# Lectures on the Apocalypse: A Modern Paraphrase

*Lectures on the Apocalypse, or Book of the Revelation of St. John the Divine, by Frederick Denison Maurice, restated paragraph by paragraph in modern English. This paraphrase follows the order and content of the original without adding interpretation. Drafted with claude-opus-4-8; reviewed by a human editor.*

## PREFACE.

These Lectures are not argumentative or scholarly. They do not require the reader to know anything about the various theories about the Apocalypse that have been held in the past or the present, in England or elsewhere. If you have already adopted one of those theories, I hope my words may help you test it against the actual text and the overall aim of the book it came from. If you have been wavering among several of these theories, I hope my Lectures may help you do them all justice, take useful hints from all of them, and find the words of the Prophet more satisfying and more understandable than any of them.

Nor do I ask the reader to bring an extensive knowledge of ancient or modern history — the kind you would need to evaluate most modern commentaries on Prophecy. The more familiar you are with the facts of history, and the more honestly you have sought that knowledge from writers least inclined to argue in favor of the Christian Church — even from writers wholly skeptical about its value — the more, I believe, the Revelation of St. John will help explain those facts and bring your own thoughts about God's government of the world into harmony. But my plan keeps me from trying to find precise matches between particular sentences of the book and particular events that have happened or are yet to happen in one period or another. The main historical references in these Lectures concern the condition of the Roman world in the years just before the fall of Jerusalem. I would like the reader to check these against the Histories of Tacitus, just as he will naturally turn to Josephus for the record of the crimes and disasters of the Jewish people.

The method I have adopted is, I believe, very simple. But I do not therefore claim I discovered it myself. The first hint of it came from a revered friend, a clergyman of the school of Cecil and Venn, who had devoted much of his life to the study of Prophecy, and who, more than twenty years ago, was allowed to leave the school in which he had been learning for the home where his spirit had long dwelt. He is not responsible for any of the particular conclusions I have reached. But I can never be grateful enough that, through his teaching, I arrived at the conviction that the words "The kingdom of heaven is at hand" were used by the Evangelists in their strictest sense; that the Apostles were not mistaken in believing the end of an age was approaching; that they had no exaggerated expectations about the age that would follow it; and that if we accepted their statements plainly, we would understand far better what condition we are living in, what our responsibilities are, what our sins are, and what we have a right to hope for.

I have called these discourses Lectures, because they are not lessons drawn out of separate texts. But they were delivered from the pulpit, like ordinary sermons. They were aimed at what I thought were the needs of a congregation I had been connected with for fourteen years, and to which, throughout all those years, I had often spoken on the subject of Prophecy. I have not had the heart to remove from them references to current events and the days on which they were delivered. I have even taken the liberty of giving them a more pastoral and personal character by adding a sermon on the last verse of the Apocalypse — one written less as an explanation of that verse than as an expression of my wishes for a community I was about to leave. I would not have included it if I had not thought it illustrated the subject of these Lectures, as well as gave me a chance to declare my continued regard and affection for those to whom I preached them.

London, December, 1860.

## LECTURE I. INTRODUCTORY.

*The passage:* This is the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him so that he could show his servants what must soon happen; he sent and made it known through his angel to his servant John, who testified to the Word of God and to the witness of Jesus Christ and to everything he saw. Blessed is the one who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep what is written in it, because the time is near. John writes to the seven churches in Asia: may grace and peace come to you from him who is, and was, and is to come, and from the seven Spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of earthly kings. To him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and made us kings and priests to God his Father, be glory and power forever. Look, he is coming with clouds; every eye will see him, including those who pierced him, and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So be it. "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end," says the Lord, who is, and was, and is to come, the Almighty.

Many people have tried to interpret this book, and one after another has failed; that is the general opinion among educated people. But I suspect that opinion is not broad enough. It ought to be extended from this one book of the Bible to all the books of the Bible, and from the books of the Bible to every book at all that contains truths worth seeking. Those who try to interpret fail; the writer turns out to have expressed thoughts they did not grasp or reach the depth of; then others come with their own rules and measures, overturn their predecessors, and are overturned in their turn. The same thing happens with the simplest Gospel as with the Apocalypse, and with a poem, whether Latin or English, as with the Gospel. Commentators have become a byword; nearly every reader imagines he has caught something in the author they discussed that they missed or twisted.

But perhaps every reader also discovers, sooner or later, that this or that commentator has helped him see something he did not see before. He discovers that he too has the ambition to fence his author in with rules and theories of his own making. He begins to suspect that each of us might help the next person if we were more childlike, more reverent toward the subject we study, and more willing to learn its laws rather than impose our own. The kind of criticism that is not a teacher looking down on a pupil, but a pupil looking up to a teacher, may after all have the most insight in it and bring the greatest reward. Everyone is qualified to practice that kind of criticism. Some will carry away more and some less, but each will be shown something that may make his mind clearer, his heart purer, and his actions more consistent.

1\. The verses I have read to you speak of the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ the Son of God, which God gave to him. So the very opening of the book takes us at once beyond the book. What is revealed is not a doctrine—not anything that can be put into set terms—but a living Person. The letters do not make or give the Revelation; God gives it. We are not belittling the letter when we say this; we hold to the letter religiously. We contradict the book when we put it in the place of the One from whom it comes. In doing so we contradict the plain language, not only of the Apocalypse, but of the whole Bible.

2\. How strictly I mean to follow the letter of this chapter, and of all the later chapters, you will see when I come to the next clause: "to show to his servants things which must shortly come to pass." I would only be repeating myself if I stopped to weigh that clause here. The phrase "the time is at hand," and several other phrases in this passage, will soon bring it to our attention.

3\. "He sent and *signified* it." The word "signified" is not a lazy word for which any number of equivalents would have done. As everyone admits, the Apocalypse is a book of *signs*. That is assumed to be one reason for its obscurity. We think that if we could only translate all the emblems into ordinary speech, we would understand it perfectly. But are we sure that signs and emblems, if they are chosen by God, may not be the best and simplest aids to grasping truths that would stay obscure if they were presented in what we call ordinary speech? Are signs not a common, human way of speaking, one that puzzles the learned man more than the peasant, precisely because the learned man is not in touch with the facts of life the way the peasant is? If the Revelation is really to be the revelation of a Person, may the signs not point to his actual presence, while abstract words could only express certain notions about him?

4\. So in this book, as in all the earlier books of the Bible, God himself is presented as speaking to people through words or signs. Whatever methods or persons are used as the means of the revelation, he is the one who reveals. He removes the veil that keeps us from knowing what is close to us, or the veil over our hearts that keeps them from perceiving it. That must be kept in mind before we turn at all to secondary agents. Here one of them is said to be an angel: "he sent and signified it by his *angel* to his servant John." I take this name, as most people would, to mean a messenger from another world. But I must remind you that it is also used for people living in this world, in every respect like their fellow human beings, committing sins and certain to die. And I must remind you that when it is used that way, the writer does not say, "Now I am using the word in a different sense than before." He plainly wants us to feel that the sense is the same. He believes that whether or not mortal weaknesses are present, this does not disturb the basic fact that the ones he speaks of are messengers of God, receiving light from him and passing that light on to those he means it for. If there is anything spiritual in a human being, it must be able to receive such communications; if there is nothing spiritual in a human being, the Bible would never have been written—there would have been no need for such a book, and no possibility of one. But I think we shall learn from this book, more than from any earlier part of the Bible, how people's dreams about an unseen world and its inhabitants are given substance, and how their thoughts about contact between that world and this may become, not fanciful and superstitious, but calm and orderly.

5\. "He sent and signified it by his angel to *his servant John*." Students have found it very hard to identify the writer of the Apocalypse with the writer of the Gospel and the Epistles. The earliest church historian hints at another John, to whom many have been willing to assign this book. The latest and most advanced school of German Rationalists has rejected that view. Those scholars credit the Apostle himself with the work, in which they can detect nothing but fierce Jewish prejudice and hostility to St. Paul. Yet they too, like those who look for another author, see the sharpest contrast between the Apocalypse and the Gospel. They date the Gospel to the second century. And suppose the heading of this book did *not* match its contents—suppose it were *not* a revelation of Jesus Christ the Son of God but only a collection of predictions about the future—then I do think it would take an overwhelming amount of external evidence to convince us that it could come from the man who wrote of the Light that gives light to every man coming into the world, who recorded the conversations with Nicodemus, with the woman of Samaria, and at the Feasts of Tabernacles and of Dedication. There is an enormous difference between the two books as long as we hold to the popular idea about the Gospel—an idea I do not think we can ever really forget, however much we force ourselves into believing the two books had a common origin. But if we assume the writer is able to define his own purpose, and if that purpose is visible through every vision and prophecy that follows, then I believe no one was more likely to write about the fall of Babylon or the New Jerusalem than the man who testified to "the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, and all the things that he saw." There is a peculiarity in that description that a clever debater could never have reached. He might have referred to the Son of Thunder, or to the beloved Disciple. He might have referred to the Theologian who wrote about the Divine Word. But this one sentence combines the *opposite* qualities of the writings the Church has received as St. John's. The writer of the fourth Gospel dwells more than the other evangelists on what is lofty and mysterious. He also sets out more than they do what is visible and tangible. He never separates the one from the other. In the plainest language he presents his Master's plainest acts as manifestations of his eternal character and nature. Those two aims which commentators have found so hard to reconcile, and which have led them into the most contradictory theories about the fourth Gospel, are here blended with a childlike skill. How they are blended in the Apocalypse itself we shall see as we go on.

6\. The next sentence: "*Blessed* is he that reads, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep the things written in it: for the time is at hand." Writers who wanted to fix our attention on this book, and to overcome the listlessness or despair with which so many regard it, have quoted this blessing again and again. "Do we not have here a divine promise," they ask, "that we shall be the better for undertaking this study? Should we not rely on that promise and hope for results, even if earlier students have been disappointed ever so often?" The argument is very strong in itself, but in many minds its force has been weakened by the clause that ends the verse. If a teacher of the seventeenth, eighteenth, or nineteenth century could persuade his hearers that the "time" said to be at hand meant the year, the decade, or the half-century following the one in which he was speaking, he would have a good chance of engaging their thoughts, even if they were deeply absorbed in other pursuits. So this has been a common effort of interpreters: *that* date must belong to events that happened just before our own day; *this* one must point to events yet to come out of a not-distant future. But if the seventeenth-century commentator was *not* wrong in his forecast, then it occurs to the hearer or reader that the nineteenth-century commentator must be wrong in his. And if the seventeenth-century commentator *was* wrong, why should his successor be any luckier in his guess—or, at any rate, why should we give up certainties in order to find out whether he is? And there is always another, more serious suspicion behind these. Did the original writer not use words in their plain, natural sense? If he told the readers and hearers of his own day that *the time* was at hand, did he not mean them to understand that it really *was* at hand? Can he possibly have meant that what he states so definitely should be taken indefinitely? Can he have backed a divine promise with an assurance that events proved false—or with what, in an uninspired writer, we would call a pious fraud?

7\. I confess, my brothers, that these questions seem to me deeply serious and even awful. I can find only one answer to them. I take the words in their most direct and straightforward sense. I believe that the time John wrote about was at hand when he wrote. I no more suppose him to have been mistaken about its nearness than I suppose him to have been a deliberate deceiver. Yet I do not admit that the promise is any less good for the seventeenth, eighteenth, or nineteenth centuries, because I hold that events happened in the first century that were of surpassing importance, that marked the end of an age, and that deserved to be described as the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ the Son of God. Before I could hold that this passage is drained of any of its worth or reality for us because the revelation was made centuries ago, I would have to change the meaning of one of the words in it—or at least abandon the scriptural meaning of that word for a vulgar heathen one. St. John speaks of the words of this *prophecy*. If prophecy were merely an announcement of future events—if it had no more force than the Babylonian soothsayers and fortune-tellers gave it—then I would grant at once that once an event has happened, any prophecy about it is used up, except perhaps as evidence of the predictor's accuracy. But the Jewish prophets, far from wanting to be lumped in with those soothsayers and fortune-tellers, regarded them with horror, and protested fiercely against those of their own people who imitated the soothsayers' practices while daring to use the sacred phrases, "The burden of the Lord" or "The Lord has said." Prophecy, as they used and understood it, is the utterance of the mind of him who is, and was, and is to come. Events, days of the Lord, crises in a nation's history were manifestations of his everlasting mind and purpose. The seer was to explain the past and the present, and only in connection with those did he speak of the future. He told what curses people were bringing on themselves by breaking the laws that individuals and nations were created to obey. He told how the purposes of God's will were unfolding in a steady progression despite all the resistance of human self-will. He told how they would go on moving forward until everything God intends for man, for the universe, and for his own glory has been accomplished. That is prophecy, if we take our idea of it from the books we accept as authoritative, and do not shrink and twist them to fit some notion we have picked up elsewhere. But if that is what prophecy is, why should a past event be any less powerful and meaningful for us than one still to come? If we can find an interpreter to tell us what it signifies, may that meaning not be of the deepest interest to one age after another? May each age not catch some glimpse of it that another missed? May it not link that glimpse with events it has itself experienced—events happening in God's world, and so subject to the same law, the results of similar deeds, and heavy with results not unlike those the prophet spoke of? Surely there can be a blessing on the hearers and readers of his oracles, even though we believe those oracles were not ambiguous and that he never played with double meanings. Surely times may be at hand for people in every generation that make it deeply necessary for them to try to enter into the meaning of the times that were at hand in his generation. And surely, as an age—or as we sometimes call it, a dispensation of God—moves toward its completion, the need may grow greater, and greater too the hope that we shall be allowed to profit from past illuminations and past mistakes and confusions.

8\. In trying to set out the idea of prophecy that I find in the earlier prophets of his nation, I have borrowed some words from the next passage in this chapter. At first you might treat that passage as merely a burst of devotion. But the more you reflect on it, the more, I believe, it will explain the whole purpose of the book. "John to the seven churches in Asia: grace and peace to you from him who is, and was, and is to come, and from the seven Spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and made us kings and priests to God his Father—to him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen. Look, he is coming with clouds, and every eye will see him, including those who pierced him, and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So be it. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, says the Lord, who is, and was, and is to come, the Almighty."

To these seven churches St. John declares the revelation God has made to him. It is the revelation of him who is, and was, and is to come; the revelation of him in his own perfect and absolute nature, as the source from which all the grace and peace ever known by any of his creatures, and all that can ever be known, has flowed. It is the revelation of that one Spirit—seven being the perfect number, the expression of unity within variety—who dwells in their churches, who gives them their distinct graces and gifts, who binds them into one: the Spirit of Grace and Peace. It is the revelation of Jesus Christ, who has these three titles and descriptions: (1) that he is the faithful and true Witness of the Eternal God—the one in whom the Spirit dwells without limit, the one who displays his Father as perfect Goodness, Truth, and Love; (2) that he is the firstborn from the dead, the Conqueror of man's enemy, the Conqueror on behalf of the whole family of God; (3) that he is the Prince of all the kings of the earth, the actual Lord over men, to whom all must at last do homage. What he is, and what he has done for our race, cannot be set out in cold, dry statements. It can only be expressed in thanksgiving to him who has loved us with a love that is, and was, and is to come; to him whose love has shown itself in action and suffering; to him whose actions and sufferings have been for the deliverance of people from the sins that set them at war with him and with each other, and were the cause of their misery; to him who was not content merely to wash us from our sins in his own blood, but has made us kings under him—rulers over ourselves, rulers over the earth to which we are naturally slaves—and has made us priests under him, to offer holy sacrifices to God his Father. To him be glory and praise forever and ever.

9\. I have called *this* the Revelation or Apocalypse. And I believe that as you go on studying the book, you will find it occupied throughout with that divine Name into which the Christian churches are baptized, in which all of us live and move and have our being. Such an Apocalypse must be meant for every age that was to follow, just as every age before it was preparing for it. The full revelation of this Name must be the Revelation of Revelations, the one that throws light on every other. But what about the words that follow? "Look, he is coming with clouds, and every eye will see him, including those who pierced him, and all the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him." Keeping to the order and the letter of the words, I cannot doubt they were meant to tell the seven churches how they should regard the dark events that were to happen in their own time—the time of a tremendous crisis in the Roman Empire, the time of the overthrow of the Jewish nation. In the dark clouds of that time they were to recognize the coming of the Son of Man. The Judge was there, acknowledged by every human conscience, acknowledged even by the consciences of those who had pierced him as a blasphemer and a criminal. The churches would be able to read these signs. They would know what luminous form stood behind the clouds, and would hear, in the mourning of the peoples of the earth, their crying out after the very King and Deliverer they had rejected and now trembled before.

10\. I do not want to anticipate what may be said better on future occasions about these seven churches, or this awful Name, or this coming with clouds. I take these verses only as a series of pointers that the book is going to unfold. In that same light I receive the closing verse, which is repeated in the vision that follows. As some have thought, it may have been shifted here from that later place by accident. But we need to be reminded at the very start, and in many ways, of who the subject of the book is, so that we are never tempted to see in it only a scattering of rays of light with no center from which they came and to which they return. We need to be reminded that it is not enough to trace all things and all people back to their origin, unless we can also find the end for which they exist. We need to know that only a living person can be the Alpha and Omega, the starting-point of Creation and its final Rest.

I shall be glad if I can give you a few hints about this great book that will help your own reading of it. I am sure it will reward the study of the layman just as much as the priest; that it need not tempt him into any fantasies, but may deliver him from a great many; that God may use it to guide us through dark roads and tangled thickets where we are all likely to lose our way; and that it will become clear when we ask its help in practice rather than in speculation. The blessing on the one who hears and on those who read is one of those that will not pass away. May it come down richly upon us from him who is the Author of all blessings!

## LECTURE II. THE SON OF MAN.

*The passage:* John, calling himself the brother and companion of his readers in suffering and in the kingdom and endurance of Jesus Christ, was exiled on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and his testimony to Jesus. On the Lord's day he was in the Spirit and heard behind him a loud voice like a trumpet, calling itself the first and the last, telling him to write what he sees in a book and send it to the seven Churches of Asia — Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. Turning to see the voice, he saw seven golden candlesticks, and among them one like a Son of Man, in a long robe with a golden band across his chest. His head and hair were white as wool and snow, his eyes like flame, his feet like glowing brass, his voice like the roar of many waters. He held seven stars in his right hand, a sharp two-edged sword came from his mouth, and his face shone like the sun. John fell at his feet as if dead, but the figure laid his right hand on him and told him not to fear, for he is the first and the last, the one who died and now lives forever, holding the keys of death and the grave. He was told to write what he had seen, what is, and what will be; and it was explained that the seven stars are the angels of the seven Churches, and the seven candlesticks are the seven Churches themselves.

Whether or not we accept the common view that St. John had already outlived his fellow Apostles, the way he begins this passage is very striking. He usually lived at Ephesus, among the Christians of Asia Minor, who afterwards turned to him with the deepest reverence as the last living keeper of Christ's own words. Yet he calls himself "your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ." He makes no claim to apostolic authority, to his great traditions, or to any difference between himself and those he addresses. He is simply one of them, their fellow-worker and fellow-sufferer.

I do not point this out in order to draw any conclusion about the special humility of this divine teacher. It seems to me that St. Paul was just as humble when he was strongly asserting his claim to be an Apostle and denouncing the Judaisers who tried to rank him below the original twelve. Asserting oneself can be as much a duty as belittling oneself; both are wrong only insofar as they are the least bit put on; and one may spring from as deep a sense of personal weakness as the other. They may have the same source and, in different circumstances, lead to the same end. If St. Paul had held back from proclaiming his apostolic title and character, he would have given ground for the conclusion that his Lord, once he was no longer visible, had stopped governing his Church and stopped calling men to his work. The man who said he did not trust in clever words when he declared God's testimony would in fact have been trusting in that cleverness rather than in his calling and in the Spirit that helped his weakness. If St. John had told the Churches of Asia Minor about the voice that once bade him leave his father's nets, he might have led them to think that voice was now silent, or unable to reach them. If he had spoken of his apostolic commission or his special place among the Apostles, he might have made them think that when he left the world they would be stripped of the divine Presence, and only an oral or written memory of it would remain. But the lesson he was appointed to teach his own generation, and all later ones, was exactly the opposite; and so it was fitting that he should describe himself not by titles that set him apart from other men, but as their brother and companion.

1\. He tells us he was an exile on the island of Patmos. Whether the local authorities of Ephesus sent him there, or whether it was a formal deportation ordered by the Emperor, his words do not tell us. Nor does this passage help settle the debated question whether his banishment happened as early as the reign of Claudius, as late as the reign of Domitian, or somewhere in between. On the cause of his banishment he sheds more light. Most of St. Paul's persecutions were stirred up by Jews; the two notable exceptions were at Philippi, where he angered those who traded in magic, and at Ephesus, where a true instinct led Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen to see that he was harming their business, even though he had not attacked their goddess. But the charge the Jews used to stir up the mob at Thessalonica was in the end the effective one: that these men act against the decrees of Caesar, saying there is another King, one Jesus. That charge could not be permanently effective until it was joined to the one on which the rulers of the Sanhedrin had convicted our Lord of blasphemy: that he makes himself the Son of God. When St. John proclaimed the Word of God, who existed before all worlds, who had become flesh and lived among men, who is King of kings and Lord of lords, he struck a blow at both the worship and the political order of the Roman Empire. He set the God-man against the man-God. The best emperors, who tried to hide the rotten foundation of their power under respect for law, acts of mercy, and philosophy, had as much reason to hate this testimony as the worst emperors, who openly embodied the false principle in themselves.

2\. St. John does not tell us what he mostly looked at on that island, or what sounds beyond the roar of the Aegean reached him from the outer world. He says that on the Lord's day, the day of the Resurrection, he "was in the Spirit" — withdrawn from the things the senses register, seeking his eternal and real home. Then a voice came to his heart, a voice like a trumpet loud enough to wake the dead, saying, "I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last." Like the name "I AM," spoken centuries before to the shepherd in the desert, this was a witness to him that there is a living, personal ground of all things, which existed before temples, cities, earth, sea, and sky, and which will last whatever becomes of them. And like the message to Moses, it was not for himself alone: "What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches of Asia." Those Churches were to learn what their own existence meant, what they had to do, and how they stood in relation to him who is the First and the Last.

3\. "And I turned to see the voice that spake with me." The voice comes from no created thing around me. It is not the echo of my own thoughts. It comes as a command to my spirit from the Ruler of my spirit.

4\. "And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks." Our first thought is that we are now entering a region of symbols. Are not these candlesticks like the one of pure gold that Moses was told to place in the Tabernacle, or like the somewhat different one that Solomon had made when he built a house for the Lord God of Israel? Certainly they are like these; and the Apostle loves them for the resemblance; they were meant to remind both Israelites and non-Israelites within the Church of a sacred past, of a worship that was soon to end. But, as we shall soon see, they were also meant to lift them out of symbols, to turn the signs into what they signify, and to show them among what practical realities they were actually living. No stronger testimony could be given, I think, than is given here — that symbols will always have a worth for human beings, but that the world's infancy was over, that now the truths were to throw light on the parables rather than the parables on the truths, and that men were now to study the visions of an earlier day by the revelations of this later one.

5\. For "in the midst of the seven candlesticks was one like unto the Son of Man." That the candlestick pointed to the giving of light; that the light had to be spread out yet remain one; that it stood in the Tabernacle to signify him who was worshipped there as the Source of Light, and the worshippers as the instruments of spreading it abroad — this lesson needed no cleverness to draw out, and must have reached many hearts that would never have grasped it if put into words. But the more deeply it went home, the more questions it will have raised. Only those on whom it made no impression could be content simply to look at the candlestick or to hear the Scribe's explanation of it. "How can this light reach me? How can I show it forth? Is it really a light for all Israel? Is all Israel to be a lamp to mankind? How can this be, when we are so often servants of darkness? And does God really want his light to go out everywhere? Isn't it meant to be kept within his chosen people?" Such thoughts the symbol will have awakened in those in whom it did its work. Nothing they saw satisfied them. It drove them to seek for light, and those who sought found more than they dreamed of, though never enough. They found more and more signs of a Light near them, of a Light that lightens every man. They rejoiced in what was given. But they waited to hear that what they felt must be true really was true — that God's Light was indeed man's Light, that there was One in whom all the scattered rays of light were gathered up, from whom they could be received, and by whose power they could be spread abroad.

To see the Son of Man walking in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks was at once to declare that these candlesticks had a real meaning, and that their meaning was no longer merely Jewish and limited. They were no longer part of the furniture of the Tabernacle or the Temple. The one candlestick, with its six branches and its ten, had been lit long enough in Jerusalem. That flame had burned itself out. He who had kindled it as a witness of himself and his own presence with men was now truly present. It was the Son of Man himself, and not some substitute for him, no mere formal image of him, who was giving light to the sons of men.

6\. Such a revelation must have been exactly what a Jew needed for comfort, if he mourned bitterly over the present state of his people and dreaded their still darker future; and it was exactly what he would have wished everyone to share. But it would have been very incomplete if only the golden candlestick in the Jewish Temple had been given its true meaning and raised to its highest power. In the worship of that Temple, things were not the most important part; the persons who ministered were far more sacred. What was even the holy of holies itself compared with the high priest who entered it once a year?

It is this high priest who is at once brought to mind by the first part of the description of the Son of Man. He was "clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle." There can be no doubt this is priestly clothing. Enough is said to show that the Son of Man claims and fulfills the office once given to the children of Aaron: that he blesses the people in God's name, and stands as their Representative before his Father. The Alpha and Omega takes the place of the man whose work was nearly over, who had ceased to be any witness for God or for man, and had become rather a barrier between them.

But the seer moves quickly from the priest's clothing, from what is merely official, to the person himself. "His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow." What St. John had glimpsed for a few moments on Mount Tabor, when the face of the Man of Sorrows shone like the sun and his clothing became white as light, was now shown to him as a lasting glory. "His eyes were as a flame of fire" — looking into the heart and spirit, exposing whatever is false, and burning it away with their love. The feet bear the marks of endurance and suffering. They have walked over the earth and been scorched and made holy by it. They are "like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace." The roar of the sea is in the ears of the lonely man on Patmos; its strange and varied notes are blended in the voice of the Son of Man, which is "as the sound of many waters."

8\. From the robes that mark the priest we have passed to the form of the Divine Man — a form expressing purity, struggle, victory, and calm reconciling power, but never suggesting mere qualities or attributes apart from a Person in whom they live. Then we return to where we began. This Son of Man is walking among the candlesticks; he is the center of light. It is a heavenly light, not belonging to earth, though reaching into the farthest corners of the earth. The light is no longer in the Tabernacle or the Temple. "He had in his right hand seven stars." The Persian who worships the night, the Greek who worships Apollo, may still see in the forms of nature the witnesses of the true King. "And out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword." The forms of nature, beautiful and true as they are, must bow to the word that speaks to man. Out of his mouth comes that which separates soul from spirit, joints from marrow, that which divides the good from the evil, the false from the true. How essential this feature is to the picture of the Son of Man we shall feel more and more. Its effect, joined to the former, is to turn the images of night into images of day. The stars were in his hand, but his "countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength."

9\. "And when I saw him I fell at his feet as dead." Years of dwelling on the Son of Man had not lessened the old disciple's awe, but deepened it. Mere power does not make him tremble. But before the form of Divine Goodness, before eyes that are like flame, he is as weak as a child. Even lesser revelations must be moments of terror. The first glimpse of a discovery in nature, though it sometimes brings the cry "I have found it!," as often crushes the one to whom it comes with a sense of his own smallness and a wonder at what may lie behind it. To be assured that he stood before Him who is the First and the Last — was that not enough to make this poor exile, though the most favored of the Apostles, fall at his feet as if dead?

10\. And what words raise him up? Are they, "Do not fear; I am he whom you knew at Cana or on Tabor; I am he who placed you nearest to myself"? No — but, "Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death." It could not comfort or revive St. John to be told what had been done for him, how he had been singled out from the rest of his people. What did restore him was the assurance that the face he could not bear to look upon was the face of One who had been under the power of that death and that grave appointed for every criminal as much as for every apostle, and who had risen as the Conqueror of them, and Conqueror for men. Yes — to hear these words ringing in his ears, "I have the keys of hell and of death," the keys of all he fears, of all that man fears, of all that sin has made him fear; to be convinced that these are the words of the Son of Man — this must be a comfort to every apostle and martyr such as no thought of his own life, or witness, or approaching death could ever give. When all such memories are drowned in the memory of evils done and evils present; when death and hell seem as if they might be deeper abysses for him than for any poor outcast who never thought of them at all — then this trust in One who has plunged into those depths because he is the Son of Man, and has found something deeper than they, and holds the keys of that kingdom as well as of heaven's — this message meets him as fully satisfying, precisely because it overturns every selfish confidence and forces him to rest on the Redeemer and King and Lover of the universe.

11\. And because this is so, he is raised up to do a work for his fellow men; and only by doing it will he be able to keep hold of his own trust. "Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter." What he has seen are not private illuminations for himself. They are facts that concern all men — the principles of human life and fellowship. The Son of Man is not walking among the candlesticks only at that one moment. He is always doing so. St. John must write of the things that were, in order to write of the things that would be hereafter. He can serve as an interpreter to lands he never saw, and to times of trouble that would come after he had gone to his rest, only by faithfully interpreting the situation of the people closest to him, of those who were his contemporaries and companions.

12\. And how is he to carry out this task? He is told at once to strip the veil from those outward images he had been looking at, the very images that seemed as if they were to take the place of the images of the older dispensation. But those images are not to replace the old ones; the things the images represent are to replace them. The mystery, the inner meaning, of the candlesticks and the seven stars is to be declared: "The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches." And so this verse follows naturally from the one before. The prophet is to write things he has seen, and that are, and that shall be hereafter. He has seen the candlesticks, and the One holding the stars in his right hand. These Churches existed then, and were to exist afterwards. They were then distinct from one another, each under its own minister. Each minister was an angel or messenger of God. Though distinct, they formed one whole. There was one Church among many Churches. The whole body was sent into the world to spread light through it. Each separate body was to spread light over a sphere of its own. Each minister was to be a star of light to the body he served. Each was to understand that his light came not from himself but from the Center of light. Each would fail in his office if, under one temptation or another, he forgot this condition of his very existence. And each, by failing in his office, would harm the society he was meant to enlighten, infecting it with his own evil. These things were. The future would be shaped by the present; in principle they would be the same. These Churches were formed not for a day or a year, but for an ever-renewing life. They were to last on even as one star after another vanished, because the Son of Man was walking among them. The Church would endure even though particular Churches ceased to exist, because the Son of Man was in the midst of it. If all of them perished, he would not perish. These were not revelations for the apostolic age only; this revelation was especially meant to prepare the way for the ending of that age, so that no one might suppose the Church depended for its stability or life on those who had been its first pillars, and so that no one might suppose any single one of them was its center. The mystery of the seven candlesticks and the seven stars, then, is a mystery that the struggles of that time were to unfold, and that the struggles of all later generations were to make clearer. By the sins of particular angels or ministers, by the sins of one Church or another, no less than by the light one or another was able to spread, every aspect of this mystery would be brought into fuller view. More and more it would be seen that a Church which does not spread light must increase darkness, and gather darkness into itself. More and more it would be known what temptation each Church has to become a servant of darkness, and how great that darkness is. More and more it would be seen what judgments rouse Churches from their sleep, and what the signs of their doom are.

13\. This is only part, and a small part, of the Revelation. But if we open our hearts to receive it, many of the doubts that trouble us in the later parts of the book will be cleared away. We shall be far less tormented by the question, "If these words concerned Jerusalem or Rome in the days of Galba or Vespasian, how can they concern London in the days of Queen Victoria?" The mystery of the seven golden candlesticks must apply to both if it applies to either. If Churches still exist; if the Bible is the book from which we are to learn why they exist, how they may serve that end, and by what sins they may frustrate it — then we need not doubt that we shall find just as many lessons about Medieval Churches and Reformed Churches, about how particular Churches relate to the Catholic Church, and about the domination of Emperors and Popes, as the commentators have worked out who have twisted the whole Apocalypse into a testimony about such things. We shall find these lessons, not by changing present tenses into future ones, but by noticing that the present tenses are tenses of continuance — that the principles worked out at one moment must govern every moment that follows. We shall find them when we are not looking for them; they will press upon us most strongly when we are least trying to make them fit historical events, or historical events fit them. Above all, we shall understand them best, and be most able to use them to link different events and ages in the story of mankind, when we let them bear most directly upon ourselves.

Primitive Churches, Medieval Churches, Continental Churches, seats of Papacy and of Empire — yes, it is good to know what we can of them. But are not *you* a Church, a body of people from whom light is meant to go out? Does it go out from you? Are there not ministers in the Church of England? Will not the Son of Man, who walks among the candlesticks, ask each of them: "Are you uttering your own dreary, secondhand commonplaces? Are you pouring out your own dreams and speculations? Are you strutting your little hour like an actor on a stage, or the oracle of some school? Or do you care to be a messenger of My purpose, a star in My right hand?"

## LECTURE III. THE SEVEN CHURCHES.

*The passage:* Christ, who holds the seven stars and walks among the seven golden lampstands, sends a message to each of seven churches. To Ephesus: I know your works, labor, and patience; you have exposed false apostles and hate the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, but you have left your first love — repent, or I will remove your lampstand; the one who overcomes will eat of the tree of life. To Smyrna (from him who was dead and is alive): I know your tribulation and poverty, though you are rich; be faithful unto death and I will give you a crown of life; the one who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death. To Pergamos (from him with the sharp two-edged sword): I know you dwell where Satan's seat is, yet you held my name even when Antipas was martyred; but you have some who hold the doctrine of Balaam and of the Nicolaitanes — repent; the one who overcomes will receive hidden manna and a white stone with a new name. To Thyatira (from the Son of God with eyes like fire): I know your love, service, faith, and patience, and that your last works exceed your first; but you tolerate the woman Jezebel who seduces my servants — she and hers will be judged; the one who overcomes and keeps my works will receive power over the nations and the morning star. To Sardis (from him with the seven Spirits and seven stars): you have a name that you live but are dead — be watchful; a few have not defiled their garments; the one who overcomes will be clothed in white and his name confessed before my Father. To Philadelphia (from him who is holy and true, holding the key of David): I have set before you an open door; because you kept my word with little strength, I will keep you from the hour of temptation coming on the world; the one who overcomes will be a pillar in God's temple, marked with God's name and the name of the new Jerusalem. To Laodicea (from the Amen, the faithful witness, the beginning of God's creation): you are lukewarm, and think yourself rich when you are wretched and poor and blind — buy from me gold, white raiment, and eye-salve; I stand at the door and knock; the one who overcomes will sit with me on my throne.

Last Sunday our subject was the revelation, or unveiling, of the Son of Man to His servant John. He was walking among seven golden lampstands. He wore the robes of the High Priest. His form was both divine and human. Light was in Him and shone out from Him. He had died, and He was alive — alive forever. He held the keys of death and hell.

What John saw and heard, he was to report; he was to write it in a book for the good of the seven Churches in Asia. Those seven Churches were declared to be the seven lampstands among which the Son of Man was walking. They were to spread abroad the light that lived in Him. The stars He held in His hand stood for their angels, or ministers. So the revelation of Him was also a revelation to them — a revelation of how they were related to each other, and of the purpose for which they existed.

The second and third chapters continue this revelation. They contain a series of messages to these Churches. Readers who find little meaning in the rest of the book, or who despair of finding any, have still accepted these messages as of great practical worth. In every period of Christendom's history they have been felt to speak forcefully to *that* period. Indeed, it has proved so impossible to confine them to the Apostolic age or to the circumstances of Asia Minor that theories have been built up to identify which era of the Church is the Sardian, which the Philadelphian, which the Laodicean. Given what I have said about the principles I mean to follow in studying this book, you will not suspect me of any fondness for such theories. I do not care to ask which is best or worst. I am determined to stay with the Apostle: when he speaks of his own time, I assume he means his own time; when he speaks of Sardis or Philadelphia, I assume he means Sardis or Philadelphia. But I take such theories as evidence that the revelation this book contains is a revelation of what abides — of what does not depend on circumstances, however circumstances may affect or alter its appearance. In this respect the messages to the Churches seem to me no different from the parts before or after them. If we are permitted to understand them, to feel their force on our own lives at all, it will be because the Spirit who spoke them to the ancient Churches is speaking them to us now; because He who was promised to be with the Church forever, and of whose living power the Church is the witness, has not stopped living or working. It will be because He opens our ears to hear what, in these messages or through any other means, He is saying to us and to mankind.

I. 1. Before I mention any special features of these messages, I want you to notice what they all have in common. The first and most obvious of these shared features is one I have already prepared you for. St. John — their companion in the faith and patience of Jesus Christ, St. John the Apostle, dearest to them, who was to outlive all his fellow Apostles — is *not* the one addressing them. To each and all, the Son of Man is speaking Himself. To each and all He declares that He knows them, knows what they are and what they are doing. To each and all He makes known the secret of their own lives: "Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write; These things saith he that holdeth the seven stars in his right hand, who walketh in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks; I know thy works." And so likewise to Smyrna, from him who was dead and is alive; to Pergamos, from him with the sharp two-edged sword; to Thyatira, from the Son of God with eyes like fire and feet like fine brass; to Sardis, from him with the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars; to Philadelphia, from him who is holy and true and holds the key of David; to Laodicea, from the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God — in each case with the same words, "I know thy works."

The language, you will notice, is uniform in these respects: it identifies the speaker as the Person who was unveiled to the Apostle on Patmos, and He alone is assumed to know what the works of each Church are. The difference between the messages lies in which aspect of this divine Person is shown to which Church — and these disclosures, as we shall see, correspond to each Church's particular tendencies and dangers.

2\. The second general feature is that these words are repeated after each message: "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." When we look more closely at what is said about them, I believe we will see why it was not enough simply to tell them that *the Son of Man* was among them and knew what they were doing. To admit that much is possible. Recognizing Him as in *some sense* the Head of all Churches, as in *some sense* discerning their qualities and ruling them, has not been very difficult in later times, and would not have seemed so to many even then. But to combine that with the belief that He is conversing inwardly with them by His *Spirit* — that by this *Spirit* He is convincing them of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, that by this *Spirit* He is appealing to what is deepest and most permanent in them, not to what is passing or impulsive — *that*, I suspect, was the difficulty then, and has been ever since. It has taken different forms. At one time the confession of a Son of Man could harden into a merely outward, almost material confession. At another, the confession of a Spirit could be twisted into an excuse for all lawlessness and fanaticism. So it is very significant, I think, that every message should begin with one of these revelations and end with the other; and this is a great reason why, in reading of the Asiatic Churches of eighteen centuries ago, we feel we are reading of the European Churches among which we live.

3\. Another feature is no less obvious — the one I touched on last week in speaking of the seven stars. Each message is addressed to the whole body, in the person of its angel. There were clearly very wide differences in the conduct and moral life of the various people who made up these Churches. Some of these are noted. Yet still a mind and temper is attributed to the whole society, and the minister's mind and temper are taken as a faithful index of it. He represents the particular Church over which he presides. There is no address to its individual members apart from him. With such materials it would be easy to construct a whole system of priestcraft and claim St. John's authority for it. Indeed, such a system is *bound* to arise if *only this* part of St. John's words is noticed, and the part about the Son of Man walking among the lampstands and the Spirit's presence with the Churches is forgotten. Take away those divine revelations, and the light they receive from St. John's refusal to claim any honor for himself, and it takes no elaborate ecclesiastical theory to turn priests into tyrants and Churches into slaves. This will happen naturally, because there is such a craving for unity in the human heart, such an inward sense that we are set under some head, such a consciousness that fathers are responsible for their children, kings for their subjects, ministers for their congregations, that whenever the divine principle explaining these convictions and setting their limits is forgotten, there will be perpetual new outbursts of anarchy opposing priestcraft. If a minister forgets that he is a messenger of God, the only way he can avoid becoming a usurper over men is by becoming their tool.

4\. Once more, all these messages share this feature: every one ends with some words about struggle and victory. To Ephesus: the one who overcomes will eat of the tree of life in the paradise of God. To Smyrna: the one who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death. To Pergamos: the one who overcomes will receive hidden manna and a white stone bearing a new name known only to the one who receives it. To Thyatira: the one who overcomes and keeps Christ's works to the end will be given power over the nations, ruling them with a rod of iron as Christ Himself received from His Father, and will be given the morning star. To Sardis: the one who overcomes will be clothed in white, his name not blotted from the book of life, and Christ will confess his name before His Father and the angels. To Philadelphia: the one who overcomes will be made a pillar in God's temple, never to leave it, marked with the name of God, the name of the new Jerusalem, and Christ's new name. To Laodicea: the one who overcomes will sit with Christ on His throne, just as Christ overcame and sat down with His Father on His throne.

II. 1. I imagine that, even if the first three features have not separated the Apostolic-age Churches from those of later times, the fourth may be thought to belong especially to the age when Christians were persecuted for their faith. These urgent calls to overcome, it will be assumed, must refer to the cross, the stake, the amphitheater, or at least the prison. But if you read through these chapters, you will be struck by how rarely such perils are even mentioned. The most notable case — the only one where the call to struggle and the promise to the victor are directly connected with outward suffering — is Smyrna's: from him who was dead and is alive comes the acknowledgment of their tribulation and poverty (though they are rich), and of the slander of those who claim to be Jews but are the synagogue of Satan; then the encouragement to fear nothing they will suffer, though the devil will cast some into prison and they will have tribulation ten days; and the charge to be faithful unto death, with the promise of a crown of life. Then follows the further promise already quoted: the one who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death.

In this city there was a persecution — apparently not a Roman one at all, but one coming from a synagogue of Jews, men who clung to that venerable name while denying the King of the Jews. Such men, through their influence in particular cities before or after the fall of Jerusalem, could easily raise a violent storm against the sect of Nazarenes and get them thrown into prison. If they themselves were in rebellion (as was shown in the second century, when they followed Barcochba as their Messiah), they were especially willing and able to make the disciples of the Crucified suffer. Or, if the Roman authorities suppressed them by force, Christians might easily be lumped in with them, as sharing a common origin and equally refusing to worship idols. Such persecution would have been just as terrible for the Church of Smyrna as the most general and systematic kind. It had clearly borne the best fruit in the lives of both pastor and flock. Though poor, they were rich. He who had died and become alive and lived forevermore saw in them the blessed result of His agony. Still, they needed strength and comfort. The tribulation would be sharp, though short. The flesh would shrink from it. But let them hold on. The second death, the death of the spirit, would not reach those trusting in the Deliverer from death. There was life in Him. Was not that life for them? Was any royal crown like that?

I have taken this Church first, out of its order. The words spoken to it must have cheered thousands in different generations. They must have felt the message was as truly addressed to them as to the angel of the Church in Smyrna, and that it could only come from Him who had died and was alive. But though it would be an immense loss if this one instance of a body suffering persecution were missing among the seven, it is not typical of the others; it is the exception. Pergamos is called Satan's seat — probably because, as one of the wealthiest cities in Asia Minor, it had been a special resort of Jews who were unusually hostile there. A distant reference is made to an earlier tribulation in which Antipas was a faithful martyr and the Church held fast to Christ's name. But that danger was apparently over; in any case it is not the one the angel is chiefly warned about. In Philadelphia, too, there is a reference to a "synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie." That synagogue might greatly harass the Christians of Philadelphia. But the chief harassment seems to have come from their claiming to be the people of God, and denouncing those who confessed Jesus as the Son of God as deserters from the old faith. On the whole, nothing could more distort the words of this book than to associate the conquests it speaks of chiefly with external troubles, or to suppose that the seven Churches were all going through such experiences — as if this made them unfit to serve as examples or warnings for those living in ease or safety.

2\. If we are not allowed to build that highly plausible theory about these early Churches, we are even more firmly forbidden to hold another: that they were free from the invasion of immoral doctrines and habits, or that such things, where they appeared, never took root. In the message to Ephesus we hear of the deeds of the "Nicolaitanes, which I hate." There these deeds were discouraged and kept down by the angel of the Church. But in Pergamos they seem to have gained a foothold and to be linked with another doctrine, said to be that "of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication." And the angel of Thyatira is charged with tolerating "that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess," in seducing Christ's servants into fornication and eating things sacrificed to idols.

That there is a difference among the three doctrines or states of mind named here, I fully believe. That there was one trait common to all — an indifference to ordinary moral obligations, grounded on the belief that Christians had been raised to a state above them — is equally certain. Two passages in the Stromata of Clemens throw light on the teaching of the Nicolaitanes. From the first (Book II. c. xx. § 118), it appears the sect twisted a saying of the teacher whose name they took, about contempt (or abuse) of the flesh, into a sense opposite to what he meant; what was asceticism in him became libertinism in them. The second passage suggests (c. xxiv. § 25) that the founder's ascetic profession was joined with a practical arrogance and disregard for the most sacred obligations, which might well explain the later conclusions drawn from it. Those conclusions, according to Clemens, amounted to a defense of concubinage, if not of a community of wives. These accounts come from an uncertain tradition and are not entirely clear. But they have an inner probability; the same story has been repeated again and again in different forms.

I do not think we need to assume there was an actual school or sect of "Balaamites." The man who would not curse the children of Israel in words, who could only bless them, and yet did Balak's work far more effectively by setting a temptation before them that undermined their moral strength — he is the forerunner and type of all who accept and proclaim the spiritual lessons of the higher covenant but turn them into excuses for encouraging the fleshly license that saps and destroys the spirit. So far the Nicolaitane and the Balaamite are alike. The Balaamite's distinctive features are two. (1.) He has a real inspiration; he is not a pretended but a genuine prophet, turning an actual gift to a vile use. (2.) His motive for evil is money. Indulgence of lust is the result in his victims. Covetousness has destroyed *him*.

Like the Nicolaitanes and Balaamites, the Prophetess of Thyatira sets herself above law. Like the Balaamite, she enthrones her own spiritual intuitions. But it is power, not liberty, that she aspires to. Her prototype is the Sidonian Jezebel, who broke down the righteous laws of Jehovah, set up the worship of the Baalim (the powers of nature), and turned the Israelites into Phoenician idolaters, and so into a degraded, filthy people. Such female usurpation is as directly connected with sensual worship, and all its consequences, as the doctrine of the male prophet. Indeed it leads *more* directly to tyranny.

3\. The use of names borrowed from the Old Testament for two of these three heresies is proof, I think, that they did not appear to the Apostle as essentially new. He was sure they had existed and borne fruit ages before. They appeared in the Church because the Church was made of men and women; no new race had been created to people it. Even the one heresy with a modern name, of post-Pentecostal origin, was like the others in its nature and effects. Yet it did testify to the fulfillment of the old covenant, to the baptism with the Spirit. In doing so it explained how the conflict between flesh and spirit, present in all earlier times, had now reached its full intensity. Every question now came down to this: what has the illumination of the Divine Spirit done for men? Has it freed them from the restraints imposed on their evil natures, or has it explained the meaning and blessing of those restraints? Has it opened to them visions of heaven that make their earthly conduct a matter of indifference, or has it given meaning to all the common occupations of earth? Has it made those who receive it into tyrants, or made them more obedient — and so more free? If that is so, then instead of confining these Nicolaitane, Balaamite, and Jezebel tendencies to the Apostolic period, we should expect to see them growing from the little seeds in Pergamos and Thyatira into monstrous diseases infecting the Church's life in every region — diseases that, if the Church gained influence over the nations, would infect *them* too, weakening and corrupting *their* powers and threatening *their* existence.

These consequences — which we would expect must follow, if these messages were true and divine — have, it seems to me, actually appeared in the history of Christendom. Nicolaitane communism has kept reappearing in the most varied forms and at the most unexpected moments. The Balaam-prophet — who speaks grand words and sets an example of foul deeds, flattering the spirit with its own greatness until it sinks under the rule of animal or covetous desires — has never been absent from small communities, and has influenced whole countries and generations. The Jezebel, or female form of wickedness, mingling with the others, has given birth to the most widespread idolatries and to systems of spiritual despotism so bewildering, in their variety and apparent opposition, that the successive reformers who fought against them have seemed to others, and even to themselves, to be fighting under different banners for opposite ends. Yet they have been of one heart and mind, in that they all bore witness that morality is unchangeable and that the righteous God cannot dispense with His own laws. And when they have been wise and successful, they have been alike in this too: they never hoped to overcome spiritual delusions by weakening their testimony to a Spirit of Peace and Love and a Sound Mind; they traced the evil around them not to belief in His Presence, but to the denial of it.

III. 1. This last lesson, about how falsehood should be handled, is contained in the message to Ephesus. The angel of that Church had a great horror of religious pretenders: he "cannot bear them that are evil." And he had not only zeal but discernment: he tested those who claimed to be apostles and were not, and found them liars. He also spared no toil: he bore up patiently. And this from real devotion: for Christ's sake he labored and did not faint. As for that sect which has done so much mischief, he hated the deeds of the Nicolaitanes, as Christ Himself does. For all this clarity and vigor of purpose, He who walks among the lampstands and holds the stars in His hand commends His servant. And yet an evil change has been found in him: he has left his first love. The outward activity is still there. The heart is gone. His service has become — is becoming — not dishonest, but mechanical. He who looks within knows it. And He calls him to repent — He whose call, if heeded, is itself the gift of repentance. But if he does not repent, if the coldness and indifference grow deadly, then the punishment is this: "I will remove thy candlestick out of its place." It was set to give light; he is failing to give it. Men see him busy repressing bad opinions and dutifully going through his round of duties. But the life and love of good do not flow from him. So he must not pretend to be what he is not. Ephesus must cease to be a Church if it fails in the one function of a Church. This, then, is the temptation he must overcome — not persecution, not heresy, but dreariness, formality, the worship of decorum. Let him fight against it in the strength of Him who walks among the lampstands. And He will give exactly what is needed: the fruit of the tree of life — the fruit that has power to prevail against every tendency in him toward torpor and death.

