keep before us a dead Redeemer; the sound has long since rung through heaven, and earth, and hell, “He liveth, and is alive for evermore.” Keep your spirits humble and solemn by the memory of His cruel death; but be sure of this: the Redeemer LIVES. Before the throne He stands in all the vigour of His eternal life. We have “a great High Priest passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God”; and “He abideth a priest continually.” And yet, how Christian thought will cling about that shameful scene of Calvary, and about that tomb where Jesus was, though we know He is no longer there. It is the secret source of so much of our bondage and error, that we let our minds dwell so constantly on a dead Christ. We preach too much a dead Christ. We paint too many artistic pictures of a dead Christ. We think too often over the dead Christ. Our vision is not cleared enough of prejudice to observe Christ’s attitude before the throne. As we usually see it, the Lamb is lying down, as if it were slain. Nay, look again; the Lamb is standing up, only it has upon it the marks that tell it was once slain. How hard it is to take Paul’s comparative estimate of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. “It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again.” But another thought gathers round the attitude of Christ as Mediatorial King. He is “standing” as expressive of His activity and energy. He stands before the throne as one attentive, quick, waiting that He may obey. Like the visioned cherubim of Isaiah, who stood covering face and feet, with poised wing waiting to fly. So we are helped to feel that His rule is a living, active thing; not some sublime possibility; not some future glory; not a wondrous “maybe”; but a present fact. He stands concerned now for us; ruling now over us; active now to bless us. Applying now the virtue of His wounds; sanctifying us wholly—body, soul, and spirit; changing us now into the image of His own Lamb-like purity. He not only liveth, but is working, until all enemies be put under His feet. With Stephen, we may “see Jesus standing at the right hand of God.” IV. His place.—“In the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders.” The term “midst” should be middle, in the central place, the place that properly belongs to the representative and leader. All nature is figured as present before the rainbow-girdled throne of God. The four living creatures represent all animated nature. The Church of God is there, the older and the newer Church, for which stand four-and-twenty elders. But in the very middle, in the central leader’s place, is “Jesus,” standing for them all, Head and Representative of all. In Eastern lands the gorgeous pavilion of the great king or general is placed in the very centre of the encampment. Round it the tents of captains and soldiers are gathered, in ever-widening circles, every man’s tent-door opening to the view of the king’s tent. The central place is the place for the leader. And so with this feature of the vision we are helped to realise the surpassing dignities that belong to the slain Lamb; for, blending poetic figures, we read, “On His vesture and on His thigh is this name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” The sadness of those wounds and blood-stains almost seems to pass; nay, the very Lamb-figure fades a little from our view, when we see the place He occupies, and know that to Him every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things in earth. He is in the midst—the central place—of nature; her glory and her crown; the secret of her infinite beauty to all open, reverent souls. He is in the middle—the central place—of the old Judaic life and system. Abraham saw His day. David sang His praise. And prophets painted the coming glories of His salvation. He is in the midst—the central place—of the Christian Church, as it marches down through the ages to the great day of redemption, and of God. He leads His witnesses through martyr’s fires, He keeps His followers amid fierce persecutions. He nerves His soldiers to the great warfare, and His labourers to the arduous toil. He steers the great mission ship, as it carries the gospel far and wide over the earth, while His servants sing:— “Fly, happy, happy sails, and bear the press,Fly happy with the banner of the cross;Kuit land to land, and, flowing havenward,Enrich the markets of the Golden Year.”It is His rightful place. Centre everywhere and of everything. Let Him have His rightful place in your hearts, your thoughts, your life! Complete the vision you keep before your soul of the “Lamb as it had been slain,” by adding this: “He stands in the midst of the throne, and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders.” We are to see Jesus, to be always seeing Jesus, to keep Him ever well in view. We come to His table of communion that, in the way of His own providing, and by the aid of His own symbols, we may clear and renew our visions of Him. We find no mystic presence in the bread and wine, but we find a real presence in our soul: and Him whom we see and recognise; Him before whom we freshly bow; Him whose honoured Name we anew confess; Him whose redemption-work we lovingly remember; Him whose “prepared place for us” we hope to occupy; Him whose smile we feel will make our everlasting heaven;—Him we behold as a “Lamb.” Looking as if He once was slain. Standing before the throne of God. Head of nature and of man. He is the Lamb-like leader of lambs, the lowly One. Then let us become the lowly lambs He leads. He is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” then let us trust the whole burden of sin and salvation on that great sin-bearer. He is the Lamb risen to die no more, exalted to heaven’s first place, crowned with the Name above every name. He is our strength, our triumph, and our hope. Let us join beasts, elders, angels, and redeemed, as they bow before Him, and sing: “Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever.” The All-conquering Christ.—It is needless to say to the biblical student that this imagery has its base on Genesis 49:8-10. An old Hebrew Sheikh comes to die, and, dying, blesses his boys. He talks poetically. It is easy for a Semitic man to speak in poetry. One old Arab is on record as having composed a poem of one hundred and fifty-seven lines when dying. But this Sheikh is a prophet of the most High God, and his utterances are more than poetry. They are discriminating and far-seeing prophecy. They forth-tell as well as foretell the destiny of the sons, through generations to come. I. The victorious leadership and power of Judah.—Of Judah, the old man says that he shall be chief amongst his brethren. “Thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise; … thy father’s children shall bow down before thee.” He is to be a victorious power. “Thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies … from the prey thou art gone up.” His is to be a legislative and regal power. “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet.” He is to be the true centre of government, the rallying point of the world’s hopes; “to him shall the gathering of the people be.” Let us trace the history to see the facts that fulfil the prophecy. Two hundred years after the old man’s dying words were spoken, we find the children of Israel going up out of Egypt, and God gives directions about the order of their encampment. “On the east side (Numbers 2:3) … shall they of the standard of the camp of Judah pitch.” Why is Judah assigned the principal place in the front of the Tabernacle? Why is he here the chief tribe? Why should not Reuben, the first-born, be appointed here? There is no explanation to be given except that for his sin he had boon displaced, “and the genealogy is not to be reckoned after the birthright,” and “Judah was made the chief ruler” (1 Chronicles 5:1-2). Again, in Numbers 7:12, when the offerings were to be made, Nahshon … of the tribe of Judah was assigned the dignity of offering first. In Numbers 24:9 Balaam warns Balak that he would better beware of these people, because, according to an old tradition, they destroy their enemies with a lion’s strength. “He couched, he lay down as a lion, and as a great lion, who shall stir him up?” save at his own peril. The tradition does not die, and Moses re-announces it at his dying. He blesses the descendants of the boys whom Jacob blessed a-dying. He renews and re-formulates the prophecy (Deuteronomy 33:7): “And this is the blessing of Judah: Hear, Lord, the voice of Judah, and bring him” (victorious from battle) “unto his people; let his hands be sufficient for him; and be thou an help to him from his enemies.” The same all-conquering element, the all-prevailing, all-victorious might must still abide with Judah. When the tribes had passed into Canaan the remnants of the people were to be overcome, and Israel inquires of the Lord who shall be put in the forefront of the fray, who should lead to battle. “Who shall” (Judges 1:2-3) “go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up: behold, I have delivered the land into his hand.” Still later the tribe of Benjamin revolt (Judges 20:18) and the people “went to the house of God” and “asked counsel of God. Which of us shall go up first to the battle against the children of Benjamin? And the Lord said, Judah shall go up first.” The regal pomp and power of the Messiah was symbolised by David, and the foundation of his royalty he recognised to be this old legend of his people, this prophetic decree of the father of his line. The Lord chose me, and my father’s house, for He hath chosen Judah to be the ruler (1 Chronicles 28:4). When the north wind ripples over his harp, he sings, “Judah is my” (Israel’s) “lawgiver” (Psalms 60:7). II. But this all-conquering and all-controlling power of Judah but symbolised the real royalty and supreme sway of Jesus Christ, and hence we go on to the New Testament. Matthew opens with a long chapter of hard names—the family record of the Lord Jesus, “the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the Son of David.” The old promise of Jacob in Genesis was that this regal might, this conquering splendour, should abide with Judah till the Peace-Bringer, the Shiloh, should come (Genesis 49:10). We have been wont to remark how this was fulfilled, and to emphasise the fact that when the Shiloh did come, this power departed from Israel. Rome’s greedy eagles flew over Jerusalem and struck their bloody talons into Judæa’s heart, and since then they have been peeled, scattered and scorned, hunted and hated, without a priest, without an ephod, without a sceptre, the byword of the world. But that is not the deeper and inner meaning of the utterance. The truth is, that the regal power and splendour never did depart from Judah. Look at Matthew’s record. It is a record which God kept through three thousand years, and which, after Shiloh came, of Judah, fell into confusion, so that no Jew on earth, it is said, can prove to-day to what tribe he belongs. The power never did depart from Judah. It only centred in the Shiloh, and He was of the tribe of Judah. All that had been before, as compared with the race-power of the Shiloh, was only a dim foreshadow. It was as unequal to the real might and majesty of the real Lion of the tribe of Judah as “a painted ship upon a painted ocean” is to the real ship on the real ocean. It is needless to point out the manifested regal sway of Jesus Christ. It is needless to remind ourselves, at length, that Christian kings, and Christian princes, and Christian presidents rule to-day more than half the land surface of the globe, and all the seas. The unobserved but steady transfer of the thrones and of all political power from heathen and Moslem to Christian hands is but one of the many indications that the sceptre has not yet departed from Judah, nor a “lawgiver from between his feet.” III. It would be interesting to note at length the blending of the Lion of the tribe of Judah and Shiloh the Peace-Bringer, as the two elements are portrayed in the book of Revelation.—The Rest-Man is to rule, until He put all enemies under His feet. He is to be the Prince of Peace, “that in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth even in Him” (Ephesians 1:10), for to this Lion, Shiloh, “shall the gathering of the people be.” In our text (Revelation 5:5-6), John was asked to behold a Lion, and he looked and beheld a Lamb. He looked for the Lion of the tribe of Judah and beheld the Shiloh. And now henceforth John flashes and flames with the record of his visions of the all-conquering, all-controlling, all-compelling power, the regal splendour, the triumphant sway, of the Shiloh—the Lamb slain. The Lamb is the centre of thrones and principalities and powers. He is the centre of the homage and honour of the whole creation. The elders with harps are before the throne (Revelation 5:8), and the assembly shouts His worth, saying, “Worthy is the Lamb to receive power … and strength, and honour, and glory,” and His enemies overthrown are fearful in His presence, crying (Revelation 6:16), “Hide us … from the wrath of the Lamb.… Who shall be able to stand” before the irresistible sweep of His “sceptre”? And (Revelation 7:9-10) an international multitude, too vast to be estimated, victorious in His might, wave palms before the throne on which He sits, and these are they (Revelation 7:10) which washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, and He (Revelation 7:17) fed them and led them, and “wipedaway all tears from their eyes.” And yet again (Revelation 11:15), amid the thunders and lightnings great voices in heaven say, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever.” And still further, when the head of all the organised evil forces is overthrown, it is said he was cast down by “the blood of the Lamb.” Christ’s forces are enrolled, His registry is complete, and power was given Him (Revelation 13:7-8) over all kindreds and tongues and nations, and this marshalled and enrolled multitude whose names are written in the Book of Life, of the Lamb slain, ascribe unto Him all dominion. The scroll unfolds, vision rushes after vision, and one regiment of 144,000, the “King’s own,” a personal escort branded with the love-brand of the Father’s own name in their foreheads, in sweet and royal submission “follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.” John’s wing does not weary; he soars on. Now it is over a sea of glass, mingled with fire, where is another group of victors who had gotten the victory over the beast, who sing the song of Moses and the Lamb. The nineteenth chapter ushers us into the banqueting room for the “marriage supper of the Lamb.” And now the central courts of the universe are flooded with light, and the Lamb is the Light thereof (Revelation 21:23), and the book closes with the outflow of peace and prosperity from the centre of the regal splendour, and a “river of water flows out from the throne of God and of the Lamb.”—J. T. Gracey, D.D. Revelation 5:12. The Slain Lamb.—John was the bosom friend of Christ. To his affectionate, confiding nature may be traced the intimacy formed with his Lord. Through him, the beloved disciple, we have disclosed the inner life of the Lord Jesus. In gospel and epistle John makes Christ the central figure. When isolated from men, exiled at Patmos, he was not cut off from Christ, but made to witness the sublime revelations of his enthroned Redeemer, as well as the events of coming history exhibited as an opening panorama, even down to the end of time. He sees the vials poured, the trumpets blown, and Satan bound. He beholds the bewildering glory of the eternal world and hears the song, “Worthy the Lamb.” Let us consider— I. The Lamb slain. II. The Lamb worshipped as worthy.—There is nothing dubious or defective in this matter. The statement is clear. John the Baptist pointed to Jesus, saying, “Behold the Lamb of God.” The lamb is an emblem of purity and innocence. Christ is holy, harmless, and undefiled. We eat the flesh of a lamb and wear its fleece. Christ’s flesh is meat indeed, and His blood our drink, spiritually. So, too, we are to put on the Lord Jesus. The sacrifice of Jesus delivers us from wrath, for His death cancels the debt due to justice. The demands of the law are met in our surety, and we are delivered from wrath. How was He slain? 1. He was slain in the counsel of God. His purpose who can annul? It was “before the foundation of the world.” He saw man ruined through their federal head. He determined to save. That was a marvellous consultation had between the three Persons of the blessed Trinity. God gave up His Son, by eternal, inevitable, and necessary generation. Amazing act of generosity! Where can its equal be found? He doomed His Son to ignominious death. He furbished the sword of justice. 2. He was slain in promise and in type. The seed of the woman is to bruise the serpent’s head. This is the germ of all succeeding promises, all of which are exceedingly precious. The serpent bruises His heel; that is, the humanity of Christ. In David’s psalms, in Zechariah, Isaiah, and Daniel, we learn more of Him who was to be slain for our offences and cut off “not for Himself.” He is the Paschal Lamb. The true day of Atonement was hastening, when the promise and type were to be fulfilled on Calvary. 3. He was actually slain. Infidelity has denied this, but the fact stands. He climbed the fatal hill, being straitened until the sacrifice was accomplished. The cross was erected. The nails, forged in hell, were driven as the murderous hammer fell. Blood streams from His hands and feet. The cross becomes as a rock against which the waves of the curse dash in vain—the lightning-rod that turns away the wrath of God from us, which otherwise would have slain us. The Lord of glory dies. The graves open. There is a preternatural chill in the air. Legions of hell rejoice as He cries, “My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Thus was the Lamb slain. III. The Lamb who was slain is worthy of praise.— 1. Because of His essential dignity. This meek and lowly Jesus was also kingly. This root out of a dry ground was also the fairest among the children of men. He who to some had no form or comeliness was really “altogether lovely.” By Him all things were made, and by Him all things consist, stand together. The universe reflects the glory of Christ. Great is the dignity and mystery. He, too, is Prophet, Priest, and King. His name shall endure for ever. When Cæsars are forgotten and Alexanders pass into obscurity, the Lamb that was slain shall still reign in undying renown. The orchestra of heaven, and the shouts of the redeemed, proclaim Him King of kings and Lord of lords. 2. His interposition on our behalf makes Him worthy of praise. When restitution was demanded, Christ met the claim. How could God be just and yet justify the sinner? When the Father asked, “Who shall go for us?” the Son replied, “Here am I, send Me; I delight to do Thy will.” We admire the self-forgetfulness of men in philanthropic endeavour, but it is not worthy to be compared with the self-abnegation of the Redeemer of the world. 3. His exaltation makes Jesus worthy of praise. He hath been “highly exalted” to the right hand of the Father. In the name of Jesus every knee shall bow to pray, for Him hath God made Lord of all. He drank of the brook by the way, and therefore hath He lifted up the head. To Him are given dominion, and glory, and power, and blessing. All in heaven worship the Lamb who was slain. Shall not we join them in this adoration? Yes, let us kiss the Son, lest He be angry. 4. Christ is represented as receiving the homage of the whole creation. All in heaven, and in earth, and under the earth, join in this recognition of the Lamb that was slain. This is with the approval of God the Father. Then we should not delay to bring our worship and service to Christ. In conclusion, I remark: 1. Here is revealed the love of God the Father. He so loved the world, He gave Christ to die. The apostle also says, “He gave Himself for us.” Here is love which is measureless. Paul prays that we may be able to comprehend its length, breadth, height, and depth, yet adds that it passes knowledge. 2. We infer the value of the atonement. “Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift.” We cannot compute the worth of this infinite sacrifice. We walk on the brink of an ocean of fathomless depth, as Newton said he stood by the sea-shore picking up, as it were, mere pebbles of truth, knowing little of treasures hid. 3. This memorial supper is an appropriate recognition of the work of Christ’s atoning grace. Men keep the deeds of heroes in mind by memorial observances; they build shrines and rear pillars. But here is a sublimer event, that calls us to more solemn and reverent recognition of the Lamb that was slain for our salvation. 4. I offer you this Saviour as your only hope, Do not pass by with indifference, but seek His favour, which is life, and His lovingkindness, which is better than life. In the love and favour of Jesus Christ, the Lamb that was slain, you are safe for time and safe for eternity.—D. Steele, D.D. TO CHAPTER 5Revelation 5:1. Written Scrolls.—Sometimes the scrolls were written on both sides, and the manner in which this was done is so well explained by a modern traveller, who saw two ancient rolls of this description in Syria, that we shall give the account in his own words: “In the monastery,” says Mr. Hartly, “I observed two very beautiful rolls, containing the liturgy of St. Chrysostom and that attributed by the Greeks to St. James. You begin to read by unrolling, and you continue to read and unroll, till at last you arrive at the stick to which the roll is fastened; then you turn the parchment round, and continue to read on the other side, rolling it gradually up till you complete the liturgy.” It was thus written within and without, and it may serve to convey an intelligible and correct idea of the books described both by Ezekiel and John.—Paxton.Revelation 5:6. The Plea in Christ’s Intercession.—(“As it had been slain.”) “A rare illustration of the efficacious intercession of Christ in heaven we have in that famous story of Amintas, who appeared as an advocate for his brother Æschylus, who was strongly accused, and very likely to be condemned to die. Now, Amintas, having performed great services, and merited highly of the commonwealth, in whose service one of his hands was cut oil in the field, he came into the court, in his brother’s behalf, and said nothing, but only lifted up his arm and showed them an arm without a hand, which so moved them that without speaking a word, they freed his brother immediately. And thus, if you look into Revelation 5:6. you shall see in what posture Christ is represented visionally there as standing between God and us: ‘And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it bad been slain;’ that is, bearing in His glorified body the marks of death and sacrifice. Those wounds He received for our sins on earth are, as it were, still fresh bleeding in heaven; a moving and prevailing argument it is with the Father to give us the mercies He pleads for.”—Flavel.The “Agnus Dei.”—In early Christian art, symbolical representations of our Saviour as a lamb are found, and it was at the Trullan Council (692 A.D.) that it was decreed that the Lord should no longer be pictured in churches under the form of a lamb, but in human form. It was an ancient custom to distribute to the worshippers, on the first Sunday after Easter, particles of wax taken from the paschal tapers, each particle being stamped with the figure of a lamb. These were burned in houses, fields, or vineyards, to secure them against evil influence or thunderstrokes. A waxen Agnus Dei is said to have been among the presents made by Gregory the Great to Theolinda, Queen of the Lombards; but proof of. this is wanting. One was found in 1725 A.D., in the Church of San Clemente, at Rome, in a tomb supposed to be that of Flavius Clemens, a martyr. A legend preserved by Robert of Mount St. Michael tells how, in the year 1183, the Holy Virgin appeared to a woodman at work in a forest, and gave him a medal bearing her own image, and that of her Son, with the inscription, “Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, Dona nobis pacem.” This she bade him bear to the bishop, and tell him that all who wished the peace of the church should make such medals as these, and wear them in token of peace.—Biblical Dictionary of Antiquities.Revelation 5:8. The Praises and Prayers of the Church.—The vials (which seem to be censers, as they hold the incense) and the harps, it is perhaps more natural to suppose, were in the hands of the four and twenty elders, and not of the living creatures. Here, then, we have the praises (represented by the harps), and the prayers (represented by the censers), of the world-wide and age-long Church of Christ. The true odours are the heart-prayers of God’s children. Archbishop Leighton says, alluding to the composition of the Temple incense: “Of these three sweet ingredient perfumes—namely, petition, confession, thanksgiving—is the essence of prayer, and by the Divine fire of love it ascends unto God, the heart and all with it; and when the hearts of the saints unite in joint prayer, the pillar of sweet smoke goes up the greater and the fuller.”—Bishop Boyd Carpenter. ON THE OPENING OF SIX AND first catastrophe, or overthrow of the Jewish persecuting power, is the subject of chaps. 6–11. Some take the subject in a more general way, as being the relation of Christianity to great universal evils.Revelation 6:1 One.—ἑνός, the first of the living ones. Come and see.—Properly only the word “Come.” This cry is not to the seer, but to the riders, who immediately begin to appear. Some take the invitation as “addressed to the Lord Jesus. His creatures pray Him to come—and behold, instead of His coming immediately, there come these terrible precursors of His, so increasingly unlike Him.”Revelation 6:2. White horse.—The rider is armed with a bow, and adorned with a victor’s crown. “This is an emblem of the gospel, which, through the instrumentality of preaching, is about to extend itself victoriously through the earth.” For visions of horses see Zechariah 1:8-11; Zechariah 6:1-8. There is symbolic significance in their colours. Here the colours of the four horses symbolise triumph, slaughter, mourning, and death. The meaning of the first is disputed. Simeox suggests that it symbolises the “spirit of conquest”; such as animates men like Alexander or Napoleon. Carpenter improves on this by suggesting the spirit of Christian victory. The horses used in Roman triumphs were white.Revelation 6:4. Horse that was red.—The angel of war. “The seal puts in pictorial form the warning of Christ, that wars and rumours of wars would be heard of. Red is the symbol of blood to be shed.”Revelation 6:5. A black horse.—“Whose rider holds a pair of balances in his hand, with which he measures out to men their daily portion of wheat and of barley: this is the angel of famine.” Black is the colour indicative of distress, misfortune, or mourning. It is a picture of “bad times.”Revelation 6:8. Pale horse.—I.e. livid; lit. green, cadaverous. The emblem of contagions sickness or pestilence. Hell.—Is Hades, the shelter-place of the spirits of the dead. The “under-world.” The grave, conceived of as ready to devour those slain by the pestilence. Fourth part.—A mission in strict limitations. But pestilence is not here regarded as a single force; it is associated with war, famine, accidents, and inroads of wild beasts (Ezekiel 14:21). Possibly it represents the special calamities of what are called the Middle Ages.Revelation 6:9. Fifth seal.—No horse is associated with this. It is the announcement of the last persecutions. A scene in the invisible world; the cry of the martyrs whose blood has been shed unjustly, and who demand the appearing of the Judge of the world. Altar.—Here first mentioned. In Old-Testament sacrifices, the blood of the victims was poured out at the foot of the altar. “This seal indicates that the mission of the Christian Church can only be carried out in suffering.” Souls.—This word usually means the mere principle of natural life, as distinguished from “spirit,” the immortal part of man. In Scripture it is often the simple equivalent of life.Revelation 6:10. O Lord.—ὁδεσπότης, our Sovereign, distinguished from κύριος. “It is a poetical description. The righteous blood shed does fall upon the world in retribution; the laws of God avenge themselves, though the victims do not live to behold the rewards of the ungodly.”Revelation 6:11. White robes.—As sign of the Divine acceptance and favour. Rest.—There was need for checking the impatience of the age for our Lord’s immediate return.Revelation 6:12. Earthquake.—Matthew 24:7. Actual natural calamity. The fear produced by earthquake, and its associated effects in nature, is poetically given in this and following verses. “All phenomena of this kind were anciently regarded with great terror, as being the evidences that God was angry, and was about to punish.” Blood.—Compare Joe 2:31.Revelation 6:13. Stars.—Matthew 14:29. Fig tree.—Isaiah 34:4; but see Matthew 24:32. Untimely figs.—Those which form too late to ripen, and fall off when spring comes.Revelation 6:14. Departed.—Better, “parted.” Moved.—By force of the earthquake.Revelation 6:15. Dens … rocks.—Shelter-places sought in the senseless fright produced by the earthquake.Revelation 6:16-17. Day of His wrath.—This was the fear, not the fact. This entire picture must be explained by the wild, unreasoning alarm occasioned by an unusually awful earthquake. In every great convulsion of nature, and in every great social convulsion, people rush at once to the idea that the day of judgment has come. But Christians ought not to yield to any such fears.MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 6:1-17 The Chief Outward Woes of Human Society which will Bear on the Church.—Just as the individual Christian is left in the world to be disciplined by an ever-varying human experience, so is the Church left in the world, and made subject to the influence of calamities in the sphere of nature, persecutions at the hand of man, and disappointments and failures in the orderings of Divine Providence. The Apocalypse first presents the strain in which the Church is placed by its outward relations, and then the more severe and perilous strain through evils, and evil influences, within itself. (Compare Acts 20:29-30.) The more serious strain involved in the presence of an apostate section in the Church, or from a wildly time-serving spirit getting into the Church, is dealt with in the later chapters, under the heading of the seventh seal. The evils are variously represented as the work of Antichrist, the Beast, and the False Prophet; and the Apostate Church within the Church is the Babylon that must come into the overwhelming judgments of God. The first four of the seals are evidently alike in this, that they deal with the things that try the characters of men, and press heavily on human society. The first seal is the most difficult one to understand. Godet thinks the conqueror on the white horse represents the gospel, but that would not harmonise with the other seals. A peaceful conqueror, who covers distances with his bow, is clearly indicated; and the only such conqueror that can be conceived is commerce and colonisation. From one point of view this is a woe, for commerce has its side of financial calamities, and colonisation breaks up family and Church life. The second seal reveals the influence of war; the third the influence of famine, or scarcity; and the fourth the influence of contagious disease or pestilence. It will at once be felt that, in the history of the Christian Church, all these things have exerted disciplinary influence, but that no sort of chronological order need be assigned to them. The fifth seal introduces the actual persecutions to which the Church is subject from outside enemies, which often involve martyrdom. The point of the paragraph, Revelation 6:9-11, is not the vision of those who have been martyred, but the assurance that, in the time to come, their fellow-servants would be killed, even as they were. The sixth seal deals with the more terrible convulsions of nature—earthquakes, volcanoes, tempests, etc., and the more terrible portents—eclipses, etc.—which, in those days, filled men with overwhelming fears, and could not fail to influence even the Church of Christ. What St. John presents by his vision of the seals to the oppressed and persecuted Churches of Asia in his day is, that the various outward forms of strain will still be permitted to affect them. Sometimes the strain on faith and steadfastness will take one form and sometimes another. It may be financial distress, or war, or scarcity, or pestilence, or martyrdom, or disasters of nature. The Church life had to be maintained under every form of stress and temptation. And it is precisely to use these various seemingly evil influences for His sanctifying purposes that the Living Lord Jesus is now actually present in His Church, “walking among the seven golden candlesticks.” M. Renan gives a vivid picture of the extraordinary natural calamities occurring at the time when the Apocalypse was written. “Never had the world been seized with such a trembling fit; the earth itself was a prey to the most terrible convulsions: the whole world was smitten with giddiness. The planet seemed shaken to its foundations, and to have no life left in it. The conflict of the legions (amongst themselves) was terrible; … famine was added to massacre; … misery was extreme. In the year 65 A.D., a horrible plague visited Rome. During the autumn there were counted thirty thousand deaths. The Campagna was desolated by typhoons and cyclones; … the order of nature seemed to be overturned; frightful tempests spread terror in all directions. But that which produced the greatest impression was the earthquakes. The globe was undergoing a convulsion analogous to that of the moral world; it was as if the earth and mankind were taken with fever simultaneously. Vesuvius was preparing for the terrible eruption of the year 79. Asia Minor was in a chronic earthquake. Its cities had to be continually re-built. The valley of the Lycus especially, with its Christian towns of Laodicea and Colossζ, was laid waste in the year 60. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_6:1. The Call to the Riders.—This invitation indicates that the events revealed are great and wonderful; it consoles the Church with the assurance that, however she may suffer, the voice of the gospels will survive—that all her sufferings will be for her own good and for Christ’s glory.—Wordsworth. The Living Creatures.—The living creatures represent animate nature—that nature and creation of God which groans and travails in pain, waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God. These summon the emblems of war and pestilence to come on the scene, for these things must needs be, and through these lies the way for the final coming of God’s Christ, for whom Creation longs. They bid the pains and troubles come, because they recognise them as the precursors of Creation’s true King. Thus their voice has in it an undertone which sighs for the advent of the Prince of Peace, who is to come.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter. Revelation 6:8. The Personification of Death.—“The personification of death, in the act of executing the Divine commands, is exhibited with great difference, both as to features and character, amongst different nations. Perhaps the most mean delineation is the common monkish one of a skeleton, with dart and hour-glass; while one of the most terrible is that of the Scandinavian poets, who represent him as mounted on horseback, riding with inconceivable rapidity in pursuit of his prey, meagre and wan, and the horse possessing the same character as his rider. Yet the passage cited from the Apocalypse is, in sublimity and terror, superior to the most energetic specimens of Runic poetry. The word translated pale (chloros) is peculiarly expressive in the original; it might be more adequately rendered “ghastly,” meaning that wan and exanimate hue exhibited in certain diseases.”—Mason Good. Times of Public Sickness.