2\. In Pergamos it is different. He who has "the sword with two edges," who fights not only outward enemies but the subtle, secret one that undermines the heart within, saw that this Church — brave enough when called to bear witness against Jewish or heathen oppressors — was becoming infected with Balaamite and Nicolaitane corruptions, and that the angel was not resisting them courageously. No doubt they had crept into his own heart. He was not clearly distinguishing *there* between the liberty of the spirit and the license of the flesh; he was not hating the one so as to cherish the other. So he could not fight them in his flock. But the Son of Man is fighting them in both, and can overcome them in both. And if the angel will let that two-edged sword do its work, this shall be his reward: he will eat of the hidden manna that restores the spirit which the flesh-pots of Egypt have weakened. He will have the white stone of Absolution — the true spiritual emancipation which the Balaamite and Nicolaitane emancipation only counterfeited. On the stone will be written "a new name, which no man knoweth save he which receiveth it." The divine liberty is not given in his own name but in Christ's name. The regenerated spirit accepts its freedom in that name; it knows it bears His name, though it cannot make anyone understand how it came to bear it. It stands fast in Christ's liberty — the liberty of doing God's will, of giving up itself.

3\. In Thyatira, again, He "who hath his eyes like unto a flame of fire, and his feet are like fine brass" — He who sees into the heart of things and looks through every appearance, and who Himself passed through the furnace of human temptation — sees how much good there is in the angel and the Church: their love, service, faith, patience, and their last works exceeding the first. There is life; there is growth; evils have been beaten; where there had been failure, there is now success. But He sees evil at work here too — evil of the same inward, penetrating kind as in the other case.

The angel tolerates the woman Jezebel in drawing Christ's servants away to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication. He is clearly afraid of her spiritual pretensions. He dares not rebuke one who regards herself as a great saint, and whom many of his flock follow as such. He has not learned that the spirit which exalts itself above law is the spirit of Lucifer; that those "depths of wisdom" which lead to moral corruption and to dabbling with idolatry — dignify them with whatever religious names you please — are the depths of Satan. But if the angel is timid, if he dares not exercise discrimination and judgment, there is Another who will lay bare sins that hide under respectable names, who will make it known what gross and open crimes spring from spiritual self-exaltation. That is how I understand the terrible threat to this Church — fulfilled to it, I have no doubt; and fulfilled again and again in particular Churches, and in the Church at large, whenever the Jezebel temper has run rampant.

Can the promise, too, have been fulfilled? "He that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations. And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father. And I will give unto him the morning star." The temptation to be overcome is the temptation to covet heathen privileges and heathen power, to tamper with heathen opinions and practices in order to win them. The hook was wonderfully baited; not to nibble at it was very hard in the earliest times, and has been very hard ever since. What is the encouragement to reject it entirely? This: if you do, you will have the very power you were seeking — power over those to whom you were being asked to surrender yourselves; a power they will confess; a power that will break their corruptions and superstitions in pieces; a power the same in kind as that which Christ received from His Father. Now this is a promise I am sure was performed to that Church at Thyatira and its angel, and has been performed to every Church since, insofar as it has struggled with this most subtle evil and conquered it. Every society that has kept its own moral standing-ground, that has refused to win power and influence by stooping to the practices of those around it, has been allowed, in marvelous ways, to lift them up, to reform nations, to make them confess that Christ's kingdom is no dream. In the smallest circle this is verified; it is proved by all the real dominion the Church has exercised over the world, by the conquests it has won from the world. It has been proved just as fully by the Church's own abominable tyrannies over the world, by the tyrannies it has kept alive in the world, and by the defeats it has suffered from the world. Grasping at the promise, "Ye shall rule them with a rod of iron" — but forgetting the clause, "as I have received from my Father" — the Church has misused her rod to crush the very spirits Christ came from the Father to raise, and to protect and worsen the cruelty and oppression He came to break to shivers. And what has been the recompense? The wretched power she wrenched and stole from the nations has been turned against her. She has been forced to grovel to them and beg their help, and they have justly spurned her. She chose to exalt herself like Lucifer, and she has fallen like Lucifer. Had she trusted her Lord, He would have given her the morning star. She should have received from Him what she claimed independently of Him. She should have dispensed light to the world. She should have shouted for joy with all the sons of God.

4\. If we take these messages this way — as applying directly to the Churches of Asia — then, it seems to me, they apply most powerfully to all times, and most stingingly to ourselves. Is there one of these early heresies to which we are not exposed? Are we free from any Antinomian danger — the danger of turning spiritual imaginations, or even spiritual realities, into an excuse for self-indulgence and self-glory?

But perhaps we are even more surprised to read the messages to Sardis and Laodicea — connected as they are with bodies we suppose must have had all the freshness of youth upon them — than to hear of the startling moral corruptions denounced in the others. For here we find all the marks we associate with what is aged and worn out, or with the indifference, softness, and self-satisfaction that ease and luxury breed. The Sardian "has a name that he lives and is dead." He must "strengthen the things that remain, that are ready to die." The Laodicean is "neither hot nor cold." He says he is "rich, and increased with goods," and does not know he is "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." This language has often been used in pulpits to show the contrast between primitive times and ours, how far below that blessed age of the New Testament we have fallen. And the admonition has been felt to have force; it has struck home to many consciences and stirred some to repentance and reform. Why? I think, brethren, because the language itself is far truer, mightier, and simpler than the preacher's interpretation of it. His golden age never existed. Christ's revelation of facts scatters that dream. But that revelation tells the Sardian that he has the seven Spirits that quicken and the seven stars that give light. And those Spirits can quicken what is ready to die now as well as then; and those stars can light up what is dark now as well as then. Christ's revelation tells the Sardian that all who overcome shall be clothed in white raiment, that what is evil shall be blotted out, that their names shall *not* be blotted from the book of life, but that He will confess them before His Father and the angels. In such a sentence lies an imperishable power. Those white robes of innocence, that power to stand before God and call Him Father — we need them as much as the generations of old. And since it is held out not to those full of faith, energy, and hope, but to those whose works were feeble, who had only a name to live, we may take courage to take it home; in us it may be accomplished. Christ's revelation tells the Laodicean that He is the "Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God," and that as many as He loves He rebukes and chastens, and that He stands at the door and knocks, and that if anyone hears His voice and opens the door He will come in and sup with him, and that to the one who overcomes He will grant to sit with Him on His throne, as He overcame and sat down with His Father on His throne. Such words carry an undying message to those beginning to discover their own nakedness, blindness, and wretchedness. They are an assurance that for these too there is gold to be had, tried in the fire, and white raiment to clothe them, and eye-salve so they may see.

5\. And so the brightest vision of all among these Churches — the only very bright one — ceases to be a vision of some bygone period owing its happiness to a set of circumstances that can never return. The angel of the Church of the Philadelphians had only "a little strength," and because he knew he had only that little, he kept Christ's word and did not deny His name. While those who called themselves Jews refused to believe that the Son of David could be the Son of Man, and claimed an exclusive Messiah to glorify them and condemn the world, this angel would not deny that glorious name; he believed in One who came to die for the world and redeem it. Amid all the apparent difficulties and contradictions, he kept the word of Christ's patience, believing that Christ would at last show Himself to be what He had declared Himself to be — that His cross would prove to be the conquering power in the world, the central sun to draw all things to it. Therefore, He who is holy and true, who holds the key of David, who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens, promises to keep this servant and this Church from the temptation that was to come upon all the world, to try those who dwell on the earth. What that temptation was, and how true the promise "Behold, I come quickly" was, I believe we shall learn as we study this book further. And the more we learn it, and the more we believe it, the less we shall think that any promise of His has worn itself out, or that He Himself has left us; the more we shall long to grasp the full force of the words this Apocalypse was written to explain to the Philadelphians and to us: "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, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God, and I will write upon him my new name."

## LECTURE IV. THE VISION OF HEAVEN.

*The passage:* After the messages, John looked and saw a door standing open in heaven. The trumpet-like voice he had heard before told him to come up, so it could show him what must happen afterward. At once he was in the Spirit, and he saw a throne in heaven with someone seated on it, radiant like jasper and sardine stone, with a rainbow like an emerald around it. Around the throne were twenty-four seats holding twenty-four elders in white robes with gold crowns. From the throne came lightning, thunder, and voices, and before it burned seven lamps of fire, which are the seven Spirits of God, and there was a sea of glass like crystal. In and around the throne were four living creatures covered with eyes front and back—one like a lion, one like a calf, one with a human face, one like a flying eagle—each with six wings and full of eyes, who never rest from crying "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come." Whenever these creatures give glory, honor, and thanks to the One who sits on the throne and lives forever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him, worship him, and throw their crowns before the throne, saying he is worthy to receive glory, honor, and power, because he created all things and they exist and were created for his pleasure.

The messages to the seven Churches are finished. What those Churches needed was the revelation of a Son of Man living among them—the source of their light, the Judge of their inner condition, the one who cleanses and restores them. But the man who wrote down what the Spirit said to them needed something more to prepare *him* for the crisis that was coming. In the vision of a Prince of the kings of the earth, something was implied that everyone should want to explore, and that those especially had to explore who were to teach their own time and be the prophets of the next generation. If they were satisfied merely to believe in a Friend of Man, they would drag Him down to their own level; or else He would seem too grand and terrible for them to contemplate, and lesser beings, more like themselves in their weakness and mistakes, would become dearer to them than He is. Then, when some great shock disturbed the ordinary course of their lives, they would find they had no firm place to stand. The faith that had for a while raised and purified them would look like nothing but *their* faith, *their* imagination. Everything around them would reel and totter, and they would reel and totter along with it.

I. So the Old Testament teaches us that the preparation for any great turning point in Jewish history was a fresh discovery of God Himself as the foundation of the nation's order and its very existence. I have already spoken in these lectures, and often before in this place, of that revelation to Moses of the "*I AM*" as the one pillar of Israel's law and freedom, the thing that fitted him for his work. Today I must speak of two other passages, which are not only important and interesting in themselves but necessary for understanding the chapter before us. "*In the year that King Uzziah died*," says the sixth chapter of Isaiah, "*I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke*." Here a man sitting in Solomon's temple is shown the meaning and reality of the symbols that stood around him. What he saw with his eyes pointed to a living, spiritual world he could not see but which surrounded him. A king was dying or dead; a king was about to succeed who would bring idol worship into that very temple, and in whose reign there would be an invasion by Syrians and a still more dangerous invasion by Assyrians. The earthquake would be terrible; the nation would be shaken to its core. Its inner life would seem to be gone, and from outside the sentence "Cut it down" would seem to be coming. But the outcome of events did not depend on Ahaz, or Shalmaneser, or Sennacherib. The survival of the nation did not depend on the survival of its outward signs and forms. Beneath everything and above everything there was a Divine King and a Divine order. He was holy, whatever else was unholy. There was right at the foundation of things, however much power seemed to trample right down. God had ministers around Him who displayed His nature and carried out His purposes. If Israel utterly failed to be His minister, these would not fail. And in them was a pledge that Israel too would not fail, whatever its kings or priests did. The nation would live on and do its work until the work was done. Knowing this, Isaiah could be a prophet. He could speak to kings, priests, and people about their unbelief in this Divine King and about the miseries their unbelief had brought and would still bring. He could bear witness that there was a Will higher than their self-will, which would in the end prevail against it.

II. Isaiah is often called the evangelical prophet, the prophet of the Christ who was to be born of the Virgin and shown on earth. That makes it all the more important to remember that his prophecy does not begin from that point; its ground is laid in the revelation of a King who lives forever. My other example comes from a later and much darker period. Ezekiel is sitting stunned by the river Chebar. He is a captive among captives. The Babylonian has laid his land waste. The capital drags on a dreary existence under a king whom Nebuchadnezzar has appointed. The temple of his fathers is soon to perish, and he is surrounded by strange sights and strange forms of idolatry. Some of those sculptures whose character we have lately come to know may have been before his eyes; at any rate they were not far off. His people, already used to cruder shapes of Egyptian or Phoenician worship, would be drawn with a strange fascination to the shapes the world's rulers had made. There were all kinds of animal power, with the lion and the eagle standing out above the rest. There was the god-king, with his sharp eye for conquest and destruction. There was the chariot in which he rode to battle or led home his procession of captives. There were the wings that seemed to say he and these animals belonged to a region above the earth. How astonishing the combination of all these forms was! Was not the Lord God of Israel—of whom no image could be made—overpowered, when the rulers of the earth, the conquerors of the chosen people, paid homage to all these images? "*It came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God. And I looked, and behold a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire unfolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire. Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance; they had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings. And they had the hands of a man under their wings on their four sides; and they four had their faces and their wings. As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side; and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle*." A vision of God! Yes—these Babylonian images have not driven Him out of His own creation. They are parts of His own creation. Every one of them bears witness to Him. The lion, the ox, the eagle each display some aspect of His power and His work. This chariot in which the tyrant sits, the chariot that goes out to spread ruin and death, is not, after all, the truly conquering chariot. There are wheels higher than its wheels. There are wheels with a spirit moving in the middle of them. There is an order of life, not of death. And these wheels will at last roll over everything that resists them. Bel will bow down and Nebo will stoop, and those who lead others into captivity will themselves go into captivity. On the throne is the likeness of a man—not of a brute or a tyrant. And just as at the start light was unfolding itself out of a cloud and a whirlwind, so this was the vision's end: "*As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord*."

By such a revelation—the powers of nature and of art rescued from their perversion and restored to their right place in the Divine harmony—by such a vision of a Being at the center of all, terrible not from too much darkness but from too much light—the lonely exile was prepared to endure the troubles of his time, to bear witness to his people about their idolatries and heathenism, and to be the prophet of a rebuilt temple and a renewed society.

III. And so it is with the greater teacher, the last of the Apostles. He had absorbed those earlier revelations, and now needed a still higher one so that he could bear the weight of his present and coming sorrow. For him on the island of Patmos, as for Ezekiel by the Chebar, a door was opened in heaven. And the trumpet-voice he had heard before, waking him to acknowledge the Son of Man walking among the candlesticks, now tells him to come up higher, so he can learn what is to come. That trumpet now, as before, speaks not to his outward ear but to his spiritual ear. At once he is in the spirit, seeking to know what lasts and abides, what will not change when everything he sees changes. "*And behold a throne was set in heaven, and One sat on the throne*." There had been a throne in Isaiah's vision; it spoke of the King who lives on when Uzziah and one king after another die. There had been a throne in Ezekiel's vision; it spoke of a King who rules in righteousness, while the kings of Israel and Babylon ruled in unrighteousness, exalting power over righteousness. St. John's need is greater. The kingdom of Israel is gone. The temple in which Isaiah sat, which in Ezekiel's day was to perish and rise again, had now been finally doomed. And a god-emperor mightier than the Babylonian was claiming the world and its glory as his own. The old Asiatic thrones, the Greek republics, even the Roman republic itself, had all fallen beneath his feet. Was there any throne besides his? Was his the only one, raised to omnipotence? A Person is here—as real as the man on the throne of the Caesars, not an abstraction, not a phantom of cloud or air. But "*He that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone*." This is not a revelation of crushing power, but of perfect, untroubled brightness—of light with no darkness in it at all. What had been emerging in Ezekiel's vision through whirlwind and cloud is now shown to the New Testament seer as the home and resting-place of his spirit. Yet he has lost nothing that was given to his forerunner: "*There was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald*." The sardine stone does not shut its light up inside itself. The light must spread out in different rays; there must be variety within the unity.

IV. I do not want to change these words. I feel how poor every attempt to make them simpler is. I only want us all to let them sink into our hearts and drive out the notions and fancies that lurk there—the dreary ideas of grandeur and divinity we make up for ourselves. We little know how much of these come from the commonest associations of earthly pomp—yes, and of mere brute force. Be sure we cannot get rid of them simply by deciding that our heaven shall bear no likeness to earth. It *will* bear likeness to earth; if you build one heaven wholly cut off from earth, you will end up with another one made from the raw materials of earth, and that is the one you will actually believe in. What you need is not a heaven separate from earth, but one that explains earth's confusions and difficulties instead of being built out of them; one that shows you how the forms of earth are images of heaven's forms, rather than heaven being copied from them. You want a door opened in heaven precisely so that you are not left with an earth given over to oppression and cruelty. Keep this thought in mind as you read the next sentences: "*And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold*." You have often noticed, reading the first book of the Iliad, how closely the council of chiefs at the beginning matches the council of gods at the end. There are quarrels in both; the quarrel on Olympus, you say, is a glorified version of the one among the Greek ships. On the whole I think that judgment is right. I would only ask you to consider what would become of everything you admire, and rightly admire, in Homer if there were *no* such glorified version—if you had only the earthly heroes without the beings they were said to descend from. You would lose the poetry, of course; and I believe you would also lose the poem's truth. The earth would become utterly bleak and bare; you would feel that the men could not be what they longed to be, could not reach the stature they felt they ought to reach, if the sense of higher presences near them were taken away. But if this is the truth, where does the falsehood come in? I have tried to show where. If the standard of the council above is in any way drawn from the standard of the council below—if the poet, wanting to see the gods as the source of the law and justice he finds among men, starts measuring that law and justice by our own—then confusion is bound to creep in. We are deeply grateful to the great poet for letting us see this; his simplicity and honesty are the very things that help us most to detect what keeps him from being wholly simple and true; and we are sure God must have been teaching men who had such glimpses of Him as this Greek and his countrymen had. All the more, then, do we long for God to tell us what He is—whether there is a heavenly order such as men have dreamed of; whether it is unlike everything most precious to us in the order of earth; and if not, whether it must share earth's imperfection.

V. People looking for objections to the Apocalypse may think it a great find that the elders sitting on the twenty-four seats recall an institution of the Jewish commonwealth. To me it is an obvious and very welcome announcement. Instead of the hierarchies of angels with which medieval writers filled the heavenly world, I find here the plain and beautiful revelation of a government and justice that is the pattern for government and justice on earth. Forget the Center of all—the One who sits on *the* throne, who is like jasper and sardine stone—and these twenty-four thrones turn into a polytheistic dream, a new kind of nature-worship or demigod-worship. But join them to that Center, as they are joined in this vision, and a calm sense comes into the mind that these are ministers of the Perfect Ruler, doing His commands and listening to His words, with no caprice or disobedience in them, no fighting against law, but perfect freedom and joy in carrying law out. There is a craving in all of us for such a revelation as this; we grow impatient even with the highest discoveries of science when we think it forces us to worship mere laws of the universe and to deny that those laws may be administered by a Person. That there is really no conflict between these two convictions, I think we shall all one day learn. What we need is the assurance that the robes of these Judges and Rulers are white—that there is on them no stain of indulgence or favoritism; that they wear the golden crowns of wisdom and righteousness, which they win by always looking at Him who is perfectly righteous and wise. Then we can rejoice that they rule the earth, because they have none of earth's baseness.

VI. In the middle of that council of Greek gods sat the Thunderer. A grand image, certainly, and not meaningless—but with very little that is truly awesome. The Israelite was taught that the thunders and lightnings that came from Sinai proceeded from the Lord his God, who had brought him out of slavery. He trembled; but he was told to trust in this God, and those who trusted Him would not be put to shame. From the throne St. John saw, "*proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices*." Perfect goodness and purity will make war on everything evil and dark. But there were also "*seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God*." The consuming fire that is in the lightning has another purpose than destruction. It gives light and gives life. It comes from the Divine Being, the perfect Love; those Spirits are filled with it, and they go out to quicken and inspire all beings that have a will. "*And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal*." The throne is not only the place from which commands are issued. The glory of Him who sits on it is meant to be mirrored in His creatures; what He is absolutely and wholly, they are to show forth in their various measures and relations.

VII. And now we get the fuller unfolding of that vision which comforted Ezekiel in captivity. Here, in this heavenly world, are the patterns of those different kinds of power to which men have paid homage on earth, which they have taken as varied pictures of the Divine nature. "And in *the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts*"—or four living creatures—"*full of eyes before and behind. And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle*." Here are types of powers you have met with in the worship and art of every great nation on earth. The first Asiatic conqueror revered the strength of the lion; it expressed the qualities he most wanted in a king and supposed most typical of a god. The useful animals, for which the calf was both literally and ideally the representative, commanded the awe of the Egyptian, and no less of the Hindu. The Greek, still wrestling with these animal images, nonetheless rose to the idea of a human figure and face that surpasses them. The flying eagle stood to the Roman for his ambition of universal rule. In each case the idea of what was greatest in nature corresponded exactly to the idea of what was greatest in the unseen world. There was indeed, as we saw in Assyrian worship, a confused mingling of these different instincts; none was missing in any people of the earth, and only gradually do we see which was mostly governed by one and which by another. But the great revelation to the last of the seers—the one that was to prepare him for the collapse of his own country's worship and of the witness it had borne against all these idolatries—is that each of these had a meaning; that it was the perversion of a truth; that each animal form had its Divine significance, its heavenly counterpart; that each had its eyes behind, turned to Him who sat on the throne, catching the reflection of His light and purity, and its eyes in front, looking out to the works of His hands. "*And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come*." Here are the wings that lifted up the living creatures in the old prophet's vision, showing him what the Assyrian sculptor had only dimly sensed—that everything in creation must have a pull upward as well as downward. There is a spirit carrying things toward God, just as there is a nature dragging them toward earth. But here the downward pull is overcome. They keep rising in higher and higher circles; they get nearer glimpses of eternal holiness and truth. The closer they come, the greater the awe, and the greater the sense of distance. There is no ambition to climb, only to behold. Ever more discovery, ever more adoration. To know truth in its many forms; to know it in its essential unity; to enter a love that surpasses knowledge, so that it may flow out through them to the farthest ends of the universe—this is the work, this is the longing, of these heavenly Natures. But this beholding of truth, this entering into the joy of the Lord, does not shut out that other work of judging and governing which our Lord promised His disciples when He said that the one who used his five talents faithfully would rule over five cities. And the work is part of the worship. "*And when these beasts give glory, and honour, and thanks to him that sitteth upon the throne, who liveth for ever and ever, the four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created*."

VIII. It has often been said in Christian pulpits that heaven is just the continuation of worship on earth. Those who have found earthly worship very dreary and unsatisfying have said they would rather have any Greek Elysium or Gothic Valhalla than a heaven like that. I think if we take St. John as our guide—if we accept his revelation as the true one—we can see a truth in what the clergyman says and also a truth in the layman's protest. Everything there is worship, because all are pursuing the highest good in both thought and action; because all are referring their thoughts and deeds to one center, instead of scattering them among a thousand different centers; because each thinker and each doer forgets himself in the object before him and the work given to him. But if the preacher supposes there is any monotony of employment there—that any serious, earnest task that occupied the student here will be dropped or cut off there, that any real work men are engaged in has nothing corresponding to it and fulfilling it there—I would ask him to look hard at this opening of heaven to the Apostle, and correct his own fancies and speculations by it. The four living creatures, we shall find, are busy with all the movements and changes in the moral world; the very word "elders" shows they are exercising the functions and faculties of judgment and direction over spiritual beings and over natural forces. Our worship must always be dreary if it stands apart from our daily life, if it does not interpret and transfigure that life. The heavenly worship is unbroken only because growth in knowledge is unbroken, and because all free action is unbroken. In the many mansions there is room for every form of life; only the shapes of death can be shut out.

IX. So I say we have here the Christian Elysium, or Valhalla, or Paradise—the thing you are all looking for in your calmest and truest moments; when you are most tormented by the discords of the world around you and of your own hearts; when you are most certain there must be a harmony without discords; when you long for room to finish tasks that death will leave undone; when you wish to recover affections that have been broken, to know what you could not know, to work bravely, to rest without stopping work. "I go," said Hooker on his deathbed—and these words move me more than all the ecstatic phrases reported from such moments—"I go to a world of order." It was such a world—as I have said, and as we shall see more fully later—that St. John was driven to seek by the upheavals tearing the world around him to pieces. Is Nero, is Vitellius, the King of kings, the Lord of lords? That was the question he had to face. And this was the answer. He found that the kingdom of heaven, which his Master had spoken of to him as they sat in the boat, and to crowds besides him, was indeed a real kingdom—not far off in some distant star, but bound by the closest ties, by shared pursuits and interests, to everything happening here. It was much to know this; but whoever knows this much will long to know more. What ties this calm life to our restless life? How can one act on the other and reform it? Will He who sits on that heavenly throne restore the children of earth who are trampled under the tyrant on the earthly throne? These questions link today's vision with the one I hope to look at next Sunday—the vision of the book sealed with seven seals, and of the Lamb who prevailed to open it.

## LECTURE V. THE BOOK WITH SEVEN SEALS.

*The passage:* John sees a book in the right hand of the One seated on the throne, written on both sides and sealed with seven seals. A strong angel asks aloud who is worthy to open it, but no one in heaven, on earth, or under the earth can open it or even look at it. John weeps because no one is found worthy. Then one of the elders tells him not to weep: the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the book and its seals. John sees, in the midst of the throne and the four living creatures and the elders, a Lamb that looks as if it had been slain, with seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent into all the earth. The Lamb takes the book from the One on the throne. Then the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fall down before the Lamb, each with a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints, and they sing a new song: the Lamb is worthy to take the book and open its seals, because he was slain and by his blood redeemed people to God out of every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, and made them kings and priests to God, and they shall reign on the earth. John then hears the voices of countless angels around the throne — ten thousand times ten thousand — saying that the Lamb who was slain is worthy to receive power, riches, wisdom, strength, honor, glory, and blessing. And every creature in heaven, on earth, under the earth, and in the sea joins in ascribing blessing, honor, glory, and power to the One on the throne and to the Lamb forever. The four living creatures say "Amen," and the elders fall down and worship.

For a time St. John might have been glad to forget everything he had seen of conflict and disorder while he gazed at that vision of peace and order. For he knew it was real. What shifts and changes might be an illusion; this could not be. It was the solid reality lying beneath all those ups and downs. It took nothing from the beholder's mind; instead it gave his mind steadiness. To see a throne on which sat One who was all light and no darkness, all justice and no whim, to see forms reflecting that light and rulers carrying out that justice — this must have brought great calm to a seer who a little before had been looking at the unsteady flickering of those earthly candlesticks, and at the imperfect government of angels who only partly showed the divine righteousness. But if the prophet could forget the earth while he looked at heaven, these heavenly powers could not. He who sat on the throne could not. Were the thrones on earth going to acknowledge this throne, or set up a rule of their own, independent of it and opposed to it? If they were to obey it, what would make them obey? Could a mere decree do it? Could rebel *wills* be made to yield that way?

I. "And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals." It matters little what we call this book. We may call it the Doomsday Book; the book that contains and interprets human history; the book that claims the kingdoms of the earth for God. Each of these names will prove fitting as we go on; the contents of the book will tell us better what it is than any guesses of ours. What St. John wants us to know at once is that the One who looked like jasper and sardine stone held it in His right hand. He knew what was in it. It was the expression of His purpose and will. The belief that there is such a book in such a hand has held up the strongest and sternest minds among men; it has let them bear the world's despair and their own. Those who have spoken of an unbending, unstoppable, irreversible fate have sensed this truth, even when they darkened it most. They meant more than they could say or knew. There was a right hand behind their terrible abstraction; a divine will beneath what looked like the denial of all will. The stoic's mere submission to necessity grows, in the hymn of Cleanthes, into recognition of a Providence over the deeds and thoughts of men; and in the meditations of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius it even becomes the confession of a deliverer and a friend. But these wise men thought the scroll could never be unrolled. To bear what was assigned them was their only wisdom. A deep wisdom, if only it could be known *what* was assigned; if it could be known what the One who assigns it was doing — so that men might not work merely as servants of a power they must give in to, but as children of a Father training them to be like Himself.

II. It was not the will of the One on the throne, as St. John learned, that the book should stay closed. "And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof?" Often, when students on earth try to look into the puzzles they find around them, behind them, and ahead of them, we stop them with a warning against vanity and presumption. Who can look into the secrets of the All-wise? Who can wrestle with the Almighty? My friends, there may be a right meaning in such warnings; I have admitted there is. In a pagan teacher they should be welcomed with gratitude as signs of an awe he did not learn in an idol's temple — though one would be sorry not to find in him also earnest cries for a solution to the riddle he sometimes calls insoluble. But we ought to ask ourselves seriously whether it may not be an inspiration from above, and not from below, that drives men to strike the bars of their prison and test whether there is not some hidden passage out. That cry on earth is the echo, St. John says, of a voice in heaven. A strong angel called on his own fellows to put out their strength and see whether they could break the seals.

III. "And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon."

Many will complain that our translators rendered *oudeis* as "no man" when the scene is in heaven and the ones spoken of are heavenly powers. It was a needless and willful clash with appearances, which they would have been wiser to avoid. But I believe the mistake is not serious at all. *We* set a vast gap between angelic and human natures — partly because the angelic is almost fantastic to us, and partly because we draw our idea of the human from the Fall. The writer of the Apocalypse, as I have said before, often seems to blend the two. God's messenger, whether subject to death or free from it, is still called by one common name. That name names his character and function; whether he fulfills that character and function or not, he can have no higher one — except the filial name that belongs to the beggar in rags as much as to the seraphim. Everything depends on the question of whom we take to be the head of every man — the first Adam or the second.

These remarks are needed to make clear the whole passage before us, even more than this one verse. Whatever superiority angelic powers may have over mortal ones, whatever exemption heavenly powers may enjoy from earth's calamities, that superiority and that exemption did not qualify them to open this book and look in it. The book of God must be read by someone who fully grasped the mind of God. The book of the earth's victory must be read by one who fully grasped the earth's conflict.

IV. "And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon." I spoke of the peace that vision of an ordered world must have given the prophet. Thank God, such peace was not all he wanted; if more had not been given, that peace could not have lasted. The pity and tenderness, you will say, of a child of earth showed itself in his weeping; rather, I would say, the pity and tenderness of a child of God. He could not be content until he knew more of the destinies of his own race, because the Father of that race would not let him be content. The question whether justice and truth were to reign *here*, and whether injustice and untruth were to be put down, concerned him most deeply, no doubt. But he learned *how much* it concerned him when he was in the company of those who are above the earth's smoke, when the One who looked like jasper and sardine stone was unveiled to him. Then it became unbearable pain that no one should be worthy to open and read the book.

V. "And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof." "The Lion of the tribe of Judah! the Root of David!" What a drop! A moment ago we were hearing of the heavenly world — the throne, the rainbow, the sea of glass, the seven lamps of fire that are the seven Spirits of God. A great drop, certainly, if there is *no* fellowship between heaven and earth. A great drop, if we tie spiritual power to the great and not to the little. But *no* drop at all, if the very subject of this vision and of this book is the union of heaven and earth, the setting up of heaven's rule over the earth. *No drop*, if spiritual power is made great through weakness, if its true showing is in triumph over animal bulk and vast numbers. The lion was long ago the symbol of the tribe of Judah. That tribe, standing for the nation it belonged to, was raised up to show how one man might chase a thousand and two put ten thousand to flight, because it held a secret of strength that Egyptian and Babylonian kings did not have. David — the youngest son, the shepherd, the stripling, the outlaw — was the proof that God had set His King on the holy hill of Zion. What name could better express the spiritual conqueror than the Lion of the tribe of Judah? What name better points to the true source and ground of all power than the Root of David? Those names belonged to all the early memories of the aged exile; they made him understand that he was never a truer Jew than when he was witnessing for the Prince of all the kings of the earth. They showed him by what divine links the records of that people — which was about to be a people no longer — were joined to the deliverance of all mankind.

VI. For who was the Lion of the tribe of Judah? Where lay that secret of strength that belonged to no other in heaven or on earth?

"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 had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth."

The Lion of the tribe of Judah is the Lamb that was slain. Here is that revelation of power made perfect in weakness, shown in submission, for which all the earlier history of mankind had been a preparation. Here is that reconciling of the highest with the lowest, of dominion with suffering, of life with death, which alone can explain the riddle of the universe, which alone can satisfy the endless doubts by which men have been and still are tormented — yes, and must be, unless they shut their eyes to facts or sink into dull indifference.

How can that absolute purity and truth, which is like jasper or sardine stone, be brought within a creature's sight? It may be worshiped from afar; it may be seen in some of its outward doings. But that is not enough for beings made in God's image, who themselves demand truth and purity. "In the midst of the throne is the Lamb that was slain." Purity and truth are seen here not in some broken mirror, in scattered fragments, but fully and altogether. In that act of perfect self-sacrifice, of total offering, of surrender to death, all that the angels are seeking comes to light. It is not scaled down or adapted to their needs or their weakness; rather, in meeting that need and weakness, the full, unmeasured divine perfection and glory appear; every veil that hid them is taken away. He is also "in the midst of the elders." Those twenty-four seats, from which go out righteous judgments upon free beings and which direct the movements of natural agents, express the mind that is in the Lamb. Throughout the whole universe the same principle of self-sacrifice, which is the law of His acts, is at work to govern and renew. "He is in the midst of the four living creatures." The lion, the calf, the man, the eagle — the different forms of power that men had worshiped — each had its heavenly original; some aspect of the divine nature was set before each and shown in each. But these creatures have their center here; the Lamb that was slain makes each able to do its own work, makes each effective for the end they are all working toward, and binds them to that throne from which human idolatry cut them off. "He has seven horns." Those powers which, cut off from self-sacrifice, are disordered and clashing, are brought into harmony in Him. Each has its own quality; none clashes with another; there is no sameness in their motions, but a free and living unity. He has the "seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth." That sense of an eye watching over the greatest and the smallest *events* in the world's history, which leads us to speak of Providence — a noble word if we let it keep its meaning and did not turn it into a feeble substitute for the living Being who exercises it; and that sense of an eye over the thoughts and intentions of our *hearts*, which leads us to speak of a scrutiny and judgment none can escape — both find their full justification here. Only the language of the Apocalypse is far clearer, brighter, and truer to our actual experience than the language we usually use. We need words that tell us each king and each man is subject to a distinct Providence and a distinct judgment, and yet that it is the same for all and in all. We need words that show the eyes are not only searching and probing, but life-giving; that if they bring the evil in us to light, they also find and give a good that can drive it out. "The seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth" give us such words — if we connect them, as the Apostle does, with the One to whom they belong; if we believe that the orderer of our lives, the searcher of our hearts, is the Lamb that was slain.

Here, then, is the New Testament revelation, matching and fulfilling that Old Testament revelation of the Lion of Judah — who was to overthrow the destroying lion, the brute tyranny, of the world — and of the Root of David, who was to set up a kingdom of righteousness in place of a kingdom of self-will. The discovery that the highest Godhead is shown in self-sacrifice; that all power, angelic or human, has this ground; that all power which does not confess this ground is disorderly, rebellious, and doomed to perish — this is the gospel that the Cross of Christ preaches to mankind; and it is this doctrine, in its most sweeping and universal form, that this chapter of the Apocalypse sets before us.

VII. "And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat on the throne."

He is able to unroll the book of God's purposes; to break the seals that have kept it from being understood by men; to show what will last in the universe and what will decay; to show what men may accept and rest in, and what they are to resist to the death. He is able to make clear whether any hope that wise and brave men have ever held for the world is destined to disappointment, or whether they hoped too feebly and the fulfillment will be beyond their dream. Such is the prospect before us. The Apocalypse is going to speak of all these things. If we will attend to its own words and not put ours in their place, I believe it will give us light and satisfaction on all of them.

VIII. But before we go on, let me lead you to think for a few moments about the passage in front of us this afternoon. It may help, I think, to correct an opinion widely spread through the Christian world, which must more or less infect us all, and which must ruin any lessons that St. John's Revelation would teach us. The Lamb is here said to prevail to *open* the book of God's purposes. We often suppose He prevailed by His sacrifice to *change* those purposes. We often say that God's will, or justice, or purity demanded of man something he could not give; that he was doomed to destruction for that failure; that the Lamb stepped in to turn aside this sentence; that He paid the creature's debt; and that so He satisfied the mind of the One on the throne. That many strands are woven into this theory which are drawn from men's practical faith, from their experience of their own needs, and from lessons they have learned in Scripture — this I gladly admit. But I must also insist that this practical faith has suffered, and still suffers cruelly, from the speculations mixed in with it; that men's hearts crave a satisfaction which this scheme of divinity does not give them; and that if they would listen to Scripture's teaching, they would find that satisfaction. How naturally men who are conscious of evil wish to change the purpose of a Power they think is ready to punish that evil; how eagerly they look for mediators they imagine can bring about this change; how they may finally arrive at the idea of a Kehama, who by prayers and sacrifice can bend the gods' will wholly to *his* will — the mythology of all nations proves this abundantly. Christian theology scatters such dark fancies by revealing the Highest Ruler as the All-good, showing the One on the throne as a Being like jasper and sardine stone to look upon; and by revealing the Lamb that was slain as the perfect sharer of His counsels, the perfect doer of His will, the perfect revealer of His designs to mankind, the perfect Redeemer of the world from the rule of the false, hateful, cruel gods men had imagined — gods that upheld all falsehood, hatred, and cruelty in earthly rulers — the perfect Atoner of man with the Father of Light, in whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning.

This, I think you will find, is the spirit of the song the prophet heard on his lonely island. "And when He had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints. And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; and hast made us unto our God kings and priests; and we shall reign on the earth." Here we have a grand confession — from the elders who represent the law of the world, that the Lamb is the author of that law and has perfectly fulfilled it, not set it aside or changed its working in the least; and from the living creatures who represent the divine nature, that the Lamb has perfectly shown it and has in no way given it a new feeling or direction. The bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints, are the cries that have gone up from all the sorrowing and suffering people on earth, praying for deliverance from their oppressors and for their true King to appear. And the song is a thanksgiving that He has appeared; that He *has* consented to die alongside those who were under the sentence of death; that by His own blood, poured out for them, He *has* freed them from their bondage; has made them kings and priests to His Father; and *has* given them a pledge and assurance that the earth shall be possessed by the meek and not by the proud.

IX. And lest we should try to limit the One in the midst of the throne to the benefits He has given the earth — to the redemption He has worked out for the fallen and the sinful — lest this natural tendency, so widespread in Christendom, should spoil the very gratitude that seems its excuse, and should again divide the creatures the Lamb has united — the ear of the prophet's spirit is opened to take in another shout: "And I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands: saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing." That which is the highest act of love — toward whatever persons it was shown, from whatever calamities it saved them — must be the highest showing of the divine character and will; and therefore it must be the cause of delight to all creatures, fallen or unfallen. If the Revelation is true, there can be no break in the sympathies of any part of God's free and intelligent universe. All must have one center, one object, one inspiration, so that each may do its own tasks freely and joyfully, and each may come to a higher knowledge of God's works and of God Himself. Nor these beings only. Free, intelligent beings are but the priests of the whole Creation. The whole of it must share in the redemption; all creation must be forever rising from under the law of death; there must be signs everywhere that the wings are unfolding inside the chrysalis; all must be reaching to enter into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Not only he who has kept weary watch over man's mortality and hoped against hope amid the wrongs of nations, the sorrows of friends, and the sins of his own heart; but also the student of nature, who finds a wonderful order and beauty throughout the universe and yet is constantly tormented by the strangest sights of death and destruction — he too takes his part in the thanksgiving: "And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever. And the four beasts said, Amen. And the four and twenty elders fell down and worshipped him that liveth for ever and ever."

## LECTURE VI. THE SEALS OPENED.

*The passage:* The Lamb opens the seals one by one. At the first, one of the four living creatures says "Come and see," and a white horse appears, its rider carrying a bow and wearing a crown, going out conquering. At the second, a red horse comes, whose rider is given power to take peace from the earth so that men kill one another, and he is given a great sword. At the third, a black horse comes, whose rider holds a pair of scales, and a voice sets prices for wheat and barley and says not to harm the oil and wine. At the fourth, a pale horse comes, whose rider is named Death, with Hell following, given power over a quarter of the earth to kill by sword, hunger, death, and wild beasts. At the fifth, under the altar are the souls of those slain for God's word, crying out how long until God avenges their blood; white robes are given them and they are told to rest a little longer until the full number of their fellow servants is complete. At the sixth, there is a great earthquake; the sun turns black, the moon like blood, the stars fall, the sky rolls up like a scroll, and mountains and islands are moved. All people, high and low, hide in the rocks and beg the mountains to fall on them to hide them from the face of God on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of his wrath has come, and who can stand?

Much has been said about these seals. Commentators have worked hard to determine which seal was opened in which age, which remain to be opened now or in the future. Since I find no times mentioned in the prophecy, I will speak of none and imagine none. It seems to me that if we follow the words exactly, they will tell us more of what we want to know than if we substitute our own words for them.

I. The Lamb has been revealed at the center of the throne, among the elders and the four living creatures. He is said to have the seven horns of power and the seven eyes of wisdom. As He opens the first seal, the prophet hears something like thunder, and one of the living creatures says, "Come and see." We must assume this divine creature is the Lion of the earlier vision. He represents the side of God's nature we usually set against the lamblike side. But that opposition is not the teaching of the Apocalypse. The One who sits on the throne is fully shown in the One who was slain. The lion's power belongs to him as much as the calf's weakness does. The question to settle is this: Is the root of power—the power that actually rules the world, the power everyone will one day acknowledge—self-will or self-sacrifice? Which of the two expresses God's will and being? Every other question is subordinate to this one.

II. "And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him; and he went forth conquering and to conquer."

Here another symbol is introduced that will recur throughout this chapter. Man's mastery over the horse—as much for the Arab in the desert as for the Greek of an Ionian city—is the type of his mastery over all animals, the sign and pledge that he himself is of a higher origin. The hero is educated by the Centaur; his own defining title is horse-tamer. In the book of Zechariah—which I will refer to later in this sermon for another purpose, and which is in some ways more closely related to the Apocalypse than any other book of the Old Testament—there is a vision of a chariot with red horses, another with black, a third with white, and a fourth with dappled and bay horses. These are described as the four spirits of heaven, which go out from standing before the Lord of all the earth. The black horses go to the north country, the white after them, the dappled toward the south, and the bay seek to range to and fro through the earth.

Such language belonged, I think, especially to Zechariah's own time—the period after Judea had sunk into a mere part of the great empire, and was rising again to the dignity of a nation. Zechariah had been urging his countrymen to rise and rebuild the temple; he had been showing them that its ordinances, and Joshua its high priest and Zerubbabel its lawgiver, all bore witness that not outward might but God's Spirit is supreme. He had spoken of a form of government founded on the opposite principle, whose first home and full development were in the plain of Shinar. Then he turns to the vision of horses going out into different lands. He could no longer, I think, be content to imagine that only his own land was cared for and watched over by God. He felt more than ever that Judea had its own vocation, that keeping its distinctness was the highest of all duties, as it was the most divine of gifts. But the more he felt its pre-eminence, the more he had to see the other nations as also having their distinct callings and powers, however abused. They might not know the highest God, the source of all power—that was the blessing the Jew was to bring them. But he could only bless them so long as he saw every energy or faculty those nations exercised—even if they made it an excuse for self-exaltation or idolatry—as a divine energy, a "spirit of heaven going forth from the Lord of the whole earth."

So when the Lamb breaks the first seal, and the Lion calls the prophet to come and see what form appears, I think He gives him light on the nature and outcome of conquest—light he especially needed in his generation, as every man has needed it in his own. What did those astonishing conquests mean—of the Asiatic monarchs, of the Macedonians, and still more of the Romans, to whom everyone bowed down? Did they prove, as they seemed to, that a Lion God was reigning, that power came from him, and that all were to be trampled under these white horses' feet? No—it was not so. The power itself was not destructive, not even earthly, but divine. The Lamb was the Lord; the Lion was his servant. In time it would be shown for whom these conquests were won—not for the Asiatic, the Macedonian, or the Roman, not for self-willed arbitrary rule at all, but for Him who was slain and who lives.

III. The Lamb opened the second seal, and another vision came. "I heard the second beast say, Come and see. And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword." An optimist would turn away from this vision, but a prophet must look steadily at it, for it is the vision of facts. This red horse of tumult, civil war, and mutual hatred does stand before men's eyes, does rise up in every period of the world's history. I need not describe how wildly that horse plunged in the days after Nero's death, before Vespasian was established. I also think there is meaning in which living creature summoned John to look. There is a lion-worship among men and a calf-worship among men. The first goes with admiration of mere conquering strength; the second with prostration, degradation, and moral slavery. Each is evil because it is a divided worship. The triumphant beast is revered by those who feel strong; the feeble beast is revered by those who feel weak. The strength turns to cruelty and tyranny; the weakness turns to meanness. The Lamb will raise men out of both. And this miserable side of humanity, like that splendid one, is a step in the revelation of Him as King of kings and Lord of lords.

IV. "And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine."

The third living creature had the face of a man. Here we have no vision of war in either form—neither the grand form we think of with a Nebuchadnezzar, a Timour, a Napoleon, nor the wretched form of countries or families torn apart in some civil upheaval. The images here are all of peace. The sword is exchanged for the scales. Men are busy with buying and selling. They are careful of the oil and wine. So they suppose the qualities of the beast have all been set aside; they are humane and civilized. But alas for the manhood that belongs to this un-brutal state of society! The animal is gone—what has taken his place? The oil and the wine are more precious than the man who uses them; the price of the measure of wheat and barley matters more than the life and heart of those who sow and reap them. We are told John heard these earthly cries—these sounds of commerce—from the midst of the four living creatures. What can that mean? I think it clearly means this, brethren: we imagine a heavenly world that takes no interest in earth's doings, that stands entirely apart from it; but the heavenly world revealed to John enters into all the concerns of men, highest and lowest; it is not indifferent to the needs of the most insignificant creature who feeds or starves below, not indifferent to our sordid ways, but longs to lift us above scorning anything human, however low it looks to vulgar pride, and above revering anything inhuman, however splendid it looks to those same eyes.

V. As in the earlier cases the Lamb claimed the Lion's strength and the Calf's weakness as His own, so now He emphatically claims as His own the face of the Man and all that belongs to the nature He took. The black, red, and white horses are powers and energies from the Lord of all the earth. But can that be said of the next vision? "And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked and behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth."

The living creature with the eagle's wings tells the prophet to look at this ghastly picture. It is one often seen on earth without any heavenly guide to interpret it: Famine and Pestilence traveling together, cutting down hosts of men; the violence of sufferers making their diseases worse; the moral recklessness that accompanies such times, which the great Greek historian describes so wonderfully in his account of the Athenian plague, and which everyone who has recorded such calamities since has noticed. Here, surely, is the pale horse with Death for its rider and Hell following after. That this should be the last of the sights the four living creatures can show—that their work is finished when they have brought us to the mouth of this yawning abyss—might at first seem appalling. But pause a little, and light will dawn on you. This is the downward course of mere animal power. Its various aspects have been shown to us, each standing out clearly and separately; now it is exhausted, having done all it can do. If there is no power but this animal power—even adding to it the power of calculation, of reckoning how much wheat a penny buys, of providing for oil and wine, which we regard as peculiarly human—if this is *the* power of the universe, then we have reached the climax of its history. Then the pale horse and its rider are the last thing we shall look upon. Death and Hell have won. Let us weigh that result well; let us ask ourselves honestly whether the mere facts of earth, supposing all glimpses of any other kind of power be shut out, are not tending toward this end.

VI. I say, brethren, another *kind* of power; for merely to imagine *this* power raised to omnipotence does not remove the confusion but makes it hopeless. Do not suppose for a moment that the Apocalypse is repeating the old story of a contest between the Giants of earth and a Giant of Heaven to see which will prevail. Still further from us be the notion that it describes a struggle between a Prometheus who would seize some of the divine wisdom for man's use and a jealous Jove determined to rule men without sharing his counsels with them. No—understand it well. It is precisely with *this* form of omnipotence, with *this* idea of a jealous will and all the religious and moral horrors that flow from it, that the Lamb is at war. As long as mere power—physical or intellectual—is what men most covet for themselves, they will attribute the same covetousness to the beings they worship; they will find themselves hemmed in by cruel conditions and restraints binding the might that works restlessly and confusedly within them; and in trying to break through these barriers they will destroy the very freedom they want and create the very tyranny they protest against. And so long, all the world's legends and histories will only echo the same cry. There is a pale horse with Death for its rider who closes every vision of good and puts out the light of every sun.

Yes, and there is a darker form behind. You think Hell is an invention of priests. Alas, priests have been shamefully guilty in preaching Hell rather than deliverance from Hell; so far as they have done that, they have violated their commission and borne witness for anyone but the Lamb who conquers death and hell. But Hell is not the priests' invention. It haunts and torments every man. He may picture it under one form or another; and so far as he gives it any form at all, he takes away some of the blank horror surrounding the thought of an impenetrable, solitary void as the home of a living, conscious, thinking creature. Until a man throws off the coil of self, he cannot throw off this coil. The more he wraps himself in self, the more impossible it is for him not to have this pale death-vision before him, and another following it that will swallow up himself, his family, and the universe.

VII. But though the four living creatures have finished *their* task once these four seals are opened, there is another seal for the Lamb to open, and the vision it discloses is wholly unlike the others. "And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them, and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled."

By confining these seals to some particular period in the later history of Christendom, some have been able to limit this description to a single school or sect of Christians who are supposed (and I doubt not did) to have witnessed against the evils around them. But I dare not confine these words even to the Christian martyrs of any age. I understand the vision the Apostle saw to be of all who anywhere—before his time, in his own, or in later times—have believed that there is a power other than self-willed tyrannical power, other than what men worshipped in the lion, the calf, the human intellect, the flying eagle—a power other than death and hell; who, in every anguish and despair from within and without, have held fast their faith and cried to Him who is holy and true to show that He is mightier than those who counterfeit His majesty and abuse it for unholy and untrue ends. From these in every corner of the earth has risen that groan, deep or loud, for deliverance—which He who sits on the throne has understood, even if no one else did, and which has been in His ears a hymn and a confession of the Lamb as the one true Lord and King of the earth. The cry came from beneath the altar. It was inspired by the spirit of sacrifice. It was the expression of a sacrifice of body, soul, and spirit to Him who had shared His own mind with them. The sacrifice was completed when the self-willed tyrants they protested against gave them to the axe or the fire, or made them drink the poison cup. But their cry did not end when they fell by the axe, the fire, or the hemlock. Then it first became distinct and intelligible; then it first joined in clear, full harmony with everything that had ascended from those who had fallen in other lands and other times; then they themselves fully knew that they had not been pleading for their own redemption but for the redemption of the earth from its tormentors. And they were given what they most longed for—the white robe of innocence, purity from all the passion and selfishness that had been mixed into their witness for God and their prayers for men. And they were assured that if they waited, the answer to their prayer would come.

VIII. Here is part of the answer: "And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondsman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?"

In this grand description most have recognized the signs of a moral and political earthquake, more terrible than any physical earthquake ever was—though it has happened, and will happen again, that physical convulsions keep time with those that shatter nations and fill men's hearts with dismay and anguish. Since the prophet names no time, I will introduce none. The description may fit many periods. It may have been fulfilled for many in the days of Alaric and Attila, of Genghis Khan or Timour, when Constantinople fell, when Napoleon laid the nations low. Do you think it must point to some still more distant day? Have you dreamed it must refer to a destruction of the earth? We shall see whether the Apocalypse leads us to expect any such destruction at any time, or whether instead it tells us of a redemption of the earth, such as the saints beneath the altar prayed for. I believe that if you study this earthquake's description carefully, you will rather be led to think of an even *earlier* fulfillment than those I have mentioned—one that helps us better understand what the others meant. We are told here of the shaking and downfall of *heavenly* powers. What can these powers be? Are they not the demons of the old mythology? Were they not trembling, and indeed falling, at the very time John was on Patmos, before the preaching of a few fishermen and a tent-maker? It was not earth alone that was moved, but heaven too. I do not regard the revolution of the first century as an exception in the history of revolutions in this respect, but as a precedent for them. There has never been a revolution that did not test men's faith and worship as well as their policy and government; never one that did not prove how inseparably these are connected. And I believe there never has been one that did not demonstrate the falsehood of self-will, or arbitrary will, and the truth that all power is centered in Him who gave up all power and took the form of a servant.

There are many excellent men today who will fully agree with me that the Apocalypse points to the deliverance of the earth, not its extinction. But they will say that the great men and captains who called the mountains to fall on them and the hills to hide them were fleeing from the wrath of the Lamb. So the prophet must be describing a manifestation of the Lamb—a manifestation of Him as the actual Lord of the earth. Certainly He is: nothing in human language is more evident. And there is no lesson, it seems to me, so important—none the Apocalypse was so much written to teach us as this: that all false and tyrannical power is a rebellion against the Lamb; that no false and tyrannical power has ever been put down except by a manifestation of the Lamb. May the Spirit of Him who is faithful and true root and ground us in the conviction that the world never has been and never can be governed by oppression and lies; that these have at no time upheld its order but have subverted it; that whether they are enthroned by false religions in heavenly places or seated by usurpation in the high places of earth, they are cursed and doomed; that the very conquests they helped bring about—the civil tumults, mercantile frauds, plagues and famines they promoted—have been their appointed punishments; that the cries of the weak and suffering have in the end proved stronger than they; that the revolutions most terrifying while they lasted, from the crimes that provoked them and the crimes they provoked, from the clash of human evil in its opposite forms, have been the instruments for putting down counterfeit powers and asserting the power that is and must endure; that all righteous men and righteous institutions have been proclaiming who was, is, and shall be the ruler over men; that the full revelation of the Christ who is to come will confirm all the true human authority and all the true human liberty that has ever existed; that He will prove the first to have come from Him, and will claim the second for our race as the reward of His agony and death.

## LECTURE VII. THE SEALING OF THE TRIBES.

*The passage:* John saw four angels at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds so no wind would blow on the land, the sea, or the trees. Another angel rose from the east, carrying the seal of the living God, and called out to those four angels not to harm the earth, sea, or trees until God's servants were sealed on their foreheads. He heard the number sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel—12,000 each from Judah, Reuben, Gad, Aser, Nepthalim, Manasses, Simeon, Levi, Issachar, Zabulon, Joseph, and Benjamin. After this he saw an uncountable multitude from every nation, people, and tongue, standing before the throne and the Lamb, dressed in white robes with palms in their hands, crying that salvation belongs to God on the throne and to the Lamb. All the angels fell on their faces and worshipped God, praising him with blessing, glory, wisdom, thanksgiving, honour, power, and might for ever. One of the elders asked John who these people in white robes were and where they came from; John said the elder knew. The elder answered that they had come out of great tribulation and had washed their robes white in the blood of the Lamb; that they are before God's throne serving him day and night, that God will dwell among them, that they will hunger and thirst no more, that the Lamb will feed them and lead them to living fountains, and that God will wipe away all their tears.

Part of this passage is read as the Epistle on All Saints' Day, and I have spoken of it before in connection with that day. I know of no line-by-line commentary that shows its meaning better. But now I will consider it in relation to the whole subject and purpose of the Apocalypse. The words "after these things" recall the vision we looked at last Sunday. Each of the four seals, as it was broken, revealed some form of *power*—power splendid and victorious; power feeding on itself; power carefully guarding mere possessions and calculating how to increase them; power destroying both things and men. The fifth seal revealed the victims of power crying out for justice, asking when it would be shown that power is the servant and creature of right. When the next seal was opened, the prophet felt the earth shaking, kingdoms falling into ruin, and the great men of the earth begging the hills and mountains to hide them from the righteous Avenger, from the wrath of the One on the throne and of the Lamb.

Yes, from the wrath of the Lamb. For in the Apocalypse he is not shown as stepping in to stop the decrees of righteousness, but as carrying them out and fulfilling them. There is a feeble and utterly confusing notion—cruel as well as feeble, immoral in practice as well as inconsistent in theory—that has crept into all the mythologies and been carried over from them into Christian teaching: the idea of a human benefactor whose mind differs from the mind of the One on the throne, who tries to shield men from the results of God's righteous judgments. That idea is completely opposed to the teaching of St. John the theologian. The Lamb helps the creature *precisely because* he does the Creator's will—because he fights with his weapons against all the usurpers who show they are rebels against God by trampling on man.

Is this upheaval, then, that is making earth and heaven shake—the thrones of the rulers who reign on earth, and the thrones of the gods they worship as the props of their rule in heaven—is it really, as the great and rich men and captains think, the beginning of universal anarchy? The one who believed the Lamb was opening the seals, who had heard the cry from under the altar, knew it could not be so. There *would* be universal anarchy if these kings and great men and captains, these gods on earth and in heaven, were the only supporters of order. But if they were themselves the sources of anarchy—if their disobedience to eternal laws had produced this earthquake and made it inevitable—then those very laws would be asserted and brought to light by the events that made the unfaithful rebels grow pale and hide.

I. The next revelation is of a divine order in the midst of this disorder: "And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree." "How foolish!" cries the shallow pretender who wants to be thought scientific; "four angels holding four winds—what ignorance of the laws of Nature!" But this criticism, far from being scientific, is merely the voice of a common feeling that true science would teach us to distrust. How does it interfere with any law that governs the winds—whether we know that law or not—if that law is administered by spiritual powers, living persons? If we insist on tying the acts of such powers to caprice, if we assume it cannot be their special nature to obey and to uphold obedience, we are simply assuming the very thing in question. That assumption is exactly the opposite of the Bible's assumption. In Scripture the righteous angel is precisely the one who carries out the commands of the perfectly righteous and orderly will, listening to the voice of his words. Suppose there is no such will; suppose laws exist without a lawgiver—then indeed all subordinate agents become incredible and impossible. And then the man asks, What governs *me*? And because he finds in himself a will that cannot bend to mere laws and yet must bend to something, he stoops to some tyrannical will. This is the weary circle round which those drive us who despise the old language and have found no new one to replace it. Glorifying laws, they lead us to despise and overthrow law. Aiming at scientific calm, they take away the very thing that protects us from endless restlessness.

What calm it must have given the Apostle's mind, what freedom from restlessness, what a sense of law, that in the very midst of a revolutionary whirl he could see the angels holding the four winds so that nothing would be touched until a purpose affecting the destiny of man was fulfilled. The sea, the earth, and the air are not our masters; we are not the playthings of their whims. They are under the government of the One who made man in his image and redeemed man to be his child. This is the Scriptural philosophy. What other philosophy can you find that equally lifts man above the fear of the elements and all the superstitions that go with that fear, that so bravely equips him to investigate the laws and conditions of a world created to be his home—created by his Father?

II. "And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads."

The distinction between the angel whose task is to seal the foreheads of men and those whose task is to harm the earth and sea is very significant. The latter cannot act without the former; both serve the punishment and education of the free creature. *He* alone can receive the seal of the living God. Every student of the Bible will recognize here principles that work themselves out in every part of its history. They will also recognize in the name "the living God" the characteristic name of the Old Testament. We read that word *living* as if it meant almost nothing; in fact it means the very highest and most practical truth that human language can express.

III. What men are to have this seal set on them? They are called *the servants of God*. And when we ask what that means, we are told that 144,000 were sealed *of all the tribes of the children of Israel*. That general statement is not enough: the Apostle goes on to list the 12,000 of Judah, of Reuben, of Gad, of Aser, of Nepthalim, of Manasses, of Simeon, of Levi, of Issachar, of Zabulon, of Joseph, of Benjamin. We are naturally puzzled by this detailed repetition. Why is it needed? Why—and this surely is the first question, on which the answer to the other depends—why should *Israel* be involved in this vision at all? We might expect that some favored souls would be saved in the coming storm. We might expect the prophet to encourage the Churches of Asia, or elsewhere, with the thought that they or some of their members would be worthy to survive the day of trouble, or be brought through it, or be richly rewarded if taken out of it. But surely Israel had forfeited any claim to special favor. The coming calamity might reach far beyond Jerusalem, but the shock would be most violent there; that city would be swallowed by the earthquake. Our Lord had prepared his Apostles to expect it. Whatever others might suffer, the Jews were surely destined to endure horrors they had never known—horrors no nation had ever known before.

IV. It might be said that, for this very reason, faithful Jews had all the more need to be assured they would be watched over. Perhaps; but if "faithful Jews" means those who had given up their national privileges and merged into the general body of the Church, why are they carefully identified by their national marks? Why are the tribes listed? Why is the same number said to be chosen from each? I take it, my friends, that everything here points to something other than an escape that certain individuals might hope for out of the coming trouble, if they seized the name of Christians and were willing to drop the name of Israelites. Israel—not a few picked men out of it, but the whole nation, the twelve tribes—had been called out to bear witness to a living God. The surrounding nations had bowed to dead gods—gods, the Psalmist keeps saying, that cannot see, or speak, or govern. To testify of One who sees the acts and thoughts of men, who communes with their hearts and spirits, who is an actual King ordering their steps and guiding their way, was the task of the family of Abraham, of the people brought out of Egypt, of those over whom David reigned and to whom the prophets spoke. Let me say it again: this work was done by them as a *nation*, as an organic body. Once they lost that organic character, they could no longer do it. As separate individuals they might hold a *religion*, might keep opinions about God different from other men's; but they could not bear witness to One who was upholding their unity, who would not let them be lost in the surrounding world. And so, as I have often pointed out, the holy men and prophets of the Jews, even when their own countrymen persecuted them most, even when they had the bitterest grievances against them, never claimed some private virtue of their own as God's witnesses. They simply asserted the standing of Israelites; they rebuked their fellows for abandoning that standing; their worst dread was that the nation, through its members' indifference, might be cut off; their belief and hope was that, into whatever apparent decline it might sink, its life was immortal, and the living God would himself sustain it. Through all disasters and captivities, in the darkest hours, that faith went with them and carried them straight forward.

I cannot convince myself that St. John's mind was any less filled and penetrated by this truth than the minds of Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel; or that anything had happened to make him accept more contentedly than they did the prospect that the nation would be a nation no longer. And yet everything seemed to say this dreadful doom was near. It seemed inevitable that the nation would lose not merely its independence—that was already gone—but its very substance, everything that had marked it as a body called by God to a special service for mankind.

V. Perhaps you will grant that this was an enormous problem for a Jew of the first century to face. But I wish you could see what an enormous problem it is for students of history in this century. What do we mean by the records of the Old World? Surely not the scattered notices we can gather of Babylonian kings, or the names and dates of Egyptian dynasties, interesting as those are. We mean the records of two or three distinct nations: Judæa, Greece, Rome. Everything vital in the ancient world is gathered up in the story and destiny of those nations. Our fathers knew this; with all our added learning, we know it too. Now, Greece as a nation had already sunk; Rome as a nation had died into the empire; Jerusalem was the last remnant of national existence left anywhere in the whole world. It was only a remnant, a token of what had been—but it was that, and while it lasted it was a sign that not everything was imperial.

If this is so, we may be no less interested—we may be even more deeply interested—than St. John himself in that heavenly vision, which told him that the nation, though already shorn of most of its locks, though the last lock might be cut off and it might be doomed for ages to labor in the mill, blind and alone, still had an imperishable life; that those of the nation who confessed a living God and believed he had actually revealed himself in his Son represented its continuance; that, coming from the various tribes, they were witnesses to the enduring, organic reality of those tribes. Their brethren who clung to different sects and schools, who called themselves Pharisees or Sadducees, might be the numerical majority. But they refused to acknowledge the King of the nation. For all practical purposes they refused to *be* a nation. They would become what they had in effect declared themselves to be: a set of units with no principle holding them together—solemn witnesses, in their disorganization, to other lands that only a living God can bind men into one, but very feeble witnesses that a nation once born is never lost, that the gifts and calling of God are without repentance. *That* testimony could be fully borne only by those who held fast to the faith that the Son of David was truly the Son of God, and that David's kingdom would never end while that Son lived and reigned.

VI. In this way I believe the vision of the exile on Patmos confirms the hopes that earnest men—Jews or Christians—have held of the final restoration of the Israelites to more than all the privileges their fathers enjoyed, and refutes the opinion of those who say that Jews are not meant to be different from other people, but, once they confess Christ, must be absorbed into our Christendom. I find it most satisfying to take the language of the prophets even more strictly than those teachers do, and to believe they were not deceived when they said that the hills were less fixed and everlasting than their divine polity. But if we read them thus far literally, we must go further. Last week I hinted that the prophets generally, and those after the return from captivity especially, could not help seeing every nation as having its own function, gifts, and destiny. Whatever was distinct was clearly meant by the living God to be distinct; whatever had done a great work was marked out by God for that work. So, if the Jewish nation has had a permanence in the mind of him who was, and is, and is to come; and if those of the race—wherever and whoever they have been—who have believed in a living God have asserted that permanence; then we may also hold that in his eyes there has been a permanence in the Greek nation through all its ages of humiliation under Christian or Mahometan oppressors; a permanence in the Italian nation amid all its subjection to Papal or Germanic tyrants; a permanence one day to be fully asserted and realized by each. And if we dare to ask, in the case of any of these—or of the Jewish nation—why that full assertion of its life has not come sooner, why what *has* come in each case has so far been so incomplete, the vision we are speaking of gives the answer, and it is one we ourselves need to take to heart as much as any people anywhere.

Look at the history of great national struggles among peoples utterly unlike one another in habits, race, character, and religious profession. Look at the Swiss in the fourteenth century, the Dutch in the sixteenth, the Tyrolese in our own day; see whether the seal of a living God has not been clearly stamped on them; see whether their awakening to conscious national life has not been bound up with a faith in One who cared that men should be alive and free—not a distant Being to be sought out and appeased, but One who was himself seeking his servants, rekindling the dying embers in them, stirring them to repentance and to hope. Consider seriously whether the belief that men form a nation which lives on from age to age, which is affected by the sins and by the righteous deeds of its fathers, which has an inheritance worth striving and dying for, does not imply belief in a living God, and can ever be long divorced from the open confession of a living God. And on the other side, consider whether a people—however great its religious profession, however loud its talk of the immortal individual soul—can really worship a living God while it regards itself nationally as merely a great machine for producing and exchanging goods, or merely as a collection of sects and parties. To talk of nationalities, as newspaper writers or politicians do, is easy; to be a nation—to feel that the word is a reality and not a fiction—is hard; whoever would cultivate that feeling must win it through endurance and sacrifice, must learn to weigh what is substantial against what is accidental, must discover how impotent many fine philosophical theories are. We hold this glorious privilege by inheritance from those who bled for it; if we lose it, we lose all our power over those we govern and all our honesty toward one another. We may lose it; other lands we have spoken of scornfully may earn it as our fathers earned it. If such a calamity is in store for us, and such a blessing for them, it will be because they have become less atheistic than we are, because they are discovering beneath all their superstitions that there is a living God working for them, in whom they may trust—the God our own superstitions are hiding from us.

Another vision followed the one of the sealing of the tribes.

VII. "After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands; and cried with a loud voice, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb."

The order of these revelations is, I believe, the order of God's own history, and the order in which its truths present themselves to our consciences. The Apostle is thoroughly possessed by the sacredness of the nation; he is sure it endures, that it bears the seal of the living God. And so he can rise to the perception of this society gathered out of all kindreds, nations, and tongues. So he can contemplate a universality and unity that are the exact opposite of imperial universality and unity. So he can see that the family of God is not divided by place or time, nor by the Fall or by death. This Church belongs not to past, present, or future, but is like the One who has gathered it, the same yesterday, today, and forever. It lacks no earthly ties; it is bounded by none. Angels mingle with these citizens of different nations and tribes; their bond is a common worship.

VIII. "And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God, saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen."

These words express contentment in the perfectly good will of God; joy that his goodness is joined to perfect wisdom; gratitude that to goodness and wisdom belongs perfect power. This is the thought that gives the angels strength; this is the inspiration of their work. And then follows that memorable passage:

IX. "And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, serving him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."

We complain that even these words have grown so familiar to us that they have lost much of their power. No, my friends; it is not familiarity that drains them of power. They are not familiar enough; the picture has been too much a mere fancy in our eyes. We have thought of it as belonging to some distant region wholly cut off from this earth. Let us rise to it as St. John rose to it. Let us think first of our own nation, sealed and set apart by the living God as a witness for him. Let us think of the brave and true men who in past days bore that witness, who did not count their lives dear, so that we might know him better and their land might testify of him and be a richer inheritance for their sons. Let us think of those we have seen struggling and suffering among us, fainting yet victorious, caring above all to show forth the name of Him who is love and to bear his likeness. Let us remember the old men who spoke wise counsels and prophecies to us, the young men who accomplished so little of what they dreamed, the children who left behind them memories of what they might have become. Then reflect: as the nation is immortal, so must those who have lived in it be immortal. These old men, these young men, these children must know us better than they did on earth, because they know God better; must help us better, because they more fully carry out his commands. Then their number will keep growing; those of other lands we have read and heard of will be mingled with them. We shall lose all count of their multitude, yet no single Church, or nation, or person will be lost in it. Each will shine, all will shine, in the light of his tender love—of him who gave his only-begotten Son to take our flesh and to die. Above all, beneath all, for all, will rise the Good Friday prayer: "We beseech thee, Almighty God, graciously to behold this thy family, for which our Lord Jesus Christ was contented to be betrayed and given up into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer death upon the cross, who now liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end."

## LECTURE VIII. THE SEVEN TRUMPETS.

*The passage:* When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, heaven fell silent for about half an hour. John saw seven angels standing before God, and each was given a trumpet. Another angel came with a golden censer and much incense, which he offered along with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke rose up before God. Then the angel filled the censer with fire from the altar and threw it onto the earth, producing voices, thunder, lightning, and an earthquake. The seven angels prepared to sound. At the first trumpet came hail and fire mixed with blood, cast on the earth, burning a third of the trees and all the green grass. At the second, a burning mountain was thrown into the sea, turning a third of it to blood, killing a third of the sea creatures, and destroying a third of the ships. At the third, a great burning star named Wormwood fell on a third of the rivers and springs, making them bitter, so that many died. At the fourth, a third of the sun, moon, and stars was darkened, and both day and night lost a third of their light. Then an angel flew through mid-heaven crying, "Woe, woe, woe to those who live on the earth, because of the trumpet blasts of the three angels still to sound."

There was an earthquake when the last seal was broken. At that point self-willed power, having passed through its various stages and exhausted itself, was reaching its natural end. There would be a judgment. The cycle might close and a new one begin. But now a doom awaits not the world's city, but God's city — the city that had been set up as a witness to the world *against* its idolatries and *for* the rule of the righteous King. Its downfall seems minor in the eyes of the world's rulers (though not entirely minor even to them), yet to the prophet it is nothing less than the end of an age or dispensation. It is the greatest catastrophe that has yet come upon the universe. Heaven falls silent as it contemplates it.

I. "And I saw the seven angels that stood before God, and to them were given seven trumpets."

Nowhere in the Apocalypse are the references to the Old Testament as numerous as here. To understand these trumpets you must turn to the sixth chapter of Joshua: Jericho was shut up tight because of the Israelites, so that no one went in or out. The Lord told Joshua that He had given Jericho, its king, and its warriors into his hand. The men of war were to march around the city once a day for six days, with seven priests carrying seven rams'-horn trumpets before the ark. On the seventh day they were to march around seven times while the priests blew the trumpets; and when they made a long blast and the people heard it, all the people were to shout, and the walls of the city would collapse flat, and everyone would climb straight up into it.

The story preserved in that sacred book, telling how Canaan was conquered by the small band of former slaves who had come out of Egypt, must have taken a strong hold on the imagination of every Jewish child. A strange sense of an invisible, mysterious power capable of overcoming walls and armed men would have blended with a feeling that their forefathers were righteous men, Heaven's favourites, punishing the wicked and accursed people of Canaan. Rabbinical schooling did little to separate what was right from what was wrong in these early impressions. It hardened the wonder at those ancient events into superstition, and the pride in the glories of the one nation into contempt for other nations. The Jew who broke away from that education — who talked and traded with foreigners, who found himself outwardly inferior to them and inwardly no better, who suspected the same was true of those Joshua led, who came to respect ordinary discipline, material strength, and the resources of an empire, and who learned that the heathen claimed even more miraculous interventions for their ancestors than he did for his — would be likely to distrust in his heart, if not openly scorn, the lessons he had inherited. Living either in that unbelief, or in a violent effort to suppress it and to crush anyone who showed signs of it, was probably the condition of most Jews in St. John's day. But there were people, before and since, who became more truly like little children than these had ever been — precisely because they had put away the merely childish fancies and risen to the thought and reflection of grown men. In the account of Jericho's fall they had found the witness of a God who was no more the God of their fathers than of themselves; a God who, by different methods suited to different periods, was always asserting that material power is subject to spiritual power; who was always dooming to destruction cities built on a false foundation, however strong they looked; who had chosen a poor Syrian tribe — not, as their own lawgiver and prophet kept insisting, for its righteousness, but as a witness of His righteousness — to put down races that defied His laws and defiled the earth with their crimes. And surely, if that were so, He would not treat that chosen tribe on any different principles from those He had applied to the tribes of Canaan.

There were such Israelites. St. John was one of them. And no one knew better than he how much his countrymen had become worshippers of material force and disbelievers in spiritual power. Though he lived away from the holy city, he knew it had become an accursed city, given over to strife and hatred, probably to as much fleshly wickedness as had brought judgment on the Canaanites, and certainly to a spiritual wickedness the Canaanites had never known. Yet he needed a special revelation to convince him that the same sentence carried out on Jericho was now to be carried out on Jerusalem — that the trumpets were sounding around *her*, and that they were blown not by mortal priests but by the angels who stand before God.

This, I take it, is the simple interpretation of the vision, and the one that connects it most naturally with what comes just before and just after. Holding that view, I cannot accept any of the more ingenious explanations that move the trumpets to a later period, or to a series of later periods — even if I thought they could be applied that way more directly to Christian purposes. But I do not think so. Let us hear what these trumpets said to the Israelites; then we shall be able to listen, with cleansed and open ears, to any trumpets that may be sounding warnings to us.

II. "And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense which came with the prayers of the saints ascended up before God out of the angel's hand. And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it on the earth; and there were voices, and thunderings and lightnings, and an earthquake."

If the earlier words recalled the priests' ministry at Jericho, these recall the priests' ministry in the tabernacle. That ministry, later transferred to the temple, was ongoing. Jews did not just read about it in a book; they saw it with their own eyes. The altar, the sacrifice, the incense, and the daily prayers were bound up with the earliest thoughts of those who lived in Jerusalem, and were probably even more impressive to those who only visited at the great festivals. Like the historical record, these worship-acts must have affected the frequent or occasional onlooker in two ways. The acts of worship spoke of a communion between the visible and the unseen world: God was meeting men at the mercy-seat, and the priest was the continual witness of that communion. But it was the worship of *Jews*. God had spoken to *their* forefathers. *They* had been told what He is and how to approach Him. What an amazing gift! What nation ever received such a gift! The growing boy was formally taught what the child had learned by heart. For him the awe of the service turned into a kind of terror, and what he lacked in genuine sympathy was made up by appeals to his awakening pride: "The heathen know nothing of the right way of serving God; *their* priests are all wrong in the sacrifices they offer; their sacrifices will never be accepted." Then, in countless cases, must have come the mature Israelite's reaction against this indoctrination — or a cold inner indifference to it: "Why is one sacrifice better than another? Why shouldn't their priests be as wise as ours? Why might not both be deceivers alike? How do we know any dealing with beings above us is even possible? How can we tell they are the least bit moved by our offerings? How can we tell such beings exist at all?" And here, too, there was a path leading through the struggles of adulthood back to a truly childlike faith: "My prayers are not only worthless; they are often impossible. I cannot pray. But I want to pray. An irresistible impulse drives me to try. And my sacrifices — what are they? Worse than worthless. They seem wicked. I have no right to offer them. My mind is wrong, and I am trying to bend God's mind to it. And yet — ought I not to make sacrifices? Ought I not to *be* a sacrifice? What if God Himself is moving me to pray, not against His will, but so that His will may be done? What if He is stirring me to sacrifice, not so that I may gain something, but so that I may be freed from the greatest of all burdens — the burden of my own selfishness? What if sacrifice is a surrender? What if He, and not I, is finally the author of that surrender? What if this was the meaning of my nation's worship? What if this is why He ordained the sacrifice, why He made the atonement, why we can only come with our dead offering, confessing our sins? What if the knowledge of this truth is the great blessing given to Abraham's children, the blessing with which we are to bless all the families of the earth?"

Those who had been led this far by an invisible teacher were ready for the mighty revelation of the sacrifice of the Lord of man and the Son of God — the revelation of Him saying, "Lo, I come," not to change your will, but "to do thy will, O God." But another revelation followed from this: the revelation of a Judge. The prayers and sacrifices in the Jerusalem temple had not been in vain. No incense that ever rose to heaven from a human heart had been in vain. The High Priest within the veil had presented every cry and groan to His Father. And what had those cries and groans asked for? That God would *not* judge the earth? That He would leave it to wallow on in crime and misery? Such prayers may have been offered by people kneeling at Jewish or heathen altars, but they were prayers for stones instead of bread — drink-offerings of blood, of bloody men, of which the High Priest says, "I will *not* offer them." The prayers for right and justice did not stop the thunder, lightning, and earthquake; thunder and earthquake were now the answer to them.

When we read our Lord's conversation with His disciples about the last days, we are often tempted to twist His words away from their plain meaning and say they could not refer to a judgment on *that* age and *that* city — even though He so solemnly says they did. Our inclination to trifle even with that divine language is not without excuse. If we suppose Jerusalem had no relation to the rest of humanity — neither to the nations it had been set apart from, nor to the nations that would be born after it had passed away — then we cannot see how words of such sweeping scope, pointing to distress and confusion everywhere, could be fulfilled by the fall of a capital that had lost all its ancient glory and was now merely the home of fierce rebel factions. But if that city had been the divine centre of the old world; if *there* stood the witness to the Name, the Kingdom, and the Will by which the world was governed; then *there* too must lie the key to the world's destinies. The meaning of the earthquake, and its relation to past and future, remains incomprehensible until we grasp what it signified for the city where David reigned and the Son of David was crucified.

III. "And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound."

Everything about this points to the greatness and importance of their task. It is not a Canaanite city that is to fall flat, but the very city that testified that the gods of the Canaanites were not the gods ruling the earth — the city that testified of a King of righteousness and peace.

IV. "The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire, mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and the third part of the trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up."

The book of Joshua gave us hints about the purpose of the trumpets; the book of Leviticus explained the part of the vision dealing with the sacrifices and incense.

Here we are carried back to the plagues of Egypt, which we were reading about before Easter. This passage in Exodus comes at once to the mind of anyone reading the Apocalypse: the Lord told Moses to stretch out his hand toward heaven so there would be hail throughout all Egypt, on man and beast and every plant of the field; and there was hail, with fire mixed in it, over all the land, striking man and beast, every herb of the field, and breaking every tree.

This language, like what we considered earlier, had been put to a fatal use by Jewish self-importance. Pharaoh and the magicians, they told themselves, had been humbled for the sake of *their* forefathers. *Their* lawgiver could do rarer miracles than the so-called wise men of Egypt. The laws of nature had been suspended so that *their* race could be delivered. This passage fed that self-satisfaction: Egypt suffered from the hail and fire, but Goshen was spared. And so the great lesson these plagues carried to the world was entirely missed. It was not the I AM, the Eternal Lawgiver who had revealed Himself to His servant Moses, who was speaking and acting in them, but — as they took it — a capricious being, essentially no different from the gods the magicians honoured. Moses had not claimed the powers of nature that enslaved the Egyptians as the servants of a God mightier than the tyrant, a God who cared to deliver the outcast. He had not taught the Egyptians what such plagues, whenever they occurred, testified about *their* own government. The whole thing was reduced to a mere contest of strength between a Jewish prophet and the Egyptian magi, with both alike setting natural laws aside. Now the old record is restored to its true force. The angel's trumpet proclaims that the plague of hail and fire is a message to Goshen even more than to Egypt. Jerusalem is to hear in that trumpet a sure declaration that the just Judge and Saviour is now judging Israel, so that the world may be saved.

V. "And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died, and the third part of the ships were destroyed."

The first trumpet, taking the symbols in their simplest sense, indicated a withering of the earth's produce, a decay of vegetation such as some sudden calamity might cause — the result and punishment of neglect and hard-heartedness. The passage I have just read, whatever weight we give to particular phrases in it, points just as clearly to disasters affecting the sea and the commerce of nations. *A third of the ships were destroyed.* That particular kind of suffering could impoverish great trading centres like Alexandria or Ephesus, and would only reach first-century Palestine in its secondary effects. But the angels' trumpets, like our Lord's words, teach the Israelite to link the doom of his own country with the common sufferings of humanity. That city was set on a hill to witness to the world of a God who rules land and sea, who has appointed men to subdue the earth and cross the sea, and who cares more for those made in His image than for all the treasures they dig from the ground or trade in commerce. That message had not been delivered; the Jew had worshipped these treasures as much, cared for man as little, and believed in a just God as little, as the heathen around him. Therefore earth and sea raised their voices against him more than against any others, saying to him — not to Pharaoh or Belshazzar — "Your kingdom has been taken from you; you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting."

VI. "And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters. And the name of the star is called Wormwood, and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters because they were made bitter."

Most, I think, will agree that here we have the hint of some visitation affecting the internal life and health of nations, just as the previous one affected their dealings with each other. I do not know that we would gain much by trying to interpret the specific details more precisely. Wormwood that makes waters bitter and destroys life would be a fitting and by no means exaggerated symbol for miseries that have fallen on countries in East and West at various times; and even without direct evidence, we may well believe such things were among the woes afflicting the world in the disastrous years before Jerusalem's fall. What matters to us is that the calamity was a message to the *Jew*. It told him that he was the Jonah in the ship. It was another trumpet blast declaring that the walls of *his* city were to collapse flat.

VII. "And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise."

It would be easy to read this as describing a moral darkness rather than a physical one. But I believe that adopting that interpretation would depart from the general purpose of these revelations and break their consistency.

The sounds of these first four trumpets all seem to me to point to the connection between physical life and physical decay on the one hand and moral life and moral decay on the other; to the way physical agents become instruments for punishing moral transgression; to the truth that earth, sea, rivers, sun, moon, and stars obey eternal laws — but laws given them by the One who created voluntary beings and whose highest kingdom is over those beings. These were the truths the Jewish nation had been called out of all nations to declare, by its words, its services, and its continual life. And these are the truths it was now to declare by its ruin and death.

But in saying this, I do not doubt that there are evils far more terrible than any that earth, sea, air, or sun and moon can inflict — or that these worse evils were at work when Jerusalem fell, and were causing her fall. Such darker evils, I believe, are pointed at in the words that follow.

VIII. "And I beheld and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth, by reason of the other voices of the trumpets which are yet to sound."

That *these* trumpets point to moral sins, to spiritual wickedness, and to their political consequences, I cannot doubt. Those who live on the earth needed to know that such woes are the greatest woes of all. The heathen needed to know it as much as those to whom belonged the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law and the promises, and from whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. And if anyone needs it even more than they, it is those who have inherited a better Covenant, a fulfilled law, a higher promise — the members of Christ's body, the heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven. May He who made the deaf hear enable His Church to receive His message! May He who made the dumb speak enable His ministers to deliver it!

## LECTURE IX. THE LATTER PLAGUES.

*The passage:* The fifth angel sounds his trumpet, and John sees a star fall from heaven to earth. This star is given the key to the bottomless pit; when it opens the pit, smoke pours out like the smoke of a great furnace, darkening the sun and the air. Out of the smoke come locusts with the stinging power of scorpions, but they are told not to harm any plants or trees—only those people who do not have God's seal on their foreheads. They are not to kill these people but to torment them for five months, with pain like a scorpion's sting, so that people will long for death but not be able to die. The locusts look like war-horses, with what seem like gold crowns on their heads, human faces, hair like women's, teeth like lions', iron breastplates, wings that sound like war-chariots, and tails like scorpions with stings, powerful to hurt for five months. Their king is the angel of the bottomless pit, named Abaddon in Hebrew and Apollyon in Greek. One woe is past; two more are coming. The sixth angel sounds, and a voice from the golden altar tells him to release the four angels bound at the river Euphrates, who were prepared for a precise hour, day, month, and year to kill a third of humanity. Their army numbers two hundred million horsemen, with breastplates of fire, jacinth, and brimstone, and horses whose heads are like lions' and whose mouths pour out fire, smoke, and brimstone, killing a third of humanity. Their power is in their mouths and in their tails, which are like serpents with heads that do harm. Yet the rest of humanity, not killed by these plagues, still did not repent of worshipping demons and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood—idols that cannot see, hear, or walk—nor did they repent of their murders, sorceries, sexual sins, or thefts.

A voice from Heaven had told John that the woes following the last three trumpets would be far worse than those before them. This seemed to me to suggest that they would be of a different kind—more moral and spiritual misery, less merely physical suffering. Let us see whether the description of the first of these woes supports that idea.

I. "And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth." I don't claim these words settle the nature of the coming calamity. Taken by themselves, they *might* mean some harm to the earth itself, like what we heard when the first trumpet sounded. But I think the symbol feels far less strained, and far more like the ones we meet in prophecy and even in everyday speech, if it means the fall of some intellectual power—the dreadful change that happens when something that ought to give light to the world instead makes its darkness worse.

II. The next words, "and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit," would mean nothing, I think, if the falling star stood for some physical disorder. But suppose some man, or some society of men, who had believed in a righteous and true God of Heaven and had witnessed to Him, became believers in a completely different kind of God—came in practice to acknowledge an evil God. Wouldn't such a description then be fulfilled? A gaping gulf of atheism is uncovered beneath a surface that had been coated with a religious crust, on which fair fruit seemed to be growing. People begin to ask whether the universe has any foundation at all, or whether it is built on rottenness. Most will admit that this pit was opening beneath the *heathenism* of the Roman empire in the first century. But did heathenism hold the *key* of the pit? Was the bottomless abyss laid bare when Jove began to be treated as just another word for the air, or when the whole Pantheon came to be regarded as a gathering of malignant demons? No—to an apostle's eye the worshippers of Jehovah were a far more horrible sight; their loss of faith in the God of their fathers, their putting a dark power in His place, was not only the meaning of the change in heathenism but in some sense its cause. For heathenism's own cause we must look further back. It is set out, I think, in those tremendous words: "If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin. But now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father." The revelation of Christ to them as the brightness of the Father's glory had brought what was hidden in them into full awareness. They had been living in a twilight, with the light still struggling within them. But they saw the Perfect Image and fled from it. That was not their God. What was directly opposite to that image was their God. The witnesses for the deliverer became the witnesses and tools of the destroyer. The star had truly fallen from heaven. And because it was a star meant to light the whole world, the whole world must suffer from its fall. The broken, imperfect faiths of humanity—those still wavering between Ahriman and Ormuzd, still timidly confessing amid every monstrous contradiction and foul deed that good is Divine and must win—all take on darkness from this great apostasy. This is how the bottomless pit is opened; only in this way could it be opened.

III. "And there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit." There is a haze of mist through which we can still see heaven. Through that mist heaven may look to us sometimes like an enlarged earth, sometimes like the faint shadow of what is solid here. But *this* medium is not mist but smoke. A furnace burns beneath it. Nothing can be seen above but wrath and horror. And all of nature takes on the same look. Everything that once seemed beautiful becomes hideous. "The sun and the air are darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit."

IV. "And there came out of the pit locusts upon the earth, and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads. And to them it was given that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months: and their torment is as the torment of a scorpion, when he striketh a man."

One of the most vivid passages in all ancient poetry is the prophet Joel's description of the locust army that invaded Palestine in his day. Travellers have confirmed how literally accurate it is; a statistical table or an agricultural report might state the facts of such a disaster more drily, but not more precisely. That description shows better than any other how we go wrong when we talk about "making allowance" for the figurative language of the prophets. We need make no allowances for it. We should study it and interpret it carefully and strictly, and then it will give us a living rather than a dead picture of events that really happened; it will set before us an actual past that can be compared with an actual present.

I point to that passage from the oldest of all the prophets because none helps us better to decide what this passage in Revelation must mean. "A nation," says Joel, "is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion. He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white." And again: "The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth. Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen; howl, O ye vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field is perished. The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men." And once more, in his second chapter: "The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them as a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them."

There can be no mistaking what this language means: its whole force is lost unless it points precisely to the destruction of grass, trees, and crops—the kind of destruction that a swarm of insects, and only insects, could cause. Now notice how carefully the Apostle, clearly with Joel's words in mind, rules out the very things Joel dwells on. *These* locusts were "not to hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree." I hardly need point out that such expressions, if they mean anything, must equally stop us from supposing that the locusts figuratively stand for the invasion of some human army. Imagine a horde of Huns or Avars leaving no mark of their march on the ground or on any tree! Imagine it being said of such locusts that they were to torment but not kill their victims! Surely it is our own fault if we refuse to take these hints—if we suppose that a prophet, just because he has a Divine commission to teach us great truths, is more careless with his symbols, and less able to make us understand them, than an ordinary teacher.

The locusts, then, that rose out of the smoke of the pit—those that were to touch only the men without God's seal on their foreheads and to strike them as a scorpion strikes—must point, I take it, to those superstitions, and especially those restless speculations about the future, that beset people from whom all belief in God's goodness has departed; people who feel the world is ruled by an enemy instead of a Father; whose accusing consciences make the worst expectations about their fate seem believable. We can all know how these locusts darken sky and air; how they breed hateful suspicions that poison dealings between people; how they attach themselves to each person's memory of what he has done and what he is; how one moment they tell him that what he is now he will always be, and the next moment urge him to see whether he can escape his own existence, his immortal self. Oh, my friends, these torments really are the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man; no other comparison could be as true.

V. It is to anguish of this kind that these words apply so exactly and so sadly: "And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them." A constant craving for death as the end of these scorpion stings, and at the same time a constant horror of death, as though the sting were inside it, and could never be drawn out. The rest of death seems delicious; the man would give worlds for it. "Not to be!" But—does not that really mean "never to have been"? Is there any other terms on which such rest is possible? The conscience answers, "No! The grave must be deep and wide enough to shut in everything I have been as well as everything I am to be, or it is not deep and wide enough for me."

VI. This scorpion-torment is the chief sign of all the superstitions that rise out of the bottomless pit of unbelief. But they have other marks that seem hardly to fit together. The first is this: "Their shapes were like unto horses prepared for the battle." There is haste, eagerness, and terror about them. They *look* as if always getting ready for some encounter, but they never *are* ready. Fear where there is nothing to fear; no fear of the real crisis actually approaching; an inability to measure danger clearly and steadily—here is a token of that day's trouble, as it has been of the like in every later day. Here is the second mark: "And they had on their heads as it were crowns of gold." Fantastic hopes of possible happiness alternate with terror. Gold crowns float before the dupe's eyes; the dealer in omens and enchantments keeps holding them out. A sensual paradise, with no tree of knowledge—or one that may be freely eaten from—seems about to be restored. Here is the third sign: "And their faces were like the faces of men." The various superstitions and dreams take their different looks from the tastes, moods, likings, and dislikes of particular teachers; they all reflect human faces; none has any lasting or Divine substance. Here is the fourth feature: "And they had hair as the hair of women." There was a feminine element in them—not just weakness and timidity, though that was surely present. We have already seen the part the false prophetess played in the church at Thyatira; in the forty years before Jerusalem's destruction, when men like Simon and Elymas were scattered so widely, the Jezebel was found at least as often as the Balaam, one always standing beside the other. And the dreams of the future, along with the immediate fantasies, showed the qualities of both. Again, "The teeth of these locusts were like the teeth of lions." In Joel's bold language these teeth had been given to actual insects; he was comparing things not by their size but by their effects. The prophet of the Apocalypse does the same. However soft an air they put on, however human and feminine they may seem, these superstitions that come out of the bottomless pit are still murderous; they are tearing to pieces whatever righteousness and truth remain on the earth.

Again, "They have breastplates as it were breastplates of iron." Most missionaries could tell what iron breastplates protect the world's cruel superstitions and dark worships. They have learned that fearful truth, I trust, not only from their experience of the heathen but of themselves; they have found what an unnatural and terrible hardness any falsehood we have given in to, and that has wrapped itself around us, can take on. So it need not surprise us that these locusts in John's vision—those that had spread over the earth in Jerusalem's last days and were darkening earth and air—should have this among their signs. And again, "The sound of their wings was as the sound of many chariots running to battle." The Divine seer, like the false prophets, was expecting a battle. And all those various forms of evil that gathered up the falsehoods and false worships spread over the world until then sounded in his ears like chariots hurrying to the fight—the forerunners and heralds of a conflict between the powers of good and evil unlike any there had ever been. But whatever else marks these locusts, we must keep to the end the mark noticed first: "They had tails like unto scorpions, and there were stings in their tails." There may be gold crowns on their heads, but all their power comes from the torments they can inflict on the conscience. That which makes cowards of us all is what makes these thoughts of the future terrifying and real; without it they would be mere lies from the father of lies.

VII. For "they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name is in the Hebrew tongue Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon." Here we reach the root of the matter. Devil worship—the worship of the destroyer—is the source of all the foul and hurtful fancies that fill people's hearts. These men have bowed down to him; they have confessed him as their lord and master. Until now there had always been a protest against his tyranny. Wherever there is a nation, wherever there is law, justice, freedom—even the struggle for law, justice, freedom—he is defied; from there goes out a proclamation: This is not our Lord; we owe him no allegiance. In one nation that protest had been clear, formal, carried on from age to age. In one nation the voice—"I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the house of bondage; I am the Lord God, merciful and gracious; I am the Righteous Judge of the earth"—had been heard through every law and every sacrifice. And now that nation was reverencing Abaddon, or Apollyon, under the name of Jehovah. Was this not a woe that foretold woes to come? Was it not a trumpet announcing that the holy city was to fall?

VIII. "One woe is past; and, behold, there come two more woes hereafter. And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men."

Doesn't this vision look more like those of the first four trumpets than like the one we have just been considering? An actual river is named, the Euphrates. A third of humanity is said to be killed. Two hundred million horsemen form a huge army. Shouldn't we look for some physical rather than moral calamity in this language? I have no doubt this is most readers' first impression. But I think it can hardly be the final one.

We shall see, I think, that this trumpet follows the fifth in natural chronological order. The bottomless pit is opened; swarms of dark superstitions spread abroad; then comes the removal of a spiritual chain that had until now held an evil host in check. But what of the river Euphrates? On any scheme of interpretation, that river must be symbolic; it cannot point to events visibly happening on its banks or nearby. So the question is: what does such a symbol most obviously and naturally mean? A Jew would always connect the Euphrates with Babylon; he would think of it as the river of the Asiatic monarch. He would take it to stand spiritually for the dividing line between the two great kingdoms—the Babel kingdom and the Israelite kingdom; the kingdom founded on self-will, and the kingdom founded on the God of Righteousness. So he would understand the command to release the angels bound at the Euphrates as the Divine decree that the barriers between these kingdoms—so far as the second was represented in Jerusalem—should exist no longer. The moral basis of the distinction had been destroyed. Jerusalem was now part of the Babel society; may we not boldly say it had become its center and capital?

IX. The year, the day, and the hour of this crisis, we are told, were fixed. The long pent-up evil broke loose. But it had gained no all-powerful might. A higher Will decided when it would become a lie for Jerusalem to keep pretending to be a witness for God, and when it was right that Jerusalem should be declared the great witness for the Devil. That year, day, and hour were not a matter of indifference to the rest of the world. They affected it in ways it did not know. How, in the end, we shall be taught later. How, at once, we learn from this present passage. I find nothing here that makes me doubt that my interpretation of the Euphrates is the right one. The number of the horses is clearly not one that would be used in an account of a real event. It is deliberately chosen to indicate an army that could never have been gathered on any earthly battlefield, yet that carries a wide, mysterious desolation. The description of the horses and riders is of the same kind. The "breastplates of fire and of jacinth, and of fire and of brimstone" point to no armor made in earthly forges; the "fire, and smoke, and brimstone" do not come from the mouths of any animals man can tame.

X. Still, I do not in the least mean to explain away the statement that "men were killed by the fire, and the smoke, and the brimstone that issued out of their mouths." By this I do not mean spiritual death. Wars and fighting came then, as they come now, from the lusts in people's bodies; the brutality, greed, self-glorification, and atheism of a land were then, as now, the causes that destroy hundreds of thousands. The loosing of the angels may have been the removal of restraints from powers of moral evil. But if so, it was necessarily also the removal of hindrances to the murder of people's bodies. The crossing of the Euphrates may have been the breaking of the boundary between a kingdom of righteousness and a kingdom of mere power. But once that boundary is gone, nothing earthly is safe from the violence of power. That strange description in verse 19, of the horses' power—"It is in their mouth and in their tails, for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt"—means, I take it, a complete union of intellectual with animal force, with all moral purpose shut out. There is the mouth that can speak wisdom; there is the tail that strikes and kills. All the wisdom is serpentine: *the tail has heads*; these obey the lower instincts; to do harm is their only function. Surely when such creatures are turned loose for a little while, they will carry out that function. Woe to the world because of them. Lifted to high places, nothing they have imagined doing will be held back.

XI. Six trumpets, then, have sounded. We ask: what effect did they have on those living within earshot of them? How did they affect the heathen world? How did they affect the Jewish world? The seer answers: "And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk: neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornications, nor of their thefts." So it was in the beginning, and so it will be to the end. All outward plagues, all outbreaks of moral evil, all apostasies within Divine Societies, were and are God's trumpets; those who acknowledge His goodness and truth will tremble and rejoice that He is speaking to them, calling them to repent, preparing the way to reveal Himself. But these trumpets, however loud and long they sound, rarely move a man who disbelieves in a living and good God to confess Him. The terror in them stuns rather than awakens. The sleeper is half roused from his dream, is bewildered, takes a fresh dose of opium, flees to the gods that cannot see, hear, or walk, and flees from Him whom he has known only in thunder and lightning. The saying is forever true that it is not the fire, nor the earthquake, nor the wind splitting the mountains, but only the still small voice that reaches the heart and makes it bow. Jew and heathen alike hear the notes of coming doom and are unmoved. Both alike shall at last look on Him whom they have pierced, and mourn as one mourns for an only son.