—Some interpret this of the persecution under Decius and his successors, of the epidemic diseases, consequent upon famine, which prevailed so widely from A.D. 250 to 265, that half the population is said to have been destroyed by war, pestilence, and famine. After the death of Gallienus, the multiplication of wild beasts in various parts of the empire was ascribed to the guilt of the Christians. Revelation 6:9. Martyr Ages.—The burden of this passage is, that there should be a fierce and sanguinary persecution of the Christians during this seal; that that persecution should be terminated by a temporary and judicial deliverance of the oppressed ones, in which should supervene another terrible persecution. The signal triumph of the cause of the martyrs over that of their cruel oppressors satisfies all the requirements of the passage.—Bishop Waldegrave. Revelation 6:12. Natural Signs of Spiritual Events.—We are not to expect a literal fulfilment of the prophecies in this seal, which describe a great elemental convulsion. We are not to look for any terrific changes in the heavenly bodies before Christ’s Second Coming. These prophecies are spiritual, and to be understood spiritually.—Wordsworth. Revelation 6:16-17. The Wrath of the Lamb.—The lamb is the most simply innocent of all animals. Historically, also, it had become a name for sacrifice. Under this twofold reason Christ is set forth as the Lamb. The lamb is but the complemental gentleness of God’s judicial vigour. A most paradoxical, jarring combination of words predicates wrath of the very lambhood of Christ. To some, even to speak of the wrath of God is an offence, though Scripture speaks of His wrath without compunction. But the term “wrath of the Lamb” not only violates a first principle of rhetoric, forbidding the conjunction of symbols that have no agreement of kind or quality, but also shocks our cherished conceptions of Christ as the suffering Victim or the all-merciful and beneficent Friend, in either way the Saviour of sinners. Who will ever speak of a lamb’s wrath? Scripture does. What shall we make of such a fact? Simply this, that while our particular age is at the point of apogee from all the more robust and vigorous conceptions of God in His relation to evil—while it makes nothing of God as a person or governing will, less, if possible, of sin as a wrong-doing by subject wills—we are still to believe in Christianity, and not in the new religion of nature. We must have the right to believe in the real Christ, and not that theologic Christ which has so long been praised, as it were, into weakness, by the showing that separates Him from all God’s decisive energies and fires of combustion, and puts Him over against them, to be only a pacifier of them by His suffering goodness. Our Christ must be the real King—Messiah—and no mere victim; He must govern, have His indignations, take the regal way in His salvation. His goodness must have fire and fibre enough to make it Divine. We take the principle without scruple, that if we can settle what is to be understood by the wrath of God we shall not only find the wrath in God, but as much more intensely revealed in the incarnate life and ministry of Christ as the love is, or the patience, or any other character of God. Since He is the Lamb, in other words, the most emphatic and appalling of all epithets will have its place—viz., the wrath of the Lamb. We want a better English word to express the Scriptural word ὀργή. We have wrath, anger, indignation, fury, vengeance, judgment, justice, and the like, but they are all more or less defective. Indignation is the most unexceptionable, but it is too prosy and weak to carry such a meaning with due effect. Wrath must be kept as a moral, not merely animal, passion, or it will connect associations of unregulated temper that are wholly unsuitable. We understand by wrath, as applied to God and to Christ, a certain principled heat of resentment towards evil-doing and evil-doers, such as arms the good to inflictions of pain or just retribution upon them. It is not the heat of revenge. It is that holy heat which kindles about order and law, and truth and light, going in, as it were, spontaneously to redress their wrongs, and chastise the injuries they have suffered. It is that, in every moral nature, which prepares it to be an essentially beneficent avenger. Is it, then, a fact that Christ, as the incarnate Word of God, embodies and reveals the wrath-principle of God, even as He does the patience, or love-principle, and as much more intensely? On this point we have many distinct evidences. 1. Christ cannot be a true manifestation of God when He comes in half the character of God, to act upon, or qualify, or pacify, the other half. If only God’s affectional nature is represented in Him, then He is but a half manifestation. If the purposes of God, the justice of God, the indignations of God, are not in Him—if anything is shut away, or let down, or covered over—then He is not in God’s proportions, and does not incarnate His character. 2. Christ can be the manifested wrath of God without being any the less tender in His feeling, or gentle in His patience. In the history of Jesus we see occasions in which He actually displays the judicial and the tender, most affectingly, together and in the very same scene, as in His denouncing and weeping over Jerusalem. Indeed, the tenderest, purest souls will, for just that reason, be hottest in the wrath-principle where any bitter wrong, or shameful crime, is committed. They take fire, and burn, because they feel. 3. God, without the wrath-principle, never was, and Christ never can be, a complete character. This element belongs inherently to every moral nature. God is no God without it; man is no man without it. It is this principled wrath, in one view, that gives staminal force and majesty to character. 4. It is a conceded principle of justice that wrong doers are to suffer just according to what they deserve. In Christianity God is not less just or more merciful, but He is more fitly and proportionately expressed. 5. One of the things most needed in the recovery of men to God is this very thing—a more decisive manifestation of the wrath-principle and justice of God. Intimidation is the first means of grace. 6. We can see for ourselves that the more impressive revelation of wrath, which appears to be wanted, is actually made in the person of Christ, as in His driving out the money-changers, and denouncing the hypocritical Pharisees. 7. Christ is appointed and publicly undertakes to maintain the wrath-principle officially, as the Judge of the world, even as He maintains the love-principle officially, as the Saviour of the world. He even declares that authority is given Him to execute judgment, because He is the Son of man. But the wrath-principle in Christ is only that judicial impulse that backs Him in the infliction of justice whenever justice requires to be inflicted. And it does not require to be inflicted always; it never ought, to be when there is anything better that is possible. Put it down, then, first of all, at the close of this great subject, that the New Testament gives us no new God, or better God, or less just God, than we had before. He is the I AM of all ages, the I AM that was, and is, and is to come; the same that was declared from the beginning—“The Lord God, gracious and merciful, forgiving iniquity, transgressions, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty.”—H. Bushnell, D.D. Revelation 6:17. Survivors of the Calamities.—The sixth seal does not give us a completed picture. We see the great and awe-inspiring movements which are heralds of the day of wrath. The whole world is stirred and startled at the tread of the approaching Christ, and then the vision melts away; we see no more, but we have seen enough to be sure that the close of the age is at hand. Yet we are anxious to know something of those who have been faithful, pure, and chivalrous witnesses for truth and right, for Christ and God. In that day, that awful day, the whole population of the world seems to be smitten with dismay; the trees, shaken with that terrible tempest, seem to be shedding all their fruit; the trembling of all created things seems to be about to shake down every building. Are all to go? Are none strong enough to survive? We heard that there were seven seals attached to the mystic book which the Lion of the tribe of Judah was opening; but this sixth seal presents us with the picture of universal desolation. What is there left for the seventh seal to tell us? The answer to these questions is given in the seventh chapter, which introduces scenes that may either be taken as dissolving views, presented in the course of the sixth seal, or as complementary visions. And those scenes show us in pictorial form that the Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation; that in the midst of the time of the shaking of all things, when all might, majesty, strength, and genius of men is laid low, and every mere earth-born kingdom is over-thrown, there is a kingdom which cannot be shaken.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter. The Awful Character of Earthquakes.—One of the most terrible earthquakes on record happened at Lisbon, November 1st, 1755. The morning was fine, and there was no apparent indication of the coming destruction. About nine o’clock a low subterraneous rumbling was heard, which gradually increased, and culminated at last in a violent shock of earthquake, which levelled to the ground many of the principal buildings of the place. Three other shocks followed in rapid succession and continued the work of destruction. Scarcely had the ill-fated inhabitants begun to realise the enormity of the disaster which had come upon them when they were surprised by another visitation of a different, but not less destructive, character. The sea began to rush with great violence into the Tagus, which rose at once as much as forty feet above high-water mark. The water swept over a great part of the city, and many of the inhabitants fled from its approach to take refuge on a strong marble quay recently erected. They had collected there to the number of three thousand when the quay was suddenly hurled bottom upwards and every soul on it perished. A fife broke out in the city. And by the combined effect of these disasters sixty thousand persons are supposed to have perished. SEALING OF THE OF AND chapter is in the nature of an episode. Before the enemies of the gospel are finally destroyed, St. John sees the admission of believers to their blessedness in heaven. The vision has certainly the appearance of being supplementary to the preceding, and seems to refer to the visitation described under various seals, especially the third and sixth, and to represent their universality (“four corners of the earth,” “four winds of the earth”); their character, as providential, ordered and directed by God through His angels; their limitation, or suspension, or restriction, as the interests of God’s Church required (W. and W.). Godet treats the two visions of this chapter as anticipative. “The foresight of her own triumph is to inspire the Church with courage to face the formidable crises which still stand between her and the object of her hope.” He thinks the first vision concerns Jews (Israel); the second the Gentile Church. It is, however, better to take the earlystandpoint, and see the Christian Church as composed of two distinct, though closely related elements, the Judaic and the Gentile. The revelation is not addressed to Jews, nor does it concern them, save as they stand in some relation, hostile or helpful, to the Christian Church.Revelation 7:1. After these things.—Not to be unduly pressed. The law of succession in time controls all forms of human thinking, even visions. Holding, etc.—By this figure the Divine care of the elect ones is intimated. Their safety is secured before the calamities indicated in the previous chapter are let loose. Winds, being a great cause of calamities, are taken as symbols of calamity.Revelation 7:2. Ascending.—In the book of Enoch, which seems to have suggested some of the figures of this book, the east is the paradise of God, the place where the Lord of Glory dwells. There is the possible idea also that, as the angel came with the dawn, a long day’s work is intimated. Seal of the Living God.—Eastern kings signed documents, etc., by impressing the seal of the signet ring which they jealously kept on their finger. To entrust this seal to a person was to empower him to act on the king’s authority.Revelation 7:3. Sealed the servants of God.—This act is illustrated in the salvation of Israel from the destroying angel, through the mark of the blood upon the door. The sealing does not preserve the Church from being affected by outward calamities, only from being overwhelmed by them.Revelation 7:4. Hundred, forty and four thousand.—Clearly a symbolical number. A goodly number, from all the tribes, had become members of the Christian Church. Scripture gives no support to the notion of “Lost Tribes.”Revelation 7:9. Could number.—The relativity of Gentile to Jewish members of the Christian Church is strikingly suggested by this fixed number for the Jewish, and limitless numbers for the Gentile, portions. White robes.—The sign of triumph in the conflict with evil. Palms.—The recognised symbol of victory.Revelation 7:10. Salvation.—To be conceived as both a negative thing—deliverance from evil; and also a positive thing—attainment of holiness. To our God.—It is fitting that we go past all agencies to the final cause.Revelation 7:13. What are these?—A question not asked in order to gain information, but in order to open the way for giving information.Revelation 7:14. Tribulation.—A special time of trouble is referred to; probably that which was endured by the Church under the Pagan emperors. Washed … in the blood.—This very strange figure is perhaps not yet properly apprehended. The blood of Christ is used as a figure for His strenuous efforts, even unto death, in effecting His purpose of redemption. The champion from Edom with blood-dyed garments (Isaiah 63:1); the sweat-like blood-drops in Gethsemane; and the appeal in Hebrews, “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin,” should guide us to the right thought. The idea may be this: Christ is highly exalted because, in the resistance of sin, He “poured out His soul unto death”; and these have the white robes because they, too, resisted sin, and bore their earth-burdens, and won the triumph of obedient submission, as He did, and in His strength. The figure of actually washing clothes or persons in blood is a very strained one, unless its symbolical character is clearly recognised.Revelation 7:15. Dwell among them.—R.V. “Shall spread His tabernacle over them.” Dr. Tregelles compares this passage with Exodus 40:35, and suggests, as a true rendering, “He … shall be a covert over them.” In Alford’s revision we read, “shall spread His habitation over them.” The allusion, then, is to the manner in which the Israelites were, all through their wilderness journey, overshadowed by the cloud which represented God’s presence, so that He was not only with them, but they did, as it were, live in the Divine tabernacle, as they moved hither and thither. Compare John 1:14; Revelation 21:3.Revelation 7:17. Feed them.—As a shepherd. It should be clearly apprehended that the vision blends what waking apprehension cannot. St. John saw a person as if He were a lamb. We should have to speak of Christ in the glory not as a lamb, but as “the lamb-like One.”MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 7:1-17 The Vision of the Redeemed.—We See— I. The great number of the redeemed (Revelation 7:9). All who have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, and who have died in the faith; all who shall believe on Him in the future ages; infants, dying in infancy; the great multitude who have come out of great tribulation. Many are the saved. II. The eternal glory of the redeemed.— 1. The glory of their appearance. (1) “Clothed with white robes.” They shine in the beauty of holiness. (2) “With palms in their hands.” They are conquerors through Him that loved them. 2. The glory of their service. (1) Their service of song; their song of salvation (Revelation 7:10); their song of eternal praise to God (Revelation 7:12). (2) Their holy ministry (Revelation 7:15). 3. The glory of their eternal home. (1) Their communion with God (Revelation 7:15). “He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them.” (2) The heavenly provision (a) for their immortal nature: the Lamb “shall feed them”; He is their eternal Shepherd; (b) for their constant refreshment: the Lamb “shall lead them unto living fountains of waters”; (c) For their everlasting comfort, “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” III. Our lessons from the redeemed.— 1. Once they were sufferers such as we, or more than any of us. They came “out of great tribulation.” 2. Once they were sinners such as we. They had need of cleansing. They “washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” The same fountain is open for us. Through the merits of the same Saviour we may enter into the same heaven, and enjoy the same blessedness and glory. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_7:4. Who are the “hundred and forty-four thousand?”—Very probably the believing Jews of this period—those of the house of Israel who, in an age of national apostasy and national punishment, acknowledged Jesus as their Messiah and Lord; who accepted the new covenant and passed under its seal, both outward and inward. They are the class who are emphatically termed by St. Paul “the election,” “the remnant according to the election of grace” (Romans 11:5; Romans 11:7); the predicted remnant which should be saved (Romans 9:27; Isaiah 10:20-22; Isaiah 65:8-9). This interpretation is sustained by the particularity with which the tribes are named, as if to fix attention upon the fact of a special reference to the actual descendants of the patriarchs. Otherwise there must be some spiritual significance in each particular tribe, which is hardly conceivable. The exact number denotes election (Jeremiah 3:14).—W. and W. God’s Elect.—This vision of a certain number of Israelites, and the next of an innumerable multitude of all nations, are certainly correlative to each other; and the most obvious way of understanding them is, that among God’s elect there will be many faithful Israelites, and yet few comparatively to the number of faithful Gentiles.—W. H. Simcox, M.A. Revelation 7:9. Universal Praise for Redemption.—Then the countless host of the redeemed, with palm branches of victory in their hands, the emblems of the Church’s triumph, unite in praising God, with all the angels, and elders, and living creatures. One universal symphony fills the heavenly world. Among this countless host stand conspicuous, in robes of white, the martyrs who have sealed their testimony by their own blood. The glory to which they are destined is brought distinctly into view in order that persecuted and suffering Christians, then “enduring the cross,” might, “on account of the joy set before them, despise the shame,” and attain at last to the same blessedness.—Moses Stuart. Revelation 7:9-10. All Saints’ Day.—One, day is given to the commemoration of the great general idea of sainthood. It seems to gather in all the multitude of the holy in every age, and bids us think of their characters, and follow in their steps. What is there in the world for each one of us that would not be here if others had not lived before us—if we were the first generation that ever peopled this populous earth of ours? What are the legacies that the past sends down to us? 1. There are certain circumstances, things which men have gradually, in the course of ages, invented and worked out, and they are permanent, and have come down to us in their accumulation. Besides these, there are certain truths; all the knowledge that man has ever won, of physics, of metaphysics, of morals, of religion, of beauty—all this we have not to win over again for ourselves. Besides these, there is another gift—of certain inspirations which we find waiting for us in the world. Men have left behind them their examples, their enthusiasms, and their standards. The impulse and contagion of their work is waiting everywhere to breathe itself into ours. The power of this inspiration comes in various ways. In some degree it is the mere force of hereditation. Then there is the distinct power of example. Moreover, they have set up certain ideals of character, not reducible to precise rules of action, with which we enter into sympathy, and to whose likeness our lives almost unconsciously attempt to shape themselves. This power of influence may belong to all the past in general. From all the multitude of failures and successes rises up the picture of a true successful manhood—the perfect man. That is our leader. Or we see that power incorporate itself in some great man. Who can explain the subtle fascination that reaches everywhere and lays hold of all kinds of men, and turns their lives out of their course to follow his course; to be with him in some sympathy of purpose, and, if possible, to be like him in some similarity of nature? We may analyse the power of leadership that great men have. It may rest in either of three things: (1) It may be in mere strength of personality; (2) it may be in some truths that he teaches; (3) or it may be in a certain thing which we call holiness, which we cannot define otherwise than that it is a larger and more manifest presence of God in the life of one man than other men have—more sympathetic nearness to Divinity—which makes men feel that he, more than they, embodies the Divine Spirit and utters the Divine will; that He shows God to them. This is the leadership of the saint. These are the leaders, the inspirers, of men—the hero, the teacher, the saint. We have reached, then, this distinctive definition of the saint. He is the man whose power comes of his holiness, his godlikeness. It is a special kind of power, and it is the strongest kind of power where it can be brought to bear at all. In the hero man feels that there is something of God’s power, but by no means, of necessity, any of God Himself. In the teacher, there is God’s truth, because all truth is God’s, but the teacher is only the glass through which it shines. But in the saint there is something of God Himself, a real, abiding presence of Divinity. The saint wins a sympathetic, loving awe. In our experience we have felt the power of such saintly souls. We may connect our whole notion of sainthood with this idea of power. True sainthood is the strong chain of God’s presence in humanity running down through all history, and making of it a unity, giving it a large and massive strength, able to bear great things and to do great things too. This unity which the line of sainthood gives to history is the great point that shows its strength. You go to your saint and find God, working and manifest, in him. But he got near to God through some saint who lived before him. And that saint lighted his fire at some flame before him; and so the power of the sainthoods animates and fills the world. So holiness and purity, and truth and patience, daring and tenderness, hope and faith, are kept constant and pervading things in our humanity. In this truth we get the corrective that we need of the continual tendency to solitariness and individuality in our religion. This church of all the saints is a great power in the world. Ever from out the past, from the old saints who lived in other times, from Enoch, David, Paul, and John, Augustine, Jerome, Luther, Leighton, there comes down the power of God to us. Take away holy example, and the inspiration of holy men, and you would depopulate heaven. Only one bold, supreme soul here and there would still be able to scale the height alone, and stand triumphant in the glorious presence of God. We ascend by one another. These saints were incorporations, not of the power, nor of the truth, but of the spirit or the character of God. But in God Himself all three—power, and truth, and character—must go together; and so they will, to some extent, in the saint, who is God’s copy—but not entirely. We must, however, clearly see the absence of power of miracle, or of authority in truth, in the saints of the Christian Church, because we must have some doctrine of sainthood which shall not for a moment dim or distort the leadership and perfect headship of the Christian and the Church, which rests in Christ alone. But Christ, as He leads us on to higher things, may still strengthen us with the company of those who have the same road to travel, and are walking it in the same strength. Are there no saints to-day? If sainthood means what we have said—the indwelling, the manifest indwelling, of God in man—then there must be many a very saintly saint in these late days of ours. There may be fewer supreme, pre-eminent saints, fewer out-reaching pinnacles of grace, in the long ranges of spiritual life. As all civilisation and human culture advances, great men become less common and less marked. Still, there are saints enough, if we only know how to find them. The old idea of sainthood demanded miracles of those whom it admitted to its calendar. It is the truer discrimination that recognises the presence of God in men, the saints that are in the world, not by the miracles they work, but by the miracles they are; by the way in which they bring the grace of God to bear on the simple duties of the household and the street. The saint is he in whom God dwells.—Phillips Brooks. Revelation 7:13-14. The Redeemed in Glory.—The Bible opens and closes with conflict—between evil and good. Opens with man defeated, closes with man victorious. So it tells the whole story of humanity. The reason for the difference is given us in the song which the victors sing—“Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.” He that was defeated has become victor, because God Himself has helped him, and won a first and inclusive triumph for him in the person of His Son. The association of the text is a great multitude in the attitude of victors through Christ. It is important to Christian living that our thought should be often lifted to that world towards which we are hastening. We need to keep heaven near. And yet it is but little more than a shadow to us. The terms under which heaven is represented are figurative; of its realities we can know nothing. Figurative language is an accommodation to the uncultured, imperfect mind. It is developed in the early history of nations. But how warm and bright and hopeful are the figures suggesting heaven! Mansions, or Homes. Wiping away tears. Rest. What holy joy and triumph are suggested by its crowns, and harps, and palms, and songs! What a glory is round about its throne! I. Heaven is not merely another place and other circumstances.—We often cherish the notion that, if we could get away from present scenes, we should lose our troubles. In this hope we have made earthly changes; but did we thus lose the trouble? Many say, “Oh, to get my footsteps off this sinburdemd earth!” It is, therefore, needful to impress that heaven is, primarily, a change in ourselves. Heaven is character first, then place suited to character. White robes are but the expression of moral whiteness. II. The glorified in heaven keep their individuality.—“Who are these?” Notice the minute account of the tribes, and the maintenance of tribal distinctions. This retention of our individuality is absolutely essential to a full and happy thought of heaven. Unity in variety—not in sameness—is the beauty of the earth. Single leaves; single faces. On the basis of individuality our friendships here are formed. If the redeemed have become merely spirits, our personal interest in them is almost gone. Illustrate by giving the dying hopes of Socrates. III. In heaven the connection with earth is not lost sight of.—“Whence come they?” If christ remembers Bethlehem and Calvary, well may we. This connection is to be a material element in our bliss. Earth is our battle-ground, the sphere in which we win our victories; it is not merely our place of probation. On earth we learn to estimate the rest, and prepare to enjoy the triumph of heaven. Illustrate by visits to a nation’s battle-fields. IV. In heaven all merely earthly distinctions are lost.—The angel says nothing about the host being rich or poor, noble or servile. The one characteristic is this: they are clothed in white robes, because blood-washed. The one qualification for heaven is personal interest in the work of Christ. There are two efficiencies in His work: He washes, and He sanctifies. Learn to look far deeper than earthly distinctions, and to value character. The title to the eternal feast is the wedding garment of sanctified character. V. Heaven helps us to understand and bear present tribulation.—The white-robed came out of great tribulation. There is a direct connection between “tribulation” and “heaven.” Describe the old threshing sledge. Life in general, and life for each individual, has its forms of tribulation. We want to be sure of its relation to the white robes. The Christian has two things to learn experimentally here on earth. 1. How to get his garments washed. 2. How to keep his garments clean. When he has learned both, he is fit for heaven. But he could learn neither without passing through great tribulation. Compare the things talked of in the earthly and heavenly worlds. We talk of the battle for money and position; they talk of the battle for character. We talk of the fashion of the garments that clothe our mortality: they talk of the blood-washed robes of the soul. We talk of success, and worship success; they talk of sanctified tribulation. By cherishing more of their spirit now, we shall be preparing ourselves by-and-bye to share their society. Revelation 7:13-17. The Redeemed in Heaven.—This passage exhibits to us, first, the condition of the redeemed in heaven. That condition is marked, on the one hand, by a cessation from all suffering. They have come out of great tribulation 1. They are beyond the reach of want. “They shall hunger no more.” 2. They are beyond the reach of harm. “The sun shall not light on them, nor any heat.” That condition is marked, on the other hand, by the perfection of all enjoyment. Their enjoyment is traceable to three sources. (1) They stand in the immediate presence of God. “They are before the throne.” (2) They are uninterruptedly engaged in His service. “They serve Him day and night.” (3) They have access to sources of solid gratification. “The Lamb in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them,” etc. The Lamb is here said to lead the flock; the anomaly is unavoidable. The figure is imperfect, and is sacrificed to the sentiment. The passage also distinctly exhibits the ground on which that condition is enjoyed; which is, not their having come out of great tribulation, but their “having washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Here are two things implied: the forgiveness of sin, indicated by their being washed in the blood; and the renewal of the character, indicated by their having their robes washed—robes being emblematical of character. It is their being pardoned, or justified, that is the strict and only ground of their admission to the blessedness of heaven; whilst their being sanctified qualifies them to enjoy it. Revelation 7:16. No Thirst in Heaven.—A poor mangled German one night crawled out of his hospital bed in the delirium of fever following amputation. Somebody found him in the village street, moaning and raving alternately, while he tried to drag his bleeding body over the frozen earth. A kind Frenchwoman took him in and put warm wine to his lips, which were burning, while the rest of his frame was so cold. “No, no!” the poor soldier murmured; “I am only thirsty for my home and children;” and so, with that thirst unassuaged, and that heart-touching explanation of his dark journey, he died.—“Daily Telegraph.” FOUR TRUMPET AND NOTESRev_8:1. Seventh seal.—“The main visions give us more external aspects; the interposed visions show the inner and more spiritual aspects. The main visions give us the trumpet voices of God’s manifold providences, summoning the world to surrender to Him; the subsidiary visions point to the witness and work of the true children of God in this world, and the more secret growth of the Church of Christ.”Revelation 8:2. Seven angels.—There was a popular Jewish belief in seven special angels as attendant on God (Tob 12:15). They may be taken as representing the “complete circle of God’s power in judgment.” “Symbols of that complete and varied messenger force which God evermore commands.” Seven trumpets.—“The usual emblems of war and bloodshed; they are emblems of the series of judgments now to be inflicted.” Godet regards the trumpet as “something more than the mere revelation of an event that is to happen in the future; it is a manifestation of Will, which calls for a speedy realisation.”Revelation 8:3. Altar.—In the Jewish Temple the priest was wont to burn incense, while the people outside were praying (Luke 1:8-11). Offer it with.—Lit. give, or add, it to the prayers. To use a phrase of modern Church life, the prayers are on the altar, and the angel-priest “censes the holy things.”Revelation 8:4. With the prayers.—Better “for the prayers”; i.e., to ratify and consecrate them.Revelation 8:5. Cast it.—“The burning incense may denote Christian worship. Then that which was pure worship, if defiled and degraded by human corruptions, becomes the instrument of discord and violence” (compare Exodus 9:8-10). The hot ashes are the token of coming judgments; the ashes fall, to indicate that the judgments are at hand.Revelation 8:7. First angel.—This is the aggravation of the judgments of the third seal—famine. Blood.—Here coloured rain, which dues sometimes fall, and is regarded as a sure sign of coming agricultural evils.Revelation 8:8. Second angel sounded.—The sea is smitten; its inhabitants perish; commerce is interrupted. Addition to previous calamity in the ocean sphere. Mountain.—Volcano. Bursting of volcanoes always affects the sea and shipping. Volcanoes are almost always near the sea.Revelation 8:10. Third angel sounded.—See the fourth seal. Star.—Compare what we call shooting stars. Fatal results follow from the defilement of the waters men drink. Illustrate how civilisation tends to corrupt rivers, and springs, and induce pestilential disease. A terrible mortality seizes mankind.Revelation 8:12. Fourth angel.—Judgment affecting the atmosphere. Note how dependent human health is on atmospheric conditions. (Illustrate by the plague of darkness in Egypt, Exodus 10:21-23.) The moral influence of eclipses, and other sky-portents, on the ancient mind must be taken into full account. These various plagues need not be understood in any allegorical sense; they represent the various distresses attendant (partly) on the sins of advancing civilisation, in the very midst of which, and even suffering under which, the Church of Christ has to live and labour.Revelation 8:13. Angel.—Or eagle. This is introductory to the last three, or woe, trumpets. The three last trumpets are called “the three woes.” The difference between the first four trumpets and three last appears to be this: the first concern the sphere of nature, the last the sphere of humanity. This eagle-angel’s sight of woes that were coming suggests the “eagle-like judgments which fall upon the carcase of dead nations, or a dead Society.”MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 8:1-13 Judgments Affecting Nature.