## LECTURE X. THE OPEN BOOK.

*The passage:* John saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, a face like the sun, and feet like pillars of fire. He held a little book, open, in his hand. He set his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, and cried out with a loud voice like a roaring lion. When he cried, seven thunders spoke. As John was about to write down what the thunders said, a voice from heaven told him to seal those things up and not write them. Then the angel standing on sea and land lifted his hand to heaven and swore by the God who lives forever, who created heaven, earth, sea, and everything in them, that there should be no more delay: in the days when the seventh angel sounds his trumpet, the mystery of God would be finished, as He had told His servants the prophets. The voice from heaven told John to go and take the open book from the angel's hand. He went and asked for it, and the angel told him to take it and eat it — it would be sweet as honey in his mouth but would make his stomach bitter. John took it and ate it, and it was sweet in his mouth but bitter afterward. And the angel told him that he must prophesy again before many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings.

I. In the fifth chapter we were told how the Prophet saw, in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne, a book written on both sides and sealed with seven seals. Those seals have now been broken, and the book is open. The mighty angel whose face is like the sun holds it in his hand. I said before that we could not name the book until we knew something of its contents. Can we name it now? First, we heard that no one in heaven or earth could open it except the Lamb who was slain — the Lamb who joins the highest power to the highest suffering, in whom is all the glory of Him on the throne and all the sorrow of man. He can read it and let us read it. So this is one hint about the book: it must concern the relations between heaven and earth. It must tell what separates them, and whether they can ever be reconciled. Second, when the first four seals were broken, the four living creatures — the lion, the calf, the man, the eagle — each showed a power going out on earth to destroy rather than bless. Each earthly power seemed to correspond to one of these heavenly powers, being an aspect of God that had been cut off from God and twisted into idolatry. So the book must show us how earthly power has become separated from righteousness, and whether it can ever become righteousness's servant. Third, we heard of martyrs beneath the altar crying for deliverance from the self-willed powers, confessing the self-sacrificing power. So the book must be a record of the wars of those who have fought for good and truth against triumphant evil and falsehood, who kept their faith that what looks weakest to men is strongest to God. Fourth, we had the vision of a great convulsion that made all the seemingly supreme powers of the earth tremble, because they knew the avenger had come and the sufferer was truly the king. So the book is meant to interpret those puzzling stretches of human history that show periods of revolution and anarchy. It shows them to be the necessary result of earlier tyranny and defiance of law; it shows there is a Divine purpose in them and a Divine blessing to come out of them. In all this I find everything that fits the Scriptural idea of prophecy, and almost nothing that fits the heathen idea of prediction. The book is an unfolding or discovery of the meaning and purpose of the eternal God. It explains the principles of an unchangeable government. It shows a law at work even in the ups and downs and whims of self-will. So it applies to the ages before John was born; it applies to the time in which he lived. If, as St. Paul and the New Testament writers affirm, the ends of the ages were meeting in that age, the book must have a special bearing on it. By interpreting the century after Christ came in the flesh, it throws light back over all the centuries before He came.

The passages that follow clearly show that this is a book of judgment. And they do not leave "judgment" a vague word, as it often is in our minds. We are told *what* is judged; what *cannot* perish and what *must* perish in the judgment; what the signs of judgment are; how far God judges and punishes men; how far men judge and punish themselves. The subject of the judgment is a Nation. The vision of the sealed tribes taught us that there is an order within the nation to be judged, an order that survives any destruction of its outward forms. The vision of the countless company assured us that the nation's existence does not shut out the existence of a society with no boundaries at all. The book's plain language led us to suppose that the city or polity doomed, around which the angel's trumpets were blowing, was Jerusalem. That would be the natural conclusion if there were no stronger reasons against it. I have pointed to two reasons that have mainly led readers to reject this view and adopt a more far-fetched one. First, they have decided that the Apocalypse was written after Jerusalem's destruction, so the trumpets of coming doom must point to some other city. Second, they have thought the more obvious meaning too poor and thin, one that would strip the Apocalypse of all its instruction for later times.

To the first objection I answer this. Even if the traditional dating of the Apocalypse to the reign of Domitian could be maintained against the judgment of some of the most eminent modern scholars — even if it was not written, as those scholars suppose, in the time of Galba — the argument is still worthless, except to those who confuse prediction with prophecy. The Jews who lived after the temple was destroyed, even after the plough had been driven around the walls and the city's name changed — things that did not happen until Hadrian's time — still needed to understand what that great overthrow meant, and what the Divine signs were that announced it. The Jew needed this light so that he would not be utterly confounded by his ancient records, which seemed to promise the city of David permanence. The Gentile needed it just as much. From Jerusalem had come the message that claimed him as one of God's family. St. Paul, however hated by his own people and even suspected by the Jewish Church, had carried the gifts and offerings of the Gentiles there as a token of their obligation. When the Church lost its Capital, they might easily feel it had lost its Centre. The history of the second century shows us the sea of notions and theories about the visible and invisible world through which the Church had to pass, because belief in such a Centre was so hard to grasp. To know what Jerusalem was to the old world, and what would take its place in the new, might be the most urgent lesson for that time; and if that time and later times did not fully profit from it, perhaps it is all the more necessary for ours.

And so I come to the second objection, which I have noted in earlier lectures but which keeps rising before us and needs to be looked at from several sides. We have our own notions about which events are big and which are small, and about what information we need or do not need for practical guidance. But God's measure of events may be quite different from ours; and our Divine Teacher may know better than we do what we need. To have a set of Scripture passages we can tie to what is happening in the world, and by which we can guess what will happen, may seem to us a great help in living our lives. He may regard the search for these as feeding fever and restlessness rather than calm trust and brave action. He may want to present the Scriptures to us as one living whole, to show how they interpret the life of one nation, and through it the life of all nations. He may want us to see the light they throw on the history and traditions of the heathen — people we assume He was indifferent to, but who were part of the world Christ came to redeem. I have said before that getting a right sense of Jerusalem's place in the old world is needed for a right understanding of the modern world; and I believe St. John will teach us that truth in all his later visions.

II. I cannot think that any preparation for the opening of a book holding such records and lessons could be too vast or majestic. It seems only fitting that a mighty angel should come down from heaven wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow around his head, to present it as an open scroll. For we have now found the most comforting and satisfying name of all for it — a name St. John himself supplies. It is the book of Unveiling; the Divine mind and purpose are gradually revealed through the working of the ages. And that involves an unveiling of the very name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The symbols describing this angel are already familiar. He is wrapped in a cloud; his outward form is hidden, and he is known by the light he brings. There is a rainbow on his head, a face like the sun, and even his feet are of the same kind — only in them there is heat as well as light, a heat that can consume. No part of the universe is untouched by his message: his right foot rests on the sea, his left on the land. His voice is one of terror — not that musical sound made by many waters, but loud as a roaring lion.

III. There is something in the echoes answering that voice which cannot yet be proclaimed. "And when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices. And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write, and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not."

In a book of discovery, a book that scatters darkness and interprets the confused voices always ringing in our ears with their jarring clashes, there is still a background the spirit acknowledges but cannot reach into; there are still sounds we must be content to believe are the utterances of God's voice, but which we cannot put into our own words. Let this much be granted to those who would represent God's purposes and will as one great riddle that man can know nothing of. Let us be glad that there never has been and never can be any lifting of the veil that would interfere with trust, awe, and adoration. "What thou knowest not now, thou shalt know hereafter" — that is the Divine message every apostle and every man must hear when his Lord stoops to wash his feet; he must hear it again coming from Gethsemane, from Calvary, and from the empty tomb. And so it will be when he passes out of the sight of mortal eyes. Through age upon age there must always be a step of the ladder he has not yet climbed. But through those same ages the voice of God is at the top of the ladder, always calling him to come up higher. And he knows that nothing is kept from him out of grudging jealousy, and that what is hidden must be more good and gracious than what has already been shown. Living under the government of a Being whose delight has been to make Himself known, he can wait in quietness and confidence. If he were living under a Being about whom there was nothing but guesswork and uncertainty, he would only stop being restless when he stopped being a man.

IV. "And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer: but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets."

I cannot tell whether our translators really thought these words meant what sermons and popular religious books so often make them mean. To the ear there is certainly something very grand in the phrase "time shall be no longer." Such an announcement seems worthy of the Archangel's oath. It is only when we ask ourselves what these sounds actually convey, what we suppose "the end of time" indicates, that we find we are grasping a cloud and, for the sake of that cloud, parting with the most solid realities. Do we really suppose the prophet is saying that a *time* will come when *time* will end and eternity begin? Do we attribute such confused notions to one who tells us in every line of his Gospel and Epistles of an eternal life which was with the Father and has been made known to us — whose Apocalypse means nothing unless it means the unveiling of eternal mysteries to creatures living under the conditions of time? I need hardly point out that if Time had been meant in that abstract, absolute sense, the article would have had to be there. Philology, common sense, and, it seems to me, the highest theology have all been sacrificed here — partly because men could not see why such solemnity should attach to the proclamation that there would be no more *delay* in bringing about the mystery of God; partly because they dimly supposed that the accomplishing of the mystery of God must mean the breaking up of the framework of the universe, which they thought would be aptly described as the end of time. But if the mystery of God that He declared to His prophets is the mystery of the reconciliation and atonement of God with man, the mystery of the Lamb's triumph over the Spirit of disobedience and self-will, the mystery of the conquest of the kingdoms of earth by the kingdom of heaven, then I believe I am not departing from the language of Scripture or of sound theology when I say that *this* mystery is not waiting to be accomplished in some far-off imaginary time when time ceases, but is being accomplished at the very crisis toward which all the earlier words in this vision of the trumpets have been pointing.

Many of the difficulties here arise, in no small part, from certain forms of speech which are useful in themselves and have become habitual, but which we repeat until they confuse and mislead us. For some purposes no distinction is more important than the one between the Old and New Testaments. There is a clear outward boundary between them, the boundary of language: nearly 400 years separate the last of the Hebrew writers from the earliest of the Hellenistic ones. The inward differences seem even more deeply marked. Jews of course have the strongest interest in dwelling on them; for them the New Testament contradicts the Old. Roman Catholics are eager to show how the national life of the Jew is swallowed up in the universal life of the Church. Protestants are anxious to show that we are not under the law but under grace. A large and growing school of liberal writers is even more eager than any of these to insist that the new dispensation has swallowed up or overturned the old. And yet none of them denies, or wishes to deny, the Jewish character of the Gospels, Epistles, or Apocalypse. As little can they deny that the Apostles and Evangelists belonged to the last forty or fifty years of the Jewish Commonwealth. Even if some would assign certain books that go under their names to a later period, all the events those books claim to record certainly fall within that span. Suppose, then, we connect these writers, as they seem to connect themselves, with the earlier prophets and teachers of their land; suppose they did believe, as they say they did, that the events they speak of are the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets; suppose they did look, as they seem to have looked, for a kingdom of heaven to rise out of the kingdom of David and take the Gentiles into it — would this language *then* sound fantastic or impossible? Would not the destruction of Jerusalem be the winding up of that whole series of events — the incarnation, death, resurrection, and glorification of Christ — which were themselves the finishing of the mystery of God that He had promised to His servants the prophets? I can only ask those who look down on the New Testament writers as ignorant, narrow Jews to consider whether this is not exactly what they *do* say; whether I am not giving the real force and outcome of their words, whether those words are Divine or human, wise or unwise. And I may surely ask those who set great store by the letter of Scripture — though not, in my judgment, too great — who receive its words as oracles, to consider what those words actually are; to consider whether, taken plainly, they do not contain the Gospel of a finished salvation for men; and whether, if so, this was not a fitting occasion for an angel to swear by Him who lives forever, who created heaven and earth and sea and all that is in them — because the glorious purpose for which the Jewish nation had existed was now brought to pass; because the gods of heaven, sea, and earth were now to bow before the one living God, the Lord God of Israel; because a dispensation was about to begin grounded on the regeneration of humanity in the Son of Man; because a Divine Spirit could now stay with men and make His temple in their hearts and bodies.

V. "And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go, and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey. And I took the little book out of the angel's hand and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey; and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter."

Nearly every passage of the Apocalypse, as I have already noticed, recalls some passage of an earlier prophet. When Ezekiel, sitting by the river Chebar, had seen that "appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord" — which corresponds to the vision in the fourth chapter of this book — he heard a voice saying to him: "Son of man, I send thee to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that hath rebelled against me: they and their fathers have transgressed against me unto this very day.... And thou, Son of man, be not afraid of them, neither be thou afraid of their words, though briers and thorns be with thee, and thou dost dwell among scorpions; be not afraid of their words, nor be dismayed at their looks, though they be a rebellious house.... But thou, Son of man, hear what I say unto thee; Be not thou rebellious like that rebellious house: open thy mouth, and eat that I give thee. And when I looked, behold, an hand was sent unto me; and, lo, a roll of a book was therein; and he spread it before me; and it was written within and without: and there was written therein lamentations, and mourning, and woe. Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, eat that thou findest; eat this roll, and go speak unto the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that roll. And he said unto me, Son of man, cause thy belly to eat, and fill thy bowels with this roll that I give thee. Then did I eat it; and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness."

Ezekiel's work, as set out there, had to do with the Israelites in Babylon. His message concerned the desolation and restoration of their city, and above all of the Temple. It would not be listened to; the prophet would be scorned and hated by his own countrymen. But the words had to be spoken, whether heeded or rejected, and were to remain for the generation to come. St. John, living in a different age, hears the same tidings of lamentation, mourning, and woe that his predecessor had heard. He is speaking to the same rebellious house. He finds that house under a tyranny essentially like the Babylonian one, and awaiting a still more terrible overthrow. St. John's roll, like Ezekiel's, tells of a temple that is to fall and a temple that is to rise from its ruins. And St. John, like Ezekiel, must eat the roll. Its words are not merely to be read but taken, with all their bitterness and all their sweetness, into his innermost being. In this respect the ages between the seer at Chebar and the seer at Patmos make no difference. Living words — words that are things, words written down only because they have been acted or are to be acted — must be received into the man before he can utter them. He must know them by heart, not by rote. So it was in those old days; so it has been since; so it will be in our times. In easy days the words of all books, and of the Bible especially, become fine subjects for criticism and debate. Eloquent comments are written on them; they can be twisted into all sorts of senses; they can be proved to mean everything, anything, nothing. But in times of stress and anguish they are devoured. They are taken not to soothe the reader nor to condemn people he dislikes; he receives them as they are. They nourish him by their bitter qualities as much as by their pleasant ones; he needs both and accepts both. He asks for no explanation of them; they come already carrying a tremendous explanation of what he was and what he now is; he asks for no evidence about them; they bring it with them.

But why should the book be sweet as honey in the mouth if it is so full of woe? And why should it turn bitter afterward, if it is God's book? Ezekiel and St. John had the same experience in this. Nor, I think, would our own case be different, if we truly ate the words and they really entered into us. There must be an unspeakable sweetness in the actual living taste of a Divine communication — in the assurance, felt in the blood, felt along the heart, that a part of the law by which we are governed has been disclosed to us; that the love beneath all law, working at every moment for the welfare and renewal of the creatures it has called into being, is showing itself in our very selves. Sweet as honey! But then comes the sense of this law defied in the world and defied in ourselves, of that love trampled and resisted in the kingdoms of men and in the kingdom within us. Is there no revulsion in that? Does not the book become the more bitter afterward, in proportion to how delicious it was at first? There may be a return to that early joy; there may be a deeper joy that springs out of conflict and suffering; but whenever the messages and revelations of history and prophecy are fully digested, there must be sorrow. For is not the Man of sorrow the one they speak of, and the one who interprets them?

There was a special cause of sorrow in the case of the Apostle John. He might have hoped the open book would tell him of the judgment on the great Babel-empire of the world. Instead it made known to him the judgment of the chosen witness *against* that empire. The seventh trumpet might have announced the fall of Rome. But no — when it sounds, Jerusalem will fall. And is this, then, the end of everything? Is the mystery of God spoken of by the prophets really satisfied in this ruin? For a moment it seems so: the book is open, the dispensation is closing. But the voices of the seven thunders, which were not to be written down, may still sound after the trumpets have ceased. There may be glimpses into the dispensation still to come. The oppressor may not be meant to reign forever. Only half of the seer's task is done. "And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again unto many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings."

## LECTURE XI. THE TWO WITNESSES.

*The passage:* John is given a measuring reed and told to measure the temple, the altar, and the worshippers, but to leave out the outer court, which is given to the Gentiles who will trample the holy city for forty-two months. God will give power to two witnesses who will prophesy for 1,260 days, dressed in sackcloth; they are the two olive trees and two candlesticks that stand before God. Fire comes from their mouths to destroy anyone who tries to harm them, and they have power to stop rain, turn water to blood, and send plagues. When their testimony is finished, the beast from the bottomless pit will make war on them, defeat them, and kill them. Their bodies will lie in the street of the great city—called, in a spiritual sense, Sodom and Egypt, and the place where the Lord was crucified—and people of every nation will look at their unburied corpses for three and a half days and celebrate, exchanging gifts, because these two prophets had tormented them. After three and a half days God's Spirit revives them; they stand up, terrifying those who see them, and are called up to heaven in a cloud while their enemies watch. An earthquake destroys a tenth of the city and kills seven thousand; the rest, terrified, give glory to God. The second woe is past; the third comes quickly. The seventh angel sounds, and voices in heaven declare that the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of God and His Christ, who will reign forever. The twenty-four elders worship, thanking God for taking His power and reigning; the nations were angry, God's wrath has come, the time to judge the dead and reward His servants and destroy those who destroy the earth. The temple in heaven is opened, the ark is seen, and there are lightnings, voices, thunderings, an earthquake, and great hail.

Today we begin what I will call the second part of the Apocalypse. I do not draw this line to fit some theory of my own. The seer is told that when the seventh angel sounds, the mystery of God will be finished, but that he must prophesy again before many peoples, tongues, nations, and kings.

I have taken it that the prophet is speaking of Jerusalem. Six trumpet blasts have announced that it is about to fall. It has not fallen yet. The vision before us mentions a period of 1,260 days, or forty-two months. We usually count about four years between the start of the Jewish rebellion, brought on by the oppression of Florus, and the end of the war under Titus. If I take this stretch of time, or part of it, as the meaning of the 1,260 days, I will at least stay closer to a strict reading than if I turned the days into years—and I will be less likely to be fooled by my own imagination than if I had to guess where those years begin and end in the history of Christendom. I need not describe how that short span was filled with horrors across the whole empire, and with special, indescribable horrors in Jerusalem. Since the disorder was everywhere, the wild fanatics in the holy city could easily convince themselves that the other city, the tyrant city Rome, would fall first. The Capitol was burned before the Temple was burned. The outrages of Vitellius might draw down God's vengeance as much as those of John or Simon. And while the holy place still stood, there might always come some dramatic rescue to save it and destroy the besiegers, like the deliverance that came when Sennacherib besieged the city in Hezekiah's time.

I. "*And there was given me a reed, like unto a rod, and the angel stood, saying, Rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court that is without the temple, leave out and measure it not, for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.*"

The parallel here is plain and direct. The prophecy of Ezekiel dwells on the Temple more than any other prophecy does. Its defilement by the idolatry of its worshippers, its coming ruin by Babylon, and what its symbols meant to those living among the idolaters of Chaldea—all this surely filled his soul. Then comes the prospect of restoration. In his fortieth chapter we hear how he is carried in spirit to the land of Israel, where he sees a man with a line of flax and a measuring reed. With these the man measures every part of the city, and especially the various courts of the Temple. The prophet learns what that building is to be—one he cannot see with his eyes, but in which his countrymen will one day worship the God of their fathers.

The command to John to come and measure must at once have brought his predecessor's vision to mind. Is he too a prophet of restoration? Is the Temple to be destroyed and rise again after seventy years? Is there to be a New Jerusalem in his day, as there was after the captivity?

The rest of the Apocalypse, I believe, answers these questions. This chapter introduces the period of 1,260 days. It explains what happens during them and what they mean. It treats them as a time of total darkness and desolation. But it shows that even in that darkest time the old witnesses of God were not extinguished; even then they were doing the work they had always done. The prophet will not clear away a false hope until he has offered something real in its place. Everything within city and Temple is doomed. No fire will come down from heaven to destroy the besiegers. The fall is delayed, but it is certain. Yet those are not wrong who say there is an immortality in the city, its altars, and its worshippers. That immortality will be revealed by the very destruction that is coming. One who once cleansed it of the traders defiling it said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it again." When those who heard Him saw Him rise from Joseph's grave, they understood He had meant the temple of His body. That was one fulfillment; there could yet be another. The stone temple would not have one stone left on another, but the work for which it existed—the work it had already done for the world—could be accomplished. A better resurrection than the one that had comforted Ezekiel was approaching. What it was would be shown ever more clearly to John's spirit. Meanwhile, he was not to measure the courts that Ezekiel had measured; he was to leave them out; the desecration they underwent in the 1,260 days was a sign that the better days, the more divine order, had no connection with them.

II. "*And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and three score days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth. And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies; and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed. These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite them with all plagues as often as they will.*"

Those who try to work out what these two witnesses are from sources outside the text have a boundless field for their imagination. I will limit myself to the clues given by the passage itself and by the Old Testament passages it points us to.

The allusion here is to one of the prophets who saw the Temple rising out of its ruins and encouraged those who feared that their own weakness and their enemies' opposition would never let it be finished. In his third chapter, Zechariah has a vision of Joshua, the high priest of that day, standing before the angel of the Lord, with Satan at his right hand to oppose him. "And the Lord said unto Satan, The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan; even the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem, rebuke thee. Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?" At first Joshua is dressed in filthy clothes. These are taken away, and he is given the mitre and priestly robes—the full dignity of his office restored. Then in the fourth chapter we read that the angel woke Zechariah as a man is woken from sleep and asked what he saw; he answered that he saw a golden candlestick with a bowl on top, seven lamps and seven pipes to the lamps, and two olive trees beside it, one on each side of the bowl. He asked the angel what these were. The answer is not what we expect: "This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." The prophet is then told that the hands of Zerubbabel that laid the foundation of the house will also finish it. When he asks again about the olive trees, he is told, "These are the two anointed ones, that stand before the Lord of the whole earth."

I believe that if we look closely at this passage, the very things that puzzle us in it—its apparent digressions and inconsistencies—will help us understand the witnesses in the Apocalypse. Joshua and Zerubbabel are clearly the priest and the ruler of the city rising from its ruins. Bound up with these men, who represent the great offices of the commonwealth, is a vision of the Temple itself—the Temple where Joshua will minister and which Zerubbabel will build. But the vision is not of the outward stone building; it is of two of its old symbols, the ones that best express its spiritual character and purpose. At its highest glory and its lowest depression, the Temple has always testified of an everlasting Law coming from the invisible God of righteousness, and of a uniting, living communion between Him and His creatures. The Word from His lips and the Spirit that goes out to give life to the creatures made in His image—these anointed ones who stand continually before the God of the earth—are presented to men in the ordinances of Law and Sacrifice, in the persons of the Judge and the Priest. They had lasted from the earliest times. When Elijah, in Ahab's day, was allowed to bear witness against Baal worship by keeping the heavens from raining during the days of his prophecy; when, centuries before, Moses turned the waters of the Nile into blood so that Pharaoh might know the Lord of the earth to be the Deliverer of captives—they were acting as these witnesses. They were showing that divine power does not dwell with what looks powerful, but with what looks weak. As much as Zerubbabel, they were establishing the maxim, "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit." And so it was now. The witnesses in the midst of Jerusalem testified that a fire would come from the righteous God to sweep away the enemies of righteousness, whoever they were.

III. "*And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.*"

A time was to come, however, when these witnesses for the existence of law and of God's care for men were to be silenced. I cannot say whether this refers to some particular event in the siege of Jerusalem that marked the extinction of the last shred of moral restraint and of belief in anything good. Probably it does. Probably the allusion would have made sense to some at that time who needed it. We do not need the specific fact, but the principle it stood for. What matters to us is to grasp that there was a critical moment in the history of that falling city—as there is in every falling city—when its crimes reached their peak and the restraints that had checked them stopped working. The one who kills the witnesses is described here as the beast that rises from the bottomless pit. More about him will be told later. Enough is said here to show that mere brute force, ungoverned lust and self-will, became triumphant over everything opposed to them. To all intents and purposes they were the lords of the Holy City. The Jewish historian would tell us as much. A seer was needed, not to record or repeat the announcement, but to tell us what it implies. The witnesses who perished in Jerusalem were witnesses of God's government and of God's mercy to the world. The killing of those witnesses could not affect Jerusalem alone; it must affect all mankind.

IV. "*And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations, shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves.*"

In the first of these verses the place where the witnesses lived is identified as the place where our Lord was crucified. Jerusalem is named just as clearly by that description as by the other—that it is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt. What city, during its year of siege, better matched the idea of a Sodom, where all law and humanity were wiped out, or of an Egypt, where religion had become the great instrument of darkness and oppression, the denial of God, the spur to every crime? When the witnesses' dead bodies are said to lie in the street of this city, I take it to mean that there was the most conspicuous example ever given of the decay and rotting of institutions that had been set up to spread life among the nations. When it says the peoples, tongues, and nations would not let them be buried, I take it to mean that the surrounding heathen preferred to have Jerusalem remain a sink of filth and iniquity—a spectacle of where its grand claim to a special worship had ended—rather than have it swept away at once. For a little while, not much longer than the time the Son of God Himself remained under the power of death and the grave, Jerusalem was to be—so men decreed, so God willed—a sign and witness of the evil possible on earth, which is only possible when it is the corruption of the highest good.

V. "*And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice: and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt upon the earth.*" A sense of release from the restraints of law, from belief in anything invisible, is vividly set out in these words. It has come to different nations at different times; and always, I believe, it has been the result of the moral collapse and degradation of some society that held high trusts and, through its own boasting, sank lower than those it claimed to warn and guide. That there should be this savage glee and mutual congratulation among idolaters who had been tormented by the witness the Jewish law and worship bore against their impurities—and that an actual loosening of all moral ties, greater than ever known before, should be tied to this feeling—we could guess even without evidence; but in fact we have it from the most trustworthy sources about the real shaking of Roman society in the period after Nero's death.

VI. "*And after three days and an half, the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them. And the same hour there was a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell, and in the earthquake were slain of men seven thousand: and the remnant were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven.*" Here is the key to the whole vision. Forms and institutions that were not only ancient and honored but could claim a divine origin and had been upheld by divine power, wither and perish. The world thinks they are gone forever. That is the very moment of their transfiguration and glorification. Then they are found to hold a life that depends on no accidents of time or place.

Everything above and below announces their presence and testifies to their authority. The fears that strike the consciences of those who most defied them are the signs of that presence and authority. The swift disappearance of some power that had claimed independence of them; the confessions, conscious and unconscious, of a God of heaven that follow a stretch of utter indifference and unbelief—these show that the witnesses have ascended. If they lose their local home and name, it is so that they may claim a universal rule.

The truth of these words has been shown at various times, so it is no wonder that one group after another has claimed them for itself. I believe we vindicate them for everyone by taking them as directly referring to the crisis I have described. History tells us that the Roman world, after being shaken from center to edge, was struck with a great fear; that when Vespasian took the throne it once again accepted a just and orderly government—or, as the prophet puts it, did homage to the God of heaven; that there was no such revival in the holy city, but only wilder fury and more utter brutality among those who claimed to honor the God of heaven there; and that the very restoration of order in Rome was therefore the signal for Jerusalem's doom. This, I take it, is what the prophet means by "The second woe is past, and, behold, the third woe cometh quickly." Rome's great earthquake is over; the man who restores and delivers that city is the one destined to destroy this one. For now,

VII. "*The seventh angel soundeth.*" That the fall of the Temple follows immediately upon the trumpet blast I gather not only from everything earlier in this chapter but from its last verse: "And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament; and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail." The temple in heaven is the backdrop to the picture of the great fire consuming the temple on earth. The ark and the covenant are seen to be there; the lightnings and thunderings that shatter the one reveal the other. And so it happens that what seemed the most terrible of all disasters is celebrated in these words: "And there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever." Since last Sunday I spoke of "the finishing of the mystery of God," promised "in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound," I need not dwell long on these words, because, wonderful as they are, they are the necessary sequel to that beginning. If the temple on Mount Moriah bore witness to a Lord God of Israel whom no man had seen or could see, and to an anointed king who would reign over David's house and whose kingdom would have no end, then the fall of that temple either proved that testimony false or declared that the Lord God of Israel is the Lord God of all nations, that the Son of David is the King of men. In words, all Christians admit that the passing away of the Jewish state carried this proclamation with it. There are hymns taught to English children about God now calling the world His own and about heathens tasting His grace. But we have come to treat these as merely rhetorical phrases. We say that in a sense it is no doubt true that God reigns over the nations—meaning that in every practical and important sense it is not true. So when we hear of voices in heaven solemnly declaring that the kingdoms of this world are the kingdoms of God and His Christ, we naturally say they must refer to some quite different event from the fall of Jerusalem, to some time we have never reached. For we reasonably trust that in the language of heaven there are no rhetorical phrases—that its hymns celebrate real, not fictitious, blessings. It would indeed be daring profanity to confuse our idle talk about the world being God's world with the ascription John speaks of in the sixteenth verse.

VIII. "*And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God, saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power and hast reigned.*" But would it be profanity to suppose that they understand the vital meaning of events that we have drained of meaning? Would it be profanity to admit that we have been utterly unthankful for what should have filled us with wonder and gratitude? Would it be profanity to ask whether the Apostles had any message to deliver to the world at all—whether we have any—if the message is not this: that the kingdoms of the world belong to God and His Christ, and not to the tyrants who have claimed them, nor to the devil or his angels?

IX. In any case, I believe we shall find that this and no other is the teaching of the Apocalypse, pressing on us more and more in each vision that follows this one about the overthrow of the holy city and Temple. If the visions were all bright and joyful, we might have good reason to conclude they had nothing to do with the last eighteen hundred years of the world, or with our own day. But they are pictures of fierce conflict. The news that God has taken His great power and is reigning, which stirs such joy in heaven, finds little faith on earth. "The nations," it says, "were angry." They did not like being told of a righteous Judge. They were not eager to acknowledge One who cared for the poor and outcast, or who had taken their nature and died their death. God's government and His Christ's were far too unlike their own for them to want to live under it. But it adds, "Thy wrath is come." Their wishes could not change the fact. They were angry because they felt there was a power over them with which they were out of harmony, and which would prevail against them. And this power, the prophet goes on, is felt among the dead as well as the living. Being the power of Him who was and is and is to come, the power of the Lamb who was slain and lives forever, it cannot be confined by mortal boundaries; it cannot be limited by the sleep that closes off our years.

X. "*It was the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and to them that fear thy name, both small and great.*" I take the words as I find them; they may shatter some of our notions and theories; they may open up visions of judgment different from those we have inherited or made for ourselves. But if they are revelations of God, we must not shrink from them. We can be sure they will deepen and widen our faith, not shake it; that they will not lessen our awe, but make it more constant and more effective; that if they forbid any thoughts of God inconsistent with belief in His perfect love and full redemption, they will also not allow us to attribute to Him, or to keep in ourselves, the slightest tolerance for evil. The time has come that thou "shouldest destroy them that destroy the earth." This was a cause of the elders' rejoicing when the earthly temple fell and the heavenly temple was opened; and this must reconcile us to the fall of even what is dearest and most sacred to us—what has been dearest and most sacred in God's eyes—if it stops being a witness for Him, if it hides the ark of His testament from men.

## LECTURE XII. THE WOMAN AND THE MAN-CHILD.

*The passage:* A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in the pain of childbirth. Then another sign appeared: a great red dragon with seven heads, ten horns, and seven crowns, whose tail swept a third of the stars down to earth. The dragon stood before the woman, ready to devour her child as soon as it was born. She gave birth to a son who would rule all nations with a rod of iron, and her child was caught up to God and to his throne. The woman fled to a place prepared by God in the wilderness, to be fed there for 1,260 days. War broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought the dragon, who fought back with his angels but was defeated and lost his place in heaven. The great dragon—the old serpent, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world—was cast down to the earth with his angels. A loud voice in heaven declared that now salvation, strength, the kingdom of God, and the power of his Christ had come, because the accuser of the brethren, who accused them before God day and night, had been cast down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not cling to their lives even in the face of death. So the heavens and those in them should rejoice, but woe to the earth and sea, for the devil has come down with great wrath, knowing his time is short. When the dragon saw he was cast down, he pursued the woman; she was given the two wings of a great eagle to fly into the wilderness, to her place, where she is nourished for a time, times, and half a time, away from the serpent. The serpent poured water like a flood after her to sweep her away, but the earth helped her by opening its mouth and swallowing the flood. The dragon, enraged with the woman, went off to make war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God's commandments and hold the testimony of Jesus Christ.

In the previous vision the earthly temple vanished, and a temple in heaven was opened. The first thing the prophet's spirit sees in that higher region is a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.

It must truly have been a wonder to him. Nothing could more strikingly show the contrast between the old world that was passing and the new world that was beginning. That old world has often been called—whether in praise or blame—a male world. The description fits the Jew at least as strongly as the Roman. It would be very unjust to either to say they lacked reverence for women. Among the Jews it was fostered by all their institutions and prophecies; it colors some of their most striking legends and their most certain records, as it does the traditions the Roman republican cherished. But the man was singled out to be the servant and witness of Jehovah, especially in those acts in which the woman could not share. The fear that some standard of worth other than the male might slip into the State and weaken it was a chief reason the older Romans dreaded the coming of Greek art and learning. For in Greece there had floated a vision of surpassing beauty that could not be embodied in an Apollo alone. Pallas and Aphrodite contended with him for supremacy, though the sternness of the one and the merely passive grace of the other showed how difficult and dangerous it was to lose sight of that other ideal.

What this change means—whether it has necessarily brought effeminacy, whether it marks progress or decline—are questions that have occupied thinkers in every age, never more than now. This heavenly vision, bound up as it is with the whole purpose of the Apocalypse, and beginning a series of visions, may, I believe, shed light on this subject—light we need almost as much for our daily and practical guidance as for the study of history.

I. The wonder the Apostle saw is exactly the wonder that has accompanied Christendom through every stage of its life and growth. The mother and the child, in one form or another, have been present to everyone who has tried to work out what the human is and how it relates to the Divine. All have felt, more or less clearly, "What we are seeking is there; how, we cannot say. Perhaps it cannot be put into words at all. Perhaps the symbol itself is all we need." Romanists and Protestants have felt their difference, their intense opposition, nowhere more strongly than when this subject presses itself upon them—as it always does. They sense that here must lie the very secret of their quarrels. And yet they dimly feel that here too, if they could go a little deeper, might lie the secret of their reconciliation. May not some neglect or reversal of the law that binds this mother to this child explain many corruptions that have made men in the new world long for what seemed the simpler, manlier glories of the old? May not a true grasp of that law vindicate both the old and the new, and prove that the new is truly a blessed unfolding of what was hidden or imperfect in the old? And may not the book that claims to be a revelation of Jesus Christ give us that unfolding?

The woman is clothed with the sun. She has no brightness or glory of her own. Yet she is covered with brightness and glory. She lives in perfect light. She can look up to the source of light. The crown of twelve stars on her head distinguishes the brightness that is around her—which to those looking up from below seems to be hers—from that which she herself sees, from the true Divinity she confesses and worships. The moon at her feet shows that a reflection of this Divinity does come from her, but she must not become enamored of it. If that image attracts her, she will meet the fate of Narcissus: her self-love will destroy her.

Here is a very striking symbol of humanity. Nothing from the old world comes anywhere near it in completeness. That male ideal I spoke of struggles in vain to be more than national. When it aspired to be more in the Greek, it sank into effeminacy and slavery. When it aspired to be more in the Roman, it became imperialism. When it aspired to be more in the Jew, it either narrowed into the tightest sectarianism, or else broke out into this very type of humanity we are now contemplating.

II. But though more perfect than anything the world had yet seen, it is still imperfect. Another element is missing. "And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered." Something is needed to connect this female ideal with the male ideal of the earlier ages. That must be expanded as well as this. That must be brought into the closest harmony with this. The woman is not merely looking up to a light above her. She is struggling with a birth. The Divine must be above the human; but it must also come forth from the human. There must be a man-child. All the struggles and conflicts in society and in the individual are the throes leading up to that birth. All the conflicts the individual or society has undergone are conflicts over whether that child shall live or die. For—

III. "There appeared another wonder in heaven. And behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born." I must remind you again that the last vision of the Apocalypse—if we interpret it strictly, as I try to—points to a definite critical moment in the world's history: as I think, that period of three or four years when Jerusalem was threatened by the Roman armies and Rome herself seemed to be in a death-struggle. Seen from above, what does this crisis mean? It means the struggle over whether humanity shall have its true and rightful king, or whether some other power shall rule over it and receive its homage. That power is pictured as a bloody dragon. The Lamb, you remember, had the seven horns and seven eyes that are the seven Spirits of God going out into all the earth. There we have the symbol of concentrated, harmonized power, coming from one loving Will, aimed at one loving end; the symbol of life in all its measures and forms, coming from the Source of life, to quicken, renew, and unite. Here we have the opposing symbol: seven heads and ten horns—powers intellectual and physical, going out not from one creative mind to achieve a blessed result in various ways, but from a destructive mind, destructive, and therefore broken into different shapes to spread death. This is the dragon that has fought man in every generation of the world—fighting to separate him from the loving, eternal God; fighting to make him see God under divided forms, to make him mistake and pervert God's purposes, to make him build the Divine Spirit out of his own notions instead of letting his notions be shaped and re-formed by the Divine Spirit. This is the dragon, then, who tried to tempt the Divine Son while He was on earth into distrusting and denying His Father, into separating Himself from the creatures whose nature He had taken. And that same dragon is shown here struggling to keep men from confessing the Conqueror of the evil spirit as both the Son of Man and the Son of God.

This dragon is said to draw a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. Whenever spiritual beings are led to worship themselves, to glory in their own power, to revere power for its own sake, they are dragged down from heaven to the earth. Being stars meant to spread light, they become powers of darkness. All creation is blighted by their influence. Men have believed there was such a fall of spirits. If you ask me how many texts of Scripture they have had to support that belief, I would answer: if they had only this one, it would be all the more remarkable that the faith should be so widespread, should have ruled so many different ages, penetrated so deeply into the heart of nations, taken so many forms of art and literature, and defied so much scorn and disbelief. And this faith, though it may have had various forerunners and foretastes in the ancient world, is strictly a Christian faith. The revelation of our own spiritual capacities and temptations has shown us how the dragon's tail might sweep down the stars of heaven. Every man has known, at some crisis of his life, longings, insights, and hopes that could not belong to an animal but must belong to a spirit. He has felt these were emphatically human longings, insights, hopes. They were not his own. They lifted him above himself. They made him understand what other men and other ages had felt. They found their voice in cries for deliverance and acts of thanksgiving. He knew he had something in him capable of communion with what he could not comprehend. It is possible—we all know it is—to fall from this state of mind, to treat it as utterly fantastic and ridiculous, and at the same time to hate it, as if the sense of it were haunting us and we could not drive it away. And so the thought of how spirits may have fallen connects itself with the resistance we feel when our own spirits are trying to rise. Is there not One who knows all our needs, who is helping us against our enemies, who offers Himself to us as the Divine man, the Lord of our spirits? Is not that the Man-child, feeble yet mighty? Is not the dragon seeking to kill Him as soon as He is born?

IV. "And she brought forth a man-child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, and her child was caught up to God and to his throne." This week we shall be celebrating the mystery of our Lord's ascension. Does that mystery have anything to do with the words I have just read? It seems to me, my brethren, that all the acts of our Lord's life—His Birth of the Virgin, His Cross and Passion and Resurrection—have to do with them. All were steps in the manifestation of the true King and Conqueror of men. All were steps in the redemption of humanity. And the ascension was, if we believe St. Paul, the highest of these acts—the leading of man's captivity captive, the declaration of Christ's royalty. I would never separate that ascension from the one spoken of here. The very worth of heavenly visions is that they bring under one law and principle events that in the records of time are kept apart. In this case I do not think they are separated by any wide interval. The words, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away till all these things be fulfilled," I have taken throughout these Lectures in their literal force. At the very moment when the kingdom of God on earth seemed to be ceasing, when the pledges of any union between heaven and earth were vanishing, then the kingdom of heaven that Christ had preached is actually inaugurated; then the pledges of union are made good. That disappearance of the signs is itself the sign that the representative of humanity is caught up to God and His Throne.

Divines have a technical way of handling this subject. They speak of an actual Christ born into the world, and of a mystical Christ born in the hearts of some men. Philosophical students of history have made use of this distinction, treating the Christian idea as merely an idea, and showing how such an idea had been floating in men's minds in every country and age. It seems to me that St. John the divine understood the whole matter better than these later divines, and that for him the actual Christ and the mystical Christ are never separated. No one is so careful to set forth the Man who sat by the well, ate the Passover supper, whose soul was troubled, whose feet and hands were pierced by nails. No one is so certain that this was the Word, the light of every man, made flesh. So when He had died for the sheep and risen again, He simply returns to His natural state, to the glory He had with the Father before the worlds began. But He returns after making it known to His disciples that He is the Vine and they the branches; that all their life is from Him and in Him; that apart from Him they are nothing and can do nothing. What He had taught them, He sent them to teach the world. Everyone who received the message discovered Christ to be the teacher of his spirit, the source of his life. His conscience had told him of such a one before; now he knew His name. The Jewish prophecies and heathen traditions had said the world must have a Divine king who was also a human king. When the Jewish world passed away, He is revealed as Lord of the universe. The woman has brought forth the Man-child. He is to rule the nations with a rod of iron. Humanity is not entering a merely feminine age—though, seen only in its earthly condition, that is the highest and most universal symbol by which it can be represented. There is to be dominion and government; the Man-child is to rule the nations. There is to be no lazy tenderness. With the rod of His wrath He is to slay the wicked. It is a shepherd's rod, but a rod of iron too; let the tyrants of the earth know it and tremble.

V. "And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and three score days." Can all the commentators have been wrong in supposing that the woman here must mean the Church? If not, must I not change the meaning I gave the symbol earlier? I cannot doubt the commentators are right, and that this vision does describe the Church's condition during a period of unusual desolation. But since the Apostle does not use the same images as before, I think we are bound to ask why he changed them, and to learn the new lesson the change must be meant to teach. When he spoke of six candlesticks and said the candlesticks were Churches, I assumed he meant to describe the Churches as lights of the world; when he speaks of a woman without saying he means the Church, I cannot simply swap one name for the other. I must find out from the context and the analogy of Scripture what the symbol naturally means, and then, if the occasion calls for it, apply that discovery to the Church. Doing so, we may hope to reach St. John's own idea of the Church, instead of forcing an idea of our own upon him.

Suppose the twelve hundred and sixty days are that period of darkness when the old witnesses of law and priesthood were prophesying in sackcloth and were about to be destroyed for a time; suppose that was the crisis in which humanity was translated to a new glory, its Divine representative being caught up to the throne of God. Where then should we look for the representative of her new condition upon earth? Not in the city of Jerusalem, which has been denying this glory of man and is to perish in its denial. But those who believe that Jesus is the Christ and that He stands at the right hand of God as their Mediator and Advocate—they, banished from the city, with no country they can call home, no visible fellowship or unity—are nevertheless upholding the true greatness of the race. They are claiming the rights of spirits; they overlook the boundaries of space and time; they have a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

The records of the Church during those particular years—indeed through all the later years of the first century—are especially scanty and confusing. Its numbers must have been greatly reduced; the love of many, as our Lord foretold, must have grown cold. Eusebius gives hints that seem to reflect the confusion of the time in the Church—of a decline that soon followed, especially in Palestine. In them are dim records of a flight to Pella. Bishops are said to have succeeded one another with incredible speed; often they bear heathen names. That the Church survived at all through such a time seemed altogether wonderful to human eyes. No fuller account of its preservation can be given than the one in the text: "She had a place prepared by God"; she was kept alive in the wilderness for twelve hundred and sixty days.

VI. And is that all? Do we only have an account of a few scattered Christians with no visible refuge or home for three or four years? Not quite. We have another record besides this.

"And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death."

That insignificant sight of a handful of poor men, exiles from cities, unrecognized on earth, is suddenly exchanged for this wonderful sight of the hosts of heaven pouring out shouts and congratulations for the greatest victory ever won. What was the victory? The words describe it clearly enough if we heed them. There had been a tremendous barrier between man and God. An enemy was constantly arraigning man as a rebel, and constantly arraigning God as a tyrant. And now the Man-child presented men to God as redeemed, justified, perfected in Him—and presented God to men as their loving Father who had given up His only Son for them. The battle in heaven had this subject and this outcome, no other. Was there truly a bond of peace and fellowship between heaven and earth? Was it truly possible for man to meet God and God to meet man? Was there One in whom both could be well pleased? Was God drawing men to Him or pushing them away?—seeking to save them or to damn them?

Whatever other dreams we may have had about the Devil and his angels being cast out of heaven, this is St. John's account of it. The accuser of the brethren is no longer able to tear the creature away from the Creator. They are made one in the well-beloved Son. "And now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ." The two are inseparably, eternally joined. Christ has not exerted any power to change the will of the Father. His power has been shown in fulfilling that will, in making it effective. It is not God who has been keeping men at a distance from Him; it is the enemy of God. He is the condemner; God is the Justifier.

These are not principles that lasted only twelve hundred and sixty days, my brethren. They were proved in those twelve hundred and sixty days; they were established in those days, when the world looked most dreary and hopeless, as the principles on which Christendom and the whole world were standing. For the men of those days overcame the dragon by the blood of the Lamb and the word of His testimony. The blood of the Lamb was a perpetual witness to them that God had reconciled the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them. The blood of the Lamb was a living sacrament of a perpetual, living union between the children on earth and their Father in heaven. And the word of this testimony was that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son for it. These were the answers to the accuser, answers that rose above all the arguments and subtleties by which he would try to persuade men that they are an accursed and not a redeemed and blessed race; that death is a sign of separation from God and from one another—as it must seem when we look at any single case—rather than a bond of reconciliation and atonement to God and to one another, as it must be when we look at it in the death of Christ, the Head, Representative, and Redeemer of the whole race. And so these witnesses did not cling to their lives even in the face of death; they could throw their lives away as witnesses for the truth, knowing that the truth was worth more than their lives, and that they could trust their lives with the God of Truth. The male courage of the old time had not departed. The Christian martyrs were to be its guardians and to hand it on.

VII. "Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth, and the seas, for the devil is come down to you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time."

The dragon was cast down from heaven. Those who claimed their portion in God saw an unclouded face. Those who looked into the eternal world—so full of dark shadows before—now saw that it was full of light. This vision was not for angels, but for sinful, dying men. The kingdom of heaven had been opened to them by Him who had borne sin and overcome the sharpness of death; even in the midst of torments they could dwell in it. The woe and trouble were for those who inhabited the earth and the sea—for those who could not look beyond the visible and temporal. These too had been redeemed and united to the other world. But if they would not acknowledge the reconciliation, if they tried to interpret the universe by the events passing within it, they could find no ground for hope; everything was a reason for despair. It was a time when the devil held sway over the world—a short time, for whatever our unbelief may pretend, such times of ascendancy are short. They bring to an end long stretches of indifference and heartlessness; they act as cures for atheism; they drive men, in spite of themselves, to a good God. But who can tell how dreadful they are while they last? Who can measure their anguish by minutes or by years?

VIII. "And when the dragon saw that he was cast upon the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man-child. And to her were given two wings of a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness, to her place, where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time, from the face of the serpent."

The child is beyond the dragon's reach. He has triumphed. But the mother of the child is still exposed to the dragon's violence. That is the formula for the history of the modern world—for the history of humanity since the Son of Man was revealed. Part of the battle, and the most tremendous part, which St. John calls the battle in heaven, had been fought. But the woman's battle—a battle with the dragon in his various forms, now tempting by prosperity, now by adversity, now with one head and horn to the fore, now another—this had still to be fought; and this is the subject of all records from St. John's day to our own.

I do not, however, extend the direct application of this passage beyond the crisis I have already spoken of. The phrase "time, and times, and half a time" is no doubt chosen for some reason—perhaps to signal that these events belong to a definite period but have a meaning that reaches into other periods. Yet the period itself seems to be the same as the 1,260 days; the flight into the wilderness in verse six cannot be distinguished from the one in verse fourteen. What is further said is that the woman is carried into her hiding place on the wings of a great eagle. "The great eagle" would be more literal; one reading is "the two wings of the great eagle." Both the usual emblem of the conquering city and the usage of the Apocalypse allow us to take Rome as the protector here. The eagle that was about to swoop down on the Jerusalem carcass rescued the witnesses for mankind—for the redemption of both Jew and Gentile—from the oppression of the Jewish sects, and from their own false position among those sects. The dwelling in the wilderness seems to imply a suspension of all visible ordinances, all outward fellowship. It was a necessary transition, a time in which the Church was to come to know herself before entering her new calling as herald of a Divine kingdom to the imperial world. But there were dangers besetting her in that solitude.

IX. "And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away of the flood. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth."

Jerusalem had been a hot-bed of sects or heresies. We think we have described them all when we name Pharisees, Sadducees, and perhaps Essenes. There must have been many more within these great political divisions, and many outside them. The Samaritans were another element; they had always been more prone than their neighbors to spiritual impostures, and less tied down by orthodox formalities. The Judaism of Alexandria, closely allied with Gentile philosophy, was rich in all sorts of conceptions and imaginings. These turned especially on the nature of the Divine Word who had spoken to the fathers, on the relation He would bear to the coming Messiah, and on the offices, powers, and relations of angels to God and men. What waters these were for the Church to float in, once she was loosed from her old moorings! All simple faith, at a time when faith was most needed, must have been threatened, if not lost, in them. But there was a merciful deliverance from this evil then, as there has been since. The Apostle's words point to it very strikingly. The arguments of learned doctors go very little way toward settling controversies; usually they only increase them and add to the bewilderment of those suffering from them. But the earth swallows them up. They may be very sublime, heavenly speculations—who knows? But they do not meet the daily needs, business, and sufferings of earth. And after all, what we ask for is that which will meet them. Opinions with the clearest warrant of antiquity, or the finest gloss of novelty, must be brought to this test: What can they do for us? You say they are very probable; there is great evidence for them. No doubt; but I want something I can rest on—not something that is very likely, but something that is. Thanks to the good honest earth, which in due time soaks up all watery notions and leaves only what has proved itself substantial.

X. "And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ."

The dragon had good reason for his wrath. He had trusted the earth as his friend, and it had proved his foe. The plain solid work and hard suffering that he thought would make men forget the Divine kingdom have really forced them to break through the mists that were hiding that kingdom from them. Other means than these must be tried. The next vision will tell us what they are. But so that we may know why they are used, and what the dragon is trying to destroy, this great simple lesson is left with us for all of us to take to heart. The battle is not with those who hold some system they call Christianity. It is with those who keep the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ—with those who hold fast the command to love God with heart and soul and strength, and their neighbors as themselves; with those who hold fast the testimony of Jesus Christ, that the God who commands us to love Him has first loved us, has given His Son for us all, has justified and glorified that Son as our Mediator and Advocate at His right hand, and has sent His Spirit of Love to form us after His image. With these the Spirit of Evil fought in the old time, fights now, and will fight until either he or they are vanquished. We have declared this day at God's altar that we are engaged in that struggle, that we have failed in it, and that there is only one strength that can enable us to prevail. And He has said to us this day: You may be more than conquerors through the might of Him who loved you. By the blood of the Lamb, the weakest of you may overcome.

## LECTURE XIII. THE DRAGON AND THE TWO BEASTS.

*The passage:* John stands on the seashore and watches a beast come up out of the sea, with seven heads and ten horns, crowns on its horns and a blasphemous name on its heads. It looks like a leopard, with a bear's feet and a lion's mouth, and the dragon gives it his power and throne and great authority. One of its heads seems to have been mortally wounded, but the wound heals, and the whole world marvels and follows the beast, worshipping both the dragon and the beast and saying no one can compare with it or fight it. It is given a mouth to speak great blasphemies and power to act for forty-two months; it blasphemes God, his name, his dwelling, and those in heaven; it is allowed to make war on the saints and overcome them, and to rule over all peoples. Everyone whose name is not in the Lamb's book of life will worship it. Whoever leads into captivity will go into captivity; whoever kills with the sword will be killed with the sword — here is the patience and faith of the saints. Then a second beast rises from the earth, with two lamb-like horns but a dragon's voice; it wields the first beast's power, makes the earth worship the first beast, works wonders such as making fire fall from heaven, deceives people by these miracles, and tells them to make an image of the first beast that had been wounded and lived. It gives the image life and voice, and has all who refuse to worship it killed. It forces everyone, of every rank, to receive a mark on their right hand or forehead, so that no one can buy or sell without the mark, the beast's name, or the number of its name. Here is wisdom: let the one who understands count the number of the beast, for it is a man's number, and it is six hundred sixty-six.

I. There is something vivid in how this vision is described, if we keep the reading of the first word that our translators adopted. The prophet is carried to the shore of his little island; as he looks at the water, this ugly creature rises out of it.

But there is another reading with more authority behind it, and one that fits the whole thrust of the vision better. It uses the third person instead of the first. It is the dragon, not the prophet, who stands by the seashore. The beast that rises out of the sea is the dragon's own earthly counterpart. In that case the sea, like the beast, carries a symbolic meaning. Symbol and fact are then less confused with each other.

I have said the beast is the earthly counterpart of the dragon; that is the first thing to keep in mind when working out what this beast is. The dragon is above all a spiritual power — the self-willed power, the destructive power. He has been cast out of heaven; he can no longer smear the image of the One who sits on the throne in the eyes of those who dwell there, who see the Man-child at the right hand of that throne. But he can wage war against that Man-child on earth; he can set up a rival dominion against His. Next, remember that such a rival dominion has, according to the Bible, existed in every age. This last book of the Bible views it at one particular crisis, when it had reached its fullest growth.

The language of the previous chapter, taken literally, forces us to think of Christ's actual birth into the world as, in some sense, the start of this crisis. Yet it also fixes a period of forty-two months, or 1,260 days, as the time when the battle was at its peak and its outcome was near. The image of a wild beast who is the counterfeit of a dragon seems to require — nearly all interpreters have thought it requires — fulfilment in some person who would fully embody an evil principle. To reconcile these different requirements, to find something that answers to them all, is the problem. There are other requirements too. There is a description of this beast in the seventeenth chapter, and nothing we conclude here should contradict it. I think it would be out of place to discuss that description now, since it is tangled up with matters we cannot deal with yet. When we come to it in due course, we can consider how far it fits the interpretation I am about to offer.

Seeing that the establishment of the Roman military despotism after the battle of Actium nearly coincides with the birth of the Son of David; and seeing that this despotism, after passing through its stages under Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, was put on trial in the three turbulent reigns that followed and emerged in its most brutal form in the person of Vitellius — I take this to be the wild beast in which the dragon saw his own image reflected. The prophet sees it first in the mild form it wore when Octavius rose from being a triumvir to being the patron of the arts, the preserver of order, the object of poetic flattery, when all the names and forms of the Republic were (as the great historian observes) so cleverly kept up to hide the tyranny beneath them; and then in the form it took when that tyranny threw off its disguises and came out as nothing but the will of the soldiers, propped up by nothing but their weapons. Because this beast is shown as having a continuous existence through these reigns, it appears with seven heads. Why seven and not eight, we shall learn later. The ten horns are, I take it, the legions in the different provinces. The real kingship lies in them: the beast keeps its power only through them. Yet it has another power distinct from theirs. On every one of the heads, from the first to the last, was the name *Blasphemy*. Octavius, in becoming an emperor, becomes a god. A poet as restrained and wise as Virgil, so full of the older Italian spirit, would not have given him that title out of mere exaggerated gratitude if it had shocked his countrymen, if they had not accepted it as the natural and necessary meaning of his rise to rule the world. In no case is it truer that "words are things." The name worked its way into all legal forms and into all popular writings. The general of the armies really was the god to whom the Capitoline Jove paid homage. He protected the city that the old republican object of worship had failed to protect. He was to take care of the worship of the gods; and they, in return, were to uphold his throne. But to all intents and purposes he was their master, not they his.

Out of that great sea of troubles — the civil wars after Caesar's death and the wars in which Antony and Augustus defied each other — this beast arose. To say there had never been anything like it in the earlier world would contradict all history, and sacred history most of all. Every military empire had combined these qualities. In each of them the god and the beast had been mingled, and in each the beast finally proved victorious. It would be just as false to say there would be no similar manifestation in ages to come. Perhaps every age might have such a manifestation, each repeating this story with its own variations. But here was the great climax of the ancient world's attempts at universal empire, and here was the pattern for all that would be made in the new. Let no one think he refutes this account of it by showing that it was inevitable — that the Republic could not survive without a head, that the plan of Brutus and those who dreamed of preserving the old order necessarily began in an outrage against order and ended in swapping a noble tyranny for a vulgar one. All this may be granted, and it is fully consistent with the vision. The beast was the natural product of earlier evils. That did not make it any less evil.

II. "And the beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet were like a bear's, and his mouth like a lion's; and the dragon gave him his power, and seat, and great authority."

A despotism spotted with the forms of law and freedom; resting on the rough, wild passions of a mob; yet always speaking through its soldiers — this answers to the beast's various outward appearances. Its inner heart is the dragon's.

If the dragon's aim is to destroy the government of the Man-child, here is the government he sets against it; here is his image of a throne above all thrones, and of an unlimited, universal rule.

III. "And I saw one of the heads as if it were wounded to death, and the deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast. And they worshipped the dragon which gave power to the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?"

Surely a vivid description of the empire after the death of any one of its successive tyrants, but especially after Nero's death. Then the beast seemed mortally wounded. A power whose malice had seemed limitless, and which had been felt in every province and every household, had actually fallen. Could such a tyranny ever rise again? Had the world not thrown off its chains once and for all? But "the deadly wound was healed." The beast was not really gone; only one of the forms in which its nature had appeared for a while had gone. Another monster was ready to replace the old one — in some ways an even more unqualified display of brutality, a more complete incarnation of the devilish. And what was the result? "All the world wondered after the beast." Tyranny in its vilest form is accepted as the normal, appointed state of things — and more than that, it becomes an object of admiration. It is not only that the neck has grown used to the collar. Men's souls have grown used to it, have learned to love it, are shaped to match it. "And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast." They believe in the omnipotence of evil; they rejoice in it, they pay homage to it and to nothing else. But evil in its pure essence is too rare and subtle for their everyday devotion. They prefer it in a concrete, earthly form. They "worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?" Can't you hear the words coming across all these centuries from two young Romans chatting as they lounge in the Forum? They once had noble thoughts; they had heard of their fathers' deeds; they had dreamed there might be some possible good for their age. But they have become drunken, dissolute gamblers. And someone even more monstrously drunken, dissolute, and gambling than they are has become their ideal of what is desirable and possible. Who is like him? who can make war with him? These two youths fairly represent the age they live in. There is nothing original about them. They think what everyone else thinks. Their private opinion is simply the public opinion of the city and of the world.

But this wild beast, though from time to time it takes the shape of a particular man, and finally finds one in which little of the human is left, must still be regarded mainly as representing sheer force — especially the force of an unruly army that knows it can bestow the purple on whomever it likes. That is how I understand the next verse.

IV. "And there was given him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given him to continue forty and two months. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. And it was given him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them; and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations." The forty-two months here, as elsewhere, denote, I take it, the whole time of lawlessness before Vespasian's accession and the restoration of regular government. During that time the sufferings of every province in the empire, at the hands of an army that Galba's aged hand tried in vain to restrain, that mocked Otho's softness, and that found nothing but encouragement in the vileness of Otho's successor, must have been utterly intolerable. The blasphemy against God, His name, and His tabernacle was no doubt provoked and sharpened by the belief that the Jews, who had talked of an invisible God, were at once the worst of all peoples and doomed to extinction. Yet I understand their blasphemies to be against all right and order, not specially against the witness for it borne by one class of men or another. Their victory over the saints may mean that whenever they came upon a man who had any reverence for right, they saw in him an enemy, someone to be put down — not by any legal process, but rather by summary execution. And to this desperate military violence and tyranny — which was the proper outcome of the despotism, though it had no real despot, only a figurehead chosen as its instrument — all peoples, tongues, and nations were for a while handed over.

V. "And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." It does not say that all who did not belong to the Christian community would worship this beast of sheer power, or would believe in the prevalence and omnipotence of evil. Very likely many who did belong to that community joined in this general, almost universal worship — subscribing in their hearts, if not with their tongues, to the creed that the dragon was supreme lord. Only those who, whatever name they went by, however little known to one another, were known to God as confessing in their hearts a self-sacrificing King to be the highest King — only those who revered a Prince of Life rather than a destroyer — could resist the temptation to acknowledge as supreme that which to all appearances was proving itself supreme. Their names are said to be written in the book of the Lamb that is slain. Whether we take the prophet to mean that the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world, or that their names had been written in the book from the foundation of the world, the lesson is the same. An eternal Deliverer is the only refuge from this great world-tyranny. A faith would be useless if it did not look before and after, and connect itself with all mankind. It was necessary to contemplate a Lamb who had always been offering himself up, who came into the world to do what it was His nature and His Father's will that He should do; otherwise there was no sufficient counterweight against the crushing pressure of present wickedness, no sufficient assurance that it might not last forever. There is no need to ask who were or were not armed with this protection. Thank God, the book of life is the Lamb's, and is not open to the inspection or correction of any man or any Church.

VI. "If any man have an ear," the prophet goes on, "let him hear. He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity; he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints."

A most necessary reminder for that time, and for every time since — worthy to be introduced with the same solemn preparation our Lord used, in the days of His flesh, when He wanted attention paid to His own words. Hear, you suffering people! This dark, devilish tyranny seems as though it were destined to last forever. It has grown worse and worse. Each change of masters has made it worse. Division among the masters seems to be the worst state of all. You do not know whom to ally yourselves with. Each party's success only promises you fresh misery. Wait, I tell you; wait; join no party; enter no conspiracies. If you do, you share their doom. For there is an eternal law that this beast cannot overturn, though he imagines he can. He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity, for a Redeemer, not an enslaver, is Lord of all. He who kills with the sword shall be killed with the sword, for there is a Judge who laughs at men's might and will show how weak it is before Him. This faith you may hold fast, for the Lamb that was slain held it fast while He was on earth. This may be your patience, for it was His. It went with Him through death, and now He is far above all principalities and powers and every name that is named here and in all other worlds.

VII. "And I beheld another beast coming out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon." A form apparently quite unlike the other. He is very soft and gentle. He has horns, but they are not meant to gore. He does not burst out of the stormy sea; he is born of no civil upheaval. He rises gradually out of the earth; he is the natural product of men's thoughts; he sympathizes with their weaknesses. And yet, when he begins to speak, it is like a dragon. Terrible threats come from him. This lamb-like creature wants to inspire fear just as much as the other does.

What is he? What sustained the imperial tyranny of Rome was the religion of Rome. In the old republican days that religion had contained many divine elements: the acknowledgment of fatherly authority, of sacred law, of righteous government in the heart of the city. But there had always been a tendency to turn these merely to the politician's advantage. The augurs were to be consulted, partly to learn the mind of the gods, partly so the people would suppose that mind was known. Sacrifices were offered, partly to confess wrongs done and proclaim the rule of right, partly to see whether wrong could not be made right by compensation, partly to persuade the people that wrong had been made right. There was this mixture of faith and unbelief, of truth and lies. It could not last. The civil wars drove out most of the faith and made the lies both more bearable and more necessary. The empire needed a religion perfectly fitted to its purposes. Then this beast rose out of a darkened earth, to meet men's natural fears and their confused notions about the unseen; holding out fair promises and dreadful predictions; the lamb and the dragon in one, ready to do for the tyrant whatever the tyrant could not do for himself.

VIII. "And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live."

What I said of the first beast applies to this one. He did not first appear in the Roman world. In Egypt, in Chaldea, in every country where arbitrary rule prevailed, some form of false worship, some miracle-working enchanter or soothsayer, arose to prop up that arbitrary rule with unseen tricks and terrors, and to shape the minds of the subjects to fit it. Whenever in later ages the one beast has risen out of the sea and demanded the homage of nations worn out by earlier riots and conflicts, the other has risen out of the earth to secure that homage for it — with the same assumed lamb-like appearance, the same use of the dragon's cunning and the dragon's fury. But the prophet gives us a striking illustration of the whole matter by fixing on the particular moment in the history when the first beast had received the wound by the sword and yet lived. Apparently the imperial tyranny had been struck down by its own instrument. The sword had turned against it. Why, then, did it not die? Another influence was at work that would not let it die. A corrupted religion had so taught men to reverence sheer power, had so fixed the image of that power in their hearts, had so filled and blocked every avenue by which the thought of any other kind of power might have entered, that even when it had been crushed by its own proper masters, it sprang back into fresh life. That is what we are told in the fifteenth verse.

IX. "And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed."

A fearful power! but one given, from time to time, to those who direct the spiritual and moral forces of a country. When some dark form of tyranny has fallen under the weight of its own crimes, by the hand of its own accomplices, they can and do bring it back to life. The sense of the unseen is powerful in all men — powerful even in wrongdoers, if only as dread of what may be coming. If those who claim to commune with the unseen world, instead of rousing men's consciences to a horror and hatred of lies, only fill them with fresh lies — playing with their hopes and their fears, and turning both to evil — they may restore, for a little while, the worst form of brutal power, and help it to destroy all that it hates, all who will not bow before it. That is the reason.

X. "And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name."

The words "he causeth" clearly attribute this to the *second* beast. If it had been the first, we might suppose some outward mark or sign was meant, for that beast deals with the visible and outward. But this one stamps an image on men's souls; it writes a name on all their inward thoughts, which then expresses itself in their ordinary daily acts. Taking these words in this sense, I know none more fearful, and none confirmed by such undoubted evidence from experience. When men read and talk about some great tyrant-power that has established itself in their country or their age, they imagine they are reading and talking about something far removed from themselves. They can comment on it, measure its effects, calculate the odds of its continuing or falling. If anyone complains that it is evil in its origin or immoral in its practice, wise people whisper, "But it does you no harm. You can buy and sell happily under its shadow. Your profits are not seriously reduced. You run no great risk of loss." And all the while these wise people do not realize that they themselves, as much as those they are talking to, have received this power's mark on their foreheads and their right hands; that its image is engraved in their hearts; that in these very conversations they are showing that they bear the name and character of the very thing they are excusing. This vision refers, as I have often said, to a moment when the *effects* of principles were no longer held down by any formal or legal restraints. And then something became visible that had not been visible before. It became clear that men follow, admire, and worship whatever matches some image already *within* them. It could never have come out in palpable form in a single man if hundreds of thousands — if the great majority of society — had not already received the impression. It grows deeper and darker with every fresh act of service and adoration. It is not the ruler's wit or wisdom that holds his subjects in chains. He may have lost his wit or wisdom, and they theirs. But the chains remain, because the subjects are what he is. They carry his name about with them. The God he obeys is the God they obey. What he does on a larger scale, each of them does or tries to do in his own little sphere. There is no bargain they make with one another that does not display the very spirit in which he governs peoples and tongues and nations. For men are bound together in a fellowship even if they become utterly and savagely selfish. They must have a common name, a common image, whether they like it or not. It may be the name of a Father or of a Dragon; it may be the image of a Christ or of an anti-Christ. But in the end, by the laws of the universe, one or the other will show itself — in the small and the great, in the rich and the poor, in the free and the enslaved.

XI. Besides the mark and the name, there is a reference at the end of this passage to the number *of the name*. We ask what that means. The chapter's closing verse gives the answer.

"Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast; for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six." Obeying this command, interpreters who thought they had understanding have set to work very diligently to count this number. Since it is said to be the number of a man, their aim has been to find which man is likely meant, and then to see whether his name can somehow be made to add up to six hundred and sixty-six. The traditional method for settling this is to take the numerical values of the Greek letters in the name being tested and add them up. By this method — sometimes helped along by changing a letter, or slipping in an iota subscript when needed — I cannot say how many an eminent man, in one age or another, has been "proven" to be the beast St. John speaks of. It is rash, I know, to break with a rule of interpretation that has such long-standing usage in its favor; but I cannot think that this scheme's success obliges us to pick one out of the crowd of names various commentators have proposed, throwing out all the rest, or entitles us to hazard some new guess in the same line. Since I have suggested that Vitellius was that eighth head of the Roman empire who seemed to bring back all Nero's brutality, I might try whether his name, put into Greek letters, could by some clever counting be made to meet the requirement. But I suspect I would be overlooking other requirements just as necessary. I never heard that the name of Vitellius, or any other name, was ordered to be marked on the right hands or foreheads of the empire's inhabitants, or that no one might buy or sell without bearing it. Among all the acts of reckless and cruel tyranny recorded of Roman emperors or their successors, no hint of this strange and wanton use of power, I believe, has been preserved. But if we insist on an actual word, first turned into letters and then into numbers, we must stick to the text in these details too; we cannot be material one moment and spiritual the next.

It is best, I think, to set these attempts aside once for all, even if we are forced to leave the problem entirely unsolved. If I venture one more try at a solution, I am far from claiming it is satisfactory; I would gladly trade it for any simpler one discovered later. At least it will not clash with what I have already said about the mark and the name. Those, I believe, were stamped in no material letters, then or ever. The name or character of any age's great tyrant, I still assume, is imaged in those who have raised him to his evil height and who keep him there.

In counting the number of this name, I cannot help noticing how constantly the number *seven* appears in this book, and what meaning is always attached to it. Whether the prophet speaks of the seven candlesticks, the seven Spirits of God, the seven eyes, or the seven horns of the lamb, the idea presented to us is perfect unity that involves perfect distinctness. To a Jew's mind — and why not to an Englishman's? — the week is the simplest and yet profoundest illustration of this unity: the six days and the one day making the complete whole, the day of rest giving meaning, purpose, and harmony to the others, connecting the order of times and the life of man with the Being who made all things and made man in His own image.

Now suppose we found the number *six* used to denote the beast who embodies the anti-Christian principle — who heads the kingdom opposed to the kingdom of God. We should at once, I think, compare it with this perfect number, and conclude it was the symbol of a society whose head is man, not God — a society made of a mass of atoms without a center, work without a sabbath. Suppose, then, we have not one six but a series of sixes — six in the units, six in the tens, six in the hundreds — may not the meaning be the same? It is as if he had said: "Here is the number that denotes what is divided, as against what is united. Repeat this number as often as you like, you never reach unity. You have lost the secret of unity, the spiritual bond; no material accumulations will replace it. How to find a unity that does not depend on piling up numbers; how to bind the toil of the six days to the rest that completes it and gives it meaning — this you may learn if you will look at the next vision, if you will look at those who surround, not a wild beast, but a lamb, who bear not the name of a destroyer but the name of their Father written on their foreheads."

## LECTURE XIV. THE LAMB AND HIS FOLLOWERS.

(PREACHED ON WHITSUNDAY.)

*The passage:* John saw a Lamb standing on Mount Sion, and with him one hundred and forty-four thousand who had the Father's name written on their foreheads. He heard a great voice from heaven like rushing waters and thunder, and the sound of harpers playing, and they sang a new song before the throne, the four living creatures, and the elders; no one could learn that song except those hundred and forty-four thousand who had been redeemed from the earth. They are undefiled, virgins, who follow the Lamb wherever he goes; they were redeemed from among men as firstfruits to God and the Lamb, with no lie in their mouth, faultless before God's throne. John then saw an angel flying in mid-heaven with the everlasting gospel to preach to everyone on earth, every nation and tongue, saying loudly, Fear God and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come; worship the Maker of heaven, earth, sea, and springs. Another angel followed, announcing that Babylon the great city has fallen, because she made all nations drink the wine of the wrath of her fornication. A third angel followed, warning loudly that whoever worships the beast and its image and receives its mark will drink the undiluted wine of God's wrath, and be tormented with fire and brimstone before the holy angels and the Lamb, their torment rising forever, with no rest day or night. Here is the patience of the saints who keep God's commandments and the faith of Jesus. And a voice from heaven told John to write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on; the Spirit says they rest from their labors, and their works follow them.

I. This vision brings to mind the one in the seventh chapter. There, as the angels went out with their trumpets to prepare for the fall of the accursed city, another angel was sealing twelve thousand from each tribe of Israel with the seal of the living God. The names of the tribes, so carefully listed there, do not appear again here. But the total number sealed is the same. The place, Mount Sion, ties them to the chosen people. Yet there are two new features: these hundred and forty-four thousand are gathered around the Lamb, and they are marked with their Father's name. I want especially to draw your attention today to the likeness between these visions and the difference between them. Whitsuntide, it seems to me, sheds clear light on the whole subject, and in turn is lit up by the Apocalypse.

(1.) The Feast of Pentecost was strictly a *Jewish* feast, though it gave thanks for the gifts of the common earth. Those who came to it treated Jerusalem as their center. At this Pentecost the Apostles spoke to them of a Son of David, and of David himself. What amazed everyone was that Galileans could speak with Jews living in all the different heathen cities about the works of the God of Abraham. Those who received the Spirit felt they were no longer a divided people scattered among the heathen, but a family that no distance could break apart. They were truly children of Abraham because they were children of God. Though they might be only a remnant of Israel, though most of their countrymen might go on calling the one they revered as a divine King a criminal and blasphemer, they stood for a united Israel. The nation the sects were tearing apart lived on in them.

(2.) And yet the ascended King was shown to be the King of the Jews precisely because he had conquered the death that held all men captive, because he could not remain in one earthly dwelling-place. He must therefore be the King of all men. However slow the Apostles were to learn that they were to proclaim him in that character, however important it was that there should be a time in which they grasped their position as Jews and showed their countrymen what that position meant, events would inevitably break down the barriers they could not break themselves. Their fellowship was essentially a human fellowship.

(3.) It was human because it was divine. Before Christ left them he had said, "I ascend to my Father and your Father; to my God and your God." And now he sent them the promise of this Father. He had himself explained that promise as the gift of another Comforter, who would stay with them forever, a Spirit of Truth, who would teach them about him and about his Father. The new name with which they were sealed was a name that Gentiles as much as Jews had been groping after. The solemn words, "The Lord thy God is One Lord," seemed to set all who had mixed human thoughts and feelings into God at an infinite distance. But now, when the highest showing of God's glory was in One who had taken flesh and become man; now, when a Spirit had been given who could teach them to glorify God most by magnifying his image most; now the hope of the Greek could be fulfilled as much as the hope of the Israelite: the kingdom of heaven could hold both. God's unity repelled no one and drew all.

(4.) These sealed members of the different tribes are now gathered on Mount Sion, around the Lamb. The place shows that they stand for the continuity of the Jewish family. But the Lamb who bore the sins of the world shows that they are no longer members of tribes, that their center is no longer in Jerusalem. The insect has passed through its stages of egg, caterpillar, and chrysalis. It has become winged. It can rise to heaven, or settle on any leaf or flower of earth. The chosen nation has expanded into the Church of the whole universe. It is a witness that men are not fatherless, are not slaves of a beast. It declares that they are redeemed and united in a living and glorified Head.

Perhaps you say the next words contradict this claim. Let us look at them.

II. "And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps: and they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and before the elders; and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand which were redeemed from the earth. These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits to God and the Lamb. And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God."

Now I will be told that nothing here speaks of a redemption of the world; a great deal speaks of a redemption from the world. These followers of the Lamb stand in sharp contrast to everyone around them. Their great blessing is that the world's habits are not their habits. No one but they can learn or understand their song. The world lies in wickedness, worshiping a beast and his image; they are faultless.

These observations are plain and true. But what conclusions should we draw from them? Many have been drawn. "Christians are redeemed from the earth. What can that mean but that the earth is a vile, unclean thing they have nothing to do with? Christians' habits are not to be the world's habits. What can that mean but that they should keep as much as possible to themselves, and preserve the purity and virginity of their souls by not mixing with the corrupted? They have songs of their own; what can that mean but that God has given them an inheritance shut off from people in general?" In later times these conclusions have seemed so inevitable to many religious people that all over Christendom, Protestant as well as Roman, they have been made the basis of whole systems of action; one sect or order after another has arisen to proclaim them, to denounce earlier sects and orders for neglecting them, and to put them into practice themselves.

To the Christian community shortly after Pentecost, maxims very unlike these seemed inevitable and became the foundation of their conduct. One of the first records of their life is that they ate their food with joy and singleness of heart. This was new to them. Part of the song they had learned was a thanksgiving for the earth and its gifts, which before they had received dully and indifferently. But was separation from other people and suspicion of them a mark of them after their baptism? If it had been, that would have set them apart in no way from the world they had lived in. Each Jewish sect cultivated this separation and cherished this suspicion; the most popular sect earned its religious reputation by how far it kept those who would not accept its rulings. The Christians would at once have been recognized as just another Nazarene sect if they had followed this precedent. They could not follow it, because the very principle of their calling was to follow the Lamb wherever he went. He had not gone that way at all. He had solemnly taken a different road. He had drawn the anger of the Pharisees by rejecting what seemed to them unquestionable rules about how to treat their fellow creatures—by going to sinners and eating with them. If his disciples, after his ascension, were to clean out the old leaven, the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, they had above all to purge the leaven of exclusiveness; no ingredient had spoiled the pure Passover bread as much as that.

But if they got rid of this leaven, how could they become a pure loaf wholly given to God? Only while they confessed that in themselves, as individuals, no good thing dwelt—nothing that lifted them above the lowest tax-collector or prostitute or heathen in the world; only while they confessed that all their purity was in that Lamb who had taken them into fellowship with himself and written his Father's name on their foreheads; only while they confessed that in him God saw them as faultless, wholly undefiled, and that fault and corruption began when they forgot their relation to him, when they separated from one another and went their own separate ways and interests. What, then, was their *redemption from among men*? Redemption from their self-interest, from their self-worship; the privilege of confessing the Son of Man who had redeemed them and all mankind; the privilege of truly belonging to a human kind, and not being, like the worshipers of the beast, utterly inhuman. I would not change one word or letter of this passage. I insist that it be taken in the strictest possible way. I insist that the weak dodges and evasions that turn "faultless" into "not very faulty," and "undefiled" into "as pure as human weakness allows," be thrown out as irreverent and dishonest. Then, I am sure, this passage will reconcile a host of others where readers imagine a contradiction, using one to water down another until both are emptied of meaning. I am sure it will be seen that the freer Christians are from the corruptions of their age, the less they will dare to limit God's grace; and the more they regard themselves as firstfruits to God and the Lamb, the more they will believe that the whole universe has been offered and sacrificed to God in its High Priest, and that he will claim his right to it, no matter who disputes that right.

This, then, I believe, is what that song is about—the song that began in heaven and was echoed on earth, sung before the throne, the four living creatures, and the elders; the song that was "as it were new"—not actually new, not without earlier versions, not different in spirit from the songs that rose from the hearts and lips of the old prophets when they glorified God under some brute tyranny, amid the sins and decay of their countrymen; but new, because it fulfilled all those older songs; new, because it celebrated the actual reconciliation of heaven and earth that they had only anticipated; new, because the brute power of this day was more openly and formally antichristian than any that came before the Incarnation.

III. "And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people; saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come; and worship him that made heaven and earth and the sea and the fountains of waters." This message, and the ones that follow, are strictly messages from heaven to earth. The first implicitly contains the rest. It is called an everlasting Gospel; good news about an everlasting God; good news to all his creatures everywhere. It is the Gospel that Saul of Tarsus, the Hebrew of the Hebrews, carried to the idolaters of Greece and Asia, feeling as he carried it that he was strictly fulfilling his role as a child of Abraham. The Jew lifted up his voice and said to the world, "You who have worshiped things in heaven, on earth, in the sea, and in the springs of water; you who have bowed to gods in nature and of nature; you who have made gods in your own image, in the likeness of your good and evil desires, your just and unjust ideas, your pure and lustful impulses—fear *the* God who has made everything in heaven, earth, and sea; fear him who made man in his own image; for he has revealed his true image to men; he has revealed the standard of righteousness; the Judge who condemns all unrighteousness; the Redeemer from all unrighteousness." Do you think it is not a Gospel because it begins with "Fear," or because it speaks of judgment? I believe no Gospel but this can satisfy men. They want to know whom they should fear. They must fear an evil being if they do not fear a good one. They cannot trust one they do not reverence. Take away awe, and the one you worship shrinks back to your own size. The misery of men had been that they made a God in their own likeness. To have him revealed as infinitely above them, yet stooping to them, was the overthrow of the superstition that had made them cowards and slaves. And the deliverance would be entirely incomplete if they could not believe that this righteous God was their Judge, the Judge of all the earth, and that they could take refuge in him from the false judgments of all men, and above all from their own judgment, and from themselves.

IV. "And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornications."

The Babel, or Babylonian, order was the opposite of the Israelite order. The ruler had no real relation to his people; he was simply a ruler. The gods he honored were *powers*—different, clashing powers; they were to be worshiped and appeased as props of his government, and they cared nothing for those who worshiped and appeased them. The God of Israel, by contrast, was declared to be the King and Husband of his people. The kings who reigned in his name were to care for the people as a husband cares for his wife. When the nation fell, as it kept falling, into idolatry, this was called an act of fornication or adultery, the wife turning away from her real Lord. That language fit the chosen people. Now it could be applied to the world at large. The angel proclaims that the world no longer belongs to Babel. The Husband of the human race has appeared; all idolatry is fornication or adultery. Men can be told that they are spiritual beings, joined to a spiritual Lord, and that in giving themselves to fleshly and visible things they are abandoning their rightful state and yielding to seducers. All this was contained in the revelation of the Son of Man. And so it also contained the downfall of the whole system of idolatry—the whole Babel order. Widely as it had spread, mighty and subtle as its influence was over every tribe and nation, the day the Man-child was born, when the true Head of man, the true bond between heaven and earth was disclosed—that was the day of its doom. Already, in the Roman empire, there were signs of the system cracking and falling to pieces. It could not sustain the tyranny that depended on it, and the tyranny could not sustain it. The cry, "It is fallen! it is fallen!" would be shown in that very age by the upheaval shaking earth and heaven, the seat of the empire and the seats of the gods. And the proclamation was not weaker but stronger because, in that upheaval, the very city that had witnessed against Babel idolatry was itself to perish. For it had let the Babel principle into its own heart. Jerusalem had become emphatically the city of confusion. It had aimed to make a name for itself and had forgotten the name of its God. It had thought its towers were high and reached to heaven; but they were built of brick instead of stone, cemented with slime instead of mortar. The babble of its sects showed that God had come down to confound its pride. It had no language it could understand itself; how could it make itself understood to the world? The Church, which the Spirit had empowered to speak to men of different tribes, in their own tongues, of the wonderful works of God, could not help seeing that the fall of Jerusalem was one sign among many that the thrones of all false gods were to be thrown down:

> "They feel from Juda's land
> The dreaded Infant's hand,
> The rays of Bethlehem blind their dusky eyen."

And this because that Infant came not to destroy but to fulfill; to gather into one all the scattered beliefs and hopes of the world; to overthrow its lies by making good its truths. We must not confuse this voice with the one that follows, closely as they are linked. The Babel society, taken by itself, rests on the worship of a number of persons. But these are always aiming at a mock unity. The beast, described in the last chapter, is the concentration of everything brutal in the others, the exclusion of everything human.

V. "And the third angel followed, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name."

The angel's voice sings utter ruin, torment, and endless restlessness to those who carry the beast's image in their hearts. Why? Because the eternal God has shown his image to men, has claimed them as made in that image, and has promised his Spirit to write his name on their hearts. To worship the beast is to degrade spiritual beings into beasts—a degradation carrying an anguish only spirits can feel: a sense of something lost; endless discontent with what has been taken in exchange; the undying worm of conscience; the envy and hatred that possess and rule creatures made for fellowship and love. Something of this misery can be traced in the laments of the companions of Ulysses when they had drunk Circe's cup and been transformed by her wand. The exile's grief is always deepest in proportion to the beauty of the home he has left. The intellectual Greek could perceive the meanness of a swinish existence in a way the savage could not. So it is inevitable that the vision the Gospel gives of a God of eternal goodness and loving-kindness should make the hell of loneliness and selfishness deep and unimaginably dark. Phrases like "the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without measure," "tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb," "the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever," "they have no rest day nor night," can easily turn into mere figures of speech the orator toys with at will—that alarm the nerves for half an hour, that fret but do not rouse the conscience, that lazy hearers expect and demand as sounds to break the monotony of an ordinary sermon. For the Gospel of such an orator is not a Gospel of God, but a Gospel about how men may be delivered from God. He has no message about a kingdom of light opened to mankind by the incarnation and death of the Son of God; and so his message about the kingdom of darkness reaches nothing in the hearts and spirits of men and only jangles in their ears. This angel's voice carries real thunder precisely because it is essentially sweet and divine. If God's love were narrowed even a little, the horror of being cut off from that love, of being given over to lust and hatred, would be narrowed by the same amount. If the power of divine love to lift men out of that abyss of horror were reduced by any time limits, then the sense of what spiritual and eternal death means, the dread of it, and the force of those divinely chosen images that describe it, would be reduced by the same measure. In easy times the contrast may not be very obvious; the divine words and their counterfeits may often be swapped for each other and taken to have the same worth. But in such times as St. John describes, when the power of the beast and the power of the Lamb meet face to face; when everyone must choose between them; when all apparent strength is on the side of evil—then the angel's words, which declare that this evil power is not all-powerful but utterly accursed, come out in their clearness and force. The beast with the lamblike face, whose work is to stamp the beast's image with the dragon's horns on men's hearts, may mix eternal and temporal terrors in wild confusion, crushing men's spirits under his shameful yoke more effectively than by any other means. The messenger of God knows in that day that he must set forth, in plain and broad words, the spiritual and eternal ruin bound up in serving a false and cruel power—so that he may turn men to the Conqueror of that power; so that he may convince them that the Redeemer is stronger than the destroyer, and that there are no chains the one can forge that the other cannot break.

VI. The words that follow are familiar to us out of their setting. It matters that we know them in their setting.

"Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus. And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them."

What has the patience of the saints to do with that announcement about the worshipers of the beast we just heard? My brothers! To believe that the devil is not the lord of the world, that he cannot give its kingdoms to whomever he pleases, is hard at all times, and intensely hard in times when brute and evil power has established its dominance and the world is running after it. Then admitting the enemy's dominion seems only to admit an obvious fact. Indeed, some will insist that holding this belief is a pious duty. "Christ is to reign hereafter; but for now the earth is handed over to the dragon." I think it impossible, while we believe this, not to pay some homage—yes, continual homage—to the power we suppose is on top. And so this book teaches the deep and vital lesson that the patience of the saints consists in steadily believing the angel's message about the beast, and in *not* believing any whispers and suggestions of his about his own authority. In doing this they keep the commandment that says, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." In doing this they walk the path of Jesus, who used this very commandment to resist the adversary when he said, "All these will I give thee, and the glory of them, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." Jesus knew that to admit that lie—to confess that these kingdoms were in the hands of the evil one—was to fall down and worship him. That was all the homage the tempter wanted. Christ might have the kingdoms later, if only he would grant that they were Satan's at that moment. He said, "Get thee behind me." In his strength every one of his followers, in the darkest hour, when good seems utterly defeated, is to say the same. And to strengthen them for this effort, another heavenly voice comes, saying, "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord from henceforth." Why *from henceforth*? Were not the dead who die in the Lord always blessed? If the words had a special bearing on that time, may we dare to use them in our funeral service for any brother or sister whose remains we now bury? I think the words did belong to that time; I think "from henceforth" carried a special comfort for those who, judging by their eyes, would have concluded that the earth was not the Lord's. It reminded them that the earth is only part of the universe; that seventy years do not settle the great questions debated here; that the Lord, who has gone into the grave and hell, has risen on high, to open eternity to men. The voice says to those sinking under the sight the world offers them, "Yes—but at this very moment men are passing into a region where the mists that block our vision here do not exist; where they will know that not the beast, but the Lord God Omnipotent reigns." And so the words became both backward- and forward-looking. "Know from now on that those who fell asleep before Christ came in the flesh are around his throne. Know from now on that you are surrounded by a countless company of every kindred and nation, watching your struggle and helping you in it. Know from now on that this company will gather fresh members from all the ages to come—in lands unknown to you, men trembling at the thought of death will learn to lose their own deaths in his, who died for the world. Remember from now on that the hard labors you or they undergo in fighting the beast, in yourselves or in the world, lead surely to a rest in God. Know from now on that if you or they leave works God set you to do on this earth poor and unfinished, those works will follow you when you have passed through the veil. Know from now on that whatever is begun will be brought to perfection; that new fields of blessed work will open to God's servants; that as they followed the Lamb under the weight of mortality, they will follow him now to fresh victories, until every enemy that has opposed him and tormented his creatures is put under his feet."

## LECTURE XV. THE REAPING AND THE WINEPRESS.

*The passage:* John saw a white cloud, and on it one like the Son of Man, wearing a golden crown and holding a sharp sickle. An angel came out of the temple and cried to him to swing his sickle and reap, because the earth's harvest was ripe; and the one on the cloud reaped the earth. Then another angel with a sickle came from the temple, and another with power over fire came from the altar, calling for the grapes of the earth's vine to be gathered, since they were ripe. The vine was gathered and thrown into the great winepress of God's wrath, which was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from it as high as the horses' bridles for a distance of sixteen hundred furlongs. Then John saw seven angels holding the seven last plagues, in which God's wrath is completed. He saw a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had conquered the beast and its image and mark and the number of its name standing on it with harps of God, singing the song of Moses and of the Lamb: that the Lord God Almighty's works are great and marvellous, His ways just and true; that all should fear and glorify Him, for He alone is holy, and all nations will come and worship because His judgments are revealed. The temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened, and the seven angels came out clothed in pure white linen with golden girdles; one of the four living creatures gave them seven golden vials full of God's wrath; and the temple was filled with smoke from His glory and power, so that no one could enter until the seven plagues were finished.

Someone will ask me: does this vision too belong to the first century? Are we then to give up the fear and the hope that stay in all our minds—the thought that the Son of Man really will come to judge the living and the dead? Is there to be no future harvest of the earth? Will no angel put in his sickle and reap it?

My friends, it seems to me that the expectation of judgment is far too weak in every one of us. The preacher who could deepen it into a firm and lasting conviction would be the greatest of all preachers; and whoever does anything to lessen what there is of it in any person is, to that degree, most harmful. I find that John the Baptist, that our Lord Himself, and that every one of His Apostles was a preacher of *judgment*—a judgment near at hand, one coming upon the very generation they addressed. I think it is because we have not taken their words literally enough that we have been unable to speak in their spirit, to feel and to make others feel that a judgment hangs over us, that the Son of Man really will appear in His Father's glory, and that each person will have the secrets of his heart and the deeds he has done laid bare before him. No book, it seems to me, would bring this truth home to us so well as the Apocalypse, if we read it plainly. While I refuse to twist any of its words out of their obvious sense—accepting them as explaining the sense in which the Baptist, our Lord, and His disciples spoke—I am forced to feel and confess that the judgment is set and the books are open; that nothing can be hidden from Him with whom we have to deal; that every good and evil seed in every person and every society is ripening toward its harvest; that the fruit of the one must be gathered into the barn, and the fruit of the other burned up.

I. We have just heard the message, "*Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth. Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them*." I took these words to sound very cheering to someone looking out on a world that was worshipping the beast and its image. They assured him that there was a realm where a different worship reigned, and that there was a way from this realm into that one. Then he looks, "*and behold, a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of Man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle*." The prophet's first thought might have been that the blessing of the dead consisted in leaving a world where the Son of Man was not *recognized*—no, rather, not *reigning*. This sight scatters that dark delusion. On a cloud drawn up from earth, though its whiteness testifies of light and of heaven, he sees no strange form, but the form of Him who always claimed that human name for Himself, who in His birth, His passion, His resurrection, and His ascension had vindicated it as His own. That the earth was passing through a terrible crisis was plain enough. Wise pagans saw it, and supposed the gods were busy taking vengeance on men and cared nothing for men's safety or rescue. To St. John the Savior of men was revealed as Himself the reaper of the earth. He has won His crown; the divine glory rests on Him. But in His hand is the sign that the work being done on earth is His doing. That was the revelation the exile on Patmos needed. It is the revelation we need. He did not need to be told that a consuming process was going on—everyone could see that. But to learn who was directing that process, and to learn that it was for the destruction of the destroyer, that was precious knowledge indeed. If we accepted it—if we interpreted by it the events passing in our own age, which will make up its history for ages to come—would not that knowledge be worth something to us? The Son of Man sat on the white cloud then; He sits on the white cloud now. If the mists were cleared from our spirits, we should see Him, and that would be an encouragement and a warning in our work such as nothing else could give.

II. "*And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle and reap, for the time is come for thee to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe*." This voice came from the inner temple; it expressed the divine purpose and will. That purpose and will the Son of Man had been fulfilling before the worlds existed. He fulfilled it in the act of creation, when all things came forth at His word, with man at the head of all, and the whole was very good. He fulfilled it in His agony and His cross. He fulfilled it in His triumph over death, and space, and time. And now that purpose and will is to be fulfilled in an act of judgment. All that He has done on earth for men has not been in vain. The resistance to His work has not defeated it, as mortals might conclude. The end of the age has come. The results of the good and evil that have been growing side by side are now plain. "*The harvest of the earth is ripe*."

III. "*And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle, and the earth was reaped. And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud voice to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe. And the angel thrust his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs*."

The reaping of the earth means, I take it, the gathering in of the fruits of all the divine seed that had been scattered over the nations and in men's hearts. Nothing that had been accomplished in society through laws, institutions, family memorials, and traditions, through the voice of prophets and the deeds of patriots; nothing accomplished for the growth and purifying of the individual soul through the countless influences of nature, the voices of mothers, the power of mutual love, through sorrows and separations, reconciliations and hopes; no devout wish that ever rose in prayer and sacrifice, having first been inspired by the very One to whom it was offered—none of this was to be lost. The Son of Man has watched it all and has stored it among His treasures; all has come from Him, and will now be claimed by Him. That this holds true for each individual person we shall be told later. Here the words lead us rather to dwell on the great *human* results of all this divine cultivation—those that are to survive into the coming age, that are to give that age its shape and character. If the reaping of the earth meant the destruction of the earth, it would obviously be pointless to speak of a new age about to begin when the old one passed. But reaping does not mean destruction in ordinary human speech, nor in Holy Scripture. And Scripture does speak of the end of an age, and of a better age to follow. The very lesson this passage teaches—and the whole Apocalypse teaches—is that God's fires are not meant to ruin the earth, which is the work of His hands, but to ruin those who have defiled it by the work of *their* hands.

This is the theme of the words that follow. Not only the earth is God's, but the fire too. The fire is His servant. The message about it comes from the altar. It is to serve, as it always has, both to kindle the sacrifice and to burn the refuse. The vine of the earth here plainly stands for all that is *not* of God's planting—all the thoughts and bloody deeds that have sprung from man's rebellious will, and that have made the earth drunk and foul. The grapes of this vine, like the grain grown from the divine seed, are now fully ripe. When the grain is reaped, it may still have many processes of threshing and winnowing to pass through. The grapes are cast into the winepress. What kind of winepress it is we shall be told more clearly later. But the signs here cannot be mistaken. A terrible conflict between rival factions, coming just before the ruin of a city or an empire, looks at first only like a cause for despair. To see, over a stretch of sixteen hundred furlongs, nothing but blood rising to the horses' bridles—human beings destroying one another, and the innocent animals perishing with them—is a sight to make an ordinary man weep; how much more a seer who believes man was made in God's image and who has proclaimed that God is Love. The sight would be utterly appalling if the seer had not that faith to hold him up. Holding it, he cannot find in the darkest such spectacle the slightest reason for despair. The wrath and fury and wickedness of men, which have been piling up for centuries, have reached their climax, have come to their great day of trial. Now they are to spend and exhaust themselves. Now they are to meet another power. The winepress cannot be regarded merely as one in which the grapes of the earth are crushed. It is the great winepress of *the wrath of God*. The wrath of love, the wrath of goodness, is to meet the wrath of hatred and evil. It is to be proved, on this earth and throughout God's whole creation, which of the two is the mightier.

And so we are prepared for the words that have been, rather awkwardly I think, separated from these and made the opening of another chapter.

IV. "*And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvellous, seven angels having the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God*." There has been much discussion in the Christian Church about when these seven last plagues began, or are to begin, how long they will last, and whether we are living through one of them now. I cannot regret that such questions have been raised, because I am sure some have been led by them to reflect on the plagues visiting themselves, their families, their country, or Christendom in general, and to ask: Where did these come from, and what message do they carry? Those who have been used to receiving one calamity or another with the thoughtlessness and dullness we are all prone to may well be thankful if, by any means—through some interpreter of prophecy, or through their own ambition to interpret it—they are brought to believe that this or that event may have a divine force in it, may be the sign and witness of God's government. For then will they not go on, step by step, to say: "If this is true in one case, must it not be true in all? Dare I single out any one of the events I have shared in, or read of as affecting my country or mankind, and say: *This* I can attribute to the Lord of heaven and earth, but not *that*; *this* deserves my earnest thought to grasp its meaning, but *those* I may safely pass over?" I can imagine that the very uncertainty of these guesses has led many serious people into a truer state of mind. They could not be sure that any given plague might not fit the description of these Apocalyptic plagues; so why not act on the conclusion that all have the same general character, that not one falls outside the divine orbit, that not one is a stray messenger on an errand of its own? But if any are tempted into frivolous debating about the matches between particular disasters of their own time and those referred to here, until they treat as indifferent and profane the ones where they find no resemblance—that atheistic view at once proves they cannot have sat at the Apostle's feet, cannot have profited by his revelations. It is no answer to say, "But he speaks of seven *last* plagues; we want to know which these are." Certainly he does. And that very word *last*, and its explanation in the phrase "*in them was filled up the wrath of God*," shows that they were the same in kind as everything that came before them; that they marked the winding-up of a period—a period that had been all along under divine cultivation and discipline, not a single event of which an Apostle could ever view except as a sign of a purpose of God or of a struggle against that purpose. Suppose, if you like, that there is to be a winding-up of *our* dispensation; believe, if you will, that it is near. But the more you hold this view, the more you should be afraid of resting anything on guesswork; the more you should wish to be in a calm, steady, habitual state of readiness for what is coming—not as something new or strange, but as the climax of the divine drama that every earlier step has been foretelling.