—The servants of God being now secure against impending destruction, all things appear to be in readiness for the execution of justice upon the persecutors of the Church. One seal, and one only, remains to be broken of the volume in which their destiny is inscribed; and it seems as if this must introduce the consummation. It is evident that such is represented to be the impression on the great multitude who encircle the throne of God. They stand in silent and awful expectation of the sequel which must take place when that seal is broken. But the Lord is “slow to anger and of great mercy, not willing that any should perish, but that all should repent and be saved.” “Judgment is His strange work,” and delay does not prove that any uncertainty attends the final event. Besides, it had already been declared (Revelation 6:11), that some delay would take place until more martyrdoms should be accomplished. Here, then, the writer introduces various circumstances by which this is aptly brought about. The breaking of the last seal, instead of presenting a single symbol of a single event, is followed by a new series of events which is disparted into seven gradations, or stages, of accomplishment; and these are presented as becoming gradually more and more annoying and destructive to the enemies of the Church. Trumpets, the usual emblems of war and bloodshed, are chosen as emblems of the series of judgments now to be inflicted. The first four trumpets affect the earth, the sea, the rivers with the springs, and the heavens. The remaining three indicate judgments that fall more immediately upon man. The present chapter comprises the first four trumpets, and the evils which they introduce occur in the order already named. But before any of the trumpets are sounded, symbols are presented in heaven of the judgments about to take place. The supplication of the saints for the relief of the Church comes up before God, along with the incense which is presented before His throne; and the answer which will be made to these supplications is symbolised by the action of an angel, who casts fire down upon the earth, which calls forth thunder, lightning, and earthquake, all indicative of future destruction to the enemies of the Church.—Moses Stuart. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_8:1. The Way to Rest is Through Trouble.—We reach, in the seventh seal, the eternal quiet of God’s presence. Through a series of visions we have been shown that the way to rest is not easy, that we must be prepared to see the great features of earth’s troubles remain till the close, and that the children of God must, through tribulation, and even persecution, enter the kingdom of God’s peace. The seals answer the question, “Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore the kingdom?” But the kingdom will be restored. The Church may find her way a way of difficulty, delay, danger; but it will be a way to triumph. The kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of the Lord. Let the people of God go forward; let their prayers be set forth as incense; let them blow the trumpet, and summon men to repentance. They are not alone; the Lord still fights for His Israel. This is the assurance which we gather from the trumpets. In all the wondrous providences which the history of the earth discloses, we may hear the trumpet-voice which heralds the kingdom of Christ, to which the Church is bearing constant and sufficient witness (Revelation 11:3-4). The seals close with peace; the trumpets close appropriately with victory (Revelation 11:15). The visions are not scenes of events which chronologically succeed one another. The one set shows us the way through trouble to rest; the other shows us the way through conflict to triumph: the one set shows us the troubles which befall the Church because of the world; the other shows us the troubles which fall on the world because the Church advances to the conquest of the world, as Israel to the possession of the land of promise.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter. Silence in Heaven.This silence was— I. Wonderful.—Wonderful, considering— 1. The multitude present; they must have been under perfect control. 2. Their feelings. Joy and wonder yearned to express themselves. II. Instructive.— 1. Nothing done in haste, or in the heat of excitement. 2. Time for thought furnished to both friends and foes of God. 3. The shortness of the silence a sign that the work of God is not long delaying; the praises of saints are only temporarily interrupted.—Anon. CHAPTER 9 THE FIFTH AND SIXTH WOE- AND NOTESRev_9:1. Fall.—Better, “fallen”; that had fallen. A star would seem to represent a false teacher. Some think Mahomet is referred to. He claimed to have received instructions from Gabriel. And he let loose a flood of evils on the earth. But it is doubtful whether any personal identifications are permissible. The typical and symbolical character should be preserved. Bottomless pit.—Better, “pit of the abyss”; inner prison; lowest deep (Luke 8:31). The word “deep” describes the abode of the evil spirits. “This verse suggests a vast depth, approached by a pit or shaft, whose top, or mouth, is covered. Dante’s “Inferno,” with its narrowing circles winding down to the central shaft, is somewhat similar. The abyss is the lowest spring of evil, whence the worst dangers arise.”—Bishop Boyd Carpenter.Revelation 9:2. Darkened by reason of the smoke.—“The enemy is at work (in the conflict of the Church with evil), seeking to obscure the Church’s light by the diffusion of dark and low-born thoughts.Revelation 9:3. Locusts.—Not the insect, but evil spirits, whose influence and work can be represented by locusts. Godet’s note marks every point of this figure: “From out the bottomless pit, the dwelling-place of devils, issue a cloud of evil spirits, represented under the image of locusts, of brilliant and attractive colours, but armed with the sting of a scorpion, and who for five months (the time during which, in the East, the plague of locusts lasts—May to December) throw into a kind of delirium—not of joy, but of deep sadness—mankind, crushed under the weight of its struggle with the Almighty. It is as if the inhabitants of the earth were subjected to possession on a great scale, after the likeness of the single instances of the kind which we find in the gospel history.” These times of delusion, and possession—of fanatics and fanaticism—bear very seriously on the Christian Church, carrying even its members away.Revelation 9:4. Not hurt the grass.—As they were not to do the mischievous work of actual locusts, we are to understand that actual locusts are not meant.Revelation 9:5. Not kill them.—They were to produce a living misery. The poison of scorpions is so acid that it causes great agony. This is the figure here.Revelation 9:6. Seek death.—As an end to their misery.Revelation 9:7. Like unto horses.—There is an imagined likeness between the head of the locust and the mailed head of a horse. Crowns.—With possible allusion to decorations on warhorses’ heads.Revelation 9:8. Hair of women.—It is said that, in Arabic poetry, the same comparison is used of the antennæ of the natural locust. Teeth as lions.—Joe 1:6. Alford sees in this vision “a great symbolical army, multitudinous as locusts, malicious as scorpions, ruling as kings, intelligent as men, wily as womanhood, bold and fierce as lions, resistless as those clad in iron armour. The locust-like army has characteristics partly human, partly diabolical, partly civilised, partly barbarous,” It may be best to see in this description the various delusions, infatuations, fanaticisms, which have afflicted humanity, and put Christ’s Church in peril, idealised. This explains the mixture of metaphor.Revelation 9:11. Abaddon, Apollyon.—The destroyer. Not an historical person, but the representative of the destructive spirit. “The genius of destruction—bodily and spiritual.”MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 9:1-12 The Locust Symbols.—The interpretation of these visions is most difficult, but we must bear in mind that they are descriptive of that great war which the Church is waging with the world, which good is waging with evil, but the end of which, we are assured, is the victory of the good. The kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of the Lord, and of His Christ (Revelation 11:15), but during the progress of the war the issue will often appear doubtful—nay, even the triumph may seem to be in the hand of the enemy; but faith disregards the back-flowing waves, for she knows the tide is coming in. We have seen that the advance of Christianity is marked by the manifestation of evils as well as the establishment of good. Christianity does not create evils, but the very intense honesty of her principles reveals the hidden force of unsuspected corruption. Thus the faith of Christ is come to give light unto the world, but in her progress many lights fall—the false lights of world-power, world-wisdom, false religionism, heresies. The enemy, too, is at work, and seeks to obscure her light by the diffusion of low and earth-born thoughts. The smoke of the pit blackens the light, and confuses the atmosphere. Now, this obscuration is surely the diffusion on earth of evil thoughts and ideas, the spirit of falsehood and hate, hostility to truth, and emnity against God and man. The bright, clear air, made gladsome by the sun, is darkened; “all forms, that once appeared beautiful, become hideous.” In the history of advancing truth there will come times when confused ideas will darken simple truth and right, and out of the darkness will emerge strange and mongrel teachings, with a certain enforced unity, but without moral harmony—a medley of fair and hideous, reasonable and barbarous, dignified and debased, which enslave and torment mankind. The outcome of these teachings is often war and tyrannous oppression, but the sacred seer teaches us distinctly that those who hold fast by the seal of God are those who cannot be injured, for he would have us remember that the true sting of false conceptions is not in the havoc of open war, but in the wounded soul and conscience.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter. TO CHAPTER 9Revelation 9:7. Horses in Battle.—“The Mamalukes, wearing their beards long and rough, with graue and sterne countenance, having strong and able bodies, vsed such cunning in all their fights and battels that, after they had giuen the first charge with their launces, they would by and bye, with wonderful actiuitie, vse their bows and arrows, casting their targuets behind them; and forthwith the horseman’s mace, or crooked scimitar, as the manner of the battel or place required. Their horses were strong and couragious, in making and swiftnesse much like unto the Spanish jennets; and that which is of many hardly beleeued, so docile, that at certaine signes or speeches of the rider they would with their teeth reach him up from the ground a launce, an arrow, or such like thing; and as if they had known the enemie, run upon him with open mouth, and lash at him with their heeles, and had by nature and custom learned, not to be afraid of anything. These couragious horses were commonly furnished with siluer bridles, guilt trappings, rich saddles, their necks and brests armed with plates of yron; the horseman himselfe was commonly content with a coat of maile or a brest plate of yron. The chiefe and wealthiest of them used head pieces: the rest a linnen covering of the head, curiously folded into manie wreathes, wherewith they thought themselves safe ynough against any handle strokes; the common souldiers vsed thrumb’d caps, but so thicke that no sword could pierce them.”—Knolles.Revelation 9:7-10. Locusts.—These great grass-hopper-looking insects have been sad scourges to mankind, and the Egyptian plague of them has happened more than once since that early date. Africa, especially that part near to Egypt, has been at different times infested by myriads of these creatures, which have consumed nearly every green thing. The effects of the havoc committed by them may be estimated by the famine they occasioned. St. Augustine mentions a plague of this kind in Africa, which destroyed no less than eight hundred thousand men in the kingdom of Masinissa alone, and many more in the lands near the sea. It is also related that in the year 591 great hosts of locusts migrated from Africa into Italy, and after grievously ravaging the country, were cast into the sea, and there arose a pestilence from their stench, which killed nearly a million men and beasts. In the territory of Venice, in 1478, more than thirty thousand persons are said to have perished in a famine occasioned by the devastation of the locusts, and instances of their dreadful numbers have been recorded in France, Spain, and Germany. In different parts of Russia, Hungary, Poland, Arabia, India, and other countries, the locusts have come at regular intervals. In the accounts of the invasions of locusts, the statements, which appear most marvellous, relate to the prodigious mass of matter which encumbers the sea wherever they are blown into it, and the pestilence arising from its putrefaction. Their dead bodies are said to have been, in some places, heaped one upon the other to the depth of four feet, in Russia, Poland, and Lithuania; and when, in South Africa, they were driven into the sea by a north-west wind, they formed, says Barrow, a bank three or four feet high along the shore. When we consider the forests that are stripped of their foliage, and the earth of its green garment for thousands of square miles, it may well be supposed that the volume of animal matter produced may equal that of herds of large animals accidentally falling into the sea. Nevertheless, unless Augustine had been a saint, the death of so many men would have been doubted. AND NOTESRev_9:13. Sixth angel sounded.—This woe is an invasion of foreign nations coming out of the East, and causing everywhere ruin and disaster.Revelation 9:14. Loose the four angels.—These are the angels of invasion. No actual reference to the Euphrates must be sought for, but what the Euphrates symbolises. Rivers do not actually hind angels. The Eaphrates was the great military barrier between the great northern and southern kingdoms. It may symbolise the providence which kept Eastern delusions and fanaticisms from passing over to the West. When the barrier was broken a flood of evils poured into Europe. But it cannot be said that this reference to Euphrates is satisfactorily explained.MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 9:13-21 The Second Woe-Trumpet.—The aim of the plague is to exhibit the death-working power of false thoughts, false customs, false beliefs, and to rouse men to forsake the false worships, worldliness, and self-indulgence, into which they had fallen (Revelation 9:20-21). The enemy against whom these foes are gathered is the great world, lost in false thoughts, luxurious ways, dishonest customs—that world which, in the very essential genius of its nature, is hostile to goodness and the God of goodness. But the hosts which come against this sin-drowned world are not merely plagues, as famine and pestilence; they are plagues which are the result of the world-spirit, and are, to a great extent, therefore, the creation of those who suffer. For there are evils which are loosed upon the world by the natural action of sin and sinful customs. We should notice that the historical basis of the Apocalypse is the past history of God’s chosen people. The Apocalypse shows us the same principles working in higher levels and in wider arena. The Israel of God, the Church of Christ, with its grand opportunities, takes the place of the national Israel. (But its experiences are similar, and each set of experiences helps us in the understanding of the other.) The people who are victorious by faith at Jericho lay themselves open, by their timid worldliness, to the dangers of a Babylonish foe. The plague which falls on the spirit of worldliness does not spare the worldliness in the Church. The overthrow of corrupted systems bearing the Christian name is not a victory of the world over the Church, but of the Church over the world. The history of Israel is in much the key to the history of the world.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter. THE OPEN AND NOTES“AND yet, notwithstanding all these calamities—last appeals from the Divine holiness to the conscience of man—men do not come to themselves. They continue to live in their idolatrous and corrupt practices. The seventh trumpet is preceded by an episode which has specially in view the destiny of Israel in the crisis which is coming on. In order clearly to indicate that we are here dealing with a scene by itself, and, as it were, isolated in the midst of the great apocalyptic drama, the author makes it the subject of a special little book, inserted within the great one. John is to eat it. This represents the most complete spiritual assimilation. This nourishment is to strengthen him for taking up again the great prophecy relating to ‘peoples and nations, and tongues and kings’ (Revelation 10:11). The contents of ‘the little book,’ which are at once joyful and bitter are comprehended in Revelation 11:1-13 (Godet). The ‘little book’ certainly indicates a supplementary prophecy, introducing a fuller account of the rise, progress, decline, and restoration, of Christianity, preparatory to the revelations of the seventh trumpet. This account is presented in a twofold form. 1. In the discourse of the angel (Revelation 11:1-13). 2. In the visions seen by St. John, Revelation 12:1-14” (W. and W.).Revelation 10:1. Another mighty angel.—This angel comes as the representative, and in the power of, Christ, to remind God’s secret ones that Christ is with them “all the days,” and will surely instruct them as to their conduct amid these calamities. Clothed with a cloud.—The token always of the Divine presence. Rainbow.—Revelation 4:3. Token of covenant. Sun, etc. See figures of chap. 1.Revelation 10:2. Little book.—Contrasted with the book of Rev 5:1. The attitude of the angel symbolises his taking possession of the whole world. The contents of the little book are partly given in the following chapter.Revelation 10:4. Write them not.—The idea is that some things are only for those who have ears to hear. St. John may hear and understand, but it is useless to expect others to understand. Compare our Lord’s words, “I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.”Revelation 10:6. Time no longer.—Not “finite time,” as opposed to “eternity.” The idea of time here is delay. There shall be no time lost before judgment shall fall. The suffering saints had cried, “How long?” They were bidden to wait awhile. Now they are told that they will have to wait no longer.Revelation 10:7. Mystery of God.—“The whole of His plan and of His counsel concerning this earth in its present state of discipline and of imperfection—all that God means to do upon it and towards it, even till that which we read of as the “time of the end” (Daniel 12:4-9).Revelation 10:9. Eat it up.—“Thoroughly consider and digest it,” “make its contents your own” (see Ezekiel 2:8; Ezekiel 3:3). Belly bitter, etc.—The first effect of being admitted to share in the Divine counsels is delightful, but when those counsels are known and realised, they may cause grave distress and anxiety; the Christ-like sorrow for those against whom God’s wrath is revealed, who “knew not the time of their visitation.” The devouring of the book is a figure for the thorough and eager perusal of it. What the seer learns by the reading is matter both for joy, and grief: for joy, because of the good tidings respecting the faithful disciples of Christ; of grief, because of the evils which were to come upon many who would persevere in their wickedness.Note on the “Little Open Book.”—It is that gospel which is the sword of the Spirit, the weapon of the Church, that Word of God, open to all, hidden only from those whom the god of this world has blinded. The fallen powers may bear the key, and let loose darkening clouds of confused thought and unworthy teaching; the outer courts of the Church may be overcast; but unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness, and God’s Word has risen with new light and power upon the bewilderments and glooms of the age.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter. THE FATE OF AND ITS AND paragraph, Revelation 11:1-13, gives the contents of the “little book,” which are in part joyful and in part bitter. The marking off of a portion of the temple answers to the sealing of the hundred and forty-four thousand in chap. 7. Here there is a symbolical reserve of a portion of the temple from impending evils, as there a reserve of an elect portion of God’s people. “Just as those were sealed to mark them for ever as the heritage of God, so is the temple measured as destined to remain His domain for ever. The temple, together with the court, is here the emblem of the Jewish nation, one part of which will remain faithful to its God—that represented by the temple measured by the angel, with the altar and its worshippers; and the other part, carnal Israel, will give itself up to the spirit of apostasy which will carry captive the Gentiles.”Revelation 11:1. Reed.—Canon: the word may mean staff, pen, or light measuring rod (Ezekiel 40:3; Revelation 21:15). Angel stood.—Omit; but assume the speaker to be he who gave the rod. Temple, etc.—Treat as symbols of the people of God within the Jewish people. Temple with all its courts symbolises the whole Jewish people. The measuring was for the reserving of this portion.Revelation 11:2. Without.—Outside, or beyond. Here the ordinary worshippers assembled. Leave out.—Despise, neglect, take no trouble with. Gentiles.—Probably alluding to Romans. Tread under foot.—Luke 21:24. Forty and two months.—See Revelation 11:3, Revelation 12:14; and compare Daniel 7:25; Daniel 12:7; Daniel 12:11. Not an exact, or literal period; to be treated typically, of a prolonged, but strictly limited, time. “It is the pilgrimage period of the Church, the period of the world’s power, during which it seems to triumph.”Revelation 11:3. Bishop Boyd Carpenter thus explains the aim of the present vision: “It explains that in the great progress towards victory the Church itself will suffer, through corruptions and worldliness, but the true temple—the kernel, so to speak, of the Church—will be unharmed and kept safe in her Master’s hands. But the position of this hidden and enshrined Church will not be one of idle security. In that temple will be reared those who will witness, undaunted and undefiled, for their Lord; throughout the whole of that chequered period of profanation and pain there will never be wanting true witnesses for righteousness and faith.” Two witnesses—Not to be regarded as actual persons; compare Zechariah 4:6-7. The idea is that there should always be some, even in a decaying, imperilled Church, who, in the special power of Divine grace, should witness against prevailing evils. In every age God has His specially appointed and sustained witnesses. “As God raised up prophets in the ancient Church, to witness against the idolatrous corruptions of religion, so there should be some in every age to testify against the iniquity and idolatry of their times.Revelation 11:4. Candlesticks.—Lamp-stands, to hold up the light of God’s claims and truth.Revelation 11:5. Will.—I.e,. wishes to. Fire.—Compare Jeremiah 5:14; 2 Kings 1:10. Evidently Old-Testament individuals and narratives suggest these figures.Revelation 11:6. Shut heaven.—As Elijah. Power over waters, etc.—As Moses.Revelation 11:7. Beast.—A familiar symbol for any noxious, powerful, and dangerous enemy. “A beast-spirit, which is in utter hostility to the Christ-spirit” (see Daniel 7). Kill them—This typities the temporary triumph of worldliness over the witnesses to high spiritual life. “Men can silence, can conquer, can slay the witness for a higher, purer, nobler life. They have done so.” But men may always reckon upon the resurrection of God’s witnesses. He never leaves Himself without a witness.Revelation 11:8. Great city.—Jerusalem. See Isaiah 1:10; Jeremiah 46:16; Ezekiel 23:8.Revelation 11:11. Stood upon their feet.—Compare Ezekiel’s vision of the “valley of dry bones.”Revelation 11:15. Seventh angel sounded.—The angel who will sound the trumpet of Christ’s final triumph, or the trump of doom. This trumpet, or third woe, has reference to the appearing of the Antichrist. Revelation 11:14 takes up the thread of the general vision. Godet says: “We shall see that it is the reign of Antichrist which brings upon men the last calamities, represented by the seven vials; hence it follows that these latter are included in the seventh trumpet, just as the seven trumpets formed the contents of the seventh seal. There is great art in this way of picturing history as a series of periods, each of which arises out of the last term of the period which precedes it. In this simple image is expressed one of the profoundest laws of the progress of the world.”In Revelation 11:15-18 the end of the great struggle is anticipated, and the mingled rejoicing in heaven, and woe on earth, is indicated. With this assurance of final victory we are prepared for all the terrible scenes that make up the sublime conflict of the ages. It must be constantly kept in view that the one aim of St. John is the comfort and assurance of God’s people in their persecution, peril, and fear; therefore it is that these recurring visions of the triumph of some, and the final triumph of all, are given.Revelation 11:15. His Christ.—Compare “Lord’s anointed” (Luke 2:26).Revelation 11:16. Sat before God.—Better, “which are before God, sitting upon their thrones.”Revelation 11:17. Omit here “art to come.”Revelation 11:19. Ark of His Testament.—It is almost always better to read “covenant.” The third woe brought on the inhabitants of the earth is the ruin and downfall of the Antichristian kingdom; but this is only a woe from the earthly point of view. It is a cause of rejoicing in the heavenly spheres.MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 11:1-19 The Prophecy of the Two Witnesses.—Here comes in another interposition—viz., that in respect to saving a part of the temple, like to that in chap. 7, with respect to saving Christians from impending evils. Christians, indeed, have already been made secure in the case before us. But the close of the Jewish or Mosaic institutions is near at hand. Shall all which pertained to these now go to ruin? Or is there not something that constitutes the essential unity of religion under both dispensations which is worthy of preservation, and which, therefore, must be preserved? If the ground taken by the author of the epistle to the Hebrews is correct (which we may well believe) then the basis of Judaism and Christianity is the same. The introduction of the two witnesses has been the occasion of much controversy, chiefly because effort has been made to identify the persons referred to, and because the symbolical use of the number two has not been recognised. Stuart explains this chapter, and the meaning of these witnesses, in the following way: “In Revelation 6:11, the martyrs, supplicating for retribution upon the enemies and persecutors of the Church, are told that they must wait for awhile, until the number of martyrs becomes augmented, and the iniquity of their persecutors comes to its full completion. Against the judgments of heaven which are to overtake the latter, Christians in general are secured by the seal of God impressed upon their foreheads (chap. 7). Here, in chap. 11, which brings us to the close of the first catastrophe, we have a picture of the renewed and bitter efforts of the enemies of the Church to destroy it, even at the period when destruction was impending over themselves. In this way the reader is prepared to acquiesce in the doom which awaits them on the sounding of the seventh and last trumpet. Nor is this all. The long-suffering of God is thus displayed towards His once beloved people. They are exhorted to repentance while destruction is impending, in order that they may escape. Prophets, furnished with miraculous powers, like those of Moses and Elijah, so as to give full proof of their Divine mission, are sent to them. But they will not hear. When the time fixed by heaven for their probation is past, those prophets are given up to the persecuting fury of their enemies, and they fall a sacrifice. Yet the cause which they advocated is not rendered hopeless by this. It is not even weakened; for the martyrs are raised from the dead, and ascend in triumph to heaven. In other words, ‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,’ for the Church becomes victorious by the deadly assaults made upon it. The enemies of religion may, indeed, bring upon themselves swift destruction by their malignity; they do so. But the Church will rise and triumph, and enjoy continued Divine protection and favour amid all the trials to which it can be subjected. That literally two, and only two witnesses were to appear in these times of peculiar wickedness; that they were to be literally raised from the dead, and ascend to heaven, etc.;—we need not strive to disprove in commenting on such a book as the Apocalypse. But why are there two witnesses mentioned. Partly, because two are a competent number to establish any matter (see Deuteronomy 17:6; Deuteronomy 19:15; Numbers 35:30; John 5:30-33; Matthew 18:16). The apostles and disciples were sent out in pairs. Compare also the combinations, Moses and Aaron, Elijah and Elisha, Zerubbabel and Joshua, Peter and John. The meaning is that a competent number of Divinely commissioned and faithful Christian witnesses, endowed with miraculous powers, should bear testimony against the corrupt Jews, during the last days of their commonwealth, respecting their sins. All beyond this is mere costume and symbol.” Godet’s explanation runs along the same lines, but brings out some fresh and suggestive homiletic points. “The last signal—that of the seventh trumpet—is preceded, as the opening of the seventh seal had been, by a scene of an encouraging tendency—that of the two witnesses. This episode refers, as did the former of the two which prepared for the seventh seal, to the destinies of the Jewish people. This subject is so important that it is treated here in a little book, which forms, as it were, a parenthesis in the great book. It is the announcement (already anticipated in the prophetic vision itself) of the conversion of Israel. The faithful Jews, together with the hundred and forty-four thousand (chap. 7) are seen prostrated in the holy place before the golden altar (the symbol of Judaism) in an ideal temple; for the material temple is no longer in existence. They are awaiting the new revelation, which is to carry them on a step farther, into the most holy place. The mass of the people are given up to the Gentiles, who tread them under foot. The author here reproduces the exact words of Jesus: ‘Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.’ John does not, any more than Jesus, use the expression, ‘to tread under foot,’ in a literal sense. The subject in his mind is that of the moral domination of the Gentiles over Israel, and of the apostasy, becoming ever more and more general, of that ancient elect people, in abjuring the Divine principle of their national existence, and basely seeking to identify themselves with the heathen nations amongst whom they were scattered. Thus, whilst the elect part of the nation, by their unshaken fidelity, prepare themselves for a sacred mission, the mass of the people—that constitute the outer court given up to the Gentiles—degrade and materialise themselves more and more to the level of the heathen. In the midst of this defection appear—as did in ancient times Enoch in the midst of the degenerate children of Seth, Moses before Israel corrupted by Egyptian idolatry, Elijah amongst the ten tribes who had become almost completely Paganised—the two witnesses, whose preaching, as well as their dress and acts of power, preach repentance to Israel. But—and this is surprising—the beast now appears upon the scene, though his coming has not yet been described. The reason is that the contents of the little book constitute a special prophecy within the great one. We shall see later on why the Antichrist thinks it expedient to leave Rome, his capital, and to take up his abode at Jerusalem. The two witnesses are killed by him, but they come to life again miraculously. The city is smitten with an earthquake, and one part of the inhabitants are swallowed up by it. The remainder of the people, and particularly those who have been specially reserved for these supreme moments, give glory to God, and are converted to Him. Accordingly, we shall find, in chap. 14, the hundred and forty-four thousand surrounding the Lamb between the time of the Advent and that of the destruction of the Antichrist. This picture is well adapted to encourage the Church in presence of the terrible conflict she is about to be called on to sustain. She knows now beforehand that she will have within humanity itself a powerful ally—that is, the people of peoples, of which the elect part will occupy a central place in the Christian army, and form a kind of bodyguard of the Lamb.” NOTES AND SERMON Rev_11:15. Christ’s Final Triumph.—The book of Revelation is difficult to interpret. No principle of interpretation has yet gained universal acceptance. Some see in it mere history—blended human and Church history. Some would have us find chiefly the history of the Church, and only indirect references to nations or individuals. Some regard it as a story that is past. Others regard it as even now in its unfolding. And some treat it as the history of spiritual truth in its contact and conflict with error. Our difficulties arise from the fact that we have no wide and comprehensive view of God’s administration of the world, and purpose concerning it. We do not enter into God’s thought in guiding His world on its course through so many ages, sustaining it through so many changes, and peopling it with such an ever-teeming multitude of living beings. There must be some sublime end towards which God, by processes which we call slow, is ever moving. As surely as geological science unfolds the story of a series of material changes, running on through uncounted ages, preparing the earth for the abode of man, so surely is the history of our earth the story of great moral and spiritual changes and progressions, preparing man for some higher and sublimer destiny. And as we stand wondering over that record of geological eras, amazed that God should take so long to prepare the earth for man, so do we stand wondering over these moral and spiritual ages, these succeeding “dispensations”; this apparent ebb and flow, these triumphs and failures, these boundings, and walkings, and creepings, out of all which God is preparing man for the glory which is to be. The great end can never be lost out of God’s thought. So far as we can discern it, reading it under the symbol and imagery that veil, while they disclose, its mystery, it is this: the full restoration of the whole moral world to harmony with Himself. He is working to secure that all the wills of all moral beings should freely choose to be in accordance with, and submission to, His Divine Will. All humanity is to repeat after the Christ-man, “Thy will be done.” All the changes of the world’s history have been working towards this sublime end. Patriarchal simplicity, Jewish ceremonial, Pagan idolatry, civilised learning, unities of commerce, warrings of nations, blendings of races, emigration of surplus populations, and the special forces of Christianity and the Christian civilisation—all these things may be thought of as winds from various quarters, blowing at various times, and in various degrees, pressing on the sails of the great vessel of humanity, and bearing it forward towards the love and service of the One Living God. If we are to get full possession of this great thought of God concerning humanity, we must first see that all—every one—of God’s human creaturos must be a subject of interest to Him. You may say, “But surely no one ever doubts that God ‘maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust?’ ” We readily admit it as a general interest to create, preserve, feed, and clothe; but what many of us have yet to see is, that God has a saving interest in every human creature He has made—an interest of grace. He “willeth not the death of a sinner, but that he turn from his wickedness and live.” We gain new views of God’s dealing with the world when, emancipated from old prejudices, we can say, with St. Peter, “Now I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but, in every nation, he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted of Him”; or with Paul, who could stand before a company of Pagan Greeks, and argue with them on the ground of the universal Fatherhood. “God, that made the world, and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands.… He hath made of one blood all nations of the earth, … hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us; for in Him we live, and move, and have our being—as certain, also, of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ ” Which of us is so fully in fellowship with God’s great purpose that he could stand before the superstitious Hindoo, the degraded savage from the islands of the seas, the wretched African from whom well-nigh the semblance of humanity itself has passed, and, without a faltering in his voice, assure them all that they were gathered up into the kindly thought of God, objects of the saving will of the great God that made them. Brethren in the one Divine creation, God wills them to be brethren too in the one Divine redemption. Till we can do that, without a question or a doubt, we prove that we are as yet out of sympathy with God’s thought for humanity. This world becomes a new world, this life a new life, moral influences new powers, when we can stand beside God and, as He does, take humanity itself into the great grasp of our love. “Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die, saith the Lord of Hosts, and not that he should return from his ways and live?” But if it is God’s will, God’s purpose, to bring the world into fellowship with Himself, the means employed must be such—wholly such, and only such—as He Himself is pleased to choose. Those means may be, to a large extent, beyond our full comprehension. Some we may have to use; some we may a little understand; the whole will be beyond us. We are sometimes found foolish enough even to test God’s ways by our ideas concerning the best ways. We say, “These cannot be God’s ways, because they are not such as we should have taken.” We even venture to test God’s plans by their seeming results, and say, “These cannot be God’s ways, because they do not seem successful.” Some say, “At the present rate of conversions, how long will it take to convert the world?” Men will try and prove to us that the increase of conversions is not equal to the increase of population, and therefore the present means, the preaching of the gospel, cannot be God’s means for converting the world. The answer to such strange calculations is very simple. We are only servants; we are not let into the secrets that belong to the Master. Servants have nothing to do with results and issues of work, only with faithfulness to duty. Moreover, we cannot measure results as God can. We could not make any true or trustworthy sum upon such a subject. And the uttermost apparent failure would not blot out one word of that command which ever animates God’s servants to consecrated toil, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature: he that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be condemned.” God might, conceivably, have healed up the wounds of humanity by one touch of His mighty hand; He might have restored to harmony all the notes of creation, set ajar by sin, as in a moment; He might have pieced up again, set in order, all the broken fragments of the moral creation by one sublime exertion of His power. Did an evil force enter our social system, and disturb the relations of the planets, God’s flats could, in a moment of time, destroy that force, and restore the perfections of movement and of place. But God has no occasion for doing even that. He works in nature in accordance with the laws He has Himself impressed upon the creatures He has made. Instead of making a home for man in a week of seven days, He guided the working of the laws he had fixed in the original elements, and wrought a final witness as the issue of the conflicts and the unfoldings of ages. It may be conceivable that God could have forced our moral nature into a complete subjection to His will (I cannot conceive it, but perhaps some persons can); God could have driven sin away from His world with a breath. He has not, however, done so. He has been pleased persistently to act in the line of those laws according to which He created man, and especially in the line of that law, of personal liberty—free will, we call it—which He made man’s supreme dignity. So far as we can read the purpose of God in dealing with our world, He intends to bring men back to His love and favour entirely by the use of moral motives, moral influences. He means to move the heart of man by such exhibitions of Himself, and of His gracious relations, that the very heart of the world shall be won to Him. That is the meaning of the fact that all the moral influences affecting man for God seem to be gathered up into the one manifestation of God in Christ to the world. Moral force reaches its climax, its supreme development, in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. By that cross God touches the very inmost of the human heart. He speaks therein to man by the mightiest power that can reach him, the power of a self-sacrificing love. Jesus declared the sublime moral power that streams forth from Calvary when He said, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.” Now, if that is God’s highest power to move human hearts, and to draw men unto Himself; if God has, as it were, gone beyond Himself in the sacrifice of His Son; if that is His sublime Evangel, His gospel for the world, His way for winning souls;—surely we cannot be wrong in preaching Christ the wide world over; we cannot be wrong in telling every human brother of the Lamb God has provided for a sin-offering. We cannot be wrong in sending out heralds to the most distant and most degraded places of the earth, to lift up, in sight of men everywhere, the cross of Jesus. Result or no result, success or no success, God surely knows the wisdom and grace of His own plan; it is enough for us, if, swayed ourselves by the moral power of the cross of Calvary, we give, we labour, we pray, that the whole world may one day be uplifted in the eternal light and love of that cross. The day is coming—certainly coming—towards it all holy living and all holy toiling are most positively tending—when the magnificent song of our text shall be sung by a ransomed and redeemed universe—“The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.” This glorious hope has always been held before the Church, and it has exercised a most important influence on all its life and labour. That gospel which is the highest form of moral influence, gathers into itself, and uses up, all kinds of moral influence. It sways by the force of gratitude, deepening ever the service to which it calls by the thought of redemption, and ransom, and purchase by precious blood. It moves by personal affection; constraining by the force of our love to One whom we increasingly esteem as “the chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.” It excites the holiest ambitions; holds forth as inspiration the possibility of the noblest achievements; offers work of the highest character, and bids us aim at the spiritual conquest of the whole world. It touches our faculty of hope, paints for us a final victory in comparison with which the victories of all earth’s battle-fields are but as children’s soldier table-play—a victory so sublime in its character, and so far-reaching in its issues, as shall make reasonable to our view all the years of waiting, all the faintings of hope deferred. The Church of Christ has found the blessing of this great hope for herself, for the nourishment of her own spirit, and the strengthening of her own faith. So far as the Church has been a living Church, it has found the value of this great hope. The more the Church rejoices in its privileges, the more does it long that its King should receive His full royal rights. When the Church has been flagging and failing, its renewal has come in visions of the glory of the day that is coming. Dimmed by the foul breath of the evil rife in an age covered over with crowding life-cares, the Church has known the dimness pass, and the covering be lifted off, when it caught sight again of the glory of that day when “the kingdoms of this world shall have become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever.” The Church has found the blessing of this hope in its times of decay and persecution. That is, whenever it has been a suffering Church. The story of Christ’s Church has been no even tale, no simple on-moving, and ever-growing towards its end. Sometimes the river has overflowed its banks, and hurried along with the swift current of revival and holy zeal; sometimes the waters have lain very low in the bed, and seemed scarcely to care to move onwards. Those were days of sluggishness and decline. Sometimes the full stream has moved slowly, noiselessly along, exhaling on either side its fertilising moistures. At times the kings of the earth have favoured Christianity, and it has had its days of prosperity and world-triumph. And, yet again, it has been a despised thing; it has known the holier days of trial and sorrow, of martyr fires, and wearying prison, and torturing rack. What has kept alive the faith, the fervour, the steadfastness of holy men and women in those suffering days? Surely it was their vision of the Lamb, who goeth forth conquering and to conquer. And not in her times of persecution only; in those other times of suffering, when the tides of evil rose high, and were driven on with fierce winds, when the Church seemed helpless to resist the desolating encroachments, and could only, with an infinite sadness, watch the sight—humanity drifting away into error, and superstition, and pride, and woe. Those are the most trying times for Christ’s Church. Then its faith is most severely tested. What holds the Church to its allegiance, save its persistent hoping for the day when the “kingdoms of this world shall have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ”? Who that knows those wonderful letters written with such overflowing emotion by Samuel Rutherford but will remember how, in the shadows of his prison-house, his very soul thrilled within him in longing for the full royal rights of that King whom he so quaintly, but so tenderly, calls “his sweet Lord Jesus”? The Church has found the blessing of this hope in its days of toil and sacrifice. That is, whenever it has been a labouring Church. It has, indeed, always been a labouring and an aggressive Church. They would have us believe, in these days, that our forefathers were wrong in expecting the world would be converted through their sanctified labours. If they were wrong, it was a strange sort of wrong, for it exercised a most ennobling influence upon them. They are a good company. We may well join them. There is Paul, not counting his life dear if only he can get opportunities for lifting up Christ. Peter declaring he cannot but speak out the things he has seen and heard. Austin visiting the then benighted isle of Britain, so that he might lift up Christ to our forefathers. Luther, braving the opposition of those in authority, in rendering his testimony for Christ. But time would fail if I tried to speak of Huss, and Wickliffe, and Savonarola, and Bernard, and Whitefield, and Wesley, and Haldane, and Hill, and Moody, and all the host of devoted missionaries, who have gone forth, consecrating all life, all powers, to the service of their redeeming Christ. Witnesses for Christ when the witness was denied. Preachers of Christ when the Word fell on stopped ears. What was it sustained them in thus labouring, and ceasing their labour only with their life? It was the hope of that coming day—always coming—when the “kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.” Do you think that we, in these latter days, can afford to lose out of our lives the force, the impulse, the thrill, of this Divinely assured hope? Are we so strong that we can live our Christian lives, and render our Christian witness, well without it? In this cold, calculating, business age of ours, can our Christian life be vigorous and bright, and pure, without the passion of love and anticipation kindled by such a hope? In these days, when really devout and spiritual living is half scorned, can we be “steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord,” without the cheering of this hope? Longing to take our places among the Lord’s labourers; to be co-workers together with God in His redemptive scheme, light-holders for God; Safed cities crowning hill-tops, and guiding ever pilgrim spirits home to God. Longing to be among those who would have all men know the royal claims of Him whom we call “Lord of lambs, the lowly; King of saints, the holy”; among those who would lift up the cross in sight of a dying world; how shall we renew our zeal, refuse to be weary in our well-doing, lay ever more talent, more money, more time, more prayer, upon the altar of service, save by keeping ever in view the glory of that time when the “kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.” We cannot do without these rapturous visions of the latter-day glory. The intensity, the holy passion, the consecrated zeal of a Christian life, fade out if we lose sight of that future. God has given us wonderful pictures of the scenes that are to be. Pearly gates, golden streets, waving palms, white-robed hosts; and then, reaching up beyond sensible figures into higher moral suggestions, God gives us the song of the days that are to be, when the “kingdoms of this world shall have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.” Perhaps these are the last days. The world’s coronation of Jesus may be nearer than we think. And what a day that will be! What a day for toilers, and for givers, and for men of prayer! What a day for the martyrs who have died for Christ! What a day for the missionaries, who have given their lives to witnessing for Christ! What a day for those who have been looking for its appearing in the only true way of looking, by earnest and faithful discharge of present duty for Christ’s sake! Sung by the chorus in the great oratorio, the words of our text have thrilled our hearts. But what shall be the chorus of the ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands? What will be the blended harmony of prophets and kings, and magi, and millions of the unlettered from east and west and north and south! Will you have a place in that great coronation of Jesus? Will you have a believer’s place? Will you have a worker’s place? Will you have a song of your own? Will you have a band round you of those whom you led to Christ? The day is coming. The glints of the dawning are already in the east. Soon the cry will go up, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.” THE MISSION OF CHRIST’S CHURCH AND ITS GREAT AND NOTES“IN the set of visions now before us, the Apocalypse unveils the spiritual aspects of the conflict, that we may know that the issue is not between Christianity and un-Christianity alone, but between Christianity and anti-Christianity. Hitherto we have seen the more outward aspects of the great war. Now we are to see its secret, hidden, spiritual—yes, supernatural—aspects, that we may understand what immeasurably divergent and antagonistic principles are in conflict under various and specious aspects in the history of the world” (Bishop Boyd Carpenter).Revelation 12:1. Woman.—Symbol of the kingdom of heaven. The Church conceived under the figure of the Virgin Mary, as mother of Messiah. Clothed with the sun, etc.—Compare Son 6:10. (Simcox thinks the Jewish Church, the ideal Israel, is meant.) Mystically treated, the work of the Church is to bring forth Christ to men, and never to be satisfied until Christ is formed in them. Exactly this its work is ever in the resistance of the devil, but in the assistance of God through His angels.Revelation 12:3. Red dragon.—A half mythical kind of serpent, combining strength, subtlety, and power to inspire terror, in doing malicious and evil work. As the woman is an ideal, so is the dragon; he is the personification of the subtle evils that afflict the Church, and hinder her from carrying through her mission. Seven heads and ten horns.—Implying that all kinds of unsanctified power are embodied in him, and represented by him.Revelation 12:4. Drew.—Draweth. Stars.—Represent leaders of men, men of prominent influence. These are led away by the subtleties of the evil power. Stood before the woman.—Figuring the intense keenness with which evil ever watches its opportunity. Some of the ideas here are evidently taken from the jealous schemes of Herod the Great, in connection with the infant Messiah.Revelation 12:5. Brought forth a man-child.—Refer tins both to Christ, and to the Spirit of Christ in the Church. Caught up unto God.—This seems to refer to the historical Christ.Revelation 12:6. Place prepared of God.—Compare flight of Virgin Mary to Egypt, which may be the suggestion of this.Revelation 12:7, War in heaven.—Nothing to do with Milton’s fall of the angels. It is something happening since the Incarnation, and consequent upon it. Michael.—Daniel 10:13; Daniel 10:21; Daniel 12:1. The special patron, or guardian angel, of the people of Israel. What we have here is a pictorial representation of the spiritual war actually being waged upon the earth. It is pictured in heaven in its completeness, and so we are cheered by the assurance that Michael is going to conquer. Compare the mission of pictorial prophetic anticipations in the Old Testament.Revelation 12:9. Old serpent.—Perhaps with allusion to Genesis 3:1. Devil.—Adversary. Satan.—Deceiver. The two words suggest the power and subtlety of evil. “Satan is thrown down from the position which he is still holding, and cast upon the earth; and he it is who, in order to avenge himself, calls forth from the depths of the seas—that is, from the midst of the nations—Antichrist—his instrument for waging a final conflict against Christ.”Revelation 12:12. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth—Simcox suggests that the idea may be this: “The Incarnation, as it broke the otherwise invincible power of sin, so made sin more deadly, if it remains in spite of Christ’s coming.” It certainly refers to the intenser features of the conflict of the Church with evil, when evil failed to destroy the power of the Son of God, even when it secured His death. The present fight with evil is altogether more subtle and more perilous than Christ knew, or waged, while He was actually on earth.Revelation 12:13. Persecuted the woman.—Which we have seen is the symbol of the Church in the world.Revelation 12:15-16. These figures have not been satisfactorily explained. Bishop Boyd Carpenter, treating the verses mystically, says: “By the flood, or river, we understand all great popular movements against Christianity: the earth swallows up all these; they diffuse themselves for a time but mother earth absorbs them all. The eternal laws of truth and right are ultimately found stronger than all the half-truths, whole falsehoods, and selfishness, which give force to such movements.”Revelation 12:17. Remnant of her seed.—From attacking the Church as a whole, the power of evil turns more hopefully to deal with sections and individuals. Antichristianism has had its power on sects, parties, and persons, but it has failed in every attempt to ruin the one, universal, spiritual Church of Christ.MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 12:1-17 Victory over the Dragon.—To understand this text (Revelation 12:11), we must gain some general idea of the chapter to which it belongs. Bishop Boyd Carpenter is our best guide in the endeavour to find the spiritual meanings and suggestions of the book of Revelation. He points out that the book is not a continuous history, but a review of the great struggle between evil and good, made over and over again, from different points of view. The visions are in series. One set is connected with the “seals,” another with the “trumpets.” In this chapter a distinct set of visions is commenced. “It deals with the spiritual conditions of the great war between evil and good; it disrobes the false appearances which deceive men; it makes manifest the thoughts of men’s hearts; it shows that the great war is not merely a war between evil and good, but between an evil spirit and the spirit of God, and that, therefore, the question is not only one between right and wrong conduct, but between true and false spiritual dispositions. Men look at the world, and they acknowledge a kind of conflict between evil and good; their sympathies are vaguely on the side of good; they admire much in Christianity; they are willing to think the martyred witnesses of the Church heroes; they think the reformers of past ages worthy of honour; they would not be averse to a Christianity without Christ, or a Christianity without spirituality. They do not realise that the war which is raging round them is not a war between men morally good and men morally bad, but between spiritual powers, and that what the gospel asks is not merely a moral life, but a life lived by faith in the Son of God, a life in which the spiritual dispositions are Godward and Christward. The Apocalypse, in this set of visions, unveils the spiritual aspect of the conflict, that we may know that the issue is not between Christianity and un-Christianity, but between Christianity and anti-Christianity.” The chapter opens with the vision of “a woman clothed with the sun.” It is the symbol of the bride, the Church of Christ. She is represented as suffering in child-birth. It is the symbol of the continual work of Christ’s Church. That work is to bring forth Christ to men, and never to be satisfied till Christ is formed in them, until the Spirit of Christ, and the teaching of Christ, and the example of Christ, are received, loved, and obeyed, and men transformed into the same image, “even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” But the work of the Church would not be unhindered. There would be constant opposition. The spiritual enemy would be ever on the watch, by subtle or by violent means destroying the likeness of Christ wherever it was seen. There appeared a dragon. “The dragon is that fabulous monster of whom ancient poets told, as large in size, coiled like a snake, blood red in colour, … unsatiable in voracity, and ever athirst for human blood.” It is the emblem of the evil spirit, the devil, the perpetual antagonist of good, the persecutor of the Church in all ages. His many heads and horns and crowns suggest the manifold forms and phases of his malicious influence. This dragon is watching, and whenever the woman, the Church of Christ, brings forth any good, the dragon is as keen in his efforts to destroy it as Pharaoh was to kill the Hebrew male children, or Herod to slaughter the babes of Bethlehem. The vision of the man-child caught up to God reminds us that the Divine defence of all good is even more sure than the active enmity of evil. The flight of the woman brings before us the persecutions which the Church undergoes, because of her active effort to bring forth good. Then the vision changes, and we have pictured the great fight between Christ and the dragon, under the figure of Michael and his angels. This is to explain how it is the spirit of evil is so resolutely attacking the Church. He has attacked in vain the Church’s Head and Lord. He has been conquered. He has been driven out. The “Prince of the world came to Christ, and had nothing in Him.” So, turning aside from Christ, the dragon attacks Christ’s Church. But there is every hope for the Church. That victory of Christ’s means this: “Now is come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ.” The dragon may try to devour all the good brought forth by Christ’s earth-bride, the Church. He will fail. The Church will overcome him, even as Christ has overcome him. The Church will overcome the dragon of each age, and of all ages, “by the blood of the Lamb,” or because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of the testimony. Who is he that condemneth, when Christ hath died? What power can the accusations of the adversary have when the Lamb of God hath taken away the sin of the world? and when we have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus? And their victory is, on their side, due to the firmness with which they stood to the word of their testimony, witnessing ever for Christ and truth, and not counting their lives dear unto themselves. Christ’s martyrs are many more than those who die in prison, at stake, or on scaffold, for Him. “He may bid us die for Him; He does bid us live for Him. If we do not the one—the less—we may be quite sure that we shall never rise to the other—the higher and the more glorious.” I would impress on you, therefore, that the conflict with evil is really a spiritual conflict, carried on within us. It is represented and illustrated by the conflict with outward evils which we see being waged in the large world-spheres. If we are Christ’s, then the Christlike is being formed in us. We are bringing forth things which bear Christ’s stamp. Good and right and gracious things are like our children. And just as there are perils surrounding infant life, foes and diseases watching to destroy this life, so the dragon watches every birth of goodness. We must accept the fact, but we will in no way be daunted by the fact, for we shall overcome because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of our testimony. The secrets of overcoming are our Inner Life, and our Open Confession. I. Our inner life.—“Because of the blood of the Lamb.” “Christ, who is our life.” It is important that we notice how the child-figure is sustained. The Lamb is represented as being the Bride’s husband, the Church’s husband, and we are to think of His life as being in the Church’s child. And it is this thought which gains expression in the figures of the text. It is quite a favourite figure with St. John, recurring again and again in his writings. That very striking sentence uttered by John the Baptist to his disciples, as he pointed to the young man, Jesus of Nazareth—“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world!”—entered into the apostle’s very soul, and gave him his best thoughts concerning Christ, especially when he learned how to get at the deeper, mystical meanings of the sentence. We may accept the figure of the Lamb as suggestive of the gentle, submissive, and loving character of Christ: but we cannot be satisfied with that only; neither John the Baptist, nor John the Apostle, nor any other Jew, could keep from the figure its associations of sacrifice. A lamb to take away sin must have meant, to them, a lamb offered as a sacrifice for the removal of sin. But there are still other ideas suggested when prominence is given to the “blood of the lamb.” For the “blood is the life.” Blood shed stands for life yielded. This the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews states for us in a very impressive manner. “For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling them that have been defiled, sanctify unto the cleanness of the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish unto God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” By the expression “the eternal Spirit” we are to understand the sovereign freeness of His own will; the voluntariness of His full self-surrender. We have, then, two supreme truths to receive. Christ’s life is given to us: that is another truth, and the one we want for our text. Christ in you. Christ formed in you. This will at once suggest to us the meaning of this passage. We shall overcome that dragon who is ever ready to devour all the goodness we can bring forth by the virtue of the blood of the Lamb, the Christ-lite that is in us. But have we entered into this higher apprehension of Christ, who is our life? The apostle Paul could say, “I live, yet not I; Christ liveth in me.” That is the assurance of victory over all the forms, and all the powers, of evil. II. Our open confession.—“The word of their testimony.” Life only keeps healthy when it finds expression and exercise. The first suggestion of these words may be of martyrs, such as Polycarp, who, when importuned to blaspheme the name of Christ, answered, “Fourscore years have I served Him, and shall I now blaspheme my King and my Saviour?” At Eastbourne, near the pier, they show three iron stakes fixed firmly in the sand, now very old and rusty, and the one farthest out to sea very nearly rusted off. Round those stakes gathers a martyr-story. A father and mother and their little daughter, because of their religion, were tied to those stakes when the tide was out, and were told that, if they did not renounce their faith, they would be drowned by the rising tide. But they remained firm. The father, being the farthest out, was drowned first; then the mother; and then the priests gathered round the little girl, who was chained to the stake nearest the high-water mark, and told her, as the waves were dashing up around her, that if she would renounce her religion she would be saved. Sue said, “No, no, I will not deny my Saviour; I will die for Jesus; He died for me.” That was the “word of her testimony,” whereby she conquered the dragon. But much of our earth-struggle stops short of martyrdom. In firm standing by the right, in all earnest expressions of Christian energy and activity, we find our power to overcome. The “word of our testimony” may be said to include (1) our firm resolve daily renewed, and (2) our personal experience, which gives to our word the force that was in the words of the once blind man, when he said concerning his Healer, “Whether He be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.” Look, then, once again at the points which have come out to view. Christ’s Church is ever bringing forth goodness, as it were Child-Christs. The dragon of evil is ever on the watch to devour every Child Christ of goodness. If we save the child it can only be by the power of the Christ-life that is in us, and by the power of the testimony for Christ that we persistently make as the natural and proper expression of the Christ-life. That life of Christ in us is the assurance of our final triumph over all evil, and in anticipation of that full victory which is certainly coming, for which we wait and for which we pray, we sing in our souls, comfort one another, and say, “Now is come the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Christ; for the accuser of our brethren is cast down.” “And I saw,” says St. John, “an angel coming down out of leaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand; and he laid hold of the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the abyss, and shut it, and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more.” NOTES AND SERMON Nature Serving Christianity.—“The earth helped the woman,” who is regarded as the symbol of the Church of Christ. Nature helps Christianity in various ways. By— I. Its grand revelations.—It reveals that there is— (1) God; (2) law; (3) mediation; (4) responsibility; (5) mystery. II. Its moral impressions— 1. Sense of dependence. 2. Reverence. 3. Contrition. 4. Worship. III. Its multiplied inventions.—Men, by studying nature, have attained to the arts. There is (1) merchandise; (2) the Press; (3) painting; (4) music; (5) government.—Dr. Thomas. The War in Heaven.—The appearance of Antichrist is preceded by a combat waged in heaven (perhaps in the heavenlies or the spiritual spheres) between Michael, the champion of God, the representative of monotheism—that is the meaning of his name, “who is like unto God”—and Satan, the seducer of men, who entices them into idolatry, into that worship of imaginary beings which is, at bottom, only the adoration of Satan himself, and of his angels. This combat represents the final conflict between monotheism and Paganism. Satan loses his place in the celestial spheres, from whence he had been ruling over men’s hearts, and making himself worshipped as God. He is cast down to earth; that is to say, his reign in the sphere of religion comes to an end. The diabolical superstitions of Paganism disappear from human society. But a certain degree of power is still left to this enemy in the terrestrial sphere. Only he cannot exert it directly; and, just as evil spirits require the body of those who are possessed as a medium for their action, so Satan needs a man wholly given up to him, to enable him to realise the plans of vengeance which he is revolving in his heart. And the coming of the Antichrist is the means which he employs for realising this threat. THE FIRST AND NOTESIN this and the preceding chapter the three chief adversaries of the real kingdom of God in the world are described. The first is the dragon, or Satan. The second is the power of the world striving to withdraw our thoughts from the unseen and eternal, and to confine them to the seen and temporal. The third is the spirit of carnal religiousness, like that which so bitterly opposed Jesus in the days of His flesh, and sought to substitute its superficial and hollow forms for the depth, the sincerity, and the freedom, of a true life with God. These two last agencies always work together, and help one another against Christian truth. Nothing so welcome to the mere politicians of this world as a faithless Church which will help them to use men for their own selfish ends. Nothing so welcome to a faithless Church as the honours, the riches, and the spoils which the mere politicians of the world have to bestow. In this part of the Apocalypse, therefore, the passion of the seer burns with its intensest flame. The degenerate Church is represented under the figure of Babylon. In quick succession the contents of the bowls are poured out upon her, until she is cast, like a great mill-stone, into the sea; and company after company of those who had been enriched with the abundance of her dainties lament, with piercing cries, her disastrous and irremediable fate? (W. Milligan, D.D.).Revelation 13:1. Beast.—Stuart says this beast rising out of the sea is a symbol of the Roman imperial and persecuting power; the beast which rises out of the earth (Revelation 13:11) is an emblem of the domination and persecution of the Pagan priesthood, or religious power; and these two united, with Satan at their head, use all their efforts to crush the Church, wherever and whenever they can attack it. The first sentence of this verse should read, “and he” (i.e., the dragon) “stood upon the sand of the sea.” Two monsters, one more brutal, the other more subtle, seem to rise at his bidding. Compare Daniel 7. Name.—Should be “names.”Revelation 13:2. The special features of three wild beasts are combined, as in Daniel 7:4. “The leopard (panther), lion, and wolf (bear), were symbols of luxuriousness, cruel ambition, and hungry and heartless avarice, which oppose men and nations when they seek the Holy Hill, where the light of God ever rests.” We need not find either imperial or papal Rome in the beast, or the false prophet. The beast represents the civil power, whenever it is used for the persecution of the Church. The second beast, or false prophet, represents the religious power whenever it is antagonistic to the spiritual life of the Church. They typify the civil and sacerdotal powers. “Antichrist represents political despotism, and the false prophet spiritual error.”Revelation 13:3. Wounded to death.—Some refer this to the death of Nero, and to a popular notion of the day that he would reappear. Godet says: “We see here one of the earlier forms of anti-Divine power on the earth, which, after having been put down by an act of the Divine power, reappears suddenly in the person of the Antichrist himself, in such a manner that the kingdom of the latter seems to be only the restoration of that ancient power.” “The spirit of the wild beast is adored wherever worldliness prevails. There is nothing so successful as success, and the homage of men is more often paid to power than to principle.”Revelation 13:6. And them.—Omit “and.” “Even them” would be better.Revelation 13:7. Overcome them.—In the sense of crushing them, not in the sense of making them give up their allegiance to God.Revelation 13:8. Book of Life.—Revelation 21:27.Revelation 13:10. Read, “if any one (is) for captivity, into captivity he goeth. The patience and faith of the saints are to be shown by their submitting to death or captivity’.Revelation 13:11. Another beast.—See on Revelation 13:1. Like a lamb, etc.—The idea of hypocrisy to serve base ends is suggested. He looks like Christ, and speaks like Satan.Revelation 13:13. Great wonders.—Matthew 24:24; 2 Thessalonians 2:9. The figures of this and the following verses are taken from the demand to worship the image of the Emperor.Revelation 13:17. Number of his name.