V. The real lesson we must learn from what we see, and from what we read, and from comparing the two, is set out in the next three verses: "*And 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, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God. And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy; for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest*." There was a time when those who stand on this sea of glass and sing these songs had longed for some solid footing of their own; they liked to think that they, at least, were safe on some raft or patch of ground, even if the world were drowned in the waters or burned up in the fire. That craving has been taken from them. The ledges of earth have been swept away, the planks have floated out of reach. Now they stand by faith in God alone. The sea is all they have to rest on; they may drop into the fire at any moment. Their one security is that God will hold them up. They can entrust themselves and the whole universe to Him. And that is their victory over the beast, and its name, and its mark, and the number of its name. Self-seeking, and the distrust that goes with self-seeking—these are the beast's traits, the marks he stamps on his followers. The battle against them has been hard and terrible. Every moment it is renewed; every moment the tyrant threatens them and may prevail again. Their victory lies in their faith, not in themselves. They can trust God on the sea of glass in the midst of the fire. They know the sea is His, and that He made it; that this sea of glass is before His throne and reflects His image. They know the fire is His; that it comes from His altar; that it is the fire of love and will consume whatever is hostile to love.

Therefore these men have the harps of God, and they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God: "*Moses said, I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and the rider hath he thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation, my fathers' God, and I will exalt him. The Lord is a man of war: the Lord is his name. Pharaoh's chariots and his host hath he cast into the sea: his chosen captains also are drowned in the Red Sea*." Here is the song of the old covenant, of the old world. It is the song of God's victory over the oppressor, of God's rescue of the oppressed. It can never become obsolete as long as there are oppressors and oppressed in creation. Woe to those who would take a single word out of it, who would try to make it gentler toward the wrongdoer by making it less of a witness for the one who suffers.

But they also sing the song of the Lamb. That, even more than the other, is a song of redemption. That, even more than the other, is a song of judgment. Moses, the servant of God, declares the great and marvellous works of the Lord—how forever He wars against the tyrant, and forever He wars on behalf of the weak and the crushed. The Lamb of God, the perfect image of the Father, reveals not only His works but His ways; He shows Him as He truly is. The Lamb not only fights the tyrant but submits to the tyrant; not only fights for the weak and crushed but becomes the weakest and most crushed of all. He strips Himself of all power, so that the eternal love of God may be seen through His emptiness. He clothes Himself with power so that it may be seen that all the power of the universe is the power of love, and that it must beat down everything opposed to it. So it is with infinite delight and satisfaction that those who have the harps of God contemplate His judgment. In their minds redemption and judgment have become inseparable. All the plagues falling on the earth are to glorify that Name which alone is holy. All are for the good of the nations; for the nations will at last come and worship before Him; they will renounce the destroyer and confess the deliverer.

VI. "*And after that I looked, and, behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened: and the seven angels came out of the temple, having the seven plagues, clothed in pure and white linen, and having their breasts girded with golden girdles. And one of the four beasts gave unto the seven angels seven golden vials, full of the wrath of God, who liveth for ever and ever. And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God, and from his power; and no man was able to enter into the temple till the seven plagues of the seven angels were fulfilled*." I hardly need to point out to you how tenderly the Apostle lingers over the old names and old symbols so dear to him and to his fathers: how he speaks of the tabernacle of the testimony, bringing back all the memories of the wilderness; of the temple of which no relic was to remain on earth; of the pure white linen and the golden girdles of those priests whose last days had been days of sin and whose end had come. He can bear to let them go, because each has found its meaning, each has been transfigured. The tabernacle of the testimony in heaven is now open. There is no longer a shadow of the divine Presence; there is a full, clear, genuine testimony of what it is. The glory of God is revealed without a veil in the face of a Man. And so there is now an abiding, unchangeable temple, in which no sound of axe or hammer was ever heard, which no Chaldean or Roman can destroy. The linen is truly pure and white, and the girdles of these priests of the inner temple are truly golden. The prophet never needed this vision of their purity and brightness more than now, for they carry with them the seven last plagues. He must have his own faith strengthened—and must strengthen ours—that what we call vengeance is really punishment; that judgments are truly for separating light from darkness; that the kingdom of light will prevail forever, and the kingdom of darkness be overthrown.

On whom the seven vials were poured out, and what their effects were, the next chapter will tell us. What we learn here is that they are full of the wrath of God. I have wanted you to weigh that expression seriously, and to give it all the force it gains from being used by the last of the Bible's seers. Being a Jew himself, he must be taken as the interpreter of how his fathers used it; the man who has set forth all the mysteries of Christian theology may tell us what place it holds in that theology. He does not see less wrath burning through the universe than Moses or David saw; in his visions it reaches more deeply to the center of things and spreads over a wider circumference. Everywhere the consuming fire is at work; it will not stop until its task is done. The wrath is of Him who lives forever and ever. What is true of one time is true of another. The same Being must be carrying on the same war; that winepress which His Son trod in the wilderness, in the garden, on the cross, must be fully trodden. What He died and rose to conquer, all the powers of creation must be fighting against. Let us understand and believe it. They are fighting against it in you and me and in the whole world; whatever in us loves and makes a lie, whatever lie is seizing power over men, the God who lives forever hates with an unquenchable hatred; this—in each human creature, and in the whole of human society—is meeting His fierce and eternal wrath. Would you ask that this wrath be less fierce? Would you like to set a time when it shall stop burning? Then you are praying for your own ruin and the world's; you are praying that you may be left to your own lies—to the father of lies; you are praying that the Infinite Love to which you owe every joy you ever had or ever can have should come to an end and give way to that other wrath which cherishes everything evil and seeks to devour everything good. Let us hope, and steadily believe, that this shall never be. Let us accept the assurance of God's word that it never shall. There are moments—the prophets say so—when the plagues darkening the world seem even to close the temple of God, so that no one can enter it. But they are sent out from that temple; they are meant to clear the air of the mists that have hidden it from men's spirits. It may be that today, as you have listened to the news of the Father of an infinite majesty, of the honorable, true, and only Son, and of the Holy Ghost the Comforter, dwelling in blessed and eternal Unity, other visions have floated before you that have hidden that beautiful and glorious vision. Why, you have asked, am I to be told of an eternal wrath surrounding those who confound the Person or divide the Substance? And if by an eternal wrath—a wrath of God—you have meant an earthly wrath, the wrath of an evil, selfish man, or of an evil spirit, you may well ask how goodness and wickedness, light and darkness, can be brought into such close contact. Or if by those against whom this wrath is aimed you have understood some neighbor of our own day, or someone who left the world in ages past, you may well have trembled lest you should be bringing down on yourselves that dreadful sentence, "With what judgment you judge, you shall be judged; what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again." But if you have given to eternal wrath the sense it bears in this divine book—the sense that links it with the God who lives forever and ever—then surely you cannot help wishing, for your own sake and for mankind's, that there should be no easing of this wrath until there has perished utterly and forever whatever in men's hearts, or will, or reason tends to confound blessed distinctions or to tear apart what is one. We shall find how much there is in ourselves that leads to that confusion and that division; we shall see how it mixes into all our thoughts, darkening and dividing the forms and workings of the outward world, the dealings of daily life, and our view of the history and character of men, as well as our view of the nature of God. We shall want God's judgment to search us, so that we may see all things as they are in God's divine light, not jumbled together by our fancy, nor torn apart by our failure to trace their inner harmony. We shall be sure that the very same causes that make us refuse justice to the differences of other men, and shrink from fellowship with them, also interfere with our grasp of the perfect Unity revealed in the Persons of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. We shall not doubt that the full revelation of that Mystery of Love which in words we have confessed today will be a revelation of the glory of God in man, and throughout the whole earth. We shall not doubt that when we fully enter into that revelation, we shall have won a victory over the selfish power that seeks to set heaven and earth at war; that we shall be able to sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb—the song of triumph over fallen tyranny and division, the song of a redeemed and reconciled universe.

## LECTURE XVI. THE VIALS.

*The passage:* John heard a great voice from the temple telling the seven angels to go and pour out the vials of God's wrath on the earth. The first was poured on the earth, and a foul, painful sore fell on the people who bore the mark of the beast and worshipped his image. The second was poured on the sea, which became like the blood of a dead man, and every living thing in it died. The third was poured on the rivers and springs, and they turned to blood; and the angel of the waters said God was righteous in this judgment, because these people had shed the blood of saints and prophets, so now they were given blood to drink, which they deserved; and another voice from the altar agreed that God's judgments are true and righteous. The fourth was poured on the sun, and men were scorched with great heat, and they cursed God's name and did not repent. The fifth was poured on the seat of the beast, and his kingdom went dark, and men gnawed their tongues in pain and cursed God, and did not repent. The sixth was poured on the great river Euphrates, and its water dried up to prepare a way for the kings of the east; and John saw three unclean spirits like frogs come from the mouths of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet—spirits of devils working miracles, going out to gather the kings of the earth to the battle of the great day of God. ("Behold, I come as a thief; blessed is he that watches and keeps his garments.") They were gathered to a place called Armageddon. The seventh was poured into the air, and a great voice from the temple and the throne said, "It is done." There were voices, thunders, lightnings, and the greatest earthquake ever; the great city split in three, the cities of the nations fell, and great Babylon was remembered before God to be given the cup of his fierce wrath. Every island fled and the mountains vanished, and a great hail fell, each stone about a talent's weight, and men cursed God because of the plague of the hail.

Any reasonably attentive reader will notice a strong resemblance between the events that followed the trumpets and those that follow the pouring out of the vials. When the first four trumpets sounded, the earth, the sea, the rivers, and the sun were struck. Here we read of the same calamities in the same order. The river Euphrates goes with both the sixth trumpet and the sixth vial; the cry "It is finished" went with both the seventh trumpet and the seventh vial. There are several small differences, which I may come to shortly. But there is one large and striking difference that seems to settle the meaning of each vision. When the fifth trumpet sounded, a star fell from heaven to earth, the bottomless pit opened, and locusts came out that did not hurt grass or trees but only tormented—not killed—the men who lacked God's seal on their foreheads, for five months. The fifth vial "was poured out upon the seat of the beast, and his kingdom was full of darkness, and they gnawed their tongues for pain." I tried to show, when I treated that trumpet, that it meant the fall and ruin of a great spiritual dynasty and the moral and spiritual misery that follows such a fall. That this vial means the destruction of a dynasty that is not spiritual at all but essentially brutal—though it may once have leaned on spiritual supports—the words themselves would teach us, even without light from earlier or later passages. Everything so far seems to favor the approach to these prophecies that I have adopted. The trumpets would all be announcements of the fall of the old world's spiritual center; they would point to Jerusalem. The vials would concern what I may call the old world's material center; they would point to Rome. But they would not concern Jerusalem and Rome at different points in history; they would mark a crisis both cities were passing through within the same three or four years.

I. What those three or four years were, and what we know was happening in them, I have already partly considered; the seventeenth chapter will bring the question clearly before us. Today's subject leads us to reflect on the different ways the same events can appear to a prophet's mind. "And the first went and poured his vial upon the earth, and there fell a foul and painful sore upon the men that had the mark of the beast, and upon them that worshipped his image." In the eighth chapter there was no mention of any harm to human beings from the hail and fire mingled with blood cast on the earth; only a third of the trees and green grass were burned. There we were hearing a trumpet; here we are seeing a vial poured out. There the earth was struck; those who had been called to declare who is the Lord of the earth, and had not declared him to men or believed in him themselves, were to read his *Mene Mene* written on their walls. To the others it could not carry that meaning. They only feel the effects of the visitation. It comes to them as a foul and painful sore. They smart under the plague. The lesson reaches them through their bodies. Do not suppose, however, that the message could not have come in this form to the people of Judæa. They too were worshippers of the beast. They were becoming incapable of grasping anything but material losses and sufferings. And there may have been many heathens who saw a divine hand in the affliction and glorified God in the fires. The distinction between the two purposes of the judgment is not changed by how this or that person received it.

II. "And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea, and it became as the blood of a dead man, and every living soul died in the sea." This, someone will say, is the language of poetry or prophecy, not of fact. I have asked you before whether you are sure the language of poetry or prophecy does not represent facts more truly than the language of statistics. Do you think a count of the number of people who die in a wreck—even the smallest fishing boat—gives you the history of that wreck? Is not a great artist's picture truer? Many of you, I am sure, will know that memorable passage of Jeremy Taylor, where he imagines a man on a battlement of heaven looking down to see how many men and women at that moment lie fainting and dying for lack of bread; how many young men are cut down by war's sword; how many orphans weep over the graves of the fathers who fed them; to hear how many sailors and passengers are at that instant in a storm and cry out as the keel strikes a rock or breaks beneath them; how many people weep from want, are driven mad by oppression, or are made desperate by too keen a sense of constant misery. Surely there was no exaggeration in these thoughts. Such a sight must, at any moment, in Taylor's age or ours, have appeared to anyone standing at that point of observation.

It is not so horrible as the sight of a single den of tyranny that is sometimes laid bare to us just as it is about to pass away. St. John *is* watching the withering of the earth and the destruction at sea from a battlement of heaven. We might describe it in some dry abstraction such as the collapse of commercial prosperity, or the breaking off of trade between nations. To him it is as if the sea became *the blood of a dead man*.

III. "And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters, and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art and wast and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy. And I heard another out of the altar say, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments." Nothing puzzles us more often than the sense of divine retribution. Our conscience testifies to it; again and again we are sure we recognize it. To deny it seems like a practical confession that chance rules everything. To deny it makes every calamity inflicted on human beings far more dreadful and ghastly, as if an evil spirit were indulging its malice. Belief in retribution was the support of heathen faith amid all its corruptions; Jewish prophets lived to proclaim it; surely the Gospel cannot have taken the right to it from us. And yet there are our Lord's words about the Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with their sacrifices, and about those in Jerusalem on whom the tower in Siloam fell. There is the warning to the disciples who assumed the blind man or his parents must have sinned. There is the universal command that overrides and upholds all these particular cases: "Judge not, that ye be not judged." There are the many times we ourselves have broken this command, and have seen others break it, trying to match particular punishments to particular crimes. There are the cruel counter-accusations that stain every page of church history, each party finding the plainest signs of divine vengeance against the other. How can we keep our faith in the exact fitness of the wrongs men do to the corrections God appoints for them, in the face of these warnings from the highest authority and from our own experience?

There are two methods, I believe, that can help us do this if we pursue them faithfully. The first is to fix our minds steadily on the word *Judgment*, to give it its full weight, and to accept no poor substitutes for it. Judgment means, in ordinary use, discrimination—assigning each thing its real worth, separating what is real from what is merely apparent or counterfeit. Mean *that* when you speak of God's judgments. Mean nothing at all that contradicts it. Then you must suppose that he does make his purposes plain, and will make them plainer. You will ask that they be made plain to you. And the more you ask that, and the more you expect an answer, the more horror you will feel at putting your own judgments in the place of God's, your rash and one-sided guesses in place of his revelation. You will feel more each day how you are tempted to do this; how you long to pull the specks out of other men's eyes and forget the beams in your own. You will not plead that you must do this to some degree so as not to hide from men that God is judging them. You will feel that in any degree you do it, you are doing something to hinder the effect of God's judgments, something to make them less believable to your fellow-creatures. The second rule follows from the first. Always try to understand God's retribution first in your own case. There it will become plain to you if you look for it. You will see that the correction was graciously fitted to the faults in your character that needed it. You will see that where you have sown the wind, you have very often indeed reaped the whirlwind. Very often—but not always. It has not been a mere movement from cause to effect. There has been a Judge directing the step from one to the other; who has—oh, how continually!—turned the very evil you did or planned into an instrument of humbling you, and therefore of good. What would naturally have borne only remorse, and so greater sin, has been made the means of leading you to repentance, and so to deliverance from sin. Such discoveries do not force us to imagine exceptions in God's ways. They are the highest examples and illustrations of his ways. They bring out the principle of retribution in its fullest power. So too in great historical crises like the one we are considering, there comes a flash of light from heaven, showing how the rivers and springs of water—those blessed gifts of God that have fed the life and health of nations—are turned into blood, made poisonous and deadly; not by accident, but in obedience to an everlasting law. Those who bore witness against the misuse of these gifts—the saints and prophets who testified that the good things given to men are not to be turned to pride and greed, not to be diverted from human channels into selfish ones—these have been made victims of their protest. Their blood has been mingled with these waters; they have been offered up to appease the selfish gods they said were no gods at all. "And now, O Lord," so sings the Angel of the Waters, "you have claimed these waters as your own. Men who used them for their bloody ends must drink blood. They would not receive the waters as given to nourish the earth; so the waters shall bring them no more nourishment, but death."

IV. "And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun, and power was given to him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues, and they repented not to give him glory." Those who try to find which modern plagues correspond to the Apocalyptic ones will never be long without parallels. That these occurred at a certain time, already defined fairly precisely and to be defined more exactly in a later passage, I cannot doubt. But plagues on land, on sea, in the springs, and from excessive heat cannot be confined to one country or one century. Those who think the words carry some more refined, cabalistic sense may justify that sense as best they can and apply it to our practical guidance. Those who think the prophet was shown how all the different parts and powers of the natural world were becoming instruments of punishment against those who had degraded themselves and their fellows into mere servants of these natural powers—so becoming witnesses against idolatry and for the true Ruler of men—will gladly admit that they have not lost that function, and that the purpose they served then may be served by them now. Nor does their failure to bring about any general repentance—the rage and blasphemy they provoked—place them outside our own experience. Are these not rather very solemn signs to us that we must not expect moral renewal, for ourselves or our fellow men, from the terrors inspired by any natural forces? The God of Life speaks through them; he speaks to our spirits. If our spirits hear him, they are bowed; but let the Angel of Death beat his wings ever so loudly, and they will be scared, not changed.

And now we come to that vial I have already spoken of as the object of them all.

V. "And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast, and his kingdom was full of darkness, and they gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds." The tribulation announced here in a few quick words is, I believe, the subject of the next two chapters. In those chapters we are told where the seat of the beast is, in language so plain and unmistakable that there has been little—I believe no—difference of opinion about it. Rome, at some period of its existence—Rome under some kind of ruler, imperial or spiritual—has been taken by all readers as fitting the description. I do not think the prophet stopped there. I think he was just as careful in fixing which ruler he meant as in fixing the capital of that ruler's government. For now, though, our business is not with the person but with the nature of his rule. We are to connect it with all that has gone before in this vision. Those who worship the beast and bear his image are those who cannot conceive of anything as almighty and divine except what is earthly, sensual, devilish. The one they worship is the embodiment of the earthly, the sensual, the diabolical. He is the towering, concentrated version of what is scattered and partial in those he governs. Suddenly an eclipse falls on his power, and confusion covers all their plans. There is something—they cannot say what—threatening them and their works. They are in darkness. They cannot feel their way. What is coming? Is it light? Oh, not that! Let that at least stay far from us. We are miserable enough already. Let it not come to torment us more. They gnawed their tongues in pain and cursed the *God of heaven*.

VI. "And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared."

In the passage of the ninth chapter that answers to this, four angels that had been bound at the great river Euphrates were set loose. Taking the Euphrates as the prophetic symbol for the boundary that separated the Babel world from the holy city, I supposed that trumpet meant that boundary would now cease to exist; that the work for which Judæa had been marked out as a separate kingdom in the midst of the earth was done; and that whatever witness might in future be borne against the Babel principle would not be borne by a separate nation with a local center. The change was tremendous—a great shaking would come before and after it—but it was a change all the trumpets had been foretelling. Once it was made, the last trumpet would sound; the age's final message would go out. That change and that final message matter as much for the Gentile world as for the Jewish. Seen with regard to the Gentiles, the Euphrates is said to be *dried up, that the way of the kings of the east may be prepared*. The ending of the Jewish state and the Jewish witness might seem to leave the world free to obey its idol rulers, to accept the latest incarnation of evil as its supreme lord. On the great throne of the West sat that incarnation of evil. To that throne the countries of the West bowed; the East had already fallen before it. Was not that kingship the children of Shem had hoped to hold over the earth, in the name of the one Lord God, now passing away forever? No—not passing away! Rather, for the first time beginning to be shown and felt. The Child to whom the Magi came, bringing gold and frankincense, will now begin his march over those western kingdoms the Roman tyrant had claimed for himself. They are not his; they are held by an older title. The West shall pay homage to the East. There shall be a Christendom confessing the God of Abraham as its God, the Son of David as its King.

Does it seem strange that I speak of what is called a vial of wrath as carrying such a meaning as this? You will stumble at every passage in the Apocalypse if you find a contradiction in the idea that the highest blessings are revealed through punishments that look like nothing but curses. This drying of the Euphrates, if it was to make a road along which the divine kingdom would pass into new regions and settle there, could not happen until the Roman state had been shown to be built of brittle clay—until the Jewish state had disappeared. Nor could it happen without another kind of evil affecting the world—especially, I believe, the Christian part of the world. This is shown in the next verses.

VII. "And I saw three unclean spirits, like frogs, come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame. And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon."

The message of a divine Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, was what the Apostles delivered to Gentiles as well as Jews. It broke down the middle wall of partition between them; it was, in the language of the Apocalypse, a drying up of the Euphrates.

But that same message stirred up all the ideas about spiritual influences and powers that had been sleeping in men's minds, hidden under their various mythologies and traditions. So, as I noted when speaking of the locusts said in an earlier chapter to overspread the earth, there was a greater outbreak of enchanters and magicians—some heathen, many of them Jewish, and not a few, like Simon, baptized in the name of Jesus Christ—than the world had ever seen before. The craving for glimpses into the invisible world was strong in men's minds; it grew stronger because of their loss of faith in the official augurs and priests who had once fed it; it attached itself both to the old Roman religion and to the modern unbelief. Those adepts who fed and tried to satisfy this craving might turn it to political or merely personal ends; they were almost sure to combine it with foul morals; imperfect spiritual perceptions and intuitions did not raise up, but rather undermined, that plain sense of honesty and justice that had come down, with however many stains and corruptions, from republican times. These, I take it, are the frogs that came out of the mouths of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet—mixing the coarsest animal wickedness with the subtlest spiritual wickedness. It is no exaggeration and no metaphor to say they went out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world. They were the Roman generals and proconsuls to whom these enchanters applied, into whose ears they whispered their divinations, whose decisions they swayed with their Babylonian calculations. Christian men, even if they did not give in to the fascination themselves, must often have been greatly troubled by reports of predictions fulfilled and wonders performed. If they trusted to their own cleverness in detecting frauds, to their tests for telling true miracles from false, they must have been constantly deceived. They could not help noticing many likenesses between these tricks and what was most precious in their own traditions. The old fences had been swept away; the outward protection that the difference between circumcised and uncircumcised had given was no longer any use. But this defense remained—"Behold, I come as a thief." The Judge stands at the door. The Son of Man, who exposes all tricks and lies, will be revealed. Will this spiritual conceit of mine bear his scrutiny? The prediction may come true; this juggling may succeed. But am I not a child of the light? Do not these works shrink from the light?

And now comes this further assurance. A battle between the powers of light and darkness is close at hand. All these teachers of the kings of the earth are gathering them for that battle. They may be worshipping a beast; but they are spirits, and spiritual powers must rouse them even to satisfy the lowest instincts—a fearful lesson that every age confirms, but that in all the great crises of history stands out and writes itself in letters of blood.

VIII. "And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air, and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings, and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake and so great. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent, and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, for the plague thereof was exceeding great."

When the last trumpet sounded, there were voices in heaven saying, "The kingdoms of the world are become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever." The voice, "It is done," which goes with the pouring out of the vial, I have taken to point to the same end and to mean the same thing. An age of the world was ending. The question of that age had been: Whose are the kingdoms of the world? The hour of decision had come. Christ and Antichrist were to meet each other. The place that stands for the conflict is curiously chosen. The name Megiddo is linked with two great triumphs of the Israelites and with two memorable defeats. It is symbolic for both reasons. The battle of Armageddon is one in which the Lord God fights the beast. He is to win the victory. So far it is like Barak's victory over Sisera, or Gideon's over the Amalekites. But it is a victory in which Israel is not to rise, but to perish. So far it corresponds to the overthrow of Saul and of Josiah. The prophet is a patriot to the last. But it is the God of Israel who lives forever and ever; let the seed of Abraham, let his own Church, become nothing, so that he may be exalted. Let the blind and captive Samson pull the pillars of the house down on himself, if only Dagon and his worshippers may fall with him. Of this fall the next chapters will tell us. I receive them as records of a triumph that has been won, and therefore as an unquestionable pledge and assurance of a triumph that shall be won, for God and for

## LECTURE XVII. THE GREAT CITY.

*The passage:* One of the seven angels who held the seven vials invited John to come and see the judgment of the great whore who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication and by whose wine the earth's inhabitants have been made drunk. Carried in the spirit into the wilderness, John saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast covered with names of blasphemy, with seven heads and ten horns. She was dressed in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, jewels, and pearls, holding a golden cup full of abominations and filth, and on her forehead was written "MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." She was drunk with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus, and John marvelled greatly. The angel promised to explain the mystery of the woman and the beast that carries her, with its seven heads and ten horns. The beast "was, and is not," and shall rise from the bottomless pit and go to destruction; those on earth whose names were not written in the book of life will wonder at it. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits, and are also seven kings: five have fallen, one is, one is not yet come and will last only a short while; the beast that "was, and is not" is himself an eighth, yet one of the seven, and goes to destruction. The ten horns are ten kings not yet crowned, who will receive power for one hour with the beast, give their strength to him, and make war with the Lamb, who will overcome them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called, chosen, and faithful. The waters are peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues. The ten horns will come to hate the whore, strip her, devour her flesh, and burn her with fire, for God has put it in their hearts to fulfil his will until his words are fulfilled. The woman is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth.

In an earlier chapter we saw a woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet. Here we read of a woman with "Babylon the great, the mother of harlots, and abominations of the earth" written on her forehead. Everyone has noticed that the two visions correspond. A Protestant controversialist would say at once that the first describes the true Church of God, kept alive through the ages—hidden from human eyes but beautiful in the sight of her Lord—and that the second points to the Papacy, seated in outward grandeur and power, but marked by God as idolatrous and apostate.

An interpretation that has sunk so deeply into the mind of a nation like ours, shaping our everyday speech and colouring our devotions, is not something we can safely throw away. It must mean something. If we ignore that meaning, we risk missing lessons the prophecy was meant to teach, shrinking it to fit our own private notions, or reducing it to mere antiquarian curiosity.

But there are other uses of the title "great Babylon" which, by the same principle, we should not overlook. It has been applied to the city of London, the very capital of Protestantism, and our consciences have accepted the name as fitting. Again, the most earnest religious teachers have urged their hearers to flee from Babylon and shun the Babylonian harlot, meaning by both phrases that world which Romanists and Protestants alike renounce in their baptism. While we do justice to one of these ways of speaking, we should test whether it is not possible to do justice to all three. If we stay close to the book itself, I believe we can.

I have given you my reasons for thinking that the vision of the woman clothed with the sun, about to give birth to the man-child, is a vision of humanity seen truly: in itself weak and feminine; great only while it looks up to a glory above its own, which becomes its clothing; poor and incomplete until it has found a Son of Man who is also a Son of God, one who does not stay on earth but is carried to heaven's throne, where he is to be acknowledged as our living Head, our Redeemer, our Representative. The discovery of this true Head of Man, and of the glory of Man in him, is what I took the vision to be about. Before this could be discovered there was war in heaven; when it was made, the adversary was cast down from heaven. There was no more darkness over the form of him on the throne. Those who confessed the crucified Man to be at his right hand could overcome all doubts and temptations by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of his testimony. But there was war on the earth. The adversary had not finished his battle here; he was carrying it on furiously. What that battle was, and who would be caught up in it, we were to learn as we went on.

Taking the first vision in this sense, it would, I thought, justify those who said the Church was implied in it. The Church is that body appointed, in its own life and acts, to testify of a Son of Man and Son of God, to say that humanity is complete only in him, to call men to claim the glory he has claimed for them, to tell them that God's face has been fully shown in the only begotten Son and is therefore a face of clear, unclouded light. In its hour of deepest sorrow—which has been its hour of greatest triumph—the Church must represent the woman who sees the sun above her and the moon at her feet. And she must be in danger of looking at the moon instead of the sun, at herself instead of her divine Head.

On the other hand, I have shown you how the image of a woman forgetting her true lord and becoming a harlot runs through all the language of the Old Scriptures, illustrating every national sin. In the Old Testament this harlotry is charged upon Israel—upon Israel alone—precisely because Israel was said to have been claimed as the bride of an unseen, spiritual Lord. The sin that earns this shameful name is idolatry. Israel forgets its unseen King and worships visible things—it becomes a creature of the senses. In doing so it tries to be like the surrounding nations, when it was set in the world to tell those nations that they were made for another service, a nobler fellowship. The punishment for this crime was captivity in the very land that gathered up the idolatry of all the nations, where idolatry had its head and crown, was organised into a system, openly propped up a universal tyranny, was fast turning into the worship of a mortal ruler, and that worship into the worship of what is below humanity.

Babylon, then, seen first on the plain of Shinar—where trust in God was traded for trust in brick walls, where the family rescued from the flood forgot its task of colonising and subduing the earth and tried to make itself a name and build a tower to reach heaven—and seen in all its later tyranny and conquests, was the living type of the idolatrous city. And when the chosen Son was revealed as head not of one nation but of every man, the idolatrous city began to be seen as the mother of harlots: as that which had all along been drawing men away from the worship of a Spiritual Being, their Lord, Friend, and Redeemer, into the worship of many natural things and powers—worshipping not the archetype of man but his mere image, worshipping evil instead of good. From the moment the mystery of God—the mystery of a redeemed humanity—was revealed, Babylon became the mystery of iniquity, representing the degradation and misery of humanity, both socially and individually. The place itself need not stay the same. What was Nineveh under Sennacherib was Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar. The type endured, even when a western city, at a wholly different stage of civilisation, became the ruling power of the earth.

If, then, as we Protestants believe, there is and has been a system spread through Christendom that robs man of his true dignity, blocks his communication with his risen and ascended Lord, and separates heaven from earth by making a mortal man the highest of all rulers—if such a system deserves to be called idolatrous and apostate—then it is a true instinct that links this system with Babylonian harlotry, precisely because our charges against it imply that it is a relapse into the state of the heathen world, that it has canonised the very despotism of sense from which the birth and glorification of the Man-child was meant to free God's creatures made in his image. And if in this city of ours there is, among clergy and laity, idle and busy, noble and tradesman and workman, on one plea or another, on religious or irreligious grounds, in deference to aristocratic or democratic notions, a tendency to revere the visible above the invisible, the passing above the permanent, the customs of society above moral and eternal laws—if this tendency has grown powerful and threatens to become supreme—then it is also a true instinct that recalls the greatness of Babylon when we are tempted to boast of the greatness of London, and warns that London may prove no more lasting than Babylon. A citizen of Paris, Madrid, Vienna, or Venice might rightly feel the same. But our consciences tell us that we have less to do with those cities than with London; their evils are, to some extent, foreign to us, while London's evils are our own. And so it is right that those who teach children or grown men to renounce the pomps and vanities of this wicked world should explain what they mean: "Now, as of old, there are idols' processions and sacrifices offered to worthless things that cannot help or save. Members of Christ, who gave himself away, you are tempted by a society that makes self its centre. Children of God, you are tempted to think yourselves children of Mammon, with everything around you bowing to him. Heirs of the kingdom of heaven, you are led to suppose there are no treasures for you but those that moth and rust corrupt and thieves steal. An evil atmosphere surrounds you. Call your world religious, political, commercial, or fashionable, whatever you like—it is still a harlot world, a world of sense; still a Babylonian world, a world of confusion and bondage." But all these applications assume a conclusion already reached. They would be worth nothing unless there were some type of them in the old world. What that type is we are to learn from the Apostle himself, who will always tell us more than his commentators do.

The first six verses of this chapter refer to the *mystery* of this woman—that is, to the meaning of the symbol, to what belongs not to one age but to all, to the evil that has threatened the heart of human society ever since there was such a thing. They connect with the earlier vision of the seven vials, and they point, as all the earlier chapters have done, to an approaching judgment.

I. "And there came one of the seven angels who had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying, Come here; I will show you the judgment of the great whore that sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness; and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of the abomination and filthiness of her fornication. And on her forehead was a name written, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus; and I wondered with great admiration."

In one of Zechariah's visions, which resembles this one in many striking ways and clearly presents the mystery of wickedness in contrast to the divine mystery shown in the Temple at Jerusalem, an angel speaks of a "House in the land of Shinar, which shall be established and set there upon her own base." A political order standing on its own foundation, its gods shaped out of human ideas, and by their help becoming a cruel and bloody tyranny—this is the idea of Babylon here and throughout Scripture. We have often been shown the final result. She who would not stand on divine ground must at last be carried by a beast. Humanity has only these two choices. In the end she must confess either a spiritual Lord or a brutal one. On her way to complete degradation she has been drinking the blood of righteous men who witnessed to her of her true greatness and of her fall. All these are called martyrs of Jesus. It does not matter when or where they lived, in what city they made their protest, or in what words or deeds they expressed it. So far as they testified that man is more than an animal, that there is a divine Power seeking to give man his true human rights, that a man is not to save his life but to lose it, not to glorify self but to give himself away—so far they were witnesses for Jesus, and his Spirit and no other was working in them. An apostle must say so. Other men might call them brave or heroic. He must trace everything good in man back to the Lord of Man—all partial light back to the perfect light.

Next we come to the explanation of this mystery as it applies to the particular period the prophecy is concerned with.

II. "And the angel said to me, Why did you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and ten horns. The beast that you saw was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit and go into perdition; and those who dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is. And here is the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sits. And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and one is not yet come; and when he comes, he must continue a short space. And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goes into perdition." The angel's explanation of the Babylon of that day has, as I noted last Sunday, been accepted by all interpreters as clear and conclusive: it must mean Rome. The only dispute has been, Rome at what period? On that I said the statement seems to me quite as precise. If there are, as I argued in an earlier sermon, grounds for treating the founding of the military despotism under Augustus—together with the divine honours given him as its head—and the Incarnation, or proclamation of Christ's kingdom, as parallel events in the world's history, then Augustus would be the first of the five kings here. Tiberius would be the second, Caius Caligula the third, Claudius the fourth, Nero the fifth. These kings "are not." In the absence of any real evidence for the old tradition that the Apocalypse belongs to Domitian's time, almost any thoughtful critic would take this very passage as reason to place it in Galba's reign. He, the sixth, "was"; Otho, the seventh, "was not yet come." A figure was seen rising behind—an eighth, yet strangely like one of the seven. When Nero died, it looked as if the wild beast into which imperial government had turned itself was dead. Vitellius would show that it still lived and breathed. The world would not only submit to this new apparition but stare after it in blank astonishment, as though beastly tyranny had now proved itself all-powerful, as though nothing else could be meant for mankind—a very natural conclusion, which the facts seemed fully to bear out, and which every attempt to shake off the yoke only confirmed. No one who merely watched passing events and reasoned from them could resist believing that evil would permanently prevail. Only those whose names were in the book of life from the foundation of the world, who saw all things in the light of eternity and watched a book of life unrolling from the beginning, claiming a place in that roll rather than the roll of death—only they could sing of the beast's ruin in his hour of triumph, only they could be sure he would last only a short while. I do not say the tyrant's followers expected his power to last long. Anticipation belongs to men, to spiritual beings; *they* could feel only the leaden weight of the present; *they* could only suppose that a yoke like the one then on the earth must always be there. And so it has been again and again, and so it will be. The revelation may belong directly to the brief reign of Vitellius. But it is the revelation of that state of mind which, at one time or another, overtakes those who have no king but Cæsar, who, being "sensual and dark," must carry the image of a sensual and dark tyranny in their hearts.

III. "And the ten horns which you saw are ten kings, who have received no power as yet, but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. These have one mind, and shall give their strength and power to the beast."

I have already suggested that these horns stand for the military force on which the empire rested. The ten kings would then be the commanders of the legions in the various provinces, who had received no power as yet, though they had just as much claim to the purple, and were just as likely one day to seize it, as the usurper they were content to serve, and for whose sake they set aside their own claims for now. There could not be a truer picture of an organised anarchy. The condition Hobbes imagined society emerging out of was the condition into which it had sunk.

IV. "These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them; and those who are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful."

In old Roman legends, mounted champions recognised as the divine Twins would appear suddenly to encourage a failing army and then vanish when the victory was won. An old Hebrew, an apostle of Jesus Christ, has no sympathy with such legends. He does not want *appearances*. The whole point of the prophecy is to free us from slavery to shapes and apparitions. Those were for the sense-bound idolater. The Christian believed in the crucified Lamb, whom he could not see. Whatever visible armies fight, he sees the real King of kings and Lord of lords on one side and his enemy on the other. What would give him strength in such a crisis as we are reading of is the assurance that unseen hosts are on his side, that Christ leads them, and that therefore the beast will go down to destruction. And the first century was to give the watchword for all centuries to come. Whenever a conflict is being fought in which the order, freedom, and well-being of mankind are at stake, it does not matter how strong the combatants are, or whether they even know in whose name they fight. The victory that puts down the oppressor is the victory of the Lamb. He, with the chosen, faithful, and true, goes out against the beast. *In hoc signo vinces*—"in this sign you will conquer"—is a message to the true warrior. God's Spirit can bring it to him without any cross appearing in the sky.

V. "And he said to me, The waters which you saw, where the whore sits, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And the ten horns which you saw on the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire. For God has put it in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled. And the woman which you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth." When the armies of the Duke of Bourbon entered Rome and, in the name of Charles V.—the very defender of the Church—laid the holy city waste with fire and sword and took its spiritual ruler captive, no doubt the sixteenth-century Reformers thought this language was strikingly fulfilled. The great earthly powers were making desolate and naked the "great city which reigns over the kings of the earth." "God had put it into the hearts of these soldiers of various lands to fulfil his will." Suppose the same drama had been played out more than fourteen centuries earlier—suppose Rome had then been laid waste by military violence and its Capitol burnt—the sixteenth-century Reformers would not have been wrong to say the lesson was repeated in their day; that the same kind of instruments were at work in both cases; that the judgment, whoever carried it out, came from the highest throne of all; that the wicked and cruel tools were working out his great, gracious, and true will. Such thoughts are the only ones that can hold up men's spirits through great crises, the only ones that let them bear the misery they see. But the Reformers spoiled the lesson if they twisted it to any party use—if they read the Bourbon's victory as a judgment in favour of Protestantism rather than a judgment upon unrighteousness, corruption, and hypocrisy wherever it is found. That has been one very harmful result of our way of handling the Apocalypse, which I have tried to illustrate in this sermon. We have found Babylon in the Papacy and forgotten to look for it among ourselves. We have not seen that the harlotry of the senses is at work everywhere, that everywhere men are tempted to become idolaters, that everywhere there are seducers drawing them away from their true Husband and Lord. The far-off evil we have spotted; its punishment we are ready to cheer; but the evil at our own door, in our own hearts, we cannot see. We forget that God shows no favouritism; that Churches which acknowledge Rome's supremacy and those that reject it, individual Papists and individual Protestants, Pharisees and Publicans, will all be sifted by his fan, and must all have their chaff burnt with unquenchable fire.

And this bad result of hasty, one-sided interpretation is closely tied to another. We talk of a Papal apostasy until we forget what the word apostasy even means. We forget that it means standing off from what is our proper ground; that if we revolt, we revolt from a government actually set over us. There could be no apostasy unless a kingdom of God had first been set up in the world. We have paid Popery an honour it has no right to when we have identified it with the Christian Church of many centuries, as if only some tiny body here and there had represented the divine election. It is a most necessary part of faith to believe that a fungus, however widely spread, however closely it seems to imitate the life, is not the tree it is destroying; that the tree is wholly of a good seed. Forget this and all history becomes nothing but a record of foul enormities—a record not of the reign and conquests of the Lamb, but of the Beast. Forget this, and we at once glorify ourselves as though we were better than others, and degrade ourselves by denying the glory and responsibilities laid equally on us and on them. London one moment exalts itself as the great opposite of Rome; the next it sinks into a mere Babylon where evil is the rule and good the rare exception. Whereas we ought to believe that both Rome and London are cities of redeemed men, where God has set up his kingdom, and which the citizens of either turn into a Babylon by disbelieving in their redemption and in his rule, by exalting their own idolatrous, sensual, selfish desires in contempt of their own human greatness and in defiance of his divine purposes.

This, I believe, lies at the root of all our moral evils: that we do not confess humanity to be married to Christ, that all men have been claimed as citizens of his kingdom and not of the Babel kingdom. We do not really confess that God has reconciled the world to himself; and so we do not really reject the world's claim that it is separate from God and can live without him.

From these great errors, which are infecting both our theology and our life, I believe the study of the Apocalypse as it is actually written can be a most effective means of freeing us. It will teach us that the Babel society was always corrupt and adulterous, that it never in any age could be regarded as the true Order of the world. The history and literature of the heathen nations—which our forefathers rightly made a central part of our education—though stained and infected with idolatry, still bear witness to what is not idolatrous, and are perpetual protests against what was corrupting and degrading mankind. They looked forward to the incarnation of the Son of God, who claimed all the life, justice, and self-sacrifice of the old world as his own. The battle of the Lamb against the Beast was to vindicate that truth for the past and to make it the foundation of all the fellowship of men in the ages to come.

## LECTURE XVIII. THE FALL OF BABYLON.

*The passage:* John sees another angel come down from heaven with great power, so bright that the earth is lit up by his glory. The angel cries out that Babylon the great has fallen and become a home for demons and unclean spirits, because all nations were made drunk with her corruption, the kings of the earth joined in it, and the merchants grew rich on her luxuries. Another voice from heaven calls God's people to come out of her so they will not share her sins or her punishments, for her sins have piled up to heaven. She is to be repaid double for her deeds; because she boasted that she sits as a queen, is no widow, and will never see sorrow, her plagues—death, mourning, famine, and fire—will come in a single day, for strong is the Lord who judges her. The kings, merchants, and shipmasters who profited from her stand far off and mourn as they watch the smoke of her burning, wailing that so great a city and so great a wealth came to nothing in one hour; a long list of her merchandise is named, ending with slaves and the souls of men. Heaven and the apostles and prophets are told to rejoice, for God has avenged them. A mighty angel throws a great millstone into the sea to show how violently Babylon will be cast down and vanish, with no more music, craft, millstone, lamplight, or voices of bride and bridegroom, because her merchants were the great men of the earth and her sorceries deceived all nations, and in her was found the blood of the prophets and saints and of all who were slain on the earth.

The language of the previous chapter was exact. The angel spoke of five kings who no longer are, one who now is, a seventh yet to come, and an eighth like one of the seven. It spoke of a city on seven hills that rules over the kings of the earth. Such a description, I thought, must have been meant to fix our minds on imperial Rome at a particular time. The emperor before Vespasian seemed clearly indicated; the setting of the prophecy seemed to be the period between Nero's death and the fall of Vitellius.

The language of *this* chapter is broad and general. It is impossible to limit this description to any disasters that fell on the mere city of Rome—even including, as they did, the burning of the Capitol itself. So I cannot wonder—nor regret—that men in different ages have been sure it did not refer only to some past event affecting others, but concerned them and their own actions, that it was a prophecy about the world they were living in. As I said last Sunday, I believe their instinct is entirely right, and that the more strictly we hold to the *exact* words of the book, the more that instinct is confirmed.

If the Apostle meant Rome, why did he say Babylon? The question is often asked, and the usual answer is surely unsatisfactory. Some suppose that speaking openly would have been dangerous, so he was forced into riddles. Dangerous for whom? He was already on Patmos—would a few more years of life matter so much to an apostle that he would suppress the truth to gain them? Perhaps dangerous because he might have stirred up rebellion against the ruling powers. But whom could he have tempted into such a rebellion? No heathen would have listened. His words were especially discouraging to all Jewish dreams of supremacy. They plainly warned the members of the Church not to take the sword, lest they perish by it. The whole empire, heathen and Jewish alike, was already in chaos. What men wanted was someone to tell them whether the chaos would last forever.

We read of the destruction of Babylon, not Rome, because it was Babylon's destruction that was in the mind of the prophet and of Him who taught the prophet. We read of Babylon, not Rome, because the words were exactly true of the Babel-order of which Rome had become the center, and would not have been true of the mere city, whether considered as walls or as a mass of people. We read of Babylon, not Rome, because the subject is a system that had been at work for generations, not in one country but in all countries, and which was to hear its sentence in that generation. We read of Babylon, not Rome, so that we will not tie that system to one place—however evil the place may be—but may study it in all its forms and aspects, and be certain that wherever it has existed, exists, or shall exist, it is essentially the same.

I. "*And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.*"

The earth's darkness is shown to John by a light from heaven. That light does not let him regard any evil as original or as finally victorious. Babylon has fallen from a better and nobler condition; she has *become* a home of demons. The phrase clearly points to moral or spiritual wickedness. The "*unclean and hateful birds*" nesting in the city are not owls and bitterns, but the greed, filthiness, and malice that fill the empty spaces once occupied by better spirits. The ruling city had been corrupting the nations with her pride, ambition, and lust for gold. Kings of West and East had sold their truth and freedom to her; she had degraded and stupefied them with her luxuries; she had made the earth's traders servants of her greed. We all know this was so. If we are afraid to fix the charge on the Roman world of the first century, it is because we suspect the words may apply to worlds we have known more closely. We need not fear that they will lose their force. Let them mean what they meant at first. God will see to it that they mean no less to us.

II. "*And I heard another voice out of heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double. How much she hath glorified herself and lived delicately, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit as a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God which judgeth her.*"

Did this heavenly voice mean that Christians should flee from Rome because it was about to suffer great disasters? Where could they flee? What part of the empire was not exposed to the same disasters? Would they share Rome's sins more by living in her than by living anywhere else? Everyone has felt that the message must mean something other than this. Babylon was in Rome, but it was also wherever men worshipped the things they could see and handle, worshipped their own lusts, worshipped themselves. It was this worship that had brought the evil spirits into the city; from it, and from them, God calls His people out. All were His people—Jews or heathens—who would obey that voice, who would confess a righteous Being to be King and Judge of the earth, who would firmly believe that whatever is not righteous must perish. It is hard to believe that—hard even for those who profess to believe it most, yes, even for those whose reason is fully convinced it cannot be otherwise. Atheism creeps over everyone. The more corrupt a society is, the more its habits and traditions press upon us the feeling that it will go on; it robs us of the heart and hope that ought to rise against it. If the belief of that society were true—that God has abandoned the world to itself, that He is only as just as we imagine Him to be—there would be no escape from this state of things: the worse it grew, the more it would seem guaranteed to last. But He speaks, and He can make Himself heard. He makes men's consciences understand that they will have their revenge for the debasement and degradation these vile doctrines and grovelling practices have inflicted on them—for these have infected everyone within their reach; there is no one whose standard has not been lowered, whose character has not been impoverished, by them. It is a glorious proclamation for mankind: "*Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works*"; it is the fitting song of triumph over the fall of a demoralizing tyranny. Do not pity it; it has withered human hearts and souls; let it wither utterly. The punishment must match her luxury and wantonness, must match the carelessness and stupid confidence that centuries of sin have bred in her. "*She sits as a queen*"—what can depose her? She *is no widow*—what does she care for any divine Lord? She "*shall see no sorrow*"—she does not know what sorrow means; she cannot imagine it coming near her. And so the destined fall catches her wholly unprepared: "*in one day there is death, mourning, famine*." The fire that went out from her comes back to consume her, for He whom she thought far away is at hand. She finds that righteousness is not a fantasy but a Person—"*strong is the Lord God that judgeth her*."

III. "*And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas! alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.*"

The terror of these kings is not about the fall of a particular dynasty—they would be well used to that—nor about some ordinary trouble overtaking Rome, which they might even have welcomed. They have no sympathy for the victim; they "*stand afar off for fear of her torment*." What they feel is the insecurity and instability of everything they had assumed was most secure and stable. Their world is toppling at its foundation. The scheme of society they thought immortal is breaking apart. The outer supports have failed. It seems to have no inner cohesion. The religious ideas it cherished, which seemed to promise more than material help, are thrown aside; men suspect them to be inventions—they never stopped the rulers from doing as they pleased, and they will not stop the rebels from doing as they please. "*Alas, alas, that great city, Babylon!*" It stood on its own foundation, and that foundation has given way.

IV. "*And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: the merchandise of gold and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and the souls of men. And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all. The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, and saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones and pearls! for in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off, and cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city! And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour she is made desolate.*"

The detail of this description is exactly what gives it its value. Sum up the "*odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and fine flour*" in some general phrase about the vanishing of material prosperity, and you carry us off into vagueness; the actual cries of the merchants, the shipmasters, and the sailors are no longer heard. I would only weaken the passage by commenting on it. But there are one or two words in the middle of it that throw light on the whole. The trade is in "*beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and the souls of men*." No distinction is drawn between the items; they are all treated alike, as entries on a bill of lading, as things to be bartered. The last of them are valued chiefly as tools for producing and exchanging the rest. They are the least significant part, but a necessary part, of the great system. They must be ground to atoms in the whirl of this social machine; they eat a certain amount of food; one by one they die; their places are filled by others who do the same jobs. And the kings of the earth, and the merchants, shipmasters, and even the sailors, cannot see how it could be otherwise—how society could ever be built on any other principle. To those who profit from the labor and to those who do it alike, it is equally hard to imagine that men could be anything more than hands for reshaping certain things, or heads for directing those hands. It is not only a class of tributaries or serfs that the earth's rulers reduce to this condition; they themselves are tributaries and serfs. The vision is of a state of society in which they have lost any idea that they have any purpose on earth except to combine "*odours, and frankincense, and fine flour, and wine, and sheep, and oxen*" in different ways. It is a world of restless idleness—all wanting to be idlers, all imagining some distant time when they will have so much more of the earth's goods than their neighbors that they can simply eat, drink, and be merry. But these children never reach the end of the rainbow, however hard they run; the serfdom continues; the merriment is always still to come; and their very capacity to enjoy it grows less each day.

V. And therefore, "*Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for God hath avenged you on her.*"

You, sons of God, who shouted for joy when the earth was made very good, when man ruled over all its bright and glorious things, when man looked up to God, was formed in His image, and worshipped Him—you have seen the spectacle of a wicked world, men bowing down to these things and making gods of them. Will you not shout for joy again, because God is declaring that this reversal shall not stand, because in thunder and lightning He bears witness that His order will be established and that whatever contradicts it will come to nothing? What have you been protesting against, holy prophets, but this worship of things, this degradation of man? What have you been saying but that God will rise up from His place to put down those who make men toil in the furnace, that He will show a man to be more precious than a golden wedge of Ophir, that He will bring forth One who will rule in righteousness and judge the poor, who "*shall reprove with equity for the meek of the earth, who shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall slay the wicked*"? What have you been announcing, holy apostles, but that the Son of God *has* taken the form of a servant and become man; *has* passed on earth as the carpenter's son; *has* died the death of the slave and the criminal; *has* risen from death in His human body; and in that body *has* ascended on high to fill all things? Did you imagine that in announcing this Gospel you were introducing a new religion to overthrow the old and to glorify your own names? Did you not understand that you were declaring the divine order and economy of the universe? Did you not understand that you were foretelling the utter downfall and destruction of everything—by whatever name it boasts—that reduces man to a slave and an animal, that forbids him to claim his glory as a member of the body of the only-begotten Son of God? Then will you not rejoice? For in this downfall of a brutal tyranny, in this chaos of the ruling city, in this earthquake of all nations, your message is proved true; the kingdom of man's enemy is shown to be rotten; the kingdom of man's Father and Redeemer is shown to be eternal.

VI. "*And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all. And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee; and the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.*"

The merchants and shipmasters wailed when they saw what was happening in the world. It seemed to them that the system they belonged to, the one they had given their hearts to, was breaking into pieces while another world came into view. The angel who casts the stone into the sea confirms their fear. He too sees in what is happening the pledge of what shall happen; he perceives the doom of the whole Babel system and order in the shock it is passing through at this particular moment. Understanding the nature of prophecy this way frees us from many crude notions about it—notions on which many opinions that disparage the authority of both the Old and New Testaments have been built. "Is it true," we are asked, "that the voice of harpers, musicians, and trumpeters was never again heard in the city of Rome after the first century? Is it true that *no craftsman of any craft was found in her*, and that *the voice of the bridegroom and the bride* was never again heard in her after the upheaval that came upon her in the days of Vitellius, or after any event since? Must not St. John then have been mistaken? Was not the catastrophe he thought was near really centuries away and still unfulfilled? Is it not obvious that he was expecting much more than the destruction of Rome? Was he not looking for the destruction of the world?"

I will take the last question first, and answer it as I have before. If by the destruction of the world you mean the destruction of this earth as it came from God's hands, then St. Paul and St. John did not expect it in their own day, because they did not expect it in any day. The earth was dear to them; they believed Christ had come upon it to redeem it from its curse, to burn away its corruption, to claim it for His Father. If, on the other hand, by the destruction of the world you mean the destruction of human society, I answer that the Apostles' Gospel was about a kingdom of heaven. They took great pains to show that by a kingdom of heaven they did not mean a kingdom somewhere in the clouds, but a society of men built on a principle that does not make society destructive and impossible—a society governed by God and not by the Devil. They did not foretell a destruction of human society in their own day; had they done so, they would have been foretelling that the very kingdom they said would never end was to perish at once. What they did look for was a striking vindication of the law of human society against those who break that law. This they did expect in their own day. They said that if it came in their day, a truth would be revealed for all ages to come: it would be shown that the earth and human society rest on a divine foundation and can rest on no other. One great experiment had been made, and was still being made, to establish it on a brutal or devilish foundation. That experiment would be confounded. The Babel doctrine might have champions, advocates, and apostles by the thousands and tens of thousands in later ages, but it had been proved a lie, and every fresh trial of it would furnish a fresh proof.

And now I come to the particular question about Rome. Beyond all doubt she rose again as an imperial city after the anarchy under Vitellius; she remained imperial from Vespasian to Augustulus; she conferred the title of Caesar in both East and West even after she herself was subject to barbarian masters; the name Eternal City, given her by heathens, was confirmed by popes; her laws and customs were carried into every nation of the West; within her actual walls the voices of harpers and musicians, of bridegrooms and brides, were heard again; all the arts and ornaments of life were there. So it was—and so the words of the prophets and apostles were fulfilled. They said the earth is the Lord's and everything in it; they denied that man's pride and vanity are the source of any outward or inward treasure man possesses; they said that He who gives to all generously and without reproach is the author and sustainer of laws, institutions, and social order, of everything that makes life healthy, convenient, and graceful, of all that lifts us above the beasts that perish. And therefore they said that Babylon the Great—which refuses to confess that the earth is the Lord's and everything in it, which traces all men's possessions to their pride and vanity, which degrades all laws and institutions into servants of arbitrary will, which turns the arts into servants of materialism and sensuality—must sink like lead in the waters; that whenever, in any kingdom on earth, its maxims become fully accepted and all other maxims disbelieved, that kingdom must perish. The voices of bride and bridegroom must cease in it; its music must turn to discord. It may revive, it may pass through many transformations, but the same law will hold in each. God will be its upholder; its own lusts and atheism will undermine it. These lusts and this atheism are most unbearable when they are disguised in the forms of religion, when the name of God is used to cover contempt and denial of His nature, when the spirit of selfishness is confused with His, when the sacrifices that spirit delights in—the sacrifices of the souls and bodies of men—are offered up as if they pleased the God of Truth. In her, it is said, was found the blood of prophets and of all who had been slain upon the earth. This belief in a false and cruel God is responsible for the murder of all brave men who stood firm for the truth, and for the murder of all men whatsoever, in soul and body. All are victims of the Babel system. The blood of all is uncovered when that system falls.

"What matters where, if *I* am still the same?"—the words our poet puts in Satan's mouth. They have a striking force in the sense he meant them. They also have another force. What does it matter where—in what city or land, under what government or what religion—evil is still the same, selfishness is still the same. The Adversary will make a Babylon wherever men will stoop to him. But "What matters where, if *I* am still the same" are also words that He who came to destroy the works of the Devil and to bruise the serpent's head is speaking to our hearts: "Whatever falsehood there is in any society or in any heart, I can overcome it. Out of death I can bring life. Whatever has been turned to Babylon's service—whatever gifts of the earth, whatever human faculties, energies, and affections, in any corner of the universe—is mine. It is the purchase of my blood. I have vindicated it, and I will vindicate it, for the service of the kingdom of God."

## LECTURE XIX. THE WORD OF GOD.

*The passage:* A great crowd in heaven shouts "Alleluia," praising God for salvation, glory, honour, and power, because His judgments are true and just: He has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth and has avenged His servants' blood. The elders and living creatures worship God, and a voice from the throne calls all His servants, small and great, to praise Him. Then a multitude like many waters and thunder cries "Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigns; the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His bride has prepared herself," clothed in fine linen, which is the righteousness of the saints. John is told to write that those called to the marriage supper are blessed—these are the true words of God. John falls to worship the messenger, but is told not to: the messenger is a fellow-servant, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Then heaven opens and a rider on a white horse appears, called Faithful and True, who judges and makes war in righteousness; His eyes are flaming, He wears many crowns and a name only He knows, His robe is dipped in blood, and His name is The Word of God. Heaven's armies follow Him. A sharp sword comes from His mouth to strike the nations; He rules with iron and treads the winepress of God's wrath, and bears the name King of Kings and Lord of Lords. An angel in the sun calls the birds to the supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, captains, and all people. The beast, the kings, and their armies gather to make war against the rider, but the beast and the false prophet are captured and thrown alive into a lake of fire; the rest are killed by the sword from His mouth, and the birds are filled with their flesh.

"We praise God for His mercies, we pray to avert His judgments." This is the idea that even religious people commonly accept. But it clashes oddly with the language of this book. The shouts of praise in heaven, echoed by saints on earth, are for God's judgments. We have seen this before; and nowhere is the lesson taught more forcefully than at the opening of this chapter.

I. "And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God: for true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand. And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders and the four beasts fell down and worshipped God that sat on the throne, saying, Amen; Alleluia. And a voice came out of the throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him, both small and great."

Are the thoughts of heaven and earth, then, completely at odds on this subject? Do the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures around the throne rejoice in the very thing that makes mortals weep? Do they give thanks that the prayers of mortals have gone unanswered—that God has carried out His vengeance despite men's efforts to stop it?

Certain phrases in this passage should make us pause before accepting that sad conclusion. One is in the first verse: *salvation* is ascribed to the Lord our God. Now salvation, in some sense, is exactly what all people everywhere are praying for. If we ask not to suffer a plague of endless rain that would ruin the harvest, we are asking for salvation from that plague; if we cry out against battle, murder, sudden death, conspiracy, or rebellion, we ask salvation from those dangers; if we pray against pride, malice, hypocrisy, uncharitableness, against fornication, heresy, schism, and contempt of God's word, we ask salvation from those evils. It does not look, then, as though the heavenly hosts are celebrating the defeat of prayers rising from earth. If they praise God for His judgments, they link those judgments with deliverance.

The second verse explains the first. "He hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand." The salvation is from something that has defiled the earth, made it miserable, and filled it with blood. With full delight they watch the smoke of the fire that has consumed the earth's tormentors and destroyers rising for ever and ever. Not for one age but for every age has that fire been kindled; the smoke rising from each age is a pledge and promise for the next. That is why the fifth verse breaks down the barrier between those in the visible world and those in the invisible one. All who fear God, small and great, are asked to join in watching the judgment—all are called to praise for it.

Yet although the Apostle does not present heaven and earth as at odds, but as truly at one, we should not forget that a conflict must exist somewhere. And since all our thoughts, wishes, and prayers are bound to be shaped by it, let us not shrink from pressing the question: Where is it? How does it come about that we speak of praying against what the wisest and holiest seem to pray for? How is it that we dread the very result they long for—which, when they see it, makes them exult?

Suppose I believe I am in a system I am to call generally or universally good, though I am aware that much in it I hate—things that torment me, crush me, devour the life in me. Then of course I do not pray, and cannot. The author of that system—if it has one—has, I suppose, made it as he saw fit. I have nothing to do but endure it as best I can; and my endurance will be mixed with curses that break out of my inmost soul, since its misery has no other outlet. Those curses will be aimed at the system, if I regard it merely as a system; or at whoever set it going, if I think there is such a one. And no arguments proving the folly or hopelessness of rebelling against a state of things to which I am chained—no statistics showing that things follow a certain course, or that after ages everything works out for the good of the whole—will produce anything more than a pretence of contentment in me, so long as I keep the feelings and needs of a human being. The only escape is to drown those feelings and needs. In animal indulgence, in the dullness of a merely sensual life, a man may learn to submit; otherwise he will beat his head against the bars of his prison, if he dreams even a little of escaping it.

How do men rise out of the mire into which they keep sinking deeper? All would say: not by acquiescing, but by *protesting*. They insist that mire is not the element human beings were meant to live in. Though a hundred are willing to stay in it, one or two keep affirming, for themselves and the rest, that this is not their proper state; and if they can see no other, they can at least see there must be another. This protest and affirmation become prayer. They believe that somehow, somewhere, they have a deliverer. If someone has cast them into this misery, someone else must be able to save them out of it. The longing to escape has been put into their minds; the effort to escape has been put into their minds. Whatever the Deliverer's name, and in whatever region near or far He may live, these promptings have come from Him, and He will back them up. They ask Him to save them from the oppressor—they ask Him, if He is strong enough, to judge between the oppressor and them. Whether the Author of the universe is the Oppressor or the Deliverer, the Enemy men must escape or the Friend on whom they can lay all their doubts, fears, and hopes—this is what all past ages were struggling to know. What we say is that the revelation of Jesus Christ was the answer to that question. We who receive Him as the Son of God, one with the Lord of all, do declare that the Creator of the universe is the Deliverer of the universe. Whatever corrupts the earth and human beings we believe comes not from His order but from a breaking of His order. By our loyalty to Him we are bound not to accept abnormalities as if they were laws, but to fight against them. We are bound to believe He is stirring us to fight against them. We have a right to pray against them, whatever they are, our prayers being simply our response to His promptings—cries for His will to triumph over what opposes it. And if we believe He is infinitely wise as well as infinitely good—that we can see only a very little way—then we shall leave our petitions in His hands with no cowardice or distrust. We believe He has ordained summer and winter, seed-time and harvest. Continued rain at this season, experience tells us, is likely to prevent the fruits from appearing in season and to make many starve; that is, we believe it will interrupt or disturb God's blessed order. Does the rain, then, not come from Him? We believe it does. Rain is a gift of God, not a curse of the Devil. So we believe it is sent for some good purpose—we do not know the specific purpose, but for the general purpose of correcting something wrong in how we act or think, of making us less stupid and monotonous in our lives, less dependent on chance, better farmers, less deaf to nature's facts and demands—all this we may safely assume, provided we assume a Fatherly Ruler of the world at all. To ask for the removal of the punishment is therefore, as today's prayer teaches us, to ask for the removal of the cause, whatever it is; to ask for repentance; to ask to be set right. So from whatever starting point, we come back to the conclusion that the source of evil lies in the will; that our wills have set themselves against God's will; that He is working to bring us into our true state; and that all natural instruments are His instruments for this end. Therefore, when people tell us we keep forgetting the permanence of God's nature and character and want to bend the laws to our convenience, we admit the charge is just, and are deeply grateful for any help in making it untrue. So we pray to God at such times as this, appealing to Him as being what He was in ancient generations, in the days of Noah's flood and before—appealing to Him as the God of law and order—appealing to Him against our own ups and downs, irregularities, and worship of accidents; certain that if we do not appeal to Him, if we do not believe in such a God, we *shall* become the plaything and slave of all shifting appearances, unable to recognize anything firm or constant in the visible or the unseen world.

So it is God's judgment we call for in every case where we act in line with what the Bible or the Church teaches. They never teach us to shrink from those judgments. Those texts that seem to justify such shrinking, weighed carefully, point the opposite way; indeed they expose the very frame of mind in us that leads to this distortion and cowardice. Do you think the Psalmist who said, "Judge me, O Lord, and plead my cause," contradicted himself when he said, "Enter not into judgment with thy servant, for in thy sight shall no man living be justified"? I am convinced that one of these prayers explains and confirms the other. He means: "Do not, O Lord, look on me, think of me, judge me as I am *apart from Thee*—a poor, wretched, helpless atom, cut off from all other atoms, having lost the principle of life and unity. Judge me as I truly am, related to Thee, taking refuge in Thee, begging Thee to search whether there is any wicked way in me, to test me and find the ground of my heart, which is in Thyself!" Do you think St. Paul, saying, "Judge therefore yourselves, brethren, that ye be not judged by the Lord," contradicted his other statement in the same letter—"I know nothing against myself, yet am I not hereby justified; for he that judgeth me is the Lord"? I think you will find that the judgment of God he wanted them not to incur was being treated as though they were part and parcel of the evil clinging to them; that he wanted them to judge between that evil and themselves; and that he told them to look boldly up to God, in His Son, to judge them and clear them of that evil. And our failure to do this, brethren—our not believing that God has sent His Son to justify us and free every one of us from our sins, our not believing that we stand in Christ, pure and holy and blameless before Him—is the reason we do not feel about His judgments on the world as the Apostle did, but instead cherish the opposite feeling: a wish that they should not come, or should not reach us. This last is, I think, the worse temper of the two. It is nobler and more righteous to wish that the world should be left in its wickedness and misery—horrible as that wish is—than to wish it to pass through the fires while we get a special exemption. What! has our saintliness come to this? Do we really want to hug our evils and not let them be destroyed? Yet that is what our saintliness will be, if our first, second, or third thought is about ourselves—if our first thought is not the one expressed in this verse:

II. "And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as of the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth." And the second thought is like it: "Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him, for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready." And the third grows out of the first and second: "And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of the saints." Here is the true Divine order. *Hallowed be thy Name*: the Lord God Omnipotent reigns! The eternally righteous Being holds all power. He in whom is light and no darkness at all is shown to be the ground of all things. *Thy kingdom come*: the Son has claimed humanity as His bride. She is no longer the servant of the beast; she has found her true Lord and can see her glory in Him. *Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven*: the Spirit clothes the bride with the graces and beauties of her Lord. Those who have nothing in themselves are able to look up to Him and become bright with His brightness.

III. "And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God. And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not, I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God; for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy."

We have already heard of the voice of a great multitude. Now *he* speaks to me. Who? The prophet knows no more than we do. He is sure only that the message is a Divine one. And he is sure it is distinct from that general chorus—it is addressed to him. It must be Divine, for it tells him of what has been the subject of all songs and prophecies since the world began: the union of Humanity with her true Husband—the overthrow of the idolatry that had separated them and degraded her. To this all the creation's hopes, to this all God's revelations, have pointed. And now some are called to celebrate this marriage. They are invited to the wedding supper. The voice pronounces them blessed. To share in such a celebration is to enter fellowship with all blessed and redeemed spirits—with everything gracious, pure, and noble in earth's generations and in the worlds that have never known sin. May not humanity so exalted be an object of worship? Does not the one who brings these tidings represent it? Has not hero-worship now found its justification? Has not the Son of Man destroyed the sin into which earlier ages fell? No—*see thou do it not!* The wedding of Humanity vindicates, rather than reverses, the second commandment as well as the first. Each person is raised by that wedding. Each person content to be a fellow-servant with his brothers, to take his place among those whose nature Jesus bore and whose death Jesus died, shares His glory. But that glory is to look above humanity, as He did. The spirit of prophecy has all along been a testimony to Him—a testimony to a Man who is one with God, who fully asserts God's name, in whom men may draw near to God.

And now He Himself appears—that Son of Man who stood before the Prophet dressed in the robes of the High Priest, walking among the candlesticks; essentially the same, but bearing a different name, carrying out another office.

IV. "And I saw heaven open, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS."

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." So St. John opens his Gospel. Those who comment on this sentence tell us how what they call the Logos doctrine was spread by a Jew of Alexandria; how it was taken up by the Christian fathers there in the second century; how they, like its first teacher, connected it with ideas drawn from pagan philosophy. Then they ask whether such a deep speculation is likely to have reached a fisherman of Galilee—whether it is not far more probable that what we call his Gospel was a compilation by learned men in a later time. All the learning that can be applied to the history of human thought is valuable, and no speculations about it need cause the slightest anxiety. But, as I have pressed on you before, it may be well worth knowing whether the discovery of the doctrine of gravitation can be traced to Newton, Kepler, or some earlier thinker; but it is rather more important to know whether the doctrine of gravitation is true or false—whether it explains the facts of the universe—rather than merely whether it is contained in a book called *The Principia*. We must apply the same test to the statements at the start of St. John's Gospel. They themselves invite that test. Learned scholar, you know everything Philo or Origen said about the Word of God; but if He has nothing to do with *you*—if you can interpret yourself without Him—you may as well leave Philo, Origen, and the wicked man who forged St. John's name entirely alone. Their doctrine can mean nothing to you, because in that case it is mere fiction. The Gospel assumes that all the light in you, or in any person, comes from His light; that neither you, nor Philo, nor Origen, could have used or understood any words but for this Word; that your darkness, and mine, and everyone's, comes from refusing to acknowledge this light and dwell in it. If this is so, then it seems in no way strange that all prophets should speak of a Word of God coming to them, or that heathens should confess they needed such an enlightener of their hearts and reasons. Nor should it surprise us, at least, that a Jew of the first century, meditating on what he believed had been revealed to the prophets of his land—and on the aspirations and perceptions of men outside their covenant—should have reached a clearer, more definite grasp than his predecessors of some Being related to the Mind of God and to the mind of man, in whom God and man might meet. The question of all questions is whether this Being is really the Enlightener of *man*, or only of wise and select *men*; whether He was made flesh and lived among men to give them power to become sons of God, or whether He was only a spiritual emanation or idea men might dream about, but who could not speak to them, rule them, or judge them. Supposing He really was what St. John says He was, then, I say, the poor Galilean fisherman was exactly the person to whom—for mankind's sake—we should expect Him to reveal Himself, so that He might be shown to be genuinely the Enlightener not of those who bring their own light with them, but of those who confess that, left to themselves, they are blind.

And now this Word of God, declared to be the light of men—the source of good to all and to each—comes out *judging and making war*. Who else can judge but He who has been conversing with every heart, who knows all its passages, who has been carrying on His secret judgments, bringing every man to His bar every day since man began to sin? Who can make war but He who has been striving with each man, each family, each nation—He against whom every idolatrous, malicious, foul thought, desire, word, and deed that has corrupted societies or individuals has fought? We know how dark and bloody men's wars have been; history tells us. What we want to know is whether all has been bloody and dark—whether it is all to end in darkness and blood. Heaven opens, and One is seen on a white horse, who is *Faithful and True*, who judges and makes war in *righteousness*. He sees into the heart of things. Nothing good, nothing of His own creation, can escape those flaming eyes or be lost; nothing evil and corrupting can hide from them and be saved. On His head are many crowns; we cannot measure the extent or variety of His victories. We only know that all His enemies are to be put under His feet. It is not we who gave Him His name; no one knows it but Himself. He knows all our names. Thanks be to God, we cannot fathom the depth of His! His robe is dipped in blood—not only the blood of others, but His own. He has poured out His own blood for men. He will not spare any blood needed for the redemption of the earth, for the destruction of its destroyers. He does not come alone; the armies of heaven are with Him. The Son of God is the Firstborn among many brothers. All the sons of God have received His Spirit and are allowed to share in His work. And that work must be a work of justice and vengeance. A sharp sword goes out of His mouth. The nations have felt the rod of wickedness; they must feel the rod of righteousness. The oppressor must learn there is a power more terrible than his. He has used God's name to strengthen his purposes of fierceness and wrath; he has thought the earth brought forth its fruits only to make him drunk; now he must learn what the winepress of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God is.

V. All through this book I have been tracing the record of a mighty catastrophe that was to end that age of the world. The thought of that catastrophe would be utterly unbearable if we could not call it a judgment, if we were not told who the Judge is. It is when I have heard that the Son of Man, the Lamb who was slain, is King of kings and Lord of lords, that I can bear to read the next verses. "And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God; that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of all men, both free and bond, both small and great. And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. And the remnant were slain with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth: and all the fowls were filled with their flesh."

There is no attempt in this passage, or anywhere in Scripture, to disguise the horror and loathsomeness of a battle. We should never shrink from steadily looking at facts, or cover them with pretty sentimental phrases. Such phrases will never change the nature of things. To endure the visible, we must learn to look into the invisible. To bear the darkness over the earth, the veil of the temple must be torn open. We can bear to hear of the flesh of men and animals given to the birds of the air, if the result is that the beast and the false prophet—the military tyranny grinding the nations, the spiritual tyranny preying on their inner life—are cast into the lake of fire. And this the prophet understands as the meaning of the agony and travail through which the world of his day was passing. It was the judgment on the prince of this world; it interpreted all the judgments before it. Every one had been a battle between these same powers, and every one held the pledge of this outcome. Until the Word of God had been fully revealed in the incarnation of the Son of Man, in His Passion, in His return to glory, a heavy cloud still hung over all the doings and destinies of God's creatures. The years since Adam came forth seemed only years of mutual destruction for his race, just as the ages before seemed periods of mutual destruction for the lower creatures. Now, when the Head of the universe had gone through its conflict and misery, a light was thrown back over all the past. His life was seen to be stronger than all the powers of death that had been at work in God's universe.

And so, again, the battle of that age throws light forward into all the battles of later generations. It is hard and sickening to read of Christian men, sons of God, giving their brothers as food to the birds of the air; it is dreadful to think for what ends the kings of the earth and the great captains have slaughtered one another. But do not doubt it: in every one of these fights, some beastly power, some lie that has deceived the world, has been thrown down and cast into the lake of fire. Amid all our reasons for mourning, the spirits of heaven, and those of our brothers who have fought the fight and joined them, have seen reasons for thanksgiving and triumph. Something has been done for the purifying of the earth, for the fuller revealing of the sons of God; new conquerors come from earth's anguish to share in its righteous government; new guests come from the horrible supper of death to sit at the marriage supper of the Lamb; one more step is gained in the triumph of the Perfect Will over rebellious wills; one step more toward that restoration of all things which God, who cannot lie, has promised through the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.

## LECTURE XX. THE MILLENNIUM.

*The passage:* John saw an angel come down from heaven holding the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain. The angel seized the dragon—the old serpent, the Devil, Satan—bound him for a thousand years, threw him into the pit, shut it, and sealed it, so that he could no longer deceive the nations until the thousand years were finished; after that he must be let loose for a short time. John also saw thrones, with judges seated on them, and he saw the souls of those beheaded for witnessing to Jesus and to God's Word, who had refused to worship the beast or its image or take its mark; they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were over. This is the first resurrection; those who share in it are blessed and holy, untouched by the second death, priests of God and Christ, reigning with him a thousand years. When the thousand years end, Satan is let loose to deceive the nations everywhere—Gog and Magog—and gather them for battle, as many as the sand of the sea. They surround the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire from God devours them, and the devil is thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone with the beast and false prophet, to be tormented forever. Then John saw a great white throne and one seated on it, from whose face earth and heaven fled away, leaving no place for them. He saw the dead, great and small, standing before God; the books were opened, including the book of life, and the dead were judged by their works. The sea, death, and hell gave up their dead, all judged by their works; then death and hell were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death. Anyone not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

The word "Millennium" brings up unpleasant memories for many educated people. Some think of the Fifth Monarchy men from our civil wars. Others recall speculations they have heard in their own time—speculations that seemed a strange blend of history and fiction, supported by arguments both clever and incoherent. Such people approach this chapter, where the doctrine of a Millennium is stated, with boredom or irritation. They will be inclined to say: "Surely these few words that have prompted such dreams can be passed over as the offhand remarks of a book that is itself rather unintelligible. We are practical men; we want the Bible for practical lessons. If some people have nothing to do, let them busy themselves with these things."

By all means let us remember that we are practical men and that the Bible is a practical book. But I cannot think this way of dismissing passages that, for good or ill, have moved and still move the most earnest men and women is practical at all. Contempt is never practical; it is the child of laziness, and it ends up causing much needless trouble. Questions denounced as beneath our notice prove they have a power we must attend to. Opinions we have despised in others rebound and strike back at us, and probably overthrow us precisely because we ignored them. I am convinced this belief in a Millennium has been a practical belief for many devout thinkers. If it is, as claimed, wrapped in fancies and held on weak grounds, that is a reason to ask where it gets a strength it clearly cannot owe to anything essentially feeble. Suppose there had never been such a tradition in Christendom, no such thought hovering in men's minds age after age—we would all have been the losers. There would not have been less fanaticism; that would simply have taken other forms. But there would have been far less hope, far less confidence in God's promises, and more of a dreary suspicion that the earth is handed over to those who only want to rob and spoil it. All art, all poetry, all politics would have been lower and more grovelling if this idea had not haunted those to whom it came in no formal, doctrinal shape—people who were often least inclined to welcome it.

But as I said about the word "Babylon" in the last chapter, this word points not to one set of opinions but to opposite sets. The objectors to the doctrine are not found only, or mainly, among those who scorn it. Many shrink from it because they hold positive convictions they think they must give up before they can accept it. They say: "We have been taught to look for a heavenly state; you want us to fix our hopes on an earthly paradise. We have been looking forward to a reward for those who serve God faithfully here, once they cross the boundary of death; you point us to a blessed condition that may come to this world in general. Even supposing we could care about that general, indiscriminate happiness here, does any Christian know he will live to reach the appointed moment?"

These are serious doubts—so serious in some minds that they simply ignore or dismiss the part of Scripture that gave rise to them. I cannot regard that as a safe course. It seems to me that the hope of good for this earth is essentially bound up in all God's promises; that we must suppress the plainest statements of Scripture, and kill the best wishes in our own hearts, if we refuse to cherish it. I cannot think that any true belief in a Kingdom of Heaven, or in the gifts God will give after death to those who love Him, would interfere in the least with the other hope. If they have seemed to clash, it must be through some confusion in our minds. And a faithful study of the actual words of the Divine book must be the way to remove the confusion and bring the two into harmony.

The traditions of the early Church show St. John in direct conflict with Cerinthus, who championed a notion of Christ's reign on earth that identified it with a golden age of the god Saturn—a return of an Eden of outward happiness. Though there is no historical foundation for the stories that make John and Cerinthus personal enemies, those stories express an instinct that their doctrines were incompatible, each the undoing of the other. That instinct is supported by every part of the Apocalypse. Its subject is certainly the deliverance of the earth—but the deliverance of the earth from the sensual masters who had degraded it, by its true spiritual Lord. That idea of a kingdom of Heaven, unfolding through every part of the New Testament, now reaches its completion. The Lamb fully vindicates His right to rule, against the Dragon, over all God's willing creatures. The unwilling creatures are restored to their proper place when man is restored to his. Remember that this has been the Apocalypse's consistent teaching so far, and now consider the words that open this chapter.

I. "And I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, to shut him up, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: after that he must be loosed a little season."

I want you to notice that in this passage, at least, there is no reference at all to any special earthly happiness the earth or man is to enjoy. Nothing is said about exemption from pain and sorrow for individuals or nations. We have been hearing of a spiritual power who resisted the Lamb, was overcome by Him, and cast out of heaven. We have heard how that power could wage an unusually terrible, though short, war against the inhabitants of the earth. We have heard of armies rising from the bottomless pit to help him—not by destroying trees or grass, but by tormenting the minds and hearts of men. We have heard of a beast to whom the Dragon gave his authority, and of a false prophet who worked wonders in his name. These temporary incarnations of the Evil Spirit have been thrown down. Now it is announced that the Evil Spirit himself will be restrained from exercising the power he has used against human beings. A chain will be put on him. And when we ask what kind of chain, the answer comes at once: he will not be able to *deceive* the nations as he has done. The mischief he has done is moral. He has persuaded men to believe that the Lamb is not King of kings and Lord of lords; that the visible is mightier than the invisible; that he himself is stronger than Christ. The nations will now confess—those who most strongly assented to his lie—that this is not so; that the invisible is mighty over the visible; that Christ is King, not Satan. It is not said his power has ended. He may be, and will be, set loose again. But there will be a stretch of years during which Christ's reign over this planet of ours will not only be proclaimed by a few here and there who stand apart from the world's affairs, but will make itself felt in the world's order, in its most ordinary daily dealings.

One objection to this doctrine, then, is removed by presenting the whole of it instead of just one side—in the Apostle's words rather than our own. You think men are already far too prone to imagine a state of lazy happiness, in which all the fruits of the earth fall at our feet without the labor of heads and hands, in which there is no need of justice, government, or self-sacrifice because everything comes to everyone spontaneously. You think this dream, whether called a dream of heaven or of earth, has weakened thought, courage, manhood, and all the virtues we most prize. The Apostle agrees with you. He declares that the Lamb who sacrificed Himself for human beings displayed the truest, highest, most heavenly state. That spirit who has deceived men with the idea of some good different from and opposed to this—who has held up a vision of selfish enjoyment—the Apostle regards as the great enemy and destroyer of the race. And the thousand years he describes are precisely years in which the earth gains new life, strength, and capacity, just because men are not so much a prey to that delusion as they once were; because a wholly different standard is set before them; because they confess themselves to be under a different law.

But can we accept this idea of a great moral change if we suppose it is caused by a sudden descent of Christ to the earth? I believe, my brethren, that this whole book has been telling us *how* the Apostle connected a moral change in the world with a descent of Christ to the earth. The true Lord of the world showed Himself to the world in poverty and humiliation, in acts of mercy and power, in dying the death of the cross. That was His descent to the earth. And He who descended also ascended, that He might fill all things. Death could not hold Him. He was proclaimed to Jews and heathens as the Conqueror of death, the Son of God, and the Giver of the Divine Spirit to men. Whether He was so or not was to be settled in battle. This book records that battle. Jerusalem, the capital of one half of the old world, and Rome, the capital of the other half, were the fields where it was fought. Other explanations may be given of the outcome. I accept this one: that mortal power was shown not to be supreme over the earth and man; that the power opposed to brute power was vindicated. Christ's descent to the earth, for which all ages had been preparing, was the beginning of this triumph; if He is the Son of God, all that followed was the necessary result of His appearing. The thrones of the earth were shaken to their center so that it might be known who held the highest throne, to whom all the kings of the world owed homage. This manifestation, or appearing, of Christ in the glory of His Father and of the angels was what the Apostles looked for; and this the last of the Apostles was permitted to see through the clouds and darkness that covered the world in his day. But if you ask, not for a manifestation of Christ's royal glory, but for another descent like the one into the manger, I can find no trace of it anywhere—certainly not in this passage about the Millennium, where people have most suspected it. For read the next words.

II. "And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the Word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years." Surely, taking these words as they stand, they do not describe a descent of Christ to earth, but an ascent of those who had been beheaded for witnessing to Christ, so they might reign with Him. I do not believe that those who cling with the deepest and truest faith to the idea of a millennium—those to whom it is a strength on their pilgrimage through the world and a comfort under the weight of its evil—would be shaken for more than a moment by noticing this difference, startling as it looks. I am satisfied that what they really mean by a reign of Christ on earth is exactly what the Apostle means, and that if they could give a clear account of their own thoughts and hopes, they would find his words far more satisfying than their own. At first it might distress them greatly to suggest that *they* had put off to a distant future a millennium that *he* believed the world was about to enter in his own day. And if such a reading of his words meant losing any real hope they have held about the future of the earth or of mankind, I would be very slow to offer it, because I would suspect it was false. I am sure the expectations the Bible holds out to us are brighter, not dimmer, than our own; that they include all anyone has imagined; and that the business of every teacher is to strengthen and deepen them, not weaken them. But it seems to me that this passage not only becomes more consistent with the rest of this book and of the New Testament if we understand it of the ages during which the Gospel was establishing itself in the various parts of the Roman Empire, but that by understanding it so, the difficulty that has perplexed so many minds—about the connection between each man's future state after death and the future state of the world at large—is removed, and a brilliant light is thrown on both.

That a vision of the souls of those *beheaded for the witness of Christ* must refer to those who have died, not those who escape death, no one can dispute. What, then, does it seem to tell us? That these witnesses of Christ—who cared so much for the earth when they lived on it, who labored to do it good, and apparently labored in vain, who told it of its true King and of its revolt to a usurper—should, when they were no longer seen, exert an influence over it that had been denied them before, working as the effective servants of Him who gave His life for the world's redemption. This is their high reward, exactly the reward our Lord held out to them in His parable. The one who used the pound well and made it five pounds was to rule over five cities; the one who used the two well and made another two was to rule over two cities. No idleness, no luxurious indulgence was offered them; they would enter into the joy of their Lord; they would have the delight of knowing more and more of His purposes and working more and more in line with them. They would be freed from the miserable vanity and selfishness that had hampered and disappointed their efforts here; they would understand their own fields of labor and cooperate with all who were assigned other fields; they would live as He lives and work as He works, for the good of His subjects; they would judge, as He judges, between right and wrong, between pure and impure.

And here is the distinction between these true servants of God and those who served not Him but His enemy: "The rest of the dead lived not again till the thousand years were finished." No such reward was prepared for them. They had chosen the wages of sin and selfishness, and those wages were death. That is what we are told. I accept these words and those that follow just as they are written. They may conflict with some of our notions about the future. I cannot help that. It is a subject on which our understandings make all sorts of crude, ignorant guesses. If we want a revelation to scatter our darkness, let us be thankful one is given.

"This," we are told, "is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy are they that have part in it." Who, then, have part in it? We have heard the definition of them, and it is surely one that does not *exclude* the first ages of the Christian Church. Our first and most natural thought might be that it refers especially to the times when men were *beheaded for the testimony of Jesus*. So suppose we consider what actually happened on the earth in the centuries after the one in which the Apostles lived. We usually say that in those centuries the Gospel made its way into countries where Greek, Syrian, Egyptian, Celtic, or Gothic idolatry had prevailed. But what do we mean by this phrase? Do we mean that one set of opinions replaced other sets of opinions? If that is all we mean, unbelievers ask, and we are forced to ask ourselves, was the world any better for the change? Was there not as much evil done in the name of Christianity as had been done in the names of the false gods? But when we have worn ourselves out with this thought, there rises before us the clear certainty of moral good and physical changes brought about in the earth—brought about directly by Christian agency. We see—no startling facts on the other side, and no false show of fairness, can keep us from seeing—that we are entering a new stage in the history of our planet. The whole religious scheme that had been bound up with the politics, habits, and amusements of the various nations passes away. Principles once contradicted everywhere in the world, still at odds with its practice, gradually force themselves on men's acceptance as truths. Much as they are disregarded, they more and more prove themselves to be laws that must govern somewhere and ought to govern everywhere. That idea of self-sacrifice, which runs counter to every inclination of every human mind, enthrones itself in human minds as the effective principle—the one thing that can accomplish what nothing else can. In some marvellous way the cross wins recognition from emperors and kings who look as though they must think it the most contemptible of all signs. How do they come to feel its power? By trying their swords against it, by testing whether swords and stakes can put out the confession of it. Those ages therefore exactly match the first part of the description in this chapter. No royal decrees, no acts of priests, will explain the change taking place. It is a change at the very heart of society. The demon is forced to release his grip on minds and spirits that had once recognized him. The new life of the thousand years affects government, education, manners, the cultivation of the soil. But it advances silently, mysteriously, in defiance of appearances. You must study it over the span of centuries to see how complete it is. You must see how the toppling of one established corruption after another shows the permanence of the spiritual rule under which the earth has been brought.

And what is the character of that spiritual rule? We sometimes say nothing is more deceptive than the dream of fame after death. The claim is well founded, for every selfish anticipation is full of delusion. But is there anything more real, more undoubted, than *influence* after death? How it was felt in those ages we all know. The benefactor of a neighborhood was regarded as the saint who, after his death, went on blessing that neighborhood. The tilling of the land is dear to him; he gives healing power to the springs. But were not those ideas full of superstition? Do I think the Bible endorses such superstitions merely because they may have had some good effects? I believe men's thoughts about these saints and this government were full of superstition. I believe the Bible endorses no superstition. I believe no superstition has good effects, only evil ones. And for that reason I do not confuse the thoughts with the reality they pointed to and testified about. This is the mistake of the philosophers who talk grandly about certain ideas that prevailed in certain periods. If by "ideas" they mean men's notions and conceptions, they must canonize very mischievous and dishonorable fancies under that name. But if by "ideas" they mean laws, principles, truths that are not of today or yesterday, then they will admit with me that men's doctrines about departed saints may have pointed to a real rule those saints exercised, of which men were aware in many ways, though they could not reduce it to order and often made it an excuse for shameful idolatry. For, let me say it again and again, this power, if it is of the same nature and quality as the power from which it comes, cannot act on men as if they were stones, or trees, or even mere animals. It must speak to their understandings, affections, and consciences; it must appeal to them as free, responsible creatures. May it not, then, be a great help to us in studying the facts of the world's history—including men's apprehensions about themselves and the powers surrounding them—if we simply adopt the Apostle's statement; if we suppose this dominion of the departed over the earth's condition and destiny is joined, by a Divine and providential link, to the dominion of Him who was the firstborn from the dead, the head of many brethren?

Blessed and holy indeed, if this is so, is the first resurrection and those who share in it. They have passed through one death in the dear power of Him whom that death could not hold. The second death, the death that overtakes the self-seeker, has no power over them, as it had none over Him. His Spirit bore witness with their spirits that they were sons of God, and therefore that their lives, in one world or another, were to be spent in the service of men. And have they not been joined by all whom the same Spirit has taught the same lesson? Do we not know what their occupations must be? Truly the occupations of heavenly creatures, because devoted to helping and comforting those who are walking, and often losing their way, on earth. A light falls on a page of a book—someone seems to be showing you its true meaning. Why not the one who wrote it?—who perhaps understood his own words only imperfectly when he set them down, but who has learned their meaning since. A room brings back the memory of faces once seen there, of voices once heard—why may not those faces be looking at us, those voices giving us reproofs and consolations? If we thought so, we would care little for false messages from the dead; the real ones would be infinitely precious and awful. If we thought so, we would truly feel that the reign of the saints is not yet over—though perhaps a higher reign than theirs has been revealed to us.

For we are told of an end to the thousand years.

III. "And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever."

To those who see the Millennium as the great climax of all human history, this prospect of a dark ending to it—of an overthrow of all its rare happiness—must be very frightening. They naturally shrink from the vision of Satan let loose on the world again, of wild tribes gathered from the ends of the earth to destroy a city where saints had set up their throne. But to those who see this Millennium as the effect of Christ's Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, of the gift of the Spirit, of His victory over Jewish and Heathen enemies, over the rebels of Jerusalem and the tyrants of Rome—to those who regard the Millennium as a real reign, over the earth He had redeemed, of those who believed in Christ, fought on His side, and died in His cause; to those who see it as a state in which this government was making itself felt, but felt by people who kept throwing off its yoke, misunderstanding its nature, and using their acknowledgment of it as an excuse for superstition and crimes; to those who take it as the true explanation of that life-in-death of Christendom which we read of in the records of the modern world; to those who therefore regard it as something immeasurably better than the condition of the old world, and more than any state of mere repose and enjoyment could be, yet immeasurably short of what God's redemption and His promises would lead them to hope for in the end—to these the announcement of a catastrophe that would shake this order, so blessed and so little acknowledged, is a help in interpreting the past and a warrant for confidence in the future. And when we consider the nature of the disaster said to fall on the camp of the saints and the beloved city, the prophet's intention again comes out into light and clearness beside the well-known facts of history. What do those wild invasions mean—the hordes of Huns and Avars, and the Tartar armies under Genghis Khan and Timur, who found a garden before them and left a wilderness behind? They called themselves scourges of God; they believed they had a Divine commission. How did that thought come into their minds? What was their role? They disrupted the civilization and order that had gradually been establishing itself in the world; they seemed to say there was no such thing as lawful government, no sacred yoke of customs and traditions. Sheer force of numbers, sheer strength of arm, apart from all that had turned multitudes and swords into servants of order, seemed once more to prove itself supreme. Yes—and why? So that nations which had sunk into a monotony of customs, laws, and traditions; which had forgotten how these had come to be and what gave them their stability and authority; which had corrupted civilization into mere indulgence, and turned belief in an invisible world into a mere tool for propping up the corruption and tyranny of the visible—so that these nations might be roused to remember what they were and how far they had fallen; that they might learn by bitter experience that selfishness is the author, not of government, but of Anarchy; that the forms, graces, and blessings of civil life are not to be sacrificed to the Devil, as though they came from him, but laid on God's altar, because they are His. Satan is let loose in the strictest sense, so that Satan may be overthrown. That dominion of the upper world over the lower is set at naught so that men may see how real it is, and what a lie society becomes when it ignores the relation between those two worlds and tries to make an earth that is self-sufficient.

That, I take it, has been men's great crime from the beginning. The Tower of Babel set the precedent for it; all the despotisms of the old world were its development; and it is what has made the Church of Christ, the beloved city of the later ages, fouler and more debased than the Jerusalem of earlier ages. That the attempt to put a visible hierarchy in place of an invisible one is denounced in the most terrible sentences of this book, I believe as strongly as those who would simply turn Babylon into papal Rome, or who would deny there has been any Church of Christ, any Communion of Saints, except in some small scattered communities, which they then have to endow with an ideal purity belonging to none of the churches we read of in the apostolic letters.

Take Babylon to represent an evil principle of society that appeared again and again in the old world, and has appeared again under more fearful and complicated conditions in the new; take the holy city to be indeed the Christendom of which we, and all the baptized nations, are members; take the millennial state to represent that new kingdom into which we have been brought—and then all the calamities that have befallen mankind, from the invasions of the wild Gog and Magog hordes on the outskirts of civilization, and from the mobs left untended in particular lands, hold the most fearful lesson and warning for us. And yet they also hold the blessed promise that the borders of the holy city will be widened to receive the very races that have threatened its existence, and that Satan, the common deceiver of all times and lands, will at last be cast into the lake of fire, where the beast and the false prophet—the tyrannical and idolatrous systems of the old world—have already been sent.

And so we are prepared for the vision that closes this chapter.

IV. "And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."

A great white throne, and He who sat on it, before whom *heaven and earth* fled away, and there was no place for them. Remember, it was *heaven* as well as *earth*. If you suppose these words speak of a destruction of the earth, you must suppose they speak of a destruction of the heavens too. If one meaning is impossible, do not contradict everything we have been reading and hearing in this book by imagining the other. Yet the vision is strictly true. In the vision of God Himself all things must disappear—the saints who govern as much as those who are governed. In that perfect light all alike seem lost; *no place is found for them*. And yet it is that very light which brings everything into view. Each one, small and great, stands out clearly and distinctly when He is revealed. Vague thoughts haunt us of great judgments on the world at large in which we individually are forgotten. Or we grow indifferent to the world, thinking only of ourselves and what will become of us. In this Divine light there is no such confusion. God loves the world—how can we separate ourselves from it? God has made each of us a conscious being—how can we lose that being in the vastness of any society? It is a judgment between life and death. Have you chosen life? Have you chosen death? That question reaches every man, whether buried in the sea or in the grave. It reaches, St. John says, into the very depths of hell. And life, he says, conquers. Death and hell are cast into the lake of fire.

Does that mean, my brethren, that by some change of circumstances, some arbitrary decree of God, evil stops bringing its curse and doom—that a time begins when God no longer judges? I can imagine nothing so frightful as that. Evil can never be less accursed until good becomes less blessed. To ask God not to judge is to ask for utter destruction to ourselves. God's victories are victories over the will of men. You and I can only be saved from curses and punishments by being saved from sin. God sent His Son to deliver us from that. If death and hell are cast into the lake of fire, it is because He has done His work; because He has seen the travail of His soul and been satisfied.

## LECTURE XXI. THE NEW HEAVEN AND THE NEW EARTH.

*The passage:* John saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first ones had passed away and there was no more sea. He saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride prepared for her husband. A great voice announced that God's dwelling is now with men: He will live with them, they will be His people, and He will wipe away every tear; death, sorrow, crying, and pain will be gone. The One on the throne said He makes all things new, that these words are true and faithful, that it is done, and that He is the beginning and the end. He will freely give the thirsty the water of life; whoever overcomes will inherit all things and be His son. But the fearful, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and liars will have their portion in the lake of fire, which is the second death. Then one of the seven angels with the seven last plagues showed John the bride, the Lamb's wife: the holy city descending from God, radiant with God's glory, bright like a jasper stone clear as crystal, with a great high wall, twelve gates with twelve angels and the names of the twelve tribes of Israel written on them (three gates on each side), and twelve foundations bearing the names of the twelve apostles. The angel measured the city with a golden reed: it lay foursquare, its length, breadth, and height equal, twelve thousand furlongs, and its wall a hundred and forty-four cubits. The wall was jasper, the city pure gold like clear glass, the foundations set with twelve kinds of precious stones, the twelve gates each a single pearl, and the street pure transparent gold. There was no temple, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple; no need of sun or moon, for God's glory lights it and the Lamb is its light. The saved nations walk in its light, kings bring their glory into it, its gates are never shut because there is no night, and nothing unclean or false enters it—only those written in the Lamb's book of life.

Before the vision of the great white throne and the One who sat on it, heaven as well as earth had fled away. In that perfect light there seemed for a while to be no place for the spiritual world any more than the material one. But soon that glory, which had cast everything into shadow, brought each thing into full view. The dead, small and great, stood forth; the sea gave up her dead; the thoughts of every person's heart came into judgment. Each one knew what he was. Death and life stood out in dreadful contrast. And death and hell "were cast into the lake of fire; this is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire."