—There have been hopeless disputings in the endeavour to identify this beast with a person; he really stands for a principle or polity, but the principle has been embodied and represented, over and over again, in the Christian ages. Some read six hundred and sixteen, but the number cannot be made to answer to any known name without considerable manipulation. It is enough to say that the Roman power is a supreme representation of the principle.MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 13:1-18 The Two Beasts.—The first beast is the great force of the world-power, which, in every age, has been antagonistic to the power of right. The wild beast is always the figure of the kingdoms of this world; i.e., the kingdoms which are founded on passion or selfishness. The spirit of arrogant self-sufficiency characterised all the world-powers. The second beast is less monstrous in appearance. He somewhat resembles a lamb; he rises from the earth, and not from the sea; his power lies in deception (Revelation 13:13-14), as well as violence; he seems to possess more supernatural power; yet the whole of his work is directed to magnifying the first beast (Revelation 13:12). Do not these features lead to the conclusion that the principles which the second wild beast supports are the same as those on which the former wild beast acted, but that he supports them with more subtlety, intelligence, and culture? He is called the False Prophet. The force and appropriateness of this designation become more apparent when we notice that the features which are assumed bear a deceptive resemblance to those of a lamb. The advancing intelligence of the world, its increase in knowledge and wisdom, the wider diffusion of culture and thought, produce a change in the general fashion of life; but the spirit which animates Society is unchanged. The second wild beast is that change which is a change of mode, but not of spirit; a change of manners, but not of heart. There is more refinement, more civilisation, more mind, but it is still the world-power which is worshipped; it is self-seeking adoration of pleasures, honours, occupations, influences, which spring from earth and end in earth—the pursuit of powers which are worldly.… All who use their knowledge, culture, wisdom, to teach men that there is nothing worthy of worship, save what they can see, and touch, and taste, are acting the part of the second wild beast. And, be they apostles of science, or apostles of culture, or apostles of logical immorality, or apostles of materialism, if their teaching leads men to limit their worship to the visible and tangible, they are making men worship the beast, who is the adversary of the servants of the Lamb.—After Boyd Carpenter. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_13:18. The Number of the Beast.—The various attempts made in recent years to solve this famous Apocalyptic riddle seem to show that students are as far as ever from agreement. Wey-land finds the number in the phrase, “Cæsar of the Romans,” written in Hebrew characters; Schmidt and Vischer recognise it in the name “Nero,” so written; Pfleiderer, in the phrase, “Nero Cæsar”; and Voelter in “Trajan Adrianus.” Erbes, Spitta, and Zahn, who follow Irenœus in reading six hundred and sixteen instead of six hundred and sixty-six, identify the beast with Caligula, that is, “Gaius Cæsar”; but this result is obtained by the use of Greek, not Hebrew, letters. After eighteen centuries it is still uncertain whether any one has yet arisen with sufficient understanding to count the number of the beast. A New Suggestion Concerning the Number.—It may seem a wild idea to make another attempt to explain the six hundred three score and six of Rev 13:18; but I hope I may be read before being condemned. It seems to me, then, that Hengstenberg makes a very wise suggestion on the subject, but does not draw the right conclusion. “Here,” he remarks, “we must not wander after our own imaginations The seen of the Apocalypse lives entirely in Holy Scripture. On this territory, therefore, is the solution of the sacred riddle to be sought.” He then goes on to find it in the name of Adonikam, whose “sons,” or rather descendants, in Ezra 2:13, are given as six hundred sixty and six in number. But may I call attention to that number in? 1 Kings 10:14, where it represents the number of talents of gold which came to Solomon in one year? The luxury and extravagance thus brought in corrupted the heart of the king himself, who, considered the model of wisdom, gave way, led astray by wealth and its consequences, to wickedness and idolatry in his old age. May not the number in question there represent worldliness and covetousness, of which Christ our Lord taught us so especially to take heed and beware? Additional probability is given to this by the preceding verse, where the votaries of this are described as the worshippers of the beast and of his image.—W. T. Lynn, B.A. The Number Symbolical.—I am disposed to interpret this “six hundred and sixty-six” as a symbolical number, expressing all that it is possible for human wisdom and human power, when directed by an evil spirit, to achieve, and indicating a state of marvellous earthly perfection, when the beast-power has reached its highest development, when culture, civilisation, art, song, science, and reason, have combined to produce an age so nearly resembling perfection—an age of gold, if not a golden age—that men will begin to say that faith in God is an impertinence, and the hope of a future life a libel upon the happiness of the present. Then will the world-power have reached the zenith of its influence; then will only a wisdom descended from above be able to detect the infinite difference between a world with faith and a world without faith, and the great gulf which the want of a little heaven-born love can fix between an age and an age. Some find the answer to this number in Nero Cæsar; others in the papacy.—Commentary for English Readers, in loc. CHAPTER 14 THE VISION OF THE OF AND we may be assured of the safety of God’s faithful ones, even during the time of the triumph of the beast and false prophet, we are shown the sealed ones all secure and in the charge of the Lamb; and we are further assured that seven angels are ministering to the protection and comfort of the imperilled saints. The angel of good news (Revelation 14:6-7); the angel proclaiming the doom of the great world city (Revelation 14:8); the angel who warns men against the mark of the beast (Revelation 14:9-12); the angel of comfort (Revelation 14:13); the angel of the wheat harvest (Revelation 14:14-16); the angel of the vintage (Revelation 14:17-20); the angel of fire (Revelation 14:18).Revelation 14:1. Father’s name.—Read “His name and His Father’s name.”Revelation 14:4. Virgins.—The term is used figuratively, not literally. They were virgin souls who had not bowed the knee to the image of Baal: and so here they were virgin souls who had refused to offer incense to the bust of the emperor.Revelation 14:6. Everlasting gospel.—With idea of its universal applicability. Everlasting and eternal are constantly used to indicate quality.Revelation 14:8. Babylon.—The type of all cities that stand in the pride of self-reliance, and so put dishonour upon God. “Is not this great Babylon which I have builded?” “Babylon is clearly an emblem of some principles which have been more or less accepted by all nations, and which will more or less involve all in the consequences of her fall.”MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 14:1-12 The Bible for the World’s Salvation.—The portion which is most suggestive for the purposes of the preacher is that comprised in Revelation 14:6-7. See a first truth. It is not the Bible as a record of the gospel that saves the world. The gospel saves the world. The gospel is God saving. I. What is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God?— 1. Good news of God Himself. Good, because no other religion proclaims it. It is the news that God is Love, and that we may use the Father-name for Him, and the fatherly relations to represent Him. 2. Good news of God’s gift. “Gave His only begotten Son.” A man, given to men. A son, given to prodigals. We have to “believe the love God hath to us,” as shown in His “unspeakable gift.” II. Wherein lies the saving efficacy of this gospel?— 1. In its universal adaptation. It is a salvation, not for what is peculiar to some men, or some nations, under some unusual circumstances, but for the woe that is common to all men, which we put into the word “sinners.” Other religions are limited to particular tribes or nations. Illustrate gods of hills and gods of valleys. Distinct deities in different parts of India. 2. In the power of God that works through it. We must never separate agencies from the Divine life that is in them, and think that agencies can save. (1) The Bible cannot save. (2) The gospel cannot save. (3) Faith cannot save. God saves, through faith, by means of the gospel, which is carried to men in the Bible. 3. In the attraction of Him who is the essence of it. There must be personal soul-relations with Christ, the Living Saviour, if there is to be salvation. And these are brought to men through the attractive power which Christ exerts when “lifted up” into their view. III. Where shall we find the gospel enshrined?—In the Bible. As the Jews, carried and preserved the primary truths of the unity and spirituality of God for humanity, so the Bible—the whole Bible—carries and preserves the gospel—the primary truths of Divine redemption—for humanity. The Bible is not a book of science, or of history, or of social principles; these are but its framing, and setting, and illustration. The one concern of the Bible is Religion. It tells us what God’s relations with man have been. That is the very heart of its history. It tells us what man’s relations with God should be, and may be. That is its message. It is summed up in the words, “He that hath the Son hath life.” Men have done the Bible great wrong by taking it to be what it never proposed to be, and never could be. Then to scatter abroad the Bible, in every land and every tongue, is for the angel to fly abroad with the everlasting gospel. There are two ways in which the angel—as the symbol of agencies—carries the gospel. 1. It is spoken by the servants of God. At first the message was spoken by aposties and teachers. It was not written and collected together so as to be at the command of evangelists and missionaries, for more than two centuries. At first men were possessed with the Word, and spake what they had in them. And this is the deeper truth, and holier power now. The true speaker is the man who has got the Word in him. Send that man anywhere, and he is an angel, having the everlasting gospel. 2. It is distributed as the book which we call the “Word of God.” And we can readily recognise the wisdom that lies in the employment of this agency. (1) Its attractiveness. (2) Its variety. Suits all ages and all abilities. (3) Its adaptation to the world, through being Eastern in form. (4) Its uniqueness, as compared with the Bibles of other religions. Compare Vedas, Koran, Book of Mormon, etc. But these two—the speakers and the Word—are really one, seeing that the speakers only speak the Word. Always the Word is the agency, whether it be heard from the lips or read from a book. And we must face the fact that what a sinful, dying world wants is that gospel which is in the Bible, and which may come to men either as spoken or as read. Both ways we may think of when we sing: “Fly abroad, thou mighty gospel,Win and conquer, never cease.”For the gospel does everywhere—all the world over and all the ages through—prove itself able to meet and satisfy all kinds of spiritual needs that humanity can feel. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_14:1. Marks of Servitude.—It was a custom among the ancients for servants to receive the mark of their master, and soldiers of their general, and those who were devoted to any particular idol, the mark of that particular idol. These marks were usually impressed on their right hands, or on their foreheads (Revelation 13, 16), and consisted of some hieroglyphical character, or of the name expressed in vulgar letters, or in numerical characters. Galatians 6:17 : “The marks of the Lord Jesus”. What these marks were, the apostle explains by the stripes, etc, mentioned in 2 Corinthians 11:23. There is a beautiful allusion to the stigmata—marks which were sometimes fixed on servants and soldiers, to show to whom they belonged. How strikingly do these two remarks illustrate the scene of Jesus the Lamb of God, the all-conquering Redeemer, standing as the great Captain of Salvation at the head of His brave army of saints on Mount Sion! “I looked, and lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with Him an hundred forty and four thousand, having His father’s name written in their foreheads.” Revelation 14:6. The Gospel of Retribution.—That a Divine judgment impends over all the actions and generations of men; that the hour of judgment is sure to strike at the due moment, let men play what tricks they will with the hands of the clock, and sure to be heard over all the world, let men close their ears as they will; that this fact of impending and inevitable judgment is an eternal or œonial gospel, veritable good tidings of great joy to every nation and tribe, tongue and people;—all this is at once of supreme importance and supreme interest. A gospel for all men in all ages must be a gospel for us. A gospel weighted by no miracles and no dogmas, a gospel which is open to no question and no doubt, but is felt to be true always, and everywhere, and by all. What, then, is this gospel? It is the gospel of retribution. We are to fear and glorify God because the hour of His judgment is come. This is the truth which the angel, flying in mid-heaven, between God and man, proclaims today, and always has proclaimed, and always will proclaim. This is the truth which St. John calls “an eternal gospel”—not the gospel, and still less the only gospel, but still a veritable gospel, glad tidings of great joy, to us and to all mankind. If the law of retribution is familiar to you, is it nothing to you to be assured, and assured on the highest authority, that what you admit to be a law is also a gospel? When we are told that God’s judgments on sin are an eternal gospel, a gospel for all beings in all ages, what is implied? This is implied, and there is no truth more precious and more practical: that the judgments of God are corrective, disciplinary, redemptive; that they are designed to turn us away from the sins by which they are provoked; that the message they bring us, and bring from heaven is: “Cease to do evil; learn to do well.—S. Cox, D.D. The Everlasting Gospel.—Only one gospel is everlasting, which can pass from country to country, from continent to continent, and be at home everywhere; which time cannot wither nor custom stale; which has the safe and certain reversion of all the future. Why is this? What makes the gospel of Christ everlasting? I. It is a message to what is universal in man.—Religions have been the religions of single tribes, or single countries, and have not been adapted for other parts of the world. But the glory of Christianity is that its teaching is addressed to what is most characteristic in human nature, and absolutely the same in all members of the human race, whether they be rich or poor, whether they inhabit one hemisphere or the other, and whether they live in ancient or modern times. You have only to glance at the most outstanding words of the gospel to see this. E.g., 1. The word “soul.” Jesus went down to the child, the beggar, the harlot, the weakest and most despised members of the human family, and when He was able to find, even in them, this infinitely precious thing, it was manifest that He had discovered the secret of a universal religion. 2. The word “sin.” Speak to the conscience, and every human being feels that He is the man. 3. The word “eternity.” “God hath put eternity in their heart.” When the hand of the gospel touches this string of the harp of human nature, it responds. On this preaching the union of Christians must be realised. II. It is a message to what is peculiar in man.—It can meet, as they rise, the changing conditions of society; it has an inexhaustible facility of adaptation to the wants and the circumstances of every individual whom it addresses. Some “preach to the times,” others “preach for eternity.” The two things are not inconsistent. His gospel has a word in season for every condition of life—for the little child, the young man in his prime, and for old age; a word for the multitude, and for the few. We have not exhausted Christ, and we have not exhausted the gospel of Christ. The pulpit is too far away from the individual. We must come nearer to men, and acquaint ourselves with the details of their experience. Sympathy is the key which opens the heart. Professional authentication sometimes only creates obstacles; but all difficulties melt away before the force of love.—James Stalker, D.D. AND NOTESRev_14:13. Blessed are the dead.—This relieves anxiety concerning all who are taken out of the warfare before the victory is fully won. They will share all the rewards, and their life-witness and service will be in no wise forgotten. Recall the fear with which St. Paul deals in the epistle to the Thessalonians, that those who died before Christ came would be placed under some special disadvantages.Revelation 14:14. Son of man.—So figured as presiding over the final judgment of humanity. The visions of a harvest and a vintage (Revelation 14:15-20), typify the time, now nigh at hand, in which God will gather in His own, and will trample His enemies in the winepress of His wrath.MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 14:13-16 Revelation 14:13. The Harvest of the Earth for Keeping.—This is the link between the earlier and later visions of this chapter. Many of the Lord’s redeemed ones had already been gathered in, out of their earth-persecutions. Many were still left under the fiery trial. But they were keeping steadfast and faithful, while the gospel was being proclaimed unto “every nation and tribe and tongue and people.” They are to be cheered and encouraged by the vision of the hour when the angel may declare that the earth-story is complete, and the judgment of God has come. In that day evil, however mighty it may seem to have grown, will fall, suddenly, irretrievably, even as Babylon fell in the day of its pride. In that day the patience of the saints will gain its full recognition. The Divine acceptance comes to the “sheep of the right hand,” “they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” But this final day of God’s judgment is no present thing; it is a vision of the far-away. It may even be turned wrongly, and made a discouragement to Christian souls, for it may seem as if all the blessedness of that day were reserved for those saints who were alive when the great judgment-trumpet should be sounded. The writer checks himself to say a gracious and comforting word to those who might be troubled with such thoughts and fears. The harvest of the earth is a long-continued process. The angel of the harvest is the death-angel, as well as the angel of ingathering for those who are “alive and remain at the coming.” Therefore this comforting word may be spoken—nay, write it down, for it is certain; write it down, for the saints of all the ages will want the gracious assurance. Not only blessed are the dead which have died in the Lord, whom you have seen in vision harping in the glory, and singing their new song, but blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth, from this very hour right away to the judgment day. “Yea, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.” They are all stored safe in the garner of God, until the harvest of the earth is complete. Then, having given this comforting assurance, the writer can return upon his visions of the end of all earthly things—his visions of the harvest-day of God. It must prove to be a double harvest. Christ Himself will see to the ingathering of the saints. His angels will execute His will upon those who have refused His gospel, kept their sin, and worked against all the gracious purposes of His love. I. The first-fruits of God’s harvest of the earth.—“The dead which die in the Lord.” We may think of heaven as the great storehouse, granary, of God. His harvest is the harvesting of years. His grain ripens in all the ages. The reaper we call death cuts down the golden grain; but no stalk is lost—every one is borne into the garner, and safely treasured there until the harvest work is complete. It is but a resting time for the saints; they never pass out of God’s memory and regard. “Their works do follow them,” and all will be taken into due account in the great day of Divine appraisement. It is a most helpful way in which to think of our dead, and of our own dying. They are but first-fruits of harvest, carried in early to God’s barn. They are only waiting awhile, until the day when the earth-fields can be swept once for all, and God’s harvest of the earth be complete. II. The remainder of God’s harvest of the earth.—A day must come when the arresting hand must be placed on the earth’s story, the stalks may no longer stand in the earth-fields. All must be gathered in. That is presented in symbol in the visions of the angel offering the sickle to the Son of man, reminding Him that the harvest is almost over-ripe, and must at once be reaped. Of this we are assured: the succession of the dying will not be continuous. The number of Christ’s redeemed ones will one day be completed. And what He will do for them in the great forever they shall know when the last stalk has fallen before the reaper. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_14:13. The Blessedness of the Dead.—What this text means in its fulness of application no one now knows. But its suggestions are manifest and manifold. I. God’s saints, at death, enter into rest.—Rest—not, indeed, from service, but from labour—which implies the disagreeable, exhausting, discouraging side of toil. In the higher sense of service they rest not day nor night, serving God in His temple. But the hindrances without and within all cease, and the service is unmixed delight. II. Their works do follow them.—This, in a threefold sense, is true: 1. Follow them in witnessing to their fidelity. 2. Follow them in contributing to their reward. 3. Follow them in perpetuating their influence for good.—Anon. Dying in the Lord.I. What is it to die in the Lord?—One has said that it “implies a previous living with Him.” Living with Him involves the exercise of certain elements. These are found in Revelation 14:12. 1. Faith: “The faith of Jesus.” No man can live with or die in the Lord without faith in Him. With it he can live and die triumphantly. 2. Obedience: “They that keep the commandments of God.” Living with God is obeying God. The obedience of faith—the obedience that is vitally connected with faith—enters into the preparation for a happy death, or death in the Lord. II. Why are those who die in the Lord blessed or happy?— 1. The happiness of contemplation. The Christian has a bright prospect. He can look forward, not to a dark uncertainty, but to the pleasures of home. When dying, one said, “I wish I had the power of writing or speaking, for then I would describe to you how pleasant a thing it is to die.” Another, “I have experienced more happiness in dying two hours this day than in my whole life.” 2. The happiness of release from toil, sorrow, pain. Rest—“That they may rest from their labours.” Christians are not free from trials; it is not according to the Divine plan that they should be. But those trials cannot pass beyond the gate of death; and when the Christian passes into the beyond he leaves his trials. 3. The happiness of being with Christ after death. The psalmist said, “In Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” Again, “I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness.” Paul said, “I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better.” Great joy here, but fulness of joy with Christ.—Anon. “The Blessed Dead.”—No book is fuller than this Apocalypse of the struggles and victories of the Church on earth; but it also opens a door into heaven. It shows that heaven is not all future, but, as it were, contemporary with present history, and bound to it by the closest ties. Messengers pass and repass; tidings come and go; and the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne presides alike over time and eternity. I. The answer which the text gives to the question, How is the heavenly blessedness attested?—We all profess to believe in the reality of heaven; but why? 1. There is the evidence from, miracle, or the presence of the supernatural in the form of power. This great apostle heard a voice from heaven. But before this, John had looked on One whose life was crowded with miracle. He had witnessed His risen glory as He came back from heaven, and His ascension glory as He returned to heaven. If miracle could vouch for heaven, its existence was confirmed. 2. The testimony is, in itself, Divinely credible. Its internal character vouches for its authority. 3. There is a living and. experimental evidence of the reality of heaven. It is written in living epistles, written, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God. II. How is the heavenly blessedness secured?— 1. The doctrine here is that the title to heaven depends on faith “in the Lord.” 2. But there is also a preparation for the heavenly state by holy obedience. “They rest from their labours,” implying that they prove their faith by works. III. How is the heavenly blessedness enjoyed?— 1. Heaven is the rest of the worker. It is not sloth, torpor, or inactivity; but while there is no apathy there is rest to the body and the spirit. No more out in the billows, toiling in rowing, when the wind is contrary, but in smooth water, and with the ripple breaking on the shore. 2. Heaven is the continued influence of the work. “Their works do follow them.” Every moral act, truly good, will last for ever. The simplest act of self-denial for Christ’s sake, the mother’s faintest prayer, record themselves in the soundingboard of eternity, and never die away.—John Cairns, D.D. Revelation 14:15. The Harvest of the Earth.—The expression is a singular and, indeed, a striking one. As his fields are to the farmer, so, we are permitted to think, the whole earth is to God. The farmer works for a harvest of his fields and trees, and God may be thought of as working for the harvest of the whole earth. God’s work in the world is like ploughing, sowing, weeding the fields. God’s work has its reward when He carries home the last loaded wain, and His garner is filled with the good corn of the earth of humanity. Can we follow out the figure, and find in it the suggestion of helpful truths? I. God prepared the earth for His seeding.—Scientific men may wrangle over the ages and order of creation. It is enough for us to know that, at a given time, God had prepared the earth to be the scene of a moral trial for a new race of beings. It is full of interest to inquire into all the mystery of nature. Of its study man never tires. But it is of far greater interest to observe in how marvellous a way the earth was adjusted and adapted to the beings who were to be placed upon it. The relativity of creation to a being with five senses, and these particular five senses, has never yet been shown with the precision and fulness that it demands. The farmer cleans, and ploughs, and manures, and harrows, and ridges, his fields, in precise adaptation to the crop that he intends to grow upon it; and earth is the prepared field of God, made ready for His sowing. II. God seeds His prepared earth with men.—Scattering the seed all over the earth, that man’s probation may be carried on under every varying condition of soil, and landscape, and climate, and relationship. God keeps on seeding the earth with men; every seed with a great possibility in it; every seed set where its possibility may freely unfold, and where the God provided influences all tend to the nourishment of all its best possibilities. Men, men everywhere, are the seed of God. They are quick with Divine life, and sown in the earth to grow into a harvest for God. III. The harvest God seeks from His seeding is character.—God sows His earth with moral beings, in the hope of reaping moral character. But what is moral character? It is the proper fruitage of the earth-experience of moral beings. But can we understand it a little more fully than that? A moral being is one that can recognise a distinction between good and evil, and, when the distinction is seen, can choose for itself which it will have, the good or the evil. But a moral being must be put into such circumstances as will offer it the choice between good and evil. And substantially the test amounts to this: good is doing what is known to be the will of the Creator; evil is doing the will of the moral being himself, when that is known to be not the will of the Creator. The picture-scene in the Garden of Eden is the typical trial of moral beings. But what we need, for our present purpose, to see with clearness, is that when, under enticement of the senses, the moral being has chosen the evil, he is said to have fallen, but he has really started the possibility of moral character, which is the issue of the conflict in which the will, biassed by the indulgence of the senses, is brought back to the choice and obedience of God’s will, and recovered from all the sad experiences and conditions resulting from the choice of evil. The story of a life is the story of that conflict. It is the growth, through the long months, of God’s seed into the “full corn in the ear” of established moral character. It is the unfolding of what God would gather in from His seeding of men, the righteousness of the accepted will of God. One thing only does man take through the great gates—the character that he has gained. It is the full ear that heads the stalk, and ripens for the reaper. IV. God has anxious times while His seed of men is growing into His harvest of character.—Every blade that breaks the earth in the farmer’s field has to fight for its life with varied foes: insects, worms, mildew, rust, living creatures, varying temperatures, crowding weeds; the growth of every blade to stalk and ear is a hard-won victory. The stalk can do its best, and be its best, only at the cost of unceasing struggle and watchfulness. And the field of earth is but a type of the world of men. Every character is the product of a stern experience, the issue of a hundred fights; a triumph from an unceasing struggle. Think of each man’s life-story, and this is true. Think of the histories of nations, and this is true. Think of the story of humanity as if it were the story of one man, and it is God’s Adam, planted in God’s earth, and growing amid the thousandfold influences for good and evil, through all the long ages, and showing at last the golden grain of moral character, rich and ripe, that can be gathered into God’s garner, as the glorious reward of His toil; For over every phase and feature of the struggle in every man out of which character is born, God presides. The problem of each man’s dealings with his surroundings—helpful be they, or injurious—God is intensely interested in. He is anxious as the farmer is anxious over his growing blades. He is anxious as the parent is anxious over the unfolding of character in his child. He may let the struggle alone. He may interfere. But we may be sure that He is deeply concerned. We speak of the “making of a man,” or the “making of a nation.” The one thing of profoundest interest to God is the making of characters in His great earth-fields. Be it so; then a fact of infinite sadness has to be faced. The issue is disappointing, for God’s harvest-hope of reaping character from His sowing of men is only partially fulfilled. AND NOTESRev_14:20. “The number here, four multiplied into itself, and then multiplied by a hundred is symbolical of a judgment complete and full, and reaching to all corners of the earth.”MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 14:17-20 The Harvest of the Earth for Crushing.—The harvest of the earth is not only the ingathering of the saints. It includes the ingathering of those whose earth-lives have been a failure: who have died in their sin; who stand on the earth, in the great reaping day, in their sin. The farmer of the yearly harvest gathers in much besides good wheat: wheat that has gone bad, weeds, and chaff even, with the good wheat. If there is a barn for the good wheat, there is a fire in the field for burning up the bad, the mock wheat, the tares, and the weeds. And this seems to have suggested to the writer his vision of the other side of the last great harvest scene. But, in accordance with the symbolic ideas of the times, he takes the yield of the vines to represent the evil side of earth’s harvest. It is a simple and natural symbol. The corn of the fields is the source of renewed life and health: it is the fitting symbol of the good results of earth’s endeavour. The fruits of the vine have been, in all ages, since Noah stepped forth upon the cleansed earth, the fruitful source of vice, and self-indulgence, and misery, to men. So the clusters of the vine are represented as cast into the winepress, and trodden under foot; crushed down; made by stern discipline to become something other than they are. The men who have come through their earth story self-indulgent, defiant of God, and refusers of His holy gospel, must be gathered in with the stern sickle of the angel, cast like grape-clusters into the great winepress of the wrath of God. What can there be for them in that great day but “indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil?” I. They who die in their sins are kept for their judgment.—In the indulging of the larger hope that one day all men will be saved, it is forgotten that, through the long ages, men have died in their sins. There is a fact which must be taken into full account. Thousands of completed earth-lives have proved moral failures. Thousands of men now exist somewhere who resisted every good influence, lived without God and without hope in the world, and died in defiant rebellion against the God who made them and the Saviour who redeemed them; crimson-stained in their souls with all the pollutions of earth. They must be in keeping against their judgment day, as truly as the blessed dead are in keeping for their reward. Do we not needlessly confuse ourselves, by regarding the earth-trial of humanity as a perfect and final trial? We expect the results to be perfect, and then set ourselves to invent theories concerning the future, which can have no value, because they have no foundation. We want the issue to be that everybody comes out righteous at last; and Scripture gives no ground whatever for such an interpretation. Our Lord’s parable of the tares should destroy any such ideas once for all. What we need to see is that man is a limited and imperfect being, placed in limited and imperfect circumstances; subjected to a limited and imperfect trial; and the issues will bear the character of the probation, and will include both failure and success. It is not, indeed, a question of it will. It does. Men do come through the probation of the earth-life evil still—worse evil for the misused probation. There must be a judgment day which they are awaiting, when the Divine dealing with their failure must be made known to them and to all; and God must be clearly seen to stand for ever for the right and against the wrong. He must do something with the vintage, as well as with the grain, of the harvest of the earth. What He will do no man knows, or can know. If the discipline of the earth-life has failed to accomplish its due result, they must go into the great winepress of the wrath of God, which must be punishment, need not be destruction, and may be the sterner, harder discipline in new and other spheres. II. They who stand in their sins are ready for their judgment.—The vision seems to deal with those who are “alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord”; but, by reason of their self-willedness and rebellion, have no interest in, only the dread of, that coming. They are represented by the hanging clusters of over-ripe grapes; their cup of iniquity is full. The angel is bidden, Send forth thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe. Then the number of the wicked, the number of life-failures, will be complete, as the number of the saints—the life-successes, will be complete; and the story of the earth may be wound up. Can we find more fitting words in which to express the result of it all, so far as that result can come into human ken, than the solemn words of our Divine Lord, “And these shall go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life”? Can we do any more than wonder, with a great wondering, what can be the lot of the wicked, when that lot is figured so impressively as in this passage: “And the angel cast his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vintage of the earth, and cast it into the winepress, the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and there came out blood from the winepress, even unto the bridles of the horses, as far as a thousand and six hundred furlongs”? Whether, then, we die in our sins, or stand in our sins when God’s harvest-day dawns, there is no escaping the just and fiery indignation. That day will overtake some as a thief. “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” “Then, O my Lord, prepareMy soul for that great day.O wash me in Thy precious blood,And take my sins away.” THE ANGELS OF THE SEVEN AND pledges and tokens of Divine retribution being thus given, the execution of it is speedily to begin. Seven angels are commissioned to go and inflict upon the beast and his coadjutors the seven last plagues, so called because the wrath of God is accomplished by them.Revelation 15:1.—No sooner is this command given than the glorious host of martyrs around the throne of God, whose blood had been shed by the beast, sing the song of anticipative triumph, and praise the justice of God, as about to be displayed in the overthrow of the beast. The temple in heaven is then opened, and the seven angels, charged with the execution of Divine justice, go forth from it in splendid apparel. One of the four living creatures which support the throne of God gives each of them a vial, or cruse (bowl), filled with material to execute the wrath of God. The temple is immediately filled with smoke, rising from the fire which burns fiercely round the Al mighty, as the emblem of His anger (Psalms 18:8), and also of His power to destroy. By reason of this, no one is able to enter into the temple, and, of course, no one is permitted to intercede for those who are about to be punished. Punishment, therefore, is certain and inevitable (Moses Stuart).Revelation 15:2. Sea of glass.—(See Revelation 4:6). Gotten the victory.—R.V. “come victorious from.” Omit “and over his mark.”Revelation 15:3. Moses … Lamb.—Types of material and spiritual redemption. Of saints.—Should read either “of the nations” or “of the ages.”Revelation 15:6. White.—Or bright.MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 15:1-8 Final Judgments.—The vision which perhaps, under all circumstances, most nearly corresponds with the present is that of Isaiah (chap. 6). There the prophet beheld the vision of God. His train filled the temple, and the house was filled with smoke, and a message of judgment was given to the prophet. That message declared that the sin of the people had reached a climax; they had trifled with convictions, and henceforward the words of God’s servants would harden rather than awaken them—“make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes,” etc. (Isaiah 6:9-10), till the desolating judgments had fallen. The general drift of the present vision is similar: the days of warning are over; the plagues which now fall will fall on those who have trifled with convictions; the sanctuary, which was opened as a refuge, is now closed; none can enter till the plagues have descended. The time has come when the judgments of God fail to stir the conscience which has been deadened by sin; the day when the gracious influences towards repentance were felt has passed. The word that has been spoken is about to descend in judgment (John 7:48). NOTES AND SERMON Rev_15:3. The Song of Moses and the Lamb.—God’s world, God’s Word, and God’s people, are all full of song. In God’s world there is nothing, animate or inanimate, without the capacity of making sound. The very flints have music in them. “There’s music in the sighing of a reed; there’s music in the gushing of a rill.” In God’s Word we are told that at the creation “the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy.” Moses uttered the deliverance of his people in song, saying, “I will sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea.” Deborah taught the people a song, whereby they might praise the Lord for the avenging of Israel. When the new creation dawned, in the birth of Jesus, angels broke through the veil, and were seen and heard by our fellow-men, singing together, “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, goodwill to men.” David’s life was a song. When Paul and Silas lay chained in the dungeon, they sang praises in the night. The visions of heaven assure us that the ransomed ones are full of song. Our text gives us the theme of their song: “Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints.” Why so much singing? Why a world full of it, a Bible full of it, a heaven full of it? Because there is nothing but music that can find expression for the deepest, the most thrilling, emotions of our nature. So often our feeling is too deep for words, the force of passion strikes us, and keeps us, dumb. Sometimes feeling is too deep for looks—nay, even for tears; it seems to dry up the very fountain of tears. But the man who can find no words has often learned that the tongue of the dumb can sing. “Music! Oh, how faint and weakLanguage fades before thy spell!Why should feeling ever speak,When thou canst breathe its soul so well?”I. Who are these heaven-singers?—Answering that question in the language of symbols this book of Revelation tells us: “I saw as it were a sea of glass, mingled with fire; and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, having the harps of God.” “LO, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands.” These rejoicing ones were once sinners of this our earth. They are no company of unfallen angels, whose songs could have no thrilling tones, that tell of sad memories. The song the ransomed sing is a song that only sinners can sing, as the name upon their foreheads is a name that only redeemed sinners can wear. Every bird that flies through God’s sunshine—thrush, and robin, and linnet, and nightingale—has his own note, which none but he can sing. Every intelligent creature, every son of God, has his own book of psalms. And there is a style, a tone, an inimitable pathos about a sinner’s song that will make his voice for ever distinct among the eternal harmonies. And it is pleasant to think that these heavenly singers have been gathered out of all ages and out of all nations. However the forms of music may vary in different periods and different climes, it will be found at last that when the hearts of men sing they make but one chorus. Black and white, bond and free, Jew and Gentile, sing in harmony together the “song of Moses and the Lamb.” If we inquire, What are these sinners now? the answer comes, The redeemed of the Lord; the purchase of the Saviour’s blood. Monuments of the grace of the Holy Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. Ransomed for ever. Sinners who once were justified through faith in the Lord Jesus; who long were being sanctified in the power of the Holy Ghost; and who now are glorified, with something of the glory that Jesus had with the Father before the world was. The work now being carried on in us, in them is finished. While it is being wrought we can sometimes sing, but oftener we must weep; when it is finished we shall weep no more. All tears are wiped away. If we can inquire, Where do these singers stand? the answer cannot be given except by symbol; for of the realities of heaven no man knoweth, no man can know, until the mortal has given place to the immortal, and the eyes of the earthly have changed for the eyes of the heavenly. They stand “on a sea of glass, mingled with fire”; perhaps we should understand, “on the shores of a sea of glass, mingled with fire.” The image is suggested by the thought of the Israelites passing through the Red Sea. For them all its waves were stilled; a sea of glass lay on either side their God-made road. And when the evening shadows lengthened and the “cloudy pillar” changed to fire, it flushed all that glassy sea and made it appear as a “sea of glass, mingled with fire.” The symbol seems to suggest their possession of rest and their memory of conflict. The restless sea, always rising and falling, often desolating and ruinous, is the Bible emblem of the troubles, and anxieties, and sorrows, of the earth. Man is born to trouble. But yonder is the sea of glass. The waves are stilled now. The “weary are at rest.” The cloud-flecked sky can find only a broken image of its beauty in the waving sea; and God finds only partial and broken images of Himself in the restless, anxious lives we have to live. A whole firmament of glory shall shine out of a still sea of glass; and a whole image of God may beam forth from that life we shall live in the land of heavenly rest. But memory will mingle the glassy sea with fire. As the sea is the emblem of trouble, so fire is the emblem of conflict. The shores of the glassy sea are only won through a great fight of affliction by him who is girded with the whole armour of God. In many an earthly mansion the shields, and breast-plates, and helmets, and swords, are hung up in the great halls, to remind the peaceful sons of the old battles out of which their forefathers wrung their liberty and rest. Who knows? There may be, somewhere in God’s heaven, an armoury where every new soldier that has battled through may lay up his weapons and his armour. Certainly fire memories shall mingle with the eternal rest; memories of the fires of battles with sin, and memories of the refining fires of God’s chastisements. And home will be to us the sweeter for nights tented in the strangers’ ground, and bivouac amid the storm and the cold—months beleaguered by watchful foes, and battles fought hardly for holiness and God. II. What are the singers’ songs?—Evidently their hymn is a blending of their old earth-song with a new heaven-song. Not, indeed, so altogether new and different. We, too, can sing, even here, the Song of Moses and the Lamb; but not just as they sing it. We can only put as much meaning into our singing as we have had experience to prepare us for. They have an experience which cannot be ours as yet—an experience of victory, and victory’s reward; so they can sing with meanings which we cannot reach. Their song is our song, with more soul in it. The subject of their song is not redemption alone, but God’s entire dealings with man in revelation. It is not the song of the Lamb only. It is the song of Moses, too. Redemption is, indeed, the one word that expresses all God’s dealing with the race. His one work has always been the work of recovery—recovery of men, of families, of nations, from outward and bodily evils, from mental mistakes, from moral bondages. Ever since Eden God has been delivering, rescuing, and saving man, and His whole work seems to reach its climax in the deliverance and redemption of human spirits from the yoke and thraldom of sin by Christ Jesus. We lose much by separating the work of God on our race into parts. It is really one sublime, one perfect whole. Some gifts of His, like acts of His, seem, indeed, to rise up into view, mountain-like, and demand unusual attention; but from Eden to the judgment day there has been one purpose, never forgotten, never remitted, never undervalued: it is the world’s full redemption from sin. We may not think of our God resting in eternal peace until every foe of man is slain, suffering and crime are ended, Satan is bound, and death, the last enemy, shall die. One day a saved earth will sing, “The Lord God omnipotent reigneth.” For the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. The models of this entire deliverance are “Moses” and “the Lamb.” Moses representing God’s triumph over evil in its outward manifestations, and the Lamb representing God’s triumph over evil in its inward manifestations. Moses’ triumph at the passing of the sea I need but recall to mind; it said for all the ages that “nothing is too hard for the Lord,” and no outward troubles need overwhelm us. The “Song of the Lamb” reminds us that God has triumphed, and is triumphing, over inward evil. It is the most mournful part of the work of sin that it has defiled human souls, and blurred the image of God on them. Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, is the Divine deliverer from inward sin, from soul-sin. No fetters of national slavery dropped from aching wrists when Jesus died, the sacrifice and ransom price. No Roman armies, panic-stricken, fled from Palestine when He died, the nation’s champion. No royal proclamation flung open prison doors when He took the sinner’s place. No waving flags, no enthusiastic shouts, proclaimed a nation’s resurrection when He died on Calvary. But then the “prince of this world was judged, and cast out.” Then “Satan fell like lightning from heaven.” Then captive souls were set free. Then the gospel of God’s saving love was proclaimed to the poor. Then the heaven of holiness for sinners came within their reach. Well may we anticipate the heavenly song, and join now the chorus of the white-robed host, saying, “Thou hast redeemed us unto God by Thy blood, and hast made us kings and priests unto God.” The Divine Righteousness.—Good men, in all ages, have been deeply impressed with the Divine righteousness. They have ever conceived of their salvation as exhibiting and establishing the Divine righteousness. It is not proper to speak of justice or righteousness as being satisfied. The Bible speaks of it as revealed, manifested. Righteousness can be satisfied with nothing short of the rightness of those in whom it is interested. Men mistake the Divine by treating justice as some abstract quality: it is one of the living forces of a Living Being; it is an expression of the Divine will. The revelation of God is this: “A just God and a Saviour.” A just God is proved by, illustrated by, His becoming a Saviour. THE SEVEN VIALS, OR AND NOTES“THIS chapter describes the pouring out of the seven vials—that is to say, the extremest punishments of God—upon the throne and empire of the beast. Antichrist had promised to mankind a new, golden age under his rule; but he promised without God. Christ now wields His own sceptre, and smites with repeated blows the nations who have been led astray. It is the history of the plagues of Egypt over again. A noisome sore consumes the flesh of the subjects of the beast (first vial). The waters of the sea are corrupted, and all the inhabitants of the ocean perish (second vial, an aggravation of the second trumpet). A similar judgment smites the rivers and fountains of waters (third vial; compare the third trumpet). A burning sun scorches the inhabitants of the earth (fourth vial). These four vials constitute a first series of plagues, after which the author remarks that men only blasphemed with so much greater audacity the name of the God who had sent these plagues upon them. A thick darkness comes upon the kingdom of the beast, as before upon the kingdom of Egypt (fifth vial); men gnaw their tongues in their rage, rather than confess their faults. The Euphrates is dried up, to open the way for a new invasion of the Eastern nations, whom three unclean spirits summon to the last battle against the Eternal (sixth vial; compare the invasion described under the sixth trumpet). Lastly, an earthquake of unprecedented violence falls upon Babylon, the capital of the beast, and the other cities of that empire (seventh vial; compare the similar phenomenon described under the sixth seal) (Godet).Revelation 16:12. Euphrates.—Here symbolical, as the natural barrier which checked the onflow of Eastern armies.Revelation 16:16. Armageddon.—The mountain of Megiddo, the great battle-field of the Holy Land. The old battle-ground becomes the symbol of a decisive struggle. No material battle is meant; the final struggle is one of principles. THE ON AND that in the Old Testament, harlotry is the frequent representation of apostasy. Babylon stands for the Apostate Church, which is here figured as a harlot temptress.Revelation 17:4. Golden cup.—Jeremiah 51:7.Revelation 17:5. Upon her forehead was a name.—It is said to have been an ancient custom for harlots to wear their names on their foreheads—tied on as a label. Mystery.—See 2 Thessalonians 2:7.Revelation 17:7. Carrieth her.—The woman sitting upon the beast may mean the union of the ecclesiastical and secular power. [It is not in the design of this commentary to examine how far the events of St. John’s time, more especially in relation to the persecutions of Imperial Rome, and in relation to doctrinal and moral failures within the Church of Christ, give colour and form to his symbolical representations. It is hardly possible to make any elaborate homiletical use of this portion of the Apocalypse.] Into the controversy as to the relation of ecclesiastical Rome to these Johannine visions and prophecies, it is not either fitting or necessary that this work should enter. It has been the aim of its author and editor carefully to avoid all contentious topics, and keep entirely in the realm of general truths and principles. What wise uses may be made of single passages in these chapters will be found indicated in the homiletic portions, and in the notes and specimen outlines. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_17:3. The Scarlet Harlot.—Who or what is the Scarlet Harlot of Revelation 17? Commentators have given scores of opinions, but the majority have settled upon Rome, either Pagan or papal. “That great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth” (Revelation 17:18) to their minds determines the question, and as a collateral proof is the plain declaration (Revelation 17:9) that “the seven heads are the seven mountains on which the woman sitteth.” What can these be (they say) but the famous seven hills of Rome? These interpreters find no difficulty in exalting the petty hills of Rome into mountains, and they also fail to see that these seven mountains are (in Revelation 17:3) “a scarlet coloured beast,” and (in Revelation 17:1; Revelation 17:15) “many waters.” How are they going to turn the seven hills of Rome into “many waters,” or “a beast”? The harlot sits on all three equally. The error with most commentators in this remarkable book is their strange mingling of the literal with the symbolic. It is true that when the apostle-prophet himself explains a symbol, we have a literal statement, as in Revelation 19:8. “The fine linen is the righteousness of saints,” but in all other cases the symbolism must be adhered to. In this seventeenth chapter we see a scarlet harlot, seated on a scarlet beast, and the beast is full of names of blasphemy, and has seven heads and ten horns. The woman is gorgeously arrayed and is drunk—drunk with the blood of the saints. The beast and the horns (see R.V.) at last destroy the harlot (Revelation 17:16). Now, if the woman of chap. 12, clothed with the sun, and yet bitterly persecuted, is God’s true Church, as the whole context seems to demand, what is more likely than that this prosperous harlot is the false church? But what is the false Church? The Church of Rome? But how about the Greek Church? and the Armenian Church? and the Nestorian Church? and the Abyssinian Church? Are not these as false as Rome? I think we shall have to give up the identification of this woman with the Church of Rome. She is the false Church—any Church which puts aught in Christ’s place. In other words, she is the ecclesiastical corrupter of doctrine and practice found in all so-called churches of Christ. Christ has a real, true Church, composed of sincere believers, trusting in Him alone as the Saviour; and side by side with these, under the same external organisations, are thousands and millions who are a false Church, whose faith is in human power and human works, who pervert the truth, and whose lives are not spiritual, but carnal. These form Antichrist. They are not under any one organisation. They are under all nominally Christian organisations. This is the false Church. Do not look for either this or the true Church in one external form. Look for it in life and spirit. This is the scarlet harlot. It seeks this world’s gold and precious stones and pearls (Revelation 17:4), and has no eye for eternal realities. It has always been the oppressor of God’s true people, and the suppressor of God’s truth. It is the concreted spirit of persecution toward all that is godly. It is a Christianity that practically denies Christ, and puts human greed or human pride and pleasure in His place. It exhibits itself, not only in superstition, political power, the Inquisition and Jesuitism, but also in rationalism, scepticism and worldliness. This woman—this harlot—this false Church, is called “that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth,” because it is this false style of Christianity that controls the governments of the world, which support the Church as it does the theatre, and which sings The Deums over acts of tyranny and murder. This great city is called Babylon (Revelation 17:5), and Sodom, and Egypt, and Jerusalem, which crucified our Lord (Revelation 11:8), names indicative of hatred to God’s people and to their Lord and Redeemer. The waters on which the woman sits, we are told, are the nations of the earth (Revelation 17:15), for she proudly flourishes wherever the nominal Christian Church is found. These nations in their institutions support her. The waters and mountains also appear as a beast, the beast of chap. 13, the beast of human tyrannical power, selfish and cruel. This human power has had seven grand manifestations in history as connected with God’s people—namely, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome Pagan, Rome Christian. The first five of these had fallen in the prophet-apostle’s time (Revelation 17:10); the sixth was in existence; the seventh was still to come, but to continue only a brief period, for the beast itself has to succeed his heads and share his power with the ten horns. That is, the successors of the Roman Empire should unite with the tyranny, now not in an Empire, but in an ecclesiastical human centre. On all these phases of tyranny over man, the scarlet woman sits in her gorgeous pride. Ecclesiastical corruption flourishes on these human institutions of government. The false Church finds her aliment in these human and carnal principles of society and law. But the time will come when God’s judgment will fall on the false Church. The very beast and horns will destroy it. The carnal interests of human authority will be the means of destroying the false Christianity which they formerly supported. The wrath of man will praise God. And then the true Church—God’s faithful ones—will be vindicated and glorified.—Howard Crosby. Revelation 17:14. The Overcoming Lamb.—A great Person is here spoken of, and a great thing, it is declared, He will accomplish. I. Consider the Person mentioned. He is not a lamb but the Lamb. He is the great, universal Lamb, causing the blood which He shed to spread itself, as it were, all over the world, so that every sinner might touch it, and be saved from his sins. See His personal qualities. 1. His quietness. It is in marked contrast with the lion. 2. Wonderful patience. How much He bore from His enemies! 3. Perfectly innocent. 4. Capable of exercising great wrath. II. What He shall overcome.—“The Lamb shall overcome them;” which seems to have special reference to organised Antichrist. But He shall overcome all opposers, both nations and individuals. III. How He shall overcome His opposers.—There are two general methods. One is that of using certain means to persuade rebellious hearts to become reconciled to God. His greatest effort has always been to overcome by the passion of His love. But the second method is that of final banishment from His presence. Oh, what can feeble man do against such an all powerful being as Christ is? How utterly vain have been the threats of infidels, that they would banish Him from the world!—C. H. Wetherbe. FOR the reasons given at the foot of page 553, no suggestions for exegetical or homiletical treatment are given in connection with chap. 18 FINAL VICTORY OF THE AND time now draws near for the final termination of the conflict. The irrevocable doom has been pronounced. But before the final consummation there is, as usual, a relief passage We have the song of victory sung in anticipation. These relief passages of this book the writer designed to cheer the spirits of the suffering and persecuted saints, and for their sake the book was written. The contents of the Revelation 19:1-10 of this chapter may be thus divided: 1. All the inhabitants of the heavenly world join in a song of holy thanksgiving, in view of the coming vindication of the Divine honour. 2. A voice from the throne requires renewed praise, which is shouted. 3. The glorious prospect of suffering martyrs is disclosed. Then St. John falls at the feet of the angel-interpreter, who refuses homage which is due only to Him who is Lord and Master of them both.Revelation 19:2. Simcox gives a sentence from the book of Enoch, 47:4, in which a similar joy in God’s judgments is expressed. “Then were the hearts of the saints full of joy, because the number of righteousness was arrived, the supplications of the saints heard, and the blood of the righteous appreciated by the Lord of Spirits.” In the second portion of the chapter there is again a threefold division. 1. The appearance of the Great Captain of Salvation, with His hosts around Him, from the heavenly world (Revelation 19:11-16). The Son of God Himself undertakes to lead the final battle. 2. The proclamation made to the ravenous beasts and birds to come and glut themselves with the slaughtered (Revelation 19:17-18). 3. The final overthrow and excision of the beast, the false prophet, and their army (Revelation 19:19-21). Note that the victory is gained by purely spiritual means. Probably the confederacy of the powers of the world, under the leadership of Antichrist, will be primarily intellectual and spiritual.MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 19:1-21 The Vision of the “Word of God.”—Are we to see in the victorious apparition of the Christ, described in chap. 19, an event purely spiritual, or a visible phenomenon? Jesus compares it to the lightning which shines instantaneously from the one end of heaven to the other (Luke 17:24). The latter view is the only one compatible with this expression. On the other hand, it follows from His use of this image that Jesus had no thought of a permanent and visible abode of His glorified Person on the earth, whether at Jerusalem or elsewhere, as the millenarians in all ages have thought. The Parousia will be, on the contrary, like the stroke of the red-hot rod, which is to startle mankind, absorbed in fleshly living, and to prepare the way for the mighty reaction whence the plenitude of the spiritual blessings of the millennium is to proceed. Living in a higher sphere, but near at hand, the faithful, who will have been glorified at the advent of the Lord, will be in communion with the early Christendom, just as the Risen Christ was in communion with His disciples until the ascension. This will be the time of the complete development of spiritual worship and of Christian civilisation, in which, as in the Middle Ages, but under the effects of the shining forth of a more intense and pure light, science, art, industry, commerce, will lend their resources to the Christian spirit to enable it to incarnate itself completely in the life of man. Then will be fulfilled the image of the leaven which leaveneth the whole lump. The number “a thousand,” is symbolical, like all numbers in the Apocalypse. It represents a complete development which nothing external to itself will interfere with or abridge—an era which shall expand itself at ease in the latter days of history. It does not seem to us that the apocalyptic vision of the reign of a thousand years contains a single feature which overpasses the conception of which we have just sketched the outline. It is that perfect state of things which Ezekiel had already described in the last nine chapters of his prophecy, under the image of an ideal temple.—F. Godet, D.D. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_19:12. The Crowned Christ.—This was a symbolic revelation of the extent and variety of the kingdoms over which Christ rules. I. In times of deep religious earnestness the very intensity of men’s desire to serve Christ perfectly often makes them forget the actual service to which He has appointed them.—The first impulse of some persons, when they begin to be in real earnest about serving Christ, is to look at a great part of their life as alienated from His service. Remember that on the head of Christ are many crowns, that all occupations of human life are His, and that every one who desires to serve Him can give Him, not fragments, but the whole of life, from first to last. You need not give up trade, if it is an honest one, to serve Christ. Serve Him in the trade itself, and remember that in trade, as in everything besides, He is King. II. And He is the King of the province of public life, too, and in politics, whether imperial or local, Christian men should still be serving and honouring Him.—Christ is the King of our political life, and in that, as in every other province of our activity, we have to serve and honour Him. III. Christ is King of the spiritual life of man.—Much of the weakness and sorrow of Christian people arise from forgetting this: we have to give Him reverence as well as trust, fear as well as love. We have to recognise His authority. The awe and devout fear with which we bow down before God are His, for He is God manifest in the flesh.—R. W. Dale, D.D. Many Crowns.—We have all heard of uncrowned kings; but the term is a misnomer. St. John’s surpasses all thoughts of one crown for earth’s victor-kings. I. On His Head is the crown of the conquest of sin.—This is THE victory. “All have sinned.” Jesus is the “Lamb of God.” “Unto Him Who loved us,” etc. II. The crown of the conquest of sorrow.—He revealed the Fatherhood of God. Holy compensation, the Father’s house. “Let not your heart be troubled.” III. The crown of the conquest of suffering. IV. The crown of the conquest of Satan.—No light conquest. In the wilderness and on the Cross. The humblest Christian warrior may now meet the assaults of the Evil One. V. The crown of the conquest of death.—In heaven the redeemed feel and know death to be a conquered power.—G. M. Statham. THE AND expositors, ancient and modern, regard the opening of this chapter as referring to an early period in the history of the Church, but there are many writers who consider the events as occurring in immediate succession to those foreshown in the end of chap. 19. Stuart points out the intentional brevity with which this portion of the prophecy is treated. “The events of a thousand years; the invasion of Gog and Magog, with their defeat; the ultimate confinement and punishment of Satan; and, lastly, the general judgment;—are all crowded into the space of twelve verses. This shows that the very distant future is designed to be merely glanced at by the writer. So it is with the Hebrew prophets. But here there is a special reason for brevity. The main object of the book is already accomplished. Christians have been consoled by assurances that all the enemies with whom the Church was then conflicting, would surely be overthrown. To complete an epic plan which involves a climactic progression of events, and to gratify the taste and feelings, the last part of the book is added. It seems to be added mainly for this purpose. Mere touches and glances are all which it exhibits, or which were intended to be exhibited. The eye of hope is directed forward, and sees the thousand years of uninterrupted prosperity; then the sudden destruction of a new and final enemy, and all the rest is left to joyful anticipation.Revelation 20:1. Bottomless pit.—Explained in note on Revelation 9:1.Revelation 20:2. Old serpent.—See on Revelation 12:9. Thousand years.—A figurative, not literal, period. With the Lord “a thousand years is as one day.” It is safer to regard it as representing a prolonged, in contrast with a limited, period.Revelation 20:4. Thrones.—Compare Daniel 7:9; Daniel 7:22. There seem to be two classes of faithful souls introduced: those who had made the martyrs’ testimony, and those who had given the testimony of noble lives. Reigned with Christ.—A figure for that kind of ruling power and influence which steadfast and heroic men and women always gain and exercise wherever they may be, even as Christ gained and exercised.MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 20:1-15 The Millennium-Picture.—The millennium-vision is, like so many of the apostolic visions, an ideal picture; it exhibits a state of things which is possible to mankind at any time. The vision has its approximate fulfilment, as the Church, in the faith of the reality of her Lord’s victory, carries on her warfare against the prince of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places. That this approximate fulfilment is not unreal may be seen in the fact that Christendom has replaced heathendom; Christ has taken the throne of the world; the prince of this world has been judged; the ascendency of Christian thought and Christian principles has marvellously humanised and purified the world. To an Irenæus, a Polycarp, a Justin Martyr, a Tertullian, the picture of the world during the Christian centuries would have the aspect of a millennium, when contrasted with the age of Pagan dominion and Pagan persecution. In their eyes, accustomed to the darkness of heathenism, the world, as influenced by a widely-diffused Christianity, would seem to be a world in which Christ ruled. They would see, in the acknowledgment, of apostles and martyrs and confessors, the wondrous resurrection-power of God’s truth; they would see how they, who fell for Christ, had stepped from their forgotten graves to sit down with Christ in His throne. The apostles, the martyrs, the faithful, do reign with Christ. The sovereignty of the world belongs far more to St. Paul and St. John than to Nero or Galba. But though thus the saints rise and reign with Christ over Christendom, we can see that this is only an approximate realisation, and falls short of the ideal picture. Christendom established and heathendom overthrown would be a millennium in the eyes of an Ignatius; but the Church of to day looks for a further and higher fulfilment. Is she justified in this expectation? If the principles we have laid down are correct, she is justified. She can accept the first-fruits of God’s promises, but she will not mistake them for the harvest; she can rejoice in the growth of her Lord’s kingdom, but she looks for the day when the powers of evil will be more effectually curbed, and the gospel will have freer course. Then the fulness of Christ’s victory will be more clearly seen.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter. TO CHAPTER 20Revelation 20:12. The Final Judgment; The Certainty of Its Decisions.—There is a machine in the Bank of England which receives sovereigns, as a mill receives grain, for the purpose of determining wholesale whether they are are of full weight. As they pass through, the machinery, by unerring laws, throws all that are light to one side, and all that are of full weight to another. That process is a silent but solemn parable for me. Founded as it is upon the laws of nature, it affords the most vivid similitude of the certainty which characterises the judgment of the great day. There are no mistakes or partialities to which the light may trust; the only hope lies in being of standard weight before they go in.—Arnot.The Record of Our Lives.—With every turn of the turnstile on Waterloo Bridge a record (in the old time) was made against the gatekeeper, and he could not recall or obliterate it. Every movement of the wind over Greenwich Observatory, steady or capricious, fast or slow, is self-registered, with pencil and paper, by an apparatus communicating to a room below, in which blank paper is presented to the pencil by clockwork; and these autobiographical memoirs are carefully preserved. So constant and unerring is the record kept in the book of God’s remembrance concerning all our actions, and even “every idle word that men shall speak” (Matthew 12:36). THE NEW AND NOTES“NOW is sealed the eternal doom of the dragon, beast, false prophet, and all their followers; yea, and of all who resemble them in the temper of their hearts or the action of their lives. Nothing remains but to exhibit the glorious reward of the righteous, in the eternal world, as contrasted with the awful punishment of the wicked.”Revelation 21:1. New heavens and new earth.—Isaiah 65:17; compare Ezekiel 40-48 and Matthew 19:28. “Heavens “here refer to the firmament regarded as the dome above the earth; it is not the abode of the righteous. No more sea.—For ancient ideas of the sea, compare Isaiah 48:18; Isaiah 57:21. “To the ancients the absence of sea seemed a pledge of security and of unfettered intercourse between all nations.”Revelation 21:2. New Jerusalem.—An ideal city, presented under figures that represent perfection—the perfection of purity, beauty, and joy.Revelation 21:3 Tabernacle of God.—Figure from the conception of Jehovah as resident in the old Jewish tabernacle.Revelation 21:10. Holy Jerusalem.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter skilfully presents the leading features: “The great and holy community will be one which draws its glory from God (chaps. Revelation 21:11; Revelation 21:23, Revelation 22:5). Its blessings are not for a few, but open to all; for its gates lie open to all quarters (Revelation 21:12-13). The heavenly and the earthly will be at one; angels, apostles, and patriarchs are there (Revelation 21:12; Revelation 21:14). Diverse characters will find entrance there; the gates bear the names of the twelve tribes. The door of admission is alike for all, though diverse characters, from diverse quarters, will enter in (Revelation 21:21). It will be the abode of all that is fair and good, and no disproportions will mar its loveliness (Revelation 21:17-18). The ancient truths, spoken by various lips, will be found to be eternal truths, full of varied but consistent beauty (Revelation 21:14; Revelation 21:19-20). The forms and helps which were needful here will not be needful there (Revelation 21:22-23); all that the servants of God have righteously hungered and thirsted for here, will be supplied there (Revelation 21:1-2). There will be blessings, various, continuous, eternal; new fields of labour, and new possibilities of service, will be opened there.”Revelation 21:7. Loosed from his prison.—As this is the indication of some future condition, it is impossible to explain it. Taken mystically, the binding of Satan implied restraint put upon his power of freedom and action; the loosing means the removal of those restraints. Christendom, even in its times of glorious success, is exposed to the influences of the evil one. Gog and Magog.—See Genesis 10:2; Ezekiel 38, 39. “In Rabbinical books these names were used to describe the nations that would rise against the reign of Messiah. The names are to be understood figuratively.”Revelation 21:12. Stand before God.—This representation of the judgment is a vision, and it would be unwise to treat it as literally descriptive. Compare our Lord’s being shown, in a moment of time, “all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them.” Book of life.—Compare Daniel 12:1.Revelation 21:13. Hell.—Sheol, the Hebrew equivalent of Hades. Those buried at sea are thought of as not being in the grave: a curious distinction.Revelation 21:14. Lake of fire.—This is pure imagery; fire to burn such things as death and the grave cannot possibly be literally explained. It is to be understood as the material representation of the “second death.” “Here is a resurrection, not to life, but to a death far more terrible than that which ends this life.”Note on the “Second Death” or “Lake of Fire.”—It is a death of which the first death—the physical death, now destroyed—was but a faint figure. It is a condition which needs no coarse exaggeration, or vulgar literalisation of the prophetic imagery, to heighten the horror of it. Very awful is that spiritual death which knows not and loves not God, and from which Christ has come to arouse us; more awful must be that second death, in which the spirit, no longer the sinning victim of hereditary evil, has become the victim of habitual choice of wrong, loving darkness rather than light, and choosing alienation rather than reconciliation—the busks of the swine rather than the Father’s house. Of the full meaning of the words, in their true and future force, we can have little conception. It is enough for us to remember two things: they are figurative, but they are figurative of something.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter.MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 21:1-27 The Millennial State.—In the latter part of chap. 20, and in chaps. 21–22:5, all Christ’s enemies are destroyed, and the happiness of the saints is perfected. Upon the millennial bliss of the redeemed, and upon the glory and happiness of the New Jerusalem, it is not possible to dwell. Suffice it to say, that we are to behold in the former a figure of the perfected and eternally secured life of those who not only die, but rise, with Christ; and that in the latter we have a bright and beautiful, as well as elevating, picture of that new condition into which the followers of Jesus are introduced, even on this side the grave, and amidst the labours and trials of their present pilgrimage. Nothing, we are persuaded, has tended more to perplex the interpretation of the Apocalypse than the idea that that holy city which St. John saw “coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband” is intended to represent a glorious state into which the redeemed shall enter, sooner or later, after the close of their earthly pilgrimage, but before they obtain possession of their eternal inheritance. Taking such a view, it is impossible to interpret fairly all the expressions of the passage, while it deprives us, at the same time, of the thought of those sublime privileges which, as we are everywhere taught in Scripture, are not the future only, but the present inheritance of God’s children. It is true, indeed, that even they who are “in” Christ Jesus are still surrounded by a darkness which has no place in the heavenly Jerusalem; that they have still to shed tears which are there washed away; and that they have still to fear that they must meet that death which shall there be swallowed up of victory. Calling these things to mind, it can be no matter of surprise that many have difficulty in believing that the brightness and glory of this celestial city can, under any point of view, represent an earthly scene through which we are thankful if we may but grope our way, “fightings without, and fears within.” Yet let them remember that the Christian life has two sides, those two which are brought forward so prominently by the Apostle, when he speaks of himself and his fellow ministers “as dying, and behold we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowing, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all things” (2 Corinthians 5:1; 2 Corinthians 5:9-10). Let them remember that, if the follower of Christ dies daily with his Lord, he also rises with Him daily, and ascends to the heavenly places, and is set down there, his life not maintained amidst the things of earth, but “hid with Christ in God.” Let these thoughts be ever present to their minds, and they will not have much difficulty in seeing that in the description of the new Jerusalem we have the ideal side of the Christian’s position, elevated to its highest point and illuminated with its brightest colouring, but still a side that is true to one aspect of his present state.—W. Milligan, D.D. NOTES AND SERMON Rev_21:1. A Strange Picture of the Future.—Who among us does not love the sea, and feel thankful that the Bible permits us to learn from it concerning God, and the future life? But our associations make it almost impossible for us to realise the joy of a time when “there shall be no more sea.” The landscapes of the heavenly world we cannot imagine will be beautiful without either near or far glimpses of the sea. The air of the heavenly world we can hardly think will be pure and rich and reviving if it does not blow over a restless, waving sea. There must, however, be some good reasons for putting the glory of the heavenly scenes under this figure. The meanings attaching to natural emblems differ in different times, and nations, and individuals, and when the Apostle John wrote this book of Revelation, men did not think of the “sea” as we think of it now. Indeed, throughout the Scriptures the sea is regarded as an object of fear and terror; its majesty, its greatness, its mastery, seem mostly to have impressed men then. It was not yet tamed by human skill. The compass was not known; the few vessels they had were inefficiently constructed for ocean-sailing; they seldom ventured out of sight of land. The dangers of sandbank, rock, headland, and current, were not marked on chart, or by buoy and lighthouse, and only the most adventurous spirits would risk their lives on the treacherous wave. The Jews, throughout their history, take no place as sailors; indeed, the whole sea-board of Canaan contains but one or two harbours. Scripture speaks of “the raging of the sea,” of the “raging waves of the sea”; of its “voice roaring,” of the “floods lifting up their voice,” of “the wicked being like the troubled sea,” of “those that go down to the sea in ships seeing the wonders of the Lord, and His judgments in the deep,” of the “great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable.” And even when it seems to have a gentle thought, saying, “There go the ships”; as if, like us, it loved to watch— “The stately ships go onTo their harbour under the hill,”at once it adds the note of power and fear—“there is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to play therein.” Only as we enter into the Bible associations of the sea shall we feel the meaning of its figure for the future world—“There shall be no more sea.” But more must be added. When John wrote down these visions he was “our companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, and was in the isle that is called Patmos for the Word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Patmos is a rocky and bare island in the Ægean Sea, and was used by the Romans as a place of banishment, something as St. Helena has been by us. There John was separated from his fellow-Christians, and from his loved work; the sea was his divider, and we can well understand how, looking on that wide waste of pathless waters all around him, his heart would fashion this image of the life to come—“There shall be no more sea.” The common idea of the age, and the special circumstances of the apostle, help us to reach the proper suggestions of a figure so unsuitable to our own feelings. We even know that the sea—the moving, and the storms of the sea—are necessary to life and health. The air is tempered which passes over it; the wants of men are met by its provisions of food; disease is dispelled by its tempests and commotions. And yet, for all the usefulness of the sea, and all the pleasure of it, there are times when, to our hearts, the figure of the text carries its full meaning; and in the light of that meaning we can anticipate “the new heavens and earth, in which there shall be no more sea.” The sea seems to gather up for us the various forms of trouble and anxiety that come to us in this life; the various forms of trouble from which we hope to be delivered in the coming life. The troubles that arise out of Separation, Danger, Mystery, Change, and Conflict. I. If the sea be to us the symbol of separation, and so of those earthly troubles that come by separations, we shall see meaning and force in this promise for the future—“There shall be no more sea.”—True the ocean is now the pathway of nations. In all the interchanges of commerce, and friendship, and travel, we make well-defined tracks over the waters, and knit land to land more easily than when mountain ranges divide kingdoms. Let but any one watch in the Downs, and see the thousand ships passing in picturesque procession to and from the Thames, and he will feel it very hard to call the sea a divider. Think but of the ropes that pass beneath the wave, and carry lightning messages to the ends of the earth, and it seems strange to speak of the sea as a separator. Yet in no day has it been such a breaker-up of families and homes as in these emigrating days of ours. Few of us are without dear friends settled in distant lands, severed from us by the great wave. Many a mother, many a father, many a lover, feels most keenly that the sea is only a little less a separator than the grave. Why those tears wrung out of the agonies of parting, save that to human feeling every mile of ocean seems to lift up a higher, and at last impassable, barrier between us and them? How many a friend has watched the ship fading in the distance that bore the beloved away, and turned back to life with all the agony of desolation, feeling as if divided from them for ever! “How hard to follow, with lips that quiver,That moving speck on the far-off side!Farther, farther—I see it—know it;My eyes brim over. It melts away.Only my heart to my heart shall show it,As I walk desolate, day by day.”Jean Ingelow. That, indeed, is only separation of space. Across the dividing sea, heart may beat true to heart, and fellowship be kept. There are worse dividers than the sea. Envies, and suspicions, and jealousies, come breaking up our life-unions and our friendships, and some of the sorest of human sorrows belong to these failing friendships and wounded trusts. Gather them all, then, into the symbol of the wounded trusts. Gather them all, then, into the symbol of the sea. Let it remind you of all the woes that have come out of separations, all through your life; even let it recall how the great separator death again and again sets his wide, rolling river between you and those you loved. Yes, even think how those dear to you, part of the host, have crossed the great flood, and are now divided by the sea of death from you. And then turn to our text; let thought and heart fill its pictures of the future with tenderness, and peaceful resting to your soul. No ship shall sail out from the heavenly harbours, bearing away from you your boys. No rolling waves of mistrust shall toss between you and your friend. No night-moaning sea of death shall bear away on its bosom your beloved. “There shall be no more sea.” “They go no more out for ever.” “Here we suffer grief and pain,Here we meet to part again:In Heaven we part no more.”II. If the sea be to us the emblem of danger, reminding us of the perils to which our daily life is exposed, we shall feel the force of the text. Those dangers do, indeed, meet us everywhere: on road and rail, at home and abroad. “In the midst of life we are in death.” But we get the largest and most affecting impressions of danger from the records of the sea. Shipwreck is a most familiar word—so familiar that if there be not special circumstances of horror, it passes almost unheeded by us. The sea is the most masterful thing with which a man has to do. He does, at best, but hold his own with it, and that only by watching it, and fitting himself to its moods. Step on deck, knowing that, for days together, you will lose all sight of land, and scarcely meet another sail, and who can wonder that the sense of danger makes you lift your heart to God? But those only feel how the sea symbolises danger who have lost a friend at sea. Its peril then has come right home to them. Down in her solitary depths their loved one made a grave; and the heart almost shudders now to look upon the dreadful sea that devoured him. Had we a sailor’s widow here, how much her heart could tell us of the perils of the deep! Is your heart sensitive and sympathising enough to hear her moan? “My boat, you shall find none fairer afloat,In river or port.Long I looked out for the lad she bore,On the open, desolate sea,And I think he sailed to the heavenly shore,For he came not back to me—Ah me!”Jean Ingelow. But these are only dangers to the body. May we rise to the higher dangers that put the soul’s life in peril; dangers hovering round our moral life, putting in peril character and virtue? And then, taking the sea as our emblem of both, does not the text begin to glow with meaning, as it promises the peace of established, settled, untempted goodness for ever?—“he that is righteous, righteous still; and he that is holy, holy still.” Watch and guard no more, as now, our first duty, and done at cost of weariness and pain. But rejoicing, resting, safety, the peace of God, about us for ever; no more treacherous, perilous, storm-tossed seas. We shall hear that “blessedest, best sound, the boat-keel grazing on the strand,” as we enter, once and for ever, the safe, quiet harbour of our God. Safe home at last. III. If we deeply feel how the sea symbolises the mystery of our present life, we shall put meaning into the promise of our text. Have you ever done thinking about the sea? Ever done asking insoluble questions about it? Ever done watching its various moods? Ever seen all its possible colourings? Ever heard all its many sounding voices? One of the greatest indications that God Himself is a sublimer mystery than even the sea, lies in this statement: “He ruleth the seas”; He “holdeth the waters in the hollow of His hand.” It may well symbolise for us the mysteries, often so distressing, so agonising, with which we are surrounded. Mysteries of life, of truth, of duty, of ourselves, of God, and of eternity. How passionately we dash against some of these encircling walls!—as if we would force nature and truth to yield us their secrets. The day is coming when we shall win the open vision. Many of us anticipate heaven with unbounded enthusiasm, because then we shall see, then we shall know; shut doors, at which here we vainly hammered, shall be open; dark things, that puzzled us sorely, shall shine in the light of God. There shall be no more sea of mystery. In comparison with present limitations, our mind and soul shall feel free; and for ennobled faculties all the glory of God shall be open to research. For some, at least, the prospect makes heaven infinitely attractive. The Lamb is the light thereof, and “we shall know hereafter.” IV. If we regard the sea as the emblem of change, we shall see the meaning of our text. It is well called the troubled, restless sea; and this we feel quite as truly in summer calm, when only gentle winds blow across it, as in winter conflicts, when wild winds raise high its tides. We feel it quite as much when we watch the varying waves fling themselves on the rocks, and cast up showers of spray in ever-differing forms, as when, journeying on the waters, we see them swirl past the vessel, and all around us heave and toss. Nothing can so well illustrate that sense of the changefulness of life which oppresses us when years of memory lengthen. The “fashion of this world is ever passing away.” What chequered, varying lives ours all have been! Indeed, we never set ourselves down anywhere now, to say “Here I shall stay,” or, looking around us, say, “All this I shall keep.” “Here we have no continuing city.” But when the heart in us pines for something to hold, something to keep, something that is unchangeable, Bible figure points us on; not now, not here, it seems to say. The sea is all about you now. A time is coming when there shall be no more change, “no more sea.” No more change as we have felt its bitterness here. “Therefore lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal.” Changes are good, while we are struggling with sin, and after holiness; but through changes we are reaching the unchanging rest of God, and the sea of the future is the calm, ever-resting sea of glass, mingled with fire. V. If we think of the sea as the emblem of conflict, we shall add meaning to the text. It may not have been your lot to watch a storm at sea. It is the most sublime illustration of conflict that I know. The lightning flash, that for a moment relieves the darkness, shows the seething, boiling waters, in a tumult of war, and the ship hardly straining and steadying itself, and keeping its prow well facing wind and wave. Such a storm I saw in early life, and its impressions can never be effaced. In half agony one thought, Could even the rocks withstand these waters when thus they lifted up their majesty? What could the little ships do amid forces so tremendous as these?—the loud thunder answering back to the deep baying of the troubled waves. It may well represent that conflict which is the law now for us in all conditions of life. We must fight. Everything in the world—the family, or the Church—that is worth having, must be won in a battle-field. Like wind, and wave, and storm, are “the world, the flesh, and the devil,” and sometimes they unite to beat upon, and strive to overcome, our soul-ships, as they voyage on to God. Is it oppressing you to-day that life is a conflict? Are you weary with it? Can you understand David saying, “Oh that I had wings like a dove, then would I flee away and be at rest”! God stills your heart to rest by the message He sends you to-day, and the promise He gives. A little while, only a little while, and then there shall be no more sea— “Not a wave of trouble rollAcross thy peaceful breast.”“What hath be at last?Sorrow vanquished, conflict ended,Jordan past.”Does it seem to you that these thoughts have been somewhat melancholy in tone? I have wanted them to lead on to the brightness and joy of a large and blessed hope. We must be sometimes reminding you how full our present life is of trying and sorrowful scenes; but we never do so in hopeless spirits—never to help you brood over the large share of trouble put into your lot—never to make you miserable, and give ground for those who plead that our religion clouds our human life with gloom. We want to produce and keep alive a profound and affecting dissatisfaction with present scenes; to sever hearts from too close clinging to the world, and the things of the world. We do want to make you feel that this is not your rest; to lift your eyes right up, and set them looking right away from the hills and vales of earth to the hills of God, whence only cometh our help. We do want to kindle in your souls that great, glorious, blessed hope of eternal life with God, which will shine on present scenes so as to make them appear insignificant and worthless. We would so fill your souls with visions of the future that you could each one say to his heart, “Go up, heart, into a little higher fighting, a little longer waiting and bearing. Be brave unto shadows; soon the shadows will flee away. Be strong in the battle-field; soon the archangel’s trump shall stop the conflict, and call the victors to their crown. Be patient in the darkness: day is breaking, even the day of God. Bear nobly even heart-breaking separations: the time is coming when there shall be no more dividing; heart shall beat with heart in the communion of heaven for ever.” “I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men: and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people; and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God.” Out of the depths, then, let us lift our eyes to-day. Our redemption draweth nigh. Over the restless ocean of life we journey now; but with Christ in the vessel there is safe guiding, and one day the abundant entrance into the kingdom of heaven. The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. And well we know we scarce shall win our welcome ere we cast our crowns at the enthroned Redeemer’s feet, saying, “Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, be glory and dominion for ever and ever.” I have but another word. Reverse our text and make it a vision of the future for those who love not Christ, and do not serve God in the gospel of His Son. Conceive what an awful future is suggested by these words: “it shall be all sea”; all wide, wild wastes of midnight, howling, storm-tossed, wintry waters; never dropping into calm; never lit by the summer sunshine; full of separation, danger, mystery, suffering, conflict. I cannot image it to you. The soul shudders at the awful picture of the future awaiting those who love not God, and refuse the gospel of His Son. “Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation.” No More Sea.—What is meant by this symbol is best ascertained by remembering how the sea appears in the Old Testament. The Jew was not a sailor. In the Old Testament it is a symbol of mystery, of rebellious power, and of perpetual unrest. 1. The revelation of a future in which there shall be no more painful mystery. 2. The text tells of a state that is to come, when there shall be no more rebellious power. God lets people work against His kingdom in this world. It is not to be always so. 3. The text forete’ls a state of things in which there is no more disquiet and unrest. Life is a voyage over a turbulent sea. Changing circumstances come rolling after each other, like the undistinguishable billows of the great ocean. Tempests and storms rise. That is life. But there is an end to it some day, and it is worth while for us to think about our “island home, far, far beyond the sea.”—A. Maclaren, D.D. Revelation 21:3-4. God’s Tabernacle with Men. Consider— I. The sentiments of which this proclamation is expressive.—We perceive in it— 1. The exultation of joyous discovery. 2. The rapture of sacred astonishment. 3. The eagerness of solemn expectation. 4. The expression of the force of a benevolent interest in all that pertains to the welfare and destiny of man. 5. The satisfaction of devout intelligence, beholding, in the events which it contemplates, fresh attestations of the stability and fulness of its own eternal welfare, as dependent on the Divine counsels and character. 6. Preparation for instant and cheerful concurrence in the effecting of God’s purposes, and the advancement of His glory. II. The events by which it is called forth.— 1. The wonders of providence, as exhibiting God’s concern, and individual, as well as constant regard for human welfare. 2. The sublimer wonders of redemption. 3. The mysteries of the sanctifying influence. 4. The final revelations of the Divine power and greatness through all time and eternity. III. The manner wherein it teaches us to reflect both on our privileges and duties.—We should meditate: (1) with mingled gratitude and wonder; (2) with united watchfulness and diligence; (3) a corresponding appreciation of every ordinance which confirms it; (4) a sacred ambition and ardour to diffuse its knowledge among thoe yet destitute of it; (5) a holy desire for the final manifestation of God.—R. S. McAll. Revelation 21:5. The Renewal of All Things. I. The need of a complete moral renewal. All visions of a political or economic millennium wreck themselves upon the obstinate fact of human depravity. With this, legislators, philosophers, and moralists, have been found powerless to deal. The gospel alone builds its hope upon a complete moral renewal of humanity, making “all things new”—chief among them the heart of man. II. An adequate power.—“He that sitteth on the throne.” At this point, too, the best human systems of morality fail. But He who created the human soul can renew it. The hardest heart can be broken, the worst disposition changed, when Omnipotence rises up to work. The conversion of Saul of Tarsus, or of the three thousand in a day, come with infinite ease within the sweep of His power. III. The wonder of regeneration.—For this stupendous thing we ask whenever we pray for the conversion of a soul: that the omnipotent Jehovah will reach down from the heaven of heavens and mould all the powers and activities of that soul to His own Divine image—in that soul “make all things new.” IV. The secret of “holding out.”—If conversion is not a varnish put on the outside, not a mere “good resolution” of man, but a renewal of “all things”—purposes, desires, ambitions, loves and hates—by Divine power, that renewed soul will “walk in newness of life.” V. The great need of the Church: a regenerate membership.—No more proud, covetous, envious, hot-tempered unscrupulous Church members, excusing these inconsistencies as “natural,” but, in the glory of the renewed nature, “growing up into Him in all things who is the head, even Christ.” Such a Church is the ideal of Christianity, and the hope of the world. VI. The ultimate renewal of all outward things: nations, nature.—“The kingdoms of the world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ”; “the creation also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God”—“new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”—I. C. Fernald. Revelation 21:17. Wherewith to Measure Life.—The measure of a man is here identified with the measure of an angel. Here is a Divine scale of measurement, and one which, if we would apply it to our lives, would make them sublime indeed! I. It is the curse of our race that, though God made our souls, like our bodies, upright, and fitted to gaze on heaven, we walk like Mammon, with earthward eyes.—Jesus contemned the offer of the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. Men will be lofty or low, according to the office to which they direct their souls. If their ideal be dwarfed and miserable, their lives, too, will be small and mean. II. You may judge of this by large as well as by small examples.—Take in your hands the great works of history, and see how grievously nations have suffered when their multitudes have been misled by false admirations. III. But perhaps we may be misled if we make our deductions too broad.—Look, then, at sections and phases of Society only. Any class of society is degraded when it acquiesces in, much more when it admires, immoral favourites. IV. To each of us individually—to our nation, to our Church—it is of supreme importance that we lift our eyes to the galaxy of great examples, and reflect the luminous virtue of heavenly ideals—The sole hope of humanity is in its good and holy men. All earth’s purest and noblest come and lay garlands at the feet of these statues, but the crowd of the vulgar clamber up the pedestal, with no other object than to injure and to deface. How can a man have any light or sweetness left in him who delights to feed himself on calumny and falsehood until the devil has drawn down his soul into incurable littleness, as the worm “draws in the withered leaf, and makes it earth”? V. I have faith in manhood when I see men choosing lofty ideals, turning with scorn from all that is frivolous, leaving things base to perish of their own natural corruption, claiming their affinity with all things worthy, and measuring their lives with the measure of a man, that is, of an angel.—Such thoughts produce pure and high-souled men. VI. Can one ask, without a sigh, whether it is a common thing for men thus to measure their lives with the measure of a man—that, is, of an angel?—1. To what multitudes among us is not the love of money a root of all kinds of evils? How insignificant a fraction of their means do some men spare for the needs of their Church, the glory of their God, and the good of their fellow-men! The worshipper of Mammon—by what does he measure his life? Is it not by the measure of the wretchedest spirit that fell? 2. Others measure their life by the measure of a fiend. A drunkard—the helpless bondslave of a dead poison, sinking into penury and rags, or in some drunken orgy becoming a felon, or even a murderer. 3. Do not others measure life with the measure of a beast? The selfish, the unclean, the greedy, the immoral, do this. 4. Others by the measure of the world. We must learn one great Divine lesson in two aspects. Respect for human nature in ourselves; and also in others. In our faith in the Incarnation lies the very heart and essence of Christianity. Angels are but ministering spirits. “All angels worship Him.”—Canon F. W. Farrar, D.D. TO CHAPTER 21Rev 21:10. The New Jerusalem.—Josiah Conder, in his work on “The Harmony of History with Prophecy,” remarks, on the above passage: “In its general plan, the symbolical city presents a striking resemblance to the description of Ecbatana, furnished by the Father of secular history. ‘Of this city, one wall encompassed another, and each rose by the height of its battlements above the one beyond it. The ground, which was a circular hill, favoured this construction, but it owed still more to the labours bestowed upon the work. The orbicular walls were seven in number: within the last stood the royal palace and the treasuries. The largest of the walls nearly equalled the circumference of Athens. The battlements of this outer wall were white; those of the second, black; of the third, purple; of the fourth, blue; of the fifth, orange; all the battlements being thus covered with a pigment. Of the last two walls, the battlements of the one were plated with silver, those of the other with gold.’ Thus the Median city consisted of seven circular terraces, each distinguished by the colour of its wall, whereas the Apocalyptic city is described as a quadrangle of twelve stages or foundations; but the points of coincidence are highly illustrative of the emblematic description. The precious stones of which the walls of the holy city appeared to consist, whatever mystical or symbolical significance may attach to them, are obviously intended to describe the colour of each resplendent elevation; and, although the colouis do not occur in the precise prismatic order, the combination would have the general effect of a double rainbow.”Revelation 21:18. Gold as Compared with Glass.—“Gold comes into consideration here on account of its splendour. ‘The white jasper,’ says Bengel, ‘and the yellow gold harmonise well together.’ The point of comparison between the gold and the glass is expressly intimated. It stands simply in the purity; the transparency, noticed in Revelation 21:21, is that of the glass, not of the gold, and taken into account merely as the symbol of purity. All gold is not pure; glass, considered generally, is so, and therefore, what is pure only exceptionally is compared with it” (Hengstenberg). Though coloured glass and opaque glass were known as far back as the early Egyptian era, it was only in the reign of Nero that clear, transparent glass came into fashion. A great demand sprang up at once for it. Hence John, in speaking of it, uses it as we would the railway or telegraph etc., and by so doing shows that his book was written after Nero’s reign. Possibly some other allusions of the same kind may exist.”Revelation 21:19-20. Precious Stones.—“When quartz or flint is found uncrystallised, and more opaque, of various colours, from white to black, it constitutes chalcedony” (Greek, chalkedon). Of this there are several varieties; the onyx and sardonyx, the sardius, or carnelian; and the chrysoprase; and the Oriental jasper already noticed. The colour of chalcedony is either bluish or milky grey. The chrysoprase is of of an apple-green colour. The former has a wavy appearance, somewhat resembling agate, and is said to have been originally found at Chalcedon, in Bithynia, whence its name The best carnelians are obtained from the East Indies, Japan, and Surat. It is also found in Europe and America. The word carnelian is derived from the Latin carnis, flesh, on account of its fleshy colour. Its Hebrew name has also relerence to its colour. “When first found these stones are of a dark olive colour, and obtain the lighter red or white hue by exposure to the air, or by being baked, it is said, in ovens. It takes a beautiful polish, and is used for seals and ornaments. It was among the precious things of Tyre. In a mountain near Damar is found a stone which the Arabs call ayek yemani, and which they hold in the highest estimation. It is of a red or rather light brown colour, and seems to be a carnelian. The natives set it in rings or bracelets, and ascribe to it the talismanic virtue of healing wounds, and stanching blood when instantly applied.” Moses, the most ancient and inspired historian, tells us that the land of Havilah abounded in the onyxstone (Hebrew, shehem; Greek, onuchion). The Hebrew word is variously translated by learned men; but it is certain, from the testimony of both the sacred and profane writers, that Arabia abounded in precious stones. Pliny says it was common in the mountains of Arabia; and Niebuhr says that he “saw quantities of the stones in the road, as he journeyed from Mount Taœs to Mount Sumara.” Another writer tells us that “not only was the onyx plentiful in Arabia, but they adorned their walls with it” (Revelation 21:19-20). And the prophet Ezekiel also speaks of the precious stones from Sheba and Raamah, in which the Arabians traded with Tyre (Ezekiel 27:22). The onyx and sardonyx (so called from its resemblance to the sardius in colour) are both of a flinty texture, composed of layers of chalcedony of different colours. “Some antique cameos were made from these stones, by having the figure, or head, in the whiter stratum, while the background was cut down to that which is darker coloured.” Miss Sedgwick says that in the room of gems in the Museo Borbonico, Naples, was an onyx, considered the finest cameo in Europe. It was as large as a plate. On one side was represented the “Nile and its fertility,” and on the other Medusa’s head. These stones are all referred to in the beautiful picture which the apostle gives of the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city; and this description was quite in accordance with the splendour of Eastern palaces. “The first object that attracts attention,” says Franklin, in his History of Shah Allum, “is the public hall of audience.… It is adorned with excessive magnificence. I judge the building to be a hundred and fifty feet in length. The roof is flat, supported by numerous columns of fine white marble, which have been richly ornamented with inlaid flower work of carnelian and different coloured stones.… The inside of the wall, about two-thirds of the way up, is lined with marble, having beautiful borders of flowers, worked in carnelians and other stones, executed with much taste.… It is evident the apostle drew his magnificent description of the walls of the holy city from these pictures of gorgeous splendour. The coarser materials of brick and mud, of which the walls in many royal gardens of the East are composed, are entirely hid by the brilliant and dazzling profusion of gems that everywhere sparkle along the whole length of walls. But how far superior the holy city!“Its walls all precious stones combine;Its gates their leaves of pearl unfold;Its holy mansions far outshineTransparent glass and burnished gold.In that bright city I would dwell,With that blest Church the Saviour praise;And, safe redeemed from death and hell,Sit at His feet through endless days.”H. H. Revelation 21:20. Chrysolite: Topaz.—(Hebrew, pitdah, topaz; Greek, topazion.)—Chrysolite really means the golden stone, and is a general term for stones having a golden hue. The colours of what we call chrysolite are a green, sometimes yellowish or brownish, with a white streak. It is bright and transparent, but is seldom larger than a pin’s head, and is used in jewellery. It is obtained chiefly from the Levant. There is a variety of this stone called olivine, on account of its colour, which is found in basalt in Bohemia, Hungary, and on the banks of the Rhine. The chrysolite of this verse was probably what we now call topaz. The topaz is a very beautiful gem, sometimes nearly transparent, and of different sizes, forms, and colours. Its general colour is bright yellow, tinged with red, orange, or green, and it is found in some countries of a blue green, or yellow colour. The Brazilian species is often as transparent as a piece of ice when the surface is melting. It is embedded in granite and other rocks in every part of the world, chiefly in veins of tin. It is either in crystal or in rounded masses, sometimes weighing several ounces. In Scotland, the topaz is found at Cairngorm, and receives its name from that place. The Oriental topazes were highly esteemed. Those of Ethiopia were celebrated for their wonderful lustre. Pliny says the topaz belonged to Arabia, and derived its name from the island Topazos.Revelation 21:23. The Glory of Heaven.—How transcendent the glory of that world where there shall be no more sin nor imperfection—where all shall unite in the song, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain” I “The glory of the Lord (doth) lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.” The idolatrous temple of Diana was so bright and splendid that the door-keeper always cried to them that entered in, “Take heed to your eyes.” But what faculties of vision must we have to behold the glory of the temple above! If it is said that the righteous themselves shall shine forth as the sun, what will be the splendour of the Eternal Throne? What a delightful change, from this world of darkness and imperfection to that where all shall be light and glory!Revelation 21:27. The “Holy” City.—Without holiness there can be no such heaven as the New Testament reveals. There may be scenery of surpassing grandeur—mountains, woods, rivers, and skies, most charming; but they do not make a heaven, else a heaven might be found in Wales or Cumberland. There may be a capital full of palaces and temples; but they do not make a heaven, else a heaven might have been found in Delhi. There may be buildings of marbles and precious stones; but they do not make a heaven, else a heaven might have been in Rome or Venice. There may be health, and ease, and luxury, and festivities; but they do not make a heaven, else one would have been met with in Belshazzar’s halls. There may be education, philosophy, poetry, literature, art; but that will not make a heaven, else the Greeks would have had one in Athens, in the grove, and in the porch. Holiness is that without which no heaven could exist.—Rev. John Stoughton. THE , AND THE AND first five verses complete the description of the new heavens and new earth. There is evident reference in the figures of the tree of life and the river that flows by the trees, to the first and forfeited paradise. The Epilogue is brief, but pertinent and impressive. The angel-guide and interpreter reassures the seer that all which has been disclosed is certain; and he repeats what was said in the prologue to the book respecting its design to unveil the future to the servants of God, and to disclose the blessedness of those who keep in mind what has been revealed. John, filled with reverence and astonishment, falls again at the feet of the angel, to do him homage; but he is warned by the angel that he himself is only a fellow-servant of God, and a fellow-labourer with the prophets who disclose the Divine will. The angel, moreover, warns him not to seal up the book, as if it were to be reserved for some distant period. On the contrary, the time is near—i.e., the time when the series of events commences. Jesus Himself is introduced as closing the scene. He declares that He has sent His angel to make the disclosures which the book contains, and that He is the promised Messiah of the Old Testament, the Offspring of David, and the Light of the World. To His promise that He will come quickly, the Spirit which speaks in His prophets, and the bride, i.e. the Church, respond and say, Come! All, moreover, who read or hear the words of the book are exhorted to unite in the expression of the same ardent desire.Revelation 22:1. Proceeding out of the throne.—Compare Ezekiel 47; Genesis 2:10.Revelation 22:2. Nations.—Apparently those outside the city.Revelation 22:3. Curse.—Compare that pronounced on the ground because of Adam’s sin.Revelation 22:4. See His face.—To be understood as implying some manifestation of God, answering to the capacities (senses) of the redeemed. Sight of God as the absolute Being is inconceivable for any who are in creature conditions.Revelation 22:15. Dogs.—Dogs are regarded in the East as unclean animals. Compare Revelation 9:21, Revelation 21:8.Revelation 22:18. Any man shall add, etc.—See Deuteronomy 4:2; Deuteronomy 12:32. “The parallel of those passages proves that the curse denounced is on those who interpolate unauthorised doctrines in the prophecy, or who neglect essential ones, not on transcribers who might unadvisedly interpolate or omit something in the true text. The curse, if understood in the latter sense, has been remarkably ineffective, for the common text of this book is more corrupt, and the true text oftener doubtful, than in any part of the New Testament. But it may be feared that the additions and omissions in the more serious sense have also been frequently made by rash interpreters. It is certain that the curse is designed to guard the integrity of this book of the Revelation, and not to close the New Testament Canon. It is not even certain that this was the last written of the canonical books” (W. H. Simcox, M.A.). St. John simply means to prohibit, in the most solemn manner, all tampering with his own work.MAIN OF THE .—Revelation 22:1-21 The Permanence of Evil.—It cannot be assured that the subject dealt with in this chapter is the “final restitution of all things.” It may even be fairly disputed whether the book of Revelation is in any sense historical. It is so manifestly a teaching by symbols and prophetic figures that we do not wisely associate with it a chronological order. Its scenes may be synchronous in many cases, descriptive of what occurs in different parts of the earth. It may even not be descriptive at all, but suggestive of moral or immoral forces, and of varying Divine judgments. Without attempting to explain what the book of Revelation is, we may with confidence affirm that the meanings of it are too uncertain for us to build perplexing doctrines upon it. And certainly, to conclude that evil will continue after the final issues of the great redemption are reached, and to base that conclusion on the passage now before us, would be wholly unwarranted. Apart from preconceived and biassing notions, the reference of the passage would seem to be a very simple one. John is bidden not to “seal up the sayings of the prophecy of this book,” because the time of closing up, though at hand, is not come; and until it does come, preaching and prophecy must be agencies working amongst men. Evil men will be going on in their evil, and need warnings; good men will be growing better through much struggle, and so will need much encouragement. The very point is that there is no fixity yet, and so for every one there is hope. The passage is really an echo of the parable of the tares. “Let both grow together until the harvest,” even if it should seem to you that the harvest is close at hand. Revelation 22:11 is rather a statement of fact than a direction of conduct, or a prophecy of the future, and this is indicated by the correction of the Revised Version. The results of the preached gospel are always such as described here: “to some it is savour of life unto life, to others of death unto death”; but we must go on preaching that gospel, even if the apparent issue be a confirming men in their sin. Bishop Boyd Carpenter takes a somewhat different view: “What does Revelation 22:11 mean? Does it mean that the time is so short that it is hardly sufficient to allow of men reforming themselves so as to be ready for their Lord, and that, therefore, the lesson is: Let those who would be ready for Him remember that now is the day of salvation? This is the view adopted by some; it contains a truth, but the meaning of the verse seems more general. Is it not the declaration of the ever-terrible truth that men are building up their destiny by the actions and habits of their lives? ‘Sow an act—reap a habit; sow a habit—reap a character; sow a character—reap a destiny.’ The righteous become righteous; the godly become godly. So, slowly but surely, may the power of being masters of our fate pass out of our hands. It is in this law of our nature that the key to many of the darkest problems of the future may lie; and not without a solemn declaration of this law does the book of Revelation close.” NOTES AND SERMON Rev_22:2. The Tree of Life.—Here we may compare the homa-tree of the Persians, growing at the spring Ardvisura, which comes from the throne of God; the kalpasoma-tree of the Hindus, which furnished the water of immortality, the libation of the gods; the tuba-tree of the Arab; the lotus-tree of the Greeks; the tree of Assyrian sculpture, adorned by royal figures, and guarded by genii, just as, in the Bible-story, it is guarded by the cherubim … With the tree of knowledge we may compare the large part played by trees in Chaldean magic; the burning bush from which God’s angel appeared to Moses; the oak of the diviners at Shechem; the palm-tree under which Deborah prophesied; the oak of Ophrah where an angel appeared to Gideon; the rustling in the tops of the balsam trees, which indicated to David that God had gone on before him in the battle; the prophetic trees of the Arabs; the “tree of light” of the Assyrian; the laurel-tree of Delos; the tree of Delphis.—W. R. Harper. Revelation 22:4. “The Vision of God.”—The vision of God is threefold: the vision of righteousness; the vision of grace; the vision of glory. I. Righteousness includes all those attributes which make up an idea of the Supreme Ruler of the universe.—Perfect justice, perfect truth, perfect purity, perfect moral harmony in all its aspects. It is a vision of awe, transcending all thought. A vision of awe, but a vision also of purification, of renewal, of energy, of power, of life. II. The vision of righteousness is succeeded by the vision of grace. When Butler, in his dying moments had expressed his awe at appearing face to face before the moral Governor of the world, his chaplain, we are told, spoke to him of the blood that cleanseth from all sin. “Ah, this is comfortable,” he replied; and with these words on his lips he gave up his soul to God. He only has access to eternal love who has stood face to face with eternal righteousness. The incarnation of the Son is the mirror of His Father’s love. III. The mirror of love melts into the vision of glory.—Here we catch only glimpses at rare intervals, revealed in the lives of God’s saints and heroes—revealed, above all, in the record of the written Word, and in the incarnation of the Divine Son. There we shall see Him face to face—perfect truth, perfect righteousness, perfect purity, perfect love, perfect light; and we shall gaze with unblenching eye, and our visage shall be changed.—J. B. Lightfoot, D.D. Revelation 22:5. The Royal State.—The Church of the future is the theme of the latter part of the book of Revelation. One class of expositors asserts that the brilliant description of the New Jerusalem herein contained can only apply to the final glorified state of the Church in its heavenly home. Others think that the glowing figures represent the earthly prosperity of the Church when the Messiah shall reign among His people in His spiritual Person. As time is the interpreter of prophecy, we may rest assured that an agreement of view cannot be expected beforehand. We are inclined to regard the whole book as the last legacy of inspiration to the Militant Church, and that its prophecies relate to her earthly course. Taking the Bible generally, and the New Testament specially, in which we find the fuller revelation of immortality, the heavenly state is nowhere fully set forth. We may almost say that the references to heaven are mere hints, and not descriptions of that glorious state. It would appear strange, therefore, that the whole subject should be treated, and at such length, in the one book. But to regard the whole as a prophetic utterance, in the highest language of imagery, of the prosperity of the Church in its latter days, when all its struggles are over, is no strain upon either imagination or faith. Indeed, such a picture is welcome, as the calm is welcome after the storm. There was once a strife among the disciples: which of them should be accounted the greatest? This arose from the expectation, which then prevailed, that Jesus would set up again the throne of David, and restore the kingdom to Israel. The contention was, Which of the disciples should occupy the highest stations in the new kingdom? The historian has not given the claims which were preferred. The Book never satisfies mere curiosity. The Saviour’s answer is given in full: “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority over them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.” At first sight, the statement seems to sweep away every aspiration, and for a moment the disciples felt a keen disappointment. The tension was slackened when He further said, “I am among you as he that serveth.” They had seen nothing in His treatment, either of themselves or others, which might lead to the thought that He was about to ascend the thronesteps. The one thing which they had seen—service—pointed in the opposite direction, as service was generally regarded. A life of constant toil and privation, which at times was violently assailed, had nothing in it to encourage the hope of wearing a crown and swaying a sceptre. Thus He brought the disciples down; but only to a level with Himself. He brought them down, however, to lift them up in another direction, yea, in an unexpected direction—that of service. The lift He gave them brought them up, not only near, but to the throne. “Ye are they which have continued with me in My temptations. And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as My Father hath appointed unto Me; that ye may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” The language is figurative; but it points out to us that one truth, that service alone will satisfy the highest and noblest aspirations of the human heart. To do good is to reign with Christ in His kingdom. The text refers to a period when the service of the Church will be so great as to command universal approbation. I. The ascendency of the Christian character.—“And they shall reign for ever and ever.” Although the specific promise which the Saviour made, and which we have now quoted, indicates a favour to be bestowed on the twelve apostles, yet in the light of other Scriptures it cannot be so confined. The ascription of praise by the Church at the beginning of the book of Revelation, includes the idea: “Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto His Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever.” Looking at the grand era of gospel ascendency which these chapters set forth, the prophet Daniel said, “And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all rulers shall serve and obey him.” Take also the words of St. Paul in Romans 5:17 : “For if by one offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.” The same apostle also says in 2 Timothy 2:12 : “If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him.” In the third chapter of this book and the last verse, we have this remarkable declaration: “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with My Father in His throne.” And now we will look at some of the attributes of the Christian character, which will make its ascendency inevitable. 1. Founded upon Christ. Jesus Christ is its source. It partakes of the character of Christ: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light” (1 Peter 2:9). In the margin, for praises we have virtues, which is the more correct reading. Then let us think of those virtues which adorned the Saviour’s life. There was an intense love of the truth. Purity marked every step. Benevolence flowed through the whole. If any one asks why the life of Jesus of Nazareth stands out pre-eminently, that is our answer. We do not stop to prove that truth, holiness, and love, are the imperishable materials with which to build up life, for the life of Jesus is our witness, which has stood the severest test for nearly two thousand years. We do not deny that other characters have outlived their generation, and have come down to us with much force, but we know that the indestructible elements in them are truth, honour, and goodness. Men who have distinguished themselves in one of these departments have created a life whose impetus overcomes the ravages of time. Above all others, the love of truth, the purity of example, and the love of man, are seen in the character of Christ. We do not think that His miracles, or even His tragic death, would have preserved His name independently of His teaching and loving-kindness. Jesus lives, not only in His heavenly mansion, but also in the lives of His followers, as He said, “Because I live, ye shall live also.” The fact that Christians disseminate the light of truth, received from the Saviour, and are the salt of the earth in the morality of their life, with which they blend every effort to be the benefactors of their day and generation, assures us of the ascendency of their character. There is in truth an inherent force, before which ignorance and error must disappear. The truth, as it is in Jesus, is the power that sways their thoughts. Truth is royal; its mandates are from the throne, and its influence must prevail. The Almighty has said over the darkness of mankind, “Let there be light,” and there is light, which increases more and more unto the perfect day. If, again, we think of another force, concurrent with truth—the force of purity—in the nature of things it must gain the ascendency over sin. St. Paul sets forth the thought in Romans 5:20-21 : “But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound; that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.” Righteousness is the foundation of all prosperity—personal and national. When the moral instincts of humanity are awakened by the gospel, it will become evident that sin is suicidal. Every Christian, therefore, brings this evidence against sin in the court of conscience; and we know what will ultimately be the verdict. We have already seen the overthrow of barbarous customs, evil habits, and many national sins. We confidently expect the day when “holiness unto the Lord” will be written on the bells of the horses. In the fact that the beneficial must become universal, we need not hesitate to believe. The Church witnesses for Christ in being His almoner to the world. Christianity’s highest credentials are the many humane institutions which it has planted in every land. Every Christian is a boon to Society. Directly and indirectly his life is a benefit to others. His motto is to do good to all men, especially to those who are of the household of faith. 2. Inspired by the Holy Spirit. If the character of Jesus is the basis of the Christian life, it may be questioned whether it is possible to maintain such a high ideal. Are we not all feeble imitators of a character which we cannot reproduce? This is very much the view which the world takes of the matter. It cannot be otherwise, because the force which sustains and inspires the Christian life is unperceived by mortal sense. The promise which the Blessed Lord gave His Church is worthy of fresh attention: “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.” The words may have a special application to the apostles, but it is also a promise of universal application to believers. The chronicler of the words, St. John, in the first epistle, says, “But the anointing which ye have received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you; but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall know Him.” By the anointing we are to understand the influence of the Holy Spirit, by which we know Christ; yea, it is the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us. The very birth of the Christian character is of the Spirit: “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” When we bear in mind that Christians are daily under the power of the Holy Ghost, it is more than conceivable that they can reproduce the excellencies of the life of Jesus. We do not assert that this is always the case, because we often grieve the Spirit, and sometimes we quench the holy fire. But Christ is living now in His saints; they are enabled, in a measure, to set forth the truth, afford a holy example, and do the works of charity, The power which lifts the soul out of darkness into light, and cancels the bond of slavery by the new birth, can make the new life triumphant. “For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” (1 John 5:4-5). Faith in Jesus Christ is an active principle, fired into action by the Holy Ghost. The influence is permanent, and not transitory, as the influence of the world. “And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” St. Paul says, “I can do all things through Christ that strengthened me.” He received that strength in his spirit by communion with the Master. So also the weakest saint has power to rise above surrounding influences, for there dwells in his heart the Living Christ. To the world Jesus of Nazareth is only an historical character; one who acted His part, and on whose life the curtain of eternity fell; but, by virtue of the indwelling Spirit, the Christian has stepped before the curtain to continue the representation, and bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. II. The distinction of the Christian character.—We have said that the language of the text is figurative, but it is intended to convey the idea that those who love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ will be exalted. Human nature has aspirations. They have their legitimate place in our life. God has placed everything under our rule: “Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet.” Checked by the Fall, as we have it elsewhere—“But now we see not yet all things put under him”—the scope of man’s action has been circumscribed. “But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour.” And where we see Jesus we also see His saints. It was His last prayer that His disciples should be with Him, to behold His glory. 1. The elevation will be above the force of circumstances. Every Christian on earth has to fight with difficulties. Life here is a struggle. We have to contend with evil influences: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” That day the strife will be over. The saints will look down from their thrones on the vanquished foes. Trials will be over, and mortality will be swallowed up of life. Death will have no sting, and the grave will be despoiled of victory. We shall be more than conquerors through Him that loved us, and gave Himself for us. Each will receive the crown of righteousness, which shall never fade. 2. The elevation will be the highest to which God can raise us. The idea of a throne and a kingdom suggests that the greatest honour will be conferred on the followers of Jesus. High as our aspirations may now be, they shall be more than fulfilled. Such a prospect calls upon us to be faithful, even unto death. Our life is brief in which to win a crown. The steps to the throne are many. Fight with sin; conform to the will of God; lead men to Christ, and build up the Church. Such a life has an upward tendency, and will continue its course until Jesus shall come.—“Weekly Pulpit.” Revelation 22:11. Permanency Stamped on Human Lives.—Our condition in the coming life absolutely depends upon our conduct in the present life. “We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in the body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” This has a most practical bearing. It crowds our present life with opportunities, and weightens every act of life with eternal relations. I. The present world is a world of change.—The air we breathe seems to be always the same, and yet there is nothing so variable, so constantly altering its place and its constituents. Every blade of grass, every tree-leaf, is in the day-time taking something from it and adding something to it, and in the night-time reversing the order. The mountains seem to keep their place, but the truth is that the so-called “everlasting hills” are ever varying their forms, and weathering down into the plains. But the present changeableness of everything is hopeful, for it involves the possibility of moral reformations. If Adam and his posterity had kept their integrity, the stamp of permanency might have been put on earth and life. As it is, the tree of life must be watchfully guarded, for the hope of humanity lies in the possibility of becoming other than it is. Now is the day of possible reformations. Now the prodigal may come back home and be again a son. Now the poor woman whose life-story is a tale of shame and sin may change into the penitent, pouring tears on the feet of Jesus and hearing words of gracious pardon. St. Paul may throw aside the old spirit of persecution and change into a preacher of the faith he once sought to destroy. “He that is unjust may become just, and he that is filthy may become holy.” II. The future world is a world unchangeable.—This earthly scene is pictured for us in the unrest of the sea. The future scene is pictured for us by the absence of the sea. “There shall be no more sea.” Unchangeable! How nearly impossible it is, with our present ideas, to appreciate that word! There will be no change, because the people shall be all holy. God is unchangeable; but why? Because “all His works are done in truth.” “Just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints.” “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty.” Then holiness must be the secret of our rest. We are to be first partakers of His holiness, and then partakers of His rest. But the unchangeableness of the future world is its woe, as well as its glory. To the Christian the thought of the unchangeable time is delightful, because his present distress is caused by the incompleteness and inconstancy of his righteousness now. St. Paul gloried in the future because he was to have a crown of righteousness; a crown, as the pledge and seal of established, perfected, eternal righteousness. But the thought of the unchangeable time is a distress to the man who is living in sin, for it means that reformation will be no longer possible. What he is he will have to be. “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still;” he has fixed for himself his moral characteristics in his life-experience, and it must be stamped with the seal of eternity. Revelation 22:17. Water of Life.—Some of the South Sea Islanders have a tradition of a river in their imaginary world of spirits, called the “Water of life.” It was supposed that if the aged, when they died, went and bathed there, they became young, and returned to earth, to live another life over again.—Turner’s “Polynesia.” The Perpetual Invitation.—“Every thing which God has made He treats according to the nature He has given it.” A memory of this fundamental principle will greatly help us in our thoughts of God. A gross idea of omnipotence is a very constant source of misconception; but, in the nature of things, and according to the Scriptures also, there are certain cannots even to God. One of these cannots is: He cannot deny Himself. Now, if God should treat anything which He has made against the nature He has given it, that would be a denial of Himself. So, when I think of God’s omnipotence, it is not right for me to think about it in any such way as to suppose that He could do anything which would deny what He had already done; I am rather to think of it as such Divine power as can do anything to anything according to the nature impressed by God upon that thing, and not otherwise. So God cannot treat a human soul as He would a stone; nor can He treat a human soul as He would an animal, for there is something belonging to the nature of the human soul that does not belong to the nature of animal or stone. Now, in what does this diverseness of human nature, which thus necessitates diverseness of Divine treatment, inhere? In many things, but eminently in this, that to man has been given by God the power of choice, and therefore God must treat a human soul, not as a stone, nor as a horse, but as a something thus endowed with the power of a rational moral choice. So, if any man, as men are so apt to do, looking forth upon the material workings of the Divine hand, or upon its workings in realms lower than that in which man moves, should say, Surely God is omnipotent; surely I need not trouble myself about the management of my soul; surely if God means to convert me He can seize me in the grasp of His power and convert me, whether I will or no; surely I can go carelessly on, choosing the wrong, waiting for Him to make me choose right;—then that man thinks wrongly, and at his soul’s peril, for he forgets that, since God cannot deny Himself, God must treat him according to the nature of the rational, moral, responsible soul he is. Upon that power of choice which God has given man, God will never, can never, rudely break. The Holy Spirit, powerful as are His influences, and helpless as we should be without them, never, in the slightest, so intrudes upon the integrity of our human, moral choices that they are not kept intact. So, then, this Scripture is the perpetual appeal and invitation of God to us to come to Him, to accept Him. 1. The Spirit says, “Come.” The impact of the Divine Spirit upon the human spirit is perpetually asserted in the Scriptures. 2. The Church says, “Come,” by its existence, by its doctrine, by its examples, by the Scripture on which it is founded, and which it, in turn, holds forth and declares. 3. He who hears may say, “Come.” Christianity is democratic. A man need not wait for the calling of any priestly and separated class. 4. But there is a call internal. He that is athirst may come. Our spiritual longings are the internal invitations to God. 5. And whosoever Will—it hinges there. And freely if you will.—Anon. Revelation 22:20-21. The Last Words of the New Testament.—St. John did not know that he was closing the canon. If he had known, be could not have closed it more appropriately. The vision granted to him seems to rapidly sketch the ages of the Christian dispensation. It seems to indicate the various forces which, taking various shapes, would put the Christian faith and the Christian Church in peril. The last words gather up two things: the cheering message of the Church’s Lord; and the proper attitude for the Church to preserve. I. Christ’s last message to His Church.—“Surely I come quickly.” We have to keep ever in mind two thoughts concerning Christ’s relations with His Church. 1. Christ is always (all the days) with His Church. 2. Christ is now, sensibly, absent from His Church. Both are true. Meeting the latter we have the promise, “Lo, I come quickly.” Messiah is coming. That was the great hope held before the ancient saints. And the promise was fulfilled. But the fulfilment came in God’s time, not in their time; in God’s way, not in their way; for God’s purposes, and not for theirs. Christ is coming. That is the great hope ever inspiring the saints of these later days. But our conceptions may be no nearer the truth than were the conceptions of the ancient saints. He may not come just at the time that we fix, in the way that we plan, or for the precise purposes that we imagine. There is, indeed, some sense in which He is coming quickly. He is making no needless delay. We say, “O Lord, how long?” He says, “Quickly.” And we should be continually braced up by the thought that it may be even now. Of this much we may be well assured: He will come for— (1) inspection of work; (2) reward of work; (3) trust of higher service. II. Man’s last response to the Church’s Lord.—“Amen. Come!” The attitude is one of expectancy and desire. The Church ever wants to have her Lord sensibly nearer. The tone in which we daily say, “Lord Jesus, come quickly,” is the revelation of our spiritual state and condition. 1. If we are fainting with the weariness of continued work, there will be no bright tone in our soul-cry, “Come.” 2. If we are giving way to unbelief, the soul-voice will be, at least temporarily, silenced. 3. If we are neglecting our spiritual duties, we shall have no heart to cry, “Come.” 4. If we are allowing ourselves to be over-mastered by the worldly spirit, we shall even find that we are praying against His coming. Can you say, “Lord Jesus, come quickly,” “Amen. Come”? Can you say it right, and with the right tone? With the solemn judgment-figure in your mind, can you say it? With the glorious coronation-figure in your mind, can you say it? It is no cry to be kept for the death-hour. It is the soul-cry of every hour, when the soul is truly “alive unto God.”