Those last words strike one as a very terrible ending to the vision. I believe they are very terrible; and yet, taken together with the words before them, they contain, it seems to me, an infinite comfort. Death and hell mean a separation from God, a denial and contradiction of God. The bottomless pit is Atheism—the condition of being without God. Here we are told that these are conquered by Him; they are cast into the lake of fire. That lake of fire is no longer regarded as outside His dominion, beyond the circle of His grace and love. It is His, to be used for His divine purposes. What those purposes are we have been hearing throughout this book—throughout the Bible, of which it is the climax. Our first thought is that whoever is not found written in the book of life—whoever has chosen death instead of life—must remain forever in that condition. When I reason about the nature of a spirit, arguing about its immortality, I can find no escape from that conclusion, though I feel it withers my energies as well as my hope. But God's revelation gives me what all my speculations cannot. I know that He can act upon spirits; I know that He can and does raise them out of death. I know that the process of rising out of death into the awareness of life is, and must be, agonizing. I know that when a prodigal is coming to himself, his conscience passes through a fire whose intensity none but God knows, though the man knows something of it. If I am told that whoever lacks life is not left in that utter wretchedness, but is cast into a lake of fire—if I am told that death, hell, and whatever divides us from God is cast into that same lake—may I not accept this as a message from above that meets all the needs, fears, and longings of my heart? Must I set up the poor measure of my own intellect against the word of God, merely because that word brings me, as it always does, the most divine consolation in the midst of the most divine warnings?

I am not anxious to answer the argument that such a hope dangerously encourages wrongdoers. The same charge has been made in every age against the teaching that man is justified by faith and not by his own deeds or merits—and rightly made, if the faith is not in a living God who frees the conscience from the guilt, burden, and power of sin, but only in a God who merely cancels the just and merciful punishment of sin. God can take care of His own cause; we take very poor care of it. Left to ourselves, we would always cheat men out of a Gospel, for fear it should make them careless about the Law. And we get the fitting reward of our dishonesty. Men are not able to keep the Law. Its terror has no power to make them obey it—only to make them hate it. They begin to keep the commandment when they trust the One who gave it, when they acknowledge that He is working in them to will and to do according to His good pleasure. Weaken that trust in any way; lead men to think that God is not the same yesterday, today, and forever; make them believe a time will come when He will change as we change—and just so far you are doing the devil's work. Your clever, worldly calculations do not make us better, only more indifferent, more desperate.

There is another assertion of far greater force, if it is taken rightly. We are often told that we must apply the same measures to the blessedness of the righteous that we apply to the misery of the wicked. Yes—and not only to their degrees, but to their kind and quality. If we imagine the misery to be merely material, we will imagine the blessedness to be merely material. If we imagine the misery to be spiritual, we will imagine the blessedness to be spiritual. If we do not tell ourselves exactly what we mean in the one case, we will fall into the same vagueness about the other. If we take all material misery to be an instrument in God's hand for delivering men out of the greater and more terrible spiritual misery, then we will take all material blessedness to be the result of spiritual blessedness. And so we will be able to enter into this twenty-first chapter about the new heaven and the new earth. For we will understand the old heaven to be what we picture while our vantage point is on earth. And we will understand the new heaven and the new earth to be both of them seen as they truly are in the light of God—the heavenly or spiritual as the substance, the earthly as the form or body that has been redeemed into its proper subjection, now able to display the glory it once hid. Think how the earth appeared to a heathen of the ancient world. His own land was the one dear, cherished spot in the midst of it, and everything else was viewed in relation to it. The earth was made up of many different countries, each with a different soil, customs, laws, language, and worship. Then think of the heaven! There dwelt the objects of those worships, the beings to whom the soil owed its richness or barrenness, who were the source of the varieties of customs, laws, and languages. This is the natural way of judging about Heaven and Earth. Do not call it heathenish—it is yours and mine. We start from what is nearest to us, and judge and measure what lies beyond by that standard. Yet we are driven to admit something we cannot see, which nevertheless has power over us and touches us in a thousand ways. What it is we can only guess. The things we do see, especially those objects over our heads that influence all we do in such marvelous ways, shape our guesses. Heaven is felt to come before earth; yet earth appears to come before heaven. How can we descend from the unknown to the known, merely because the unknown seems to be the original? Must we not instead ascend from the known to the unknown?

The Jew was taught that he could not judge the infinite by the finite, or the original by the image. The unseen God spoke to Abraham; the *I AM* unveiled Himself to Moses. The care of the land, and the laws, customs, and sacrifices of the chosen people, were grounded on that revelation. In everything, heaven claimed precedence over earth—the government of earth. But could man be satisfied with the discovery merely of a Name, even of a Government? If he was the image of the One who bore that Name and exercised that Government, must he not behold his Original, must he not meet with Him? The revelation that the Apostles declared to be the necessary sequel and fulfillment of the revelation given to Abraham's family—the one the Jewish rulers and priests rejected—claimed to be exactly this. It claimed to meet the demands of the Gentiles, whose thoughts had risen from earth toward heaven in search of their Ruler, no less than the demands of the Jew, who had confessed that the Ruler of heaven was making Himself known to earth. If that were so—if it were true that the Son of Man, who came down from heaven, ascended up to heaven, and even while on earth was in heaven—then there truly was a new Heaven and a new Earth; and the Spirit of God might enable the purified eye of man's spirit to behold them.

Such a vision was granted to the last Apostle, for his own sake and for ours. It was the result and reward of all those visions of conflict that had come before. That divided heaven of the ancient world had passed away. The narrow heaven of the Jew, still mingled with earth and yet separate from earth, had passed away. This was the Heaven of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—of God dwelling in His own perfect light, revealing Himself to all in the Divine Word, giving life by His own Spirit. Perfect distinctness; perfect unity. Each Apostle was appointed to bring out some aspect of the mystery. St. Paul, when he was carried to the third heaven, could only wonder and adore, not put into words, what he had seen. But it came out to sustain him in his own weakness; he could speak it in broken words when he cried, "Of him, and to him, and through him are all things, to whom be glory for ever"; when he preached at Athens about the God whom the people "were feeling after, if perhaps they might feel after him and find him, though he was not far from any one of them, since in him they lived, and moved, and had their being"; and more clearly still when he "bowed his knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family of heaven and earth is named," asking that God would grant the Ephesians to be strengthened by His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith, that they might be rooted and grounded in love, and might know with all the saints the height, length, and breadth, and know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge—and when, having made this wonderful request for them, he entrusted them to Him who could do "exceedingly abundantly for them above all that they could ask or think." You see how, in this act of adoration, heaven and earth inevitably meet; how impossible it was for St. Paul to enter into the glory of the higher without seeing a new glory resting on the lower. And it was an earth in which there was *no more sea*—no more necessary separation of families, tribes, and tongues; yet no confused mingling of them into a huge Babel despotism. Pentecost had established the fellowship that Babel had counterfeited. All were one in the true Head of the body. One Spirit broke down the barriers of language so far as they destroyed the intercourse of spiritual beings, and upheld the variety of tongues so far as they witnessed to distinct gifts and callings, to distinct grasps of the one Truth, to the different cultivation God had assigned to different parts of His vineyard. And so now, at last:

I. "I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And 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 shall be their God." John had seen the old Jerusalem—the dear city of his fathers, the witness for the living God to men—vanish in flame and smoke. Behind it and within it was this other Jerusalem; the old walls and battlements had fallen down so that it might be revealed. It is not a material city standing on earth, yet it is joined to the earth as the old city never was—because it descends from God out of heaven; because it is truly the city of God; because it represents humanity in its true, redeemed, bridal condition, united to its everlasting Husband, shining with His brightness. The name Emmanuel, spoken over the cradle of the Child who was King of the Jews, is fulfilled. God is indeed with men. The New Covenant is a reality and not a dream. God has truly said to man in His Son, "I will be to you a Father, and you shall be to me sons and daughters. And your sins and iniquities I will remember no more."

II. "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are faithful and true. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son."

We are all too ready to split the different parts of this passage from one another. The thought of being freed from pain, sorrow, and death is very delightful. Even people who have never felt intense pain, never seen death very close to themselves, think that if only they could be rid of these things they would have the blessedness they are seeking. But those who have endured intense pain, who have felt a little of the horror of death, want something more. Why has the pain been sent to them? Why has death been allowed? They feel that pain is unbearable if it is not a discipline; if it is not meant to make them aware of their own spiritual existence, to make them long for treasures no eye has seen and no ear heard. For them the words about pain, sorrow, and death draw their force from the assurance that God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. They will see an everlasting Friend and Deliverer. He will comfort them. This is the great change they long for: freedom from pain because it has done its work and led them to the source and center of joy; freedom from death because they are brought into fellowship with the One in whom is eternal life. In His presence all things become new, because by His presence all things are restored to their true state—all things seen not marred, distorted, and divided, but healthy, perfect, and harmonious in their Divine Head. "I am Alpha and Omega" is the first note of the Revelation; "I am Alpha and Omega" must be its closing note. The loss of the Son as the ground of all things, and the loss of the Son as the goal and consummation of all things, has brought the earth into darkness, confusion, and death. Those who see Him to be the head and end of creation see it as God sees it—see it without sorrow, pain, or death. They have given up their independence; that giving up is death. They receive continually fresh streams from God; there is the fountain of life. They have overcome their desire to be anything in themselves, anything apart from God; they are content to receive everything from God and to find everything in God, and so they inherit all things. But they can never rise to a higher blessedness than the one granted to them when the Gospel was first preached to them, the one assured to them in their baptism: "I will be their God, and they shall be my sons." This state of being adopted as sons by the One who sits on the throne is the highest state human beings can reach. Christ died, rose, and ascended so that it might be ours; when we fully enter into it, we receive the highest bliss of heaven. But this is also the highest bliss of earth. Earth is taken out of the hands of its murderer. It becomes what its Creator meant it to be.

III. "But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death."

All blessedness—oh, when shall we understand this?—consists in acknowledging what truly is; all misery and damnation consists in denying it. That men disbelieved the good and gracious God to be their Father, that they count Him not their Father but their enemy—this is what makes them cowards; this is what makes them dealers with impure and evil spirits; this is what makes them corrupters and destroyers of one another's purity; this is what makes them trifle with each other's life; this is what makes them worshippers of visible things; this is the lie of which all other lies are the offspring. Those spirits which reject truth, which feed on a lie and live in a lie, are in the lake of fire. There is no way to describe their condition but that. A fire is burning in them that nothing can quench. As I said before, if we look at this fire only as reason looks at it, without Revelation, we could find in it only despair. When God enters, despair ceases. He is called in Scripture the God of Hope. Whatever we conceive of as being His must give us hope.

IV. For consider. "There came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying"—What new doom is this angel about to speak of? His task has been to pour out plagues. What is to be their consummation?—"Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb's wife." Here is the consummation of the plagues. This is what they have all been leading toward. By them the bride has been disciplined and prepared for her Lord; by them her seducers have been tormented and cast down.

V. What this bride is we have already heard. "And he carried me away to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the new Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God."

Brothers, I believe that we read these words and the ones that follow them in our childhood; that they then made a deep impression on us; that the impression seemed to fade; that we came to regard them as Oriental poetry with nothing to do with the business of life; that, holding that opinion, we dismissed them irritably, as though they were setting before us a phantom world that could never stir our longings or affect our lives; but that, nevertheless, without our knowing it, these early impressions do come back to us in the midst of crowded cities and the hum of earthly voices. When for a moment we contrast them with what we see around us, we begin to suspect that what surrounds us is the phantom world, and that these words may testify of the real one; that what we see is only of today, while this is the permanent and unchangeable; that what we see addresses our eyes and ears, while this reveals the proper home of those to whom the eyes and ears belong—the home we were created to live in, the home our hearts are striving toward, and away from which we must be weary and restless. Oh, that God would give us grace to think in this way of that city the Apostle saw descending out of heaven from God! And I believe He will. I believe that the more we read the history of the world—and see what political orders men have tried to build for themselves, and what promise of good, of real good, there was in them, and what disappointment followed; how each one recognized some Divine power at work in its origin and preservation, and asked that power to keep its members true and the whole society united, and yet what falsehoods were spread in the attempt to make these invisible influences bear on men's visible doings; how old societies fell through weakness, and those that rose in their place were forced to beg help from the traditions they had thrown away; how great experiments for freedom ended in cruel tyrannies; how men have spoken of great ideals and clung to them with earnest faith, and then sighed because the ideal was not real; how the nations of the earth and the Church of God are alike split into factions, each envying and hating the other; how yet the attempts at unity seem worse than the sectarian hostilities they meant to end—the more, I say, we dwell on such sights, the more this vision of an eternal city, founded on the union of God with man, will dawn on us through the mists of the past, through the confusions of the present, through our faint flickering hopes for the future; and the more sure we shall be that God has revealed to us what has been, is, and must be—that which reconciles all ideals, which binds the ideal to the actual, which the world, the flesh, and the devil are always trying to shut out from us, and which they have never been able to shut out; because He who is for us, whose name we are sealed with—the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, the God blessed forever—is stronger than those who are against us.

Yes, dear friends, our baptism was truly the witness to us that we are, every one of us, citizens of this new Jerusalem. And we may continually ask the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to give us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that we may know the hope of our calling and the greatness of our inheritance. This light will come to us through all the turmoils and trials that make us feel our need of it. In hours of unspeakable darkness we shall remember that there is a "light like unto a jasper stone, clear as crystal"; that this light dwells in God Himself and is able to fill the hearts and spirits of men. When we brood on the weakness and insecurity of every material barrier and defense, the thought of "that wall, great and high," surrounding the Divine City will scatter our cowardly fears and assure us that it can be in no danger. When, in the poverty and helplessness of those who seem to be Christ's champions on earth, we cry out for invisible friends and helpers, the "twelve gates with the twelve angels" will rise before us as no imaginary thing but a most real revelation. When we feel it is very grievous to be cut off from the past, to have left its living treasures far behind, we are reminded that "on these gates are names written, which are the names of the twelve tribes of Israel." When we ask whether then we are to be brought back once more to the narrowness of the old Jewish order, which met men only on one side of their lives, which was national and not universal, we are told that in the new Jerusalem "there are on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, on the west three gates." When we imagine that the Church of former days, the Church we read of in the New Testament, is hopelessly divided from the Church of our own day, this cheering message comes to us: "And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb."

Everywhere we find theologians going about with measuring rods to determine how far the city of God reaches. Each school and sect has its own rod, and each makes the boundaries narrower. It is some comfort to know that this task is unnecessary; that it was undertaken long ago, by competent hands; and that this is what came of it.

VI. "And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof. And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth: and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel." That measure of a man, which is drawn not from his fallen nature but from his angelic nature, is God's measure. The city that lies foursquare is His city. He knows its measure. Perhaps we shall be wiser and safer if we do not make much use of our own measuring rods.

But it is when we think of the materials our human fellowship is made of that we are likely to feel the most despair. We see the corrupt doings of other men; we find a deep root of corruption in ourselves. In stones dug out of the quarries of earth, what can we expect but continual crumbling and decay? Nothing else—if they are only dug out of earth's quarries. But men are not children of the earth; they are children of the light, children of God. When they know this, when they turn to the light, when they receive His brightness and reflect it, then this is the description of them and of the society they form.

VII. "And the building of the wall of it was of jasper: and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass. And the foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, a beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus; the eleventh, a jacinth; the twelfth, an amethyst. And the twelve gates were of twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl, and the street of the city was of pure gold, as it were transparent glass."

We sometimes hear of the wealth and extravagance of Nature—her countless forms, her beauties of color and light, which seem to have no eye to look at them. That wealth and extravagance can cause us no grief. It can only encourage us to reflect on the infinite love that has produced this variety of life. But have you never groaned over the wealth and extravagance of human gifts, which seem truly to be thrown away? Religious men have seen the waste and tried to reduce everything to a safe dullness and uniformity. All beautiful talents get abused and perish; why not hide them in the earth? Is that not the way to keep them safe for the hard Master? Oh, think of God's City! Each human character, each human talent, is a distinct pearl, out of which He would build it, with which He would adorn it. Nothing He has given can be lost: all is for use, and grace, and delight. All is meant to reflect a portion of His glory. Only remember that we are nothing in ourselves, that we are created in His image—and then you will understand how each precious stone shall contribute to the glory of the whole; how the purest human gold shall be like transparent glass, through which the Divine beauty shows itself.

VIII. But what has taken the place of that temple in the old Jerusalem, whose destruction was the sign that the age had ended? This has been the question of Christendom in every century since its fall. Can we not have some temple in some earthly city that shall be like that one, or that is essentially the same? Can we not have some earthly city that shall be like the Divine City—the capital of the new world as that was of the old?

This was the question of the early ages and of the middle ages; it is the question that must be settled in ours. The miseries of division are obvious; it is plain to most thoughtful men that none of the little sect-cities men have built is the city that lies foursquare, whose length is as large as its breadth—and that all of them combined into one could never make such a city. So they ask, "Has there not been a Christian order on this earth that had a center? Shall we not attach ourselves to that?" And I know no answer but this: "Oh yes; in God's name let us attach ourselves to the order that has a center. Or rather, let us believe that we are attached to it already. For this is the Divine description of it: 'And I saw no temple there, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.'" These are the centers of the society; from them its worship and sacrifices begin, and in them they end. Whenever we inwardly grasp that this is so—when we confess that it has always been so, only that men have denied it, and have put their own notions and fancies between themselves and heaven, and have tried to separate heaven and earth which God has joined into one—then the remaining words of the chapter will also be received in their fullness: "And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the Lord God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof." Just as truly as the sun and moon give light to the visible earth, so truly is the Lord God and the Lamb the light of Man, the appointed lord of that earth. The Church has existed, and does exist, to bear witness to that truth—to declare that God is light, that in Him there is no darkness at all; to declare that Christ is the Light of the world, that "His life is the light of men." Because she has borne that witness so imperfectly, because she has denied that God is light, and has blocked His light, and has made herself the sun instead of Him, the nations of the earth within reach of her influence have been cold and dark when they might have been living in the full blaze of truth and love. But the words are still true, and shall one day prove themselves true: "And the nations of the earth which are saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory and honour into it." And this because "the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day; for there shall be no night there." And this because "there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life."

## LECTURE XXII. THE BLESSING AND THE CURSE.

*The passage:* John is shown a clear river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb. Along it grows the tree of life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit each month, its leaves healing the nations. There will be no more curse; God's throne is there, his servants serve him, they see his face, and his name is on their foreheads. There is no night, no need of lamp or sun, for God gives light, and they reign forever. The angel tells John these sayings are faithful and true, that God sent his angel to show his servants what must soon happen, and that Christ is coming quickly—blessed is the one who keeps these sayings. When John falls to worship the angel, the angel forbids it, calling himself a fellow-servant, and tells him to worship God, and not to seal up the prophecy, for the time is near. Let the unjust and filthy stay so, the righteous and holy stay so; Christ comes quickly with his reward, to repay each according to his work. He is Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. Blessed are those who keep his commandments, who may have right to the tree of life and enter the city; outside are dogs, sorcerers, and the rest. Jesus has sent his angel to testify to the churches; he is the root and offspring of David and the bright morning star. The Spirit and the bride say, Come; whoever is thirsty may take the water of life freely. A warning follows against adding to or taking from the book. Christ says he comes quickly; John answers, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus." Grace be with you all.

The last chapter of Revelation has often been compared to the second chapter of Genesis. There is reason for the comparison, but, as I tried to show you in an earlier sermon, the reason is not that the Bible's final revelation shows a return to the state it described at the beginning. The man formed from the dust, who became a living soul, ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Everyone in his race has been eating from it ever since, and the evil has produced its natural results—strife, degradation, death. Meanwhile God, the true God, has been offering himself to the knowledge of his creatures; and those creatures, so far as they have known him, have been able to rise above the evil and to see that they were made for fellowship, for continual improvement, for eternal life. When people follow the tendencies of their separate, individual, Adam-nature, they fully experience the curse: they sink into themselves and are solitary even in the midst of society. Claiming their rights as those made in God's image, they have found a second Adam, who is not a living soul but a life-giving spirit. They have left the garden and all its delights as a state fit for infancy, not for maturity. They have seen that labour is better than mere enjoyment, that conquering the thorn and thistle is better than eating everything good and pleasant. They have learned that the way to the tree of life is through death; that when death takes the shape of the Cross, the flaming sword can keep no sinful mortal from approaching it. They see the river that watered the garden turned into a river of the water of life, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

So it is all progress. There is no falling back to that first condition which, in our weakness and godlessness, we dream about and long for. From the beginning God has been educating his creatures through material things, through signs and sacraments, through the experience of toil and sorrow, through the anguish of sin, through the horror of death, so that they might understand they were born for an inheritance that is incorruptible and never fades—for a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and truth. The son of Zebedee was one of the chosen instruments in carrying on this education. He was taught how all things were created by the Word, for in him was life; how he came to baptize with the Holy Ghost; how those who would see his kingdom must be born of water and of the Spirit; how he would be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so that those who believed in him should not perish but have everlasting life; how he would give living water, so that those who tasted it would not thirst again; how it would become in them a well of water springing up into everlasting life; how those who thirsted might come to him and drink; and how, when he said this, he was speaking of the Spirit that believers would receive after he was glorified.

I. Those who ponder these passages in St. John's Gospel, and connect them with all that his Epistles say about eternal life, will be ready for the opening words of this chapter. What was shown to John earlier was not a garden but a city, the city of God—that society of men and angels, that union of heaven and earth, presented to us as the new Jerusalem. And now, when we return to the symbols of Eden, it is to remind us that as mere symbols they have passed away, and that we have arrived at the realities they stood for. "He shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb." We do not need to find the equivalents for this language; St. John has translated it himself. We know that the Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, is this River of Life. We know that it does not nourish trees, seeds, and flowers, but the hearts, wills, and reasons of human beings, the mystical body of Christ. And in case there is any doubt about this, we are at once brought back to the city: "In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations."

The river of life is what quickens, strengthens, and unites a society of men made to share God's likeness. The tree of life is the one they behold, in whom they see the perfection of their own condition, from whom all living power comes down upon them. Throughout his Epistle and Gospel St. John has been explaining how the Son of God is the source of the various graces that all have received, grace upon grace; how he distributes his twelve kinds of fruit in the proportions and at the times suited to each society and each person; how he shades with his leaves those who do not yet know the taste of the fruit; and how he makes all the outward ministries of his Gospel and Church serve to cure the miseries that selfishness has brought on the nations.

II. "And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him; and they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads."

Men are cursed not because they eat bread by the sweat of their brow, but because they live under a government other than that of God and the Lamb—because they have handed themselves over to tyrants who separate them from the true Master. Where the throne of God and the Lamb is, there is no curse. When people understand that this is the kingdom in which they are living, and are allowed to know what he is—to see him, to become like him—there is no curse. Christ has taken it away. Christ has bound the children forever to their Father in Heaven. So again I say, brothers, we are not reading about some city to be set up on this planet at some distant day; nor about a city on another planet. We are reading of the city whose Ruler is Christ, and therefore of one whose citizens are all who, anywhere, confess him. Our grasp of its nature may be very poor; we must pray God by his Spirit of revelation to deepen and enlarge it. We ourselves, or others, may not admit that any such city exists at all; we must ask that the same Spirit will remove that unbelief. But the truth of things is not changed by our opinion of them. The Apostle was shown what is, not what is not. The muddy garment of decay, which keeps us from knowing our surroundings and ourselves, was stripped from him; and what was uncovered was not some private mansion for him, but that Father's house with many mansions that has been opened to us all, and in which we are all invited to dwell.

III. "And there shall be no night there; and they shall need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever."

I have pointed you to a few of the familiar sentences in which the Evangelist St. John speaks of Christ as the Life and the Giver of Life. I hardly need remind you of the equally numerous ones in which he speaks of him as the Light of Man, the Light of the World, the Light that shines in darkness which the darkness has not understood. All his other teaching is bound up with this. The condemnation of sin is that light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. The one who witnessed to the Lamb that takes away the world's sins is said to have witnessed to the Light, so that all men through him might believe. Our Lord heals the blind man because he is the Light of the World. His charge against the Pharisees is that they will not admit they are blind so as to receive his light. How well the text agrees with this language! Where the Son of God and the Lamb is, there is no night. Those who are actually confessing that throne and kneeling before it are not in darkness but in full noonday. Whenever a human being can scatter some cloud from a neighbour's sky, or show him his path across the earth more clearly; whenever the moral world is cleared of any of the mists that make it dismal; whenever the physical world yields any of its secrets to the humble and faithful seeker—there is a pledge that the visions of this book are not deceptions. And the more thoroughly we are convinced they are not deceptions—the more we act as if God's throne were set up among us, and as if we might turn to him sure that he does not want us to live in darkness but to see the light of life—the more we ourselves will move beyond the circle of night, and draw fallen men out of it; the more we will persuade them that they do not need the candle or the sun, though they may be grateful for both; that whatever brightness comes from either, he sends it, and we may receive it from him through whatever channel it reaches us. Why does he add, "they shall reign for ever and ever"? Is it not because there is an essential, inseparable link between light and rule? The sun and stars were the rulers in the eyes of the old Eastern sages; they are so for the English peasant. Oh, that sages and peasants might learn how much grander and nobler they are than the most glorious objects they can look at! Oh, that they might believe that the Light which made those outer orbs shine can shine inwardly in their hearts and reason—and that when it does shine, and they are willing that it should, they possess an imperishable, ever-growing royalty! The kingdom of darkness must pass away; the kingdom of light is the one Christ established when he rose from the grave.

IV. "And he said unto me, These sayings are faithful and true; and the Lord God hath sent his angel, to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done. Behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book."

We have met this testimony often before: these "sayings are faithful and true." Why should such repetitions be needed? We can all know why. You and I are constantly tempted to think these are not faithful and true sayings. We suspect they belong to a region that is at least half fanciful; we take them not as explanations of the world's parables but as themselves parables. And we adopt this view all the more readily because, among these solemn statements, there are others we suppose cannot be taken literally: "These things must shortly come to pass. Behold, I come quickly." My chief aim in these sermons has been to show that these sayings too are faithful and true; that if we read them together with the rest, their apparent contradiction disappears. The old Jerusalem did not pass away until the new was revealed. From the beginning of the world all things had been moving toward the revelation of him in whom heaven and earth are joined. That is the revelation granted to the Apostle John—to be, as he says it was, a blessing to the men of his own day, and no less a blessing to men of every later day. Those who kept it would understand what was meant by the earlier movements of the world, and what was meant by the crises and agonies they were passing through. More than that, they would accept the divine kingdom God had set up among men; they would walk in its light; they would not invent some wretched counterfeit of it, nor tear it to pieces. If they "did not keep the saying of the prophecy of this book"—if they treated these sayings as idle tales, or pushed them off into an imaginary future—they would be at the mercy of impostors who would try to do for the world what God had not done; of dividers who would say his Church is only a human creation and so may be pulled down by humans; of unbelievers who would claim he takes no care of his own earth; and of tyrants who would say that what he has neglected they may trample at will.

V. "And I John saw these things, and heard them." The language of the senses is the only real language—the only language—that presents spiritual things to us as they truly are, not altered and disturbed by our reasoning, not as though our perceptions of them were the ground of their existence. So it has been throughout Scripture, and the lesson is pressed home in this closing passage. And there is another lesson we need just as much. The Bible has been throughout a witness against idolatry—and, at the same time, a witness of every man's proneness to idolatry. We speak of Semitic races that had some special leaning toward the worship of the invisible; yet the teachers of that branch of the Semitic race which carried the weightiest and most enduring protest against worshipping the visible declare that their own people were ready to fall into it at every moment. The old Jewish Apostle, seeing and hearing the most divine truths, entering the very heart of the spiritual world, tells us twice that this temptation had not been overcome in him: "And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel which shewed me these things. Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God."

Triumphant and secure Protestant—you who scorn idolatry, and trample on those who fall into it—has it ever occurred to you that you might not be wholly out of reach of a danger that pursued the beloved disciple to the very end? Has it ever struck you that he might say to you: judge not, that you be not judged; be not high-minded, but fear.

Here, as I noted in an earlier chapter, there is no obvious change of persons. It is not by formal phrases and words that we are taught to tell the angel apart from the one who sent the angel. God himself enabled the prophet to distinguish them; it is he who enables us to distinguish them.

VI. "And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be."

The Apostle was told not to store up his prophecy as if its contents belonged to another age rather than his own. "The time was at hand." I do not want to press this statement further than he presses it; but when he is taught that he must draw our attention to it, we must listen. The proof of its fulfilment would not depend on those who understood and received it. The Judge's voice would make itself heard; the unjust and the filthy, the righteous and the holy, would hear it. How would they show they had heard it? The unjust will remain unjust. The sentence would go out: "You have chosen your path, stay in it. You love wickedness—feel and know what wickedness is. You love what is right, pure, and good—feel and know what the right, the pure, and the good is."

When the light of the world shines out fully, each person will be found to have the very thing he has worked for. The wages of sin, and the gift of God—each will be received in full. We keep imagining that this law will somehow be reversed, that somehow we will not reap what we have sown. This delusion clings to us all; we try to convince ourselves that God's grant of pardon licenses it. But God does more than pardon in our poor sense of the word. He gives repentance. All our attempts to measure and limit that grace of his are weak and impious. Yet it is the grace of turning us from darkness to light—not the cruel mercy of letting us go on in darkness, nor the impossible mercy of giving us the blessing of a light we hate. Good and evil were set before man at the first; they are set before him to the last. From the beginning the divine will has been acting on man's will, that he might choose the good and reject the evil. We pray—Christ prays—that this will may prevail entirely. But as long as there is resistance to it, so long there is misery. There has been no change in the divine order, no turning of anything into its opposite. We are reading of a revelation, not of a scheme. God is bringing all contrasts into the open, just as he is bringing everything he has made into harmony.

VII. For the old refrain of the prophecy comes back once more: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." The Revelation to St. John is the revelation of a Person who has been, and is, and is to be—of him who is the living centre of God's universe, in whom past, present, and future meet. Does such a revelation carry us off into some far-off region away from our ordinary tasks and duties? Listen to the next words.

VIII. "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie."

Those who remember God's commandments in order to do them; those who live day by day as if under the government of a gracious Father, and as if he were working in them to will and to do according to his good pleasure; those who shun their own evil and turn to him as the source of all good—these gain power over the tree of life. The Apostle's own words are stronger than the more grand-sounding phrase our translators put in their place. In one sense all have a right to the tree of life, since Christ has been set forth as the Life of the world, and has proclaimed himself, in death, the deliverer from death. What we need is not to claim a right but to acquire the capacity to taste and enjoy the tree's fruit. We need the power to give up craving what is our own, the power to stop eating the fruit that grows on our own poor stock. This power is gained in the daily discipline of sorrow, in the effort to do what has to be done, in the struggle not to do the things our evil nature prompts. For there is a constant urging toward what it wants us to do. Around the best man who is striving to live as a citizen of God's city live those who refuse to be its citizens, who would rather be animals, who prefer lying to truth. And the man who keeps God's commands cannot say, like the Pharisee, "I thank thee that I am not one of these." He is continually taught that he has in himself everything that has degraded them into dogs or sorcerers. Only by turning to the tree of life, taking in the food of its fruit, and enjoying the shade of its leaves, can he overcome these temptations, or hope for the day when the city of God will utterly defeat whatever in him or in the universe despises its invitation and lives as a stranger beside it. Thus, in the very middle of the description of the heavenly inheritance—of the highest blessings we can receive or God can give—we are still reminded of what is dark, foul, and terrible. If the highest state were one of mere innocence, with no knowledge of good and evil, this could not be. But if the countless company of angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, can find no more glorious object of contemplation than the Lamb that was slain; if the Cross is the true tree of life; then the blessedness the New Testament reveals is not one that can ever be separated from the memory of a triumph won over selfishness, and from the desire and hope to share in the battle against whatever remains of it in God's universe.

IX. "I Jesus have sent my angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star."

In this complete unveiling, nothing is lost from all the earlier revelation. Jesus the Saviour, born of the Virgin, the root and offspring of David, recalling all that belongs to Jewish life and the old dispensation; the bright morning star, whom the Magi sought in their faithful ignorance—the Light of the whole earth—all these names needed to be repeated, so that the Churches of Asia might receive the testimony sent to them about their King and Brother; that they might send it out into the world; and that we might receive it not as an heirloom handed down from them, but fresh from the lips of the one who is with us as he was with them. Only because they believed he was truly among them could they deliver his message to mankind; only while we believe he is with us can we deliver it. It is a grand, all-embracing message, meeting all the needs of men, both social and individual, reaching beneath all that is evil. "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst say, Come. And whosoever will, let him come and take of the water of life freely." If we could, in even a small measure, believe these words—if we truly owned that the Spirit of the Eternal God was himself speaking them to the thirsty and broken spirits of men in every part of the earth—if we heard them echoed by the Church of all ages—then we might be allowed, each in his own small sphere, and each by the strength and encouragement he can give his brothers in theirs, to take part in the work of breaking the chains that bind our race. And we shall be taught, brothers, in wonderful ways, that this power is given to the weakest, if only they will credit it to the Spirit and the Bride and not to their own might or wisdom. Very feeble words will enter into human hearts and seem to die, and when they have died will bear fruit. For the words are not ours but his, in whom is life, and whose life is the light of men. And this makes the sentences that follow very awful indeed to those who have dared to open their lips in delivering and interpreting the lessons of the Apocalypse or of the Bible.

X. "For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."

That this message is aimed especially at us, the ministers of God's word and sacraments; that it tells us he will plague us if we add our own fancies and theories to what he has revealed of himself and of his character and purposes; that he will hide his truth from us—the very truth that is our deliverance—if we rob those we are sent to of what they need for their deliverance: this I cannot doubt. I am sure that whatever is written here must mean far more than I can see in it. But I am also sure that it is unsafe to turn this language into a condemnation of any other man. I am sure that every man needs to ask that the one who spoke it will use it for his own testing and cleansing. If we do ask that, I cannot doubt that the next words will be dearer and brighter to us than ever before.

XI. "He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly; even so, come, Lord Jesus."

If in these sermons I have managed to show you that the Lord Jesus Christ did, in real deed and truth, reveal himself in the last days of the old dispensation—that the apostles and saints were not mistaken in expecting that an age was ending and a newer, more glorious one was to follow—then I trust I will have given you fresh strength and warrant for believing these warnings and for praying this prayer. Suppose the Apostle was disappointed—suppose what he looked for did not happen—then the same calamity may be waiting for us. But grant that the revelation of Jesus Christ, the Son and Word of God, was real for him, and it is real for us too. We shall then blame the darkness that hides the Friend, the King, the Judge of the World from us on ourselves, not on him. And then the clouds gathering about our own steps, or about the destinies of the earth, will become reasons for asking him to come and scatter them. And every mist that has cleared in the past will be a pledge for the future, because we shall recognise and accept it as a sign of the Son of Man—a token that daylight was breaking through our night.

XII. And the revelation to us will not be chiefly a revelation for us. It will be a revelation of the firstborn of the dead, of the Prince of all the kings of the earth, of the Lamb that was slain, of the brightness and glory of the Father. That brightness and glory will at last fill the whole earth. So, every day, to the one watching alone in his own sadness and despondency, to every one of God's Churches in the midst of the world's gloom, and to all human beings: "Come, Lord Jesus."

## LECTURE XXIII. PARTING WORDS.

*The passage:* May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

This is the last verse of the book I have been speaking to you about for some months; it is the last verse of the whole Bible. If we consider it, we may find that the entire message of the Apocalypse, and of the Bible, is gathered up in it.

I. When you hear the word *Grace* spoken in a pulpit, you immediately assume it has a technical meaning, and you cast aside — or try to — the associations you have with it in ordinary life. My friends, do not make that effort; it is not wise, it defeats itself, and it robs us of the deep, particular value the word carries in its Scriptural use. Allow yourselves to think freely of whatever has struck you as most graceful in daily life or in art. Do not leave out what is most exquisite in outward form and its movement; do not forget what you have called grace in animals or in some lifeless object. You will feel — you cannot help feeling — that whatever you admired on the outside is determined by something within. There may be grace in stone, but only because it bears witness to life. You speak of grace lingering on a corpse's face; you mean it still carries the impress of the living being you knew and loved. So you are always led back from looks and actions to something they point to. You are sure the grace that *appears* in them really *is* in what you cannot see — in the person who looks and acts.

Reflect on these simple observations, and they will help you, better than any exact definitions, to grasp how outward visible signs may signify an inward spiritual grace. And will they not carry you a step further? At first the grace you delight in strikes you as something belonging to the person you attribute it to. You notice the contrast between the grace of one person and the ungracefulness of another. You are inclined to call the latter common or vulgar, the former special or exceptional. There is much excuse for that judgment; to reverse it seems a glaring paradox. And yet ask yourselves whether you are not doing an injustice to those you most admire when you try to set them apart from the rest of humanity. Is it not a *human* grace you recognize in them? If you could not call it that, would it not lose half its charm and sweetness? So far as it is a departure from the human standard — so far as it is merely individual — is it not imperfect, is it not less gracious? When you call grace rare or uncommon, don't you really mean that few are free from those small affectations and self-wills that spoil their human proportion, that create a certain irregularity and disturbance?

There is, it is true, a flat, dreary sameness, an absence of all distinctive, strong, marked qualities, which most of us find more disagreeable than even excess or distortion. But you do not call that sameness *grace*; it is the opposite of grace, for it is an approach to death. You want the fullness of life; you would like to see every energy in its perfect play; you long for a harmony that comes from all the energies working together. Anything short of that you feel is a defect. Yet you do not expect it — you do not even wish for it — in any single one of your fellow men. You feel each person has some qualities another lacks, some powers uppermost in him that in his neighbors are subordinate, and meant to be subordinate. The best people are not those who try to be everything and do everything; there is an obvious awkwardness, presumption, and disappointment in such attempts. Those who commend themselves to you most are those who seem to understand most clearly what their own work is, who devote themselves to it, who best appreciate other men's abilities and callings, and most gladly make use of their help and service.

We see, then, how inevitably the idea of grace in shape and movement joins itself to the idea of moral grace, grace of character. But there is another use of the word, at least as common and obvious. We speak of grace as something granted by a superior to an inferior; we connect it with royal condescension. We are aware that these two senses cannot really be separated. A favor, we say, is painful, not pleasant, if it is given ungraciously — that is, if it is done under constraint, if it does not express the mind and purpose of the one it comes from. Suppose it is merely a favor to some particular person, given out of liking for one rather than another; we condemn it as immoral and refuse to call it grace. An unrighteous king, we are sure, cannot be a gracious king. His pardons and his rewards are alike governed by accident or by some outside influence; both are equally harmful to those who receive them and to society at large.

If you try to imagine a perfectly gracious government, you would picture one whose effect is to produce in its subjects the very quality that first existed in the ruler. You would think he had failed in his aim if he scattered ever so many blessings around, unless those blessings somehow tended to raise the minds and characters of those who received them. You are looking for a power that always addresses itself to the man in you, and in everyone who has a man's form and face; a power that keeps down and overcomes whatever is contrary to this. Now see whether the Scriptural idea of a kingdom of grace does not reconcile and fulfill what you have been trying to express in various broken phrases. See whether, instead of being hard and technical, it is not more comprehensive and more practical than our ordinary speech. When we are told we are brought under a reign or law of grace, what is meant? Are we not taught that a real Ruler, in whom all grace dwells, has taken us under His rule so that He may act on us to make us gracious? Are we not taught that He rules not only the outside of our lives but our thoughts, desires, and hopes — the very springs of our life? Are we not taught He is seeking to shape these into conformity with His own character and will, so that our outward acts, words, and looks may express what is gracious and not what is ugly and base? Are we not taught that He works upon our wills to make them obedient and to make them free? When St. Paul says we are moved out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son, is it not a kingdom of this kind he means? And does he not command us to believe that it is under *this* kingdom that we are living?

But, you will say, he also speaks of a kingdom of darkness. Was he describing only the kingdom the heathen dwell in? May not *we* be dwelling in it? My friends, do we not know we may? Have we not dwelt in it continually? Are we not liable at every moment to fall into it? For what is this kingdom of darkness but the kingdom of our own selfish, solitary natures? What is it but a world in which we see nothing but ourselves, and images of ourselves, in the heaven above and the earth beneath? We sometimes call it the state of the natural man — the man wrapped up in himself, apart from his fellows, apart from God. Scripture more often calls it the state of death, because all life consists in going out of ourselves, in receiving influences from earth and heaven, in having fellowship with earth and heaven. That state of nature, or of death, is always around us. Every man ought to know that if he were left to himself for one instant he would plunge into it and be lost. But every man ought also to know that he is *not* left to himself for a single instant — that a gracious kingdom surrounds him, that gracious powers have been acting on him from his birth onward, that there is about him an unspeakable Gentleness, Goodness, and Forgiveness; that it is striving to make him gentle, forgiving, and good; that he may yield to it and be governed and reconciled by it, just as he may rebel against it and live far from it. Oh, I beg you, never think that what Scripture calls the regenerate or gracious state is a strange, irregular condition meant only for a few, from which mankind is shut out! The gracious state is the human state; the selfish, deathly state is the inhuman one. It is the state we choose for ourselves when we throw off the easy yoke and the light burden. It is the state we sink into because we will not claim our human rights, because we prefer chains to freedom.

II. And so we come to the next words of the text, which give the necessary explanation of the first: "*The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ*." We are very apt to boil this name down to some poor equivalent. We say we live under a Christian dispensation, that we are within the reach of Christian influences, and so on. All such language is good if we translate it back into the honest, simple language of Scripture and interpret it by that; it is very bad if we shrink the Scriptural language down into it. The Christian dispensation is the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, or it is nothing. Christian influences, or the means of grace, are the gracious powers that come from Him, or they are nothing. And just as we are fond of reducing a person to an abstraction, so even when we speak of Him as a person we are apt to take only part of His name, not the whole of it — dividing or confusing what Scripture presents as both distinct and one.

First, the Bible tells us to think of *Our Lord*. We are to remember we are under One who has shown Himself, in the highest and fullest sense, the Lord of Man — Lord not merely of the outward arrangement of our lives but of our very selves, our hearts and inmost parts. We are to recall that He knows us as we are, knows each one's character, temperament, and makeup; knows our outward circumstances; knows our relations to one another. We are to recall that all these have been ordered and arranged by Him — that we and they were not made once and then set loose to manage as best we could without Him, but are under His eye and oversight every hour and moment. We are to remember that although each man has a right to say, and ought to say, "He is *my* Lord," yet "*our* Lord" is the better, the inspired expression; it contains the other within itself, and reminds each man that he is not alone in the world, and that the care taken over him does not interfere with the care taken over any of his fellow men. It would not be universal care if it were not individual; it would not be individual if it were not universal. Does that word *our* seem to imply a tenderness inconsistent with judgment and scrutiny? Brothers, no real tenderness can exist apart from judgment and scrutiny. We need the precious and the vile separated within each of us. All society requires that same separation. He who is our Lord must be our Judge. But,

Secondly, He is our Lord *Jesus*. That name recalls His life and work on earth. It brings before us the Child at Bethlehem, the Boy in the Temple, Him who went about doing good, the Deliverer of men's bodies from their diseases. It reminds us of Him who spoke on the Mount, who taught in parables, who sat with the disciples at the Passover Feast, of the agony in the garden, of the death on the Cross. In all these acts, words, and sufferings, Jesus — the Saviour, the Son of Man — was showing Himself. In all these He was displaying that perfect grace which can only appear in humiliation and sacrifice. In all these He was giving Himself up, contending with the Spirit of selfishness, redeeming our nature from its tyranny. Often, in contemplating His perfect human grace, men have been inclined to forget where it came from — to think of the Son as separate from the Father, forgetting that the glory of His life and work was precisely this: that He refused ever to separate Himself from the Father, that He did nothing without the Father.

Thirdly, the Apostles always speak of Him as the Lord Jesus *Christ*. They force us to remember that He was anointed by the Father; that the voice from Heaven declared Him the only-begotten Son; that the Spirit of the Father came down on Him; that in the might of that Spirit He wrestled with the evil spirit; that in the might of that Spirit He preached the Gospel to the poor, broke the bonds of those whom the evil spirit had bound, delivered the victims of death, gave Himself up to death, rose from the dead, and ascended on high. They describe the Christ as coming into the world to baptize with the Holy Spirit. They connect the Christ in Heaven with the Father's promise that was fulfilled to His children on earth. They speak of His triumph as complete when He could send out His disciples to preach to all nations that God in Christ had reconciled the world to Himself, that He had given His Spirit to dwell with men and rule their hearts and tongues, so that they might be sealed with the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, the one God blessed forever.

"*The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ*" takes in all that this Divine revelation contains. It supposes the disclosure to men of a Father who has sent His own Son to adopt them into His family. It supposes a deliverance from the tyranny of evil gods and of visible things. It supposes men recognized as endowed with spiritual capacities, created to bear the image of Him who is above them and to rule over what is below them. It supposes sacrifice established as the bond between the Divine and human nature, between the Divine and human life. It supposes the joining of men into a society whose living head is Christ and which draws all its life from Him. It supposes the gift of a Comforter to dwell with them, lift them up, and unite them to their Father in heaven and their brothers on earth. It supposes the need for a continual renewal of Divine forgiveness and Divine strength, so that men may not sink back into a worse death than the one He raised them out of, but may be witnesses for God and bring forth fruits to God. It supposes a grace suited to every special circumstance, sorrow, and temptation. It supposes distinct graces flowing from the one perfect fountain of grace, enabling each member to fill its place in the body, to do the work assigned it without intruding on another's work, to help the rest and suffer with the rest. It supposes a continual struggle between life and death, light and darkness, grace and unruly will, the Spirit and the world, God and the devil.

III. So that the Churches of Asia might throw themselves wholeheartedly into this struggle and be victorious in it, St. John says to them, "*The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all*." He knew that in one sense this grace was already with them all, and would be with them all. If it had not been surrounding them even while they were heathens, there would have been no Gospel to preach to them. St. Paul could not otherwise have told the savages of Lycaonia that God was sending rains from Heaven and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness. He could not otherwise have prayed for the Ephesians that they might not live as the other Gentiles do, ignorant of the life of God that was in them, cut off from Him by wicked deeds. The grace was there; the whole Creation would have withered without it; men would have destroyed it. But when he wished it might be with them, he wished that they might know its power, that they might live habitually under its control and in its daily blessing. For redeemed, regenerate men to live as if they had never been redeemed, as if they were only born of the flesh, was possible and easy — every day's experience showed how possible, how easy. To hold fast what they had received, to believe what was true, took constant effort. What would nerve them for that effort? What would keep them alert so they would not grow numb in the world's frosts and long for sleep as numbed men long for it, and die in that sleep? "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ" was the awakening, renewing energy. It was assured to them in their Baptism. When they ate the bread and drank the wine, there was a witness to its perpetual, unchangeable vitality, its power to keep and strengthen each of them in his own tasks and trials. They might receive it in their daily food. All nature testified to it. They might receive it through the ministries of father and mother, of wives and children, of friends and enemies. Crosses would be the sure pledges of it, since in the Cross it was concentrated, and from the Cross it flowed down upon men.

I said the Apostle desired this blessing for the Churches of Asia and for all the members of those Churches. It is better to speak that way. It is better to connect, as the Apostles always do, their most divine words and most astonishing assurances with the actual societies around them, with men and women they could name. So the Gospel becomes definite; so we are reminded that it is addressed to creatures of our own flesh and blood. But precisely because it is so definite — because it is meant for creatures of flesh and blood — it cannot be confined to any one region or time. If the Apostle had said, "*My* grace, *my* love be with you," his converts and disciples might have claimed the words as belonging especially to them. But he knew no such expression could satisfy any of them. He had to soar higher in order to meet their needs. He could say nothing less than this: "*The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all*." And that is the grace of the Son of Man and of the Son of God, of Him who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

My friends, for the last fourteen years I have been ministering this grace to you. Looking back over those years, I see cause enough for shame and humiliation. But I want to say it solemnly, and for the last time, that I feel no sorrow or repentance for any words I have spoken to you about the absolute and eternal love of God; about the full and perfect showing of that love in the only-begotten Son; about the redemption and reconciliation which His incarnation and death, His resurrection and ascension, have accomplished for the whole world; about His presence with men and His government over them; about the Eternal Spirit, who is One with the Father and the Son, and who works in us to guide us into all truth and to make us willing subjects of that love which has proved itself mightier than death and hell. I am deeply convinced that whatever I have said on these subjects has been too narrow, not too broad; that any words I have added to the words of Scripture have narrowed their freedom and the largeness of their application; that the Creeds and the Sacraments display the eternal goodness of God, triumphing over all that opposes it in every part of the universe, with a fullness beyond anything I have ever been able to think of or imagine. I mourn and repent because I have shrunk these testimonies by my poor conception of them. I mourn over the coldness and hardness that must often have made them seem unreal to you. I mourn that I have not shown more confidence in God's purposes toward you and toward all — more confidence that there is in each of you something that craves all good and protests against all evil. For the insincerity and heartlessness that have often kept me at a distance from those I might have helped, I ask your forgiveness, and the forgiveness of Him whose message I have marred. And so it is an infinite comfort that I may part from you not with words of mine, not with wishes of mine, but with the assurance that there is a grace which reaches deeper than all words and wishes, which can make its presence felt, which can make us gracious. I may say to you: "Friends and brothers, in the middle of your work, when you are trying to be honest and faithful and finding how hard it is; in your family circles; as English citizens; in lonely hours; when you are wrestling with temptations that only the Searcher of hearts knows; when you are trying to pray and cannot pray; when all things in heaven and earth seem unsteady; when you are crushed by memories of failure; when you look in vain for faces that once comforted you; in your trouble as in your prosperity; in the hour of death; in that day of Judgment which shall show us how closely we have been bound to one another, and what a Divine Power has been using even the feeblest instrument to draw us to itself: may the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen."