After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter. And immediately I was in the Spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and One sat on the throne. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald. 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. And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices: and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God. And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts 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. 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. And when those beasts give glory and honour and thanks to him that sat on 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.—Rev. iv.
The messages to the seven Churches are concluded. What they needed was the revelation of a Son of Man, dwelling in the midst of them, the Source of their illumination, the Judge of their inward state, their Purifier and Restorer. He who wrote down the words which the Spirit spoke to them, required more to prepare him for the crisis that was approaching. In the vision of a Prince of the kings of the earth, something was implied which all should desire to look into, which those must look into who were to be the teachers of their time, the prophets of another generation. If they were content to rest in the belief of a Friend of Man, they would bring Him down to their level; or else He would be too august and awful an object for their contemplation, and all inferior beings who partake more of their own weakness and errors would be dearer to them than He. So, when a great shock disturbed the ordinary routine of their lives, they would find themselves without a standing ground. The faith which for a time had elevated and purified them, would look as if it were only their faith or their imagination. All things would reel and totter about them, and they would reel and totter with the rest.
I. Therefore the Old Testament teaches us that the preparation for any great critical period of Jewish history, was a discovery of God Himself as the foundation of the nation’s order and existence. I have spoken already in these lectures, as I have often spoken in this place before, of that revelation to Moses of the “I AM,” as the one pillar of the law and freedom of Israel, which fitted him for his work. To-day I must speak of two other passages, which, apart from their own importance and interest, are necessary for the interpretation of the chapter before us. “In the year that King Uzziah died,” so we read in the sixth chapter of the Prophecy 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 we have the revelation, to a man sitting in Solomon’s temple, of the meaning and reality of the symbols which were there. That which he saw with his eyes betokened a living and spiritual world which he could not see, but by which he was surrounded. A king was dying or dead; a king was about to succeed who would bring idol worship into that very temple, and in whose days there would be an invasion of Syrians, and a more formidable invasion of Assyrians. The earthquake would be terrible; the nation would be shaken to its centre. The life of it would seem to have perished within; the sentence, “Cut it down,” to be coming from without. But the issues of events were not dependent upon Ahaz, or Shalmaneser, or Sennacherib. The permanence of the nation was not dependent upon the permanence of its signs or forms. There was a Divine King and a Divine order beneath all and above all. He was holy, whatever else was unholy. There was right at the foundation of things, however power might seem to trample upon right. God had His ministers surrounding Him, who set forth His nature, and fulfilled His purposes. If Israel utterly failed to be His minister, these would not fail. But there was a pledge in them that Israel would not fail, however its kings or priests might. The nation would live on, and do its work till the work was accomplished. Isaiah, knowing this, could be a prophet. He could speak to kings, and priests, and people, of their unbelief in this Divine King, and of the miseries which that unbelief had brought and would bring upon them. He could testify that there was a Will higher than their self-will, which would at last 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 manifested upon earth. It is therefore the more important to remember that his prophecy does not start from this point, that its ground is laid in the revelation of a King living for ever and ever. The other instance is taken from a later period of the history, from a far darker period. Ezekiel is sitting astonished by the river Chebar. He is a captive among captives. The Babylonian has laid waste his land. The capital is dragging on a dreary existence under a king whom Nebuchadnezzar has set over it. The temple of his fathers is soon to perish; and he is surrounded by strange sights, by strange forms of idolatry. Some of those sculptures with the character of which we have lately become familiar, may have been before his eyes; at all events they were not far from him. His people, already used to vulgarer shapes of Egyptian or Phœnician worship, would turn to those which the world’s rulers had fashioned, with a strange fascination. There were all forms of animal power, the lion and the eagle conspicuous over the rest. There was the god-king, with his keen eye for conquest and destruction. There was the chariot in which he went forth to battle, or led home his procession of captives. There were the wings which seemed to witness that he and these animals belonged to another region than the earth. How wonderful was the combination of all these forms! Was not the Lord God of Israel, He of whom no similitude might be made, overpowered, when to all these similitudes the rulers of the earth, the subduers of the chosen people, did homage? “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 banished Him from His own creation. They are parts of His own creation. They are bearing witness of Him one and all. The lion, the ox, the eagle, all set forth some aspect of His power and His work. This chariot in which the tyrant is sitting, the chariot which goes forth to scatter ruin and death, is not after all the conquering chariot. There are wheels which are higher than its wheels. There are wheels in the midst of which a spirit is moving. There is an order of life and not of death. And these wheels will at last drive over all that resists them. And Bel will bow down, and Nebo will stoop; and those that lead into captivity will go into captivity. And on the throne is the likeness as of a man, not of a brute or a tyrant. And as there was light at first unfolding itself out of a cloud and of a whirlwind; so this was the end of the vision: “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 of the powers of nature and art delivered from their inversion and restored to their right place in the Divine harmony—by such a vision of a Being at the centre of all, awful not from excess of darkness, but of light—was the solitary exile prepared to endure the tribulations of that time; to be a witness to His people concerning their idolatries and heathenism; to be the prophet of a restored temple and a regenerated society.
III. And so it is with the greater teacher, the latest Apostle. He had drunk in those earlier revelations, and needed a higher revelation that he might be able to sustain the pressure of his present and coming sorrow. For him in the isle of Patmos, as for Ezekiel by the river of Chebar, a door was opened in heaven. And that trumpet-voice which he heard before, awakening him to confess the Son of Man who was walking among the candlesticks, bids him come up higher, that he may know what is to be hereafter. That trumpet now, as before, is addressed not to his outward, but to his spiritual ear. Straightway he is in the spirit, seeking to know that which endures and abides, that which will not change when all things that he sees change. “And behold a throne was set in heaven, and One sat on the throne.” A throne there had been in Isaiah’s vision; it told of the King who lived on, when Uzziah and one king after another died. A throne there had been in Ezekiel’s vision. It told of a King who ruled in righteousness; when monarchs of Israel and of Babylon were ruling in unrighteousness, magnifying power above righteousness. St. John has greater necessities. The kingdom of Israel is gone. The temple in which Isaiah sat, which was in Ezekiel’s time to perish and rise again, had been finally doomed. And a god-emperor mightier than the Babylonian declared the world and its glory to be his. The old Asiatic thrones, the republics of Greece, the republic of Rome itself, had sunk beneath his feet. Was there any other throne beside his? Was it only his raised to omnipotence? A Person is here; real as he on the throne of the Cæsars, no abstraction, no phantom of cloud or air. But “He that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone.” It is not a revelation of crushing power, but of perfect, untroubled brightness, of light with no darkness at all. That which was coming forth in Ezekiel’s vision through the whirlwind and cloud is presented to the New Testament seer as the home and resting-place of his spirit. But he has lost nothing which was given to his forerunner: “There was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.” The sardine stone does not enclose its light within itself. The light must be diffused in different rays; there must be variety in the unity.
IV. I do not like to change the words. I feel how miserable are all efforts to make them simpler. I only want that we should all let them sink into our hearts and scatter the notions and fancies which linger there; the dreary conceptions of grandeur and divinity which we form for ourselves. We know not how much these are derived from the vulgarest associations of earthly pomp; yes, and of mere brute force. Be sure that we cannot rid ourselves of them by merely determining that our heaven shall have no resemblance to earth. It will have resemblance to earth; if you make one heaven which is utterly apart from earth, you will have another which is fashioned from the elements of it; and that is the one you will believe in. What you want is, not a heaven separated from earth, but one which shall explain its confusions and perplexities, instead of being constructed out of them; which shall show you how the forms of earth are the images of its forms, instead of being their archetypes. You want to have a door opened in heaven that you may not have an earth given up to oppression and cruelty. Keep this thought in mind while you read the next sentences in this chapter: “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 observed, as you have read the first book of the Iliad, how nearly the council of chiefs to which you are introduced at the commencement, answers to the council of gods with which it closes. There are disputes in both: that on Olympus you say is a glorified likeness of that in the Greek ships. I believe, in the main, the criticism is right. I would only ask you to consider what would become of all that you admire and ought to admire in Homer if there were no such glorified likeness; if you had simply the earthly heroes without the beings from whom they were said to be derived. You would lose the poetry, of course; I believe you would also lose the truth of the poem. The earth would become utterly dreary and bare; you would feel that the men could not be what they aspired to be—could not attain the stature which they felt they ought to attain—if the sense of presences superior to themselves and not far from them were withdrawn. But, if this is the truth, where comes in the falsehood? I have endeavoured to show where it comes in. If the standard of the council above is in any degree derived from the standard of the council below—if the poet, wishing to regard the gods as the sources of the law and justice which he finds among men, begins to measure this law and justice by ours—then confusion must enter. We are deeply grateful to the great singer for enabling us to perceive it; his simplicity and honesty are the greatest helps to our discovery of that which hinders him from being wholly simple and true; we are sure that God must have been teaching men who had such intuitions of Him as this Greek and his countrymen possessed. So much the more do we crave that He should tell us what He is; whether there is a heavenly order such as men have dreamed of; whether it is unlike all that is most precious to us in the order of earth; if not, whether it must needs partake of the imperfection of that order.
V. Those who are seeking for objections to the Apocalypse may consider it a great discovery that the elders who are sitting on the twenty-four seats recall an institution of the Jewish commonwealth. To me it is a most obvious and a most welcome announcement. Instead of those hierarchies of angels, with which the writers in the Middle Ages peopled the heavenly world, I find the simple and beautiful revelation of a government and justice, which is the pattern of the government and justice on earth. Forget the Centre of all, Him that sitteth on the throne, Him who is as the jasper and the sardine stone, and these four and twenty thrones bring in a polytheistic dream; a new form of natural or demigod worship. Unite them with that Centre as they are united in this vision, and there comes into the mind the calm feeling that these are ministers of the Perfect Ruler, who do His commandments, hearkening to the voice of His words; in whom is no caprice and disobedience, no striving with laws, perfect freedom and joy in the performance of laws. There is a craving in us all for such a revelation as this; we become impatient even of the highest discoveries of science when we suppose it compels us to reverence mere laws of the universe, and to deny that the laws may be personally administered. That there is nothing in one of these convictions which really clashes with the other, I think we shall all one day learn. What we need is the assurance that the raiment of these Judges and Rulers is white; that there is not on them a stain of indulgence or favouritism; that they have the golden crowns of wisdom and righteousness which they gain by always contemplating Him who is perfectly righteous and wise: then we may rejoice that they rule the earth, because they have none of the baseness of earth.
VI. In the midst of that council of Greek gods sat the Thunderer. A grand image, surely; not without meaning; but certainly with very little of awfulness. The Israelite was taught that the thunders and lightnings which came forth from Sinai proceeded from the Lord his God, who had brought him out of the house of bondage. He trembled; but he was commanded to trust in this God; those who trusted in Him would not be confounded. “Out of the throne” which St. John saw, “proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices.” The perfect goodness and purity will wage war against all that is evil and dark. But there were also “seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.” That consuming fire which is in the lightning has another purpose than one of destruction. It is illuminating and life-giving. It comes forth from the Divine Being, the perfect Love; those Spirits are filled with it; they go forth to quicken and inspire all voluntary creatures. “And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal.” The throne is not merely that from which commands issue. The glory of Him who sits upon it is to be imaged in His creatures; what He is absolutely and entirely, they are to set forth in their different measures and relations.
VII. And now, therefore, we have the fuller unfolding of that vision which consoled Ezekiel in the land of captivity. There, in this heavenly world, are the exemplars of those different forms of power to which men have done homage on earth, which they have accepted as diverse representations 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.” You have here types of powers which you have met with in the worship and the art of all the great nations of the earth. The first Asiatic conqueror reverenced the strength of the lion; it expressed to him the qualities which he most desired in the king, and supposed to be most characteristic of the god. The useful animals, of which the calf was actually, as well as ideally, the representative, have commanded the awe of the Egyptian, and not less of the Hindoo. The Greek, still struggling with these animal conceptions, yet rises to the conception of a human figure and countenance which transcends them. The flying eagle symbolized to the Roman his aspiration for universal dominion. In each of these cases the idea of what was greatest in nature and in the unseen world strictly corresponded. There was indeed, as we have seen in the Assyrian worship, a confused blending together of these different instincts; none of them was wanting in any tribe of the earth; it is but gradually that we discern which of them was most governed by one, which by the other. But the great revelation to the latest seer, that which was to prepare him for the downfall of his own country’s worship, and of the witness it had borne against all these idolatries, is that each had a meaning; that it was the perversion of a truth; that each animal form had its Divine significance, its celestial counterpart; that each of these had its eyes behind, which turned to Him who sat upon the throne, and caught the reflection of His light and purity; and its eyes before, which looked 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 we have the wings that lifted up the living creatures, in the vision of the old prophet, signifying to him that whereof there had been a dim sense in the Assyrian sculptor, that all things in creation must have a tendency upwards as well as downwards. There is a spirit which carries them towards God, as there is a nature which draws them towards earth. But here the downward tendency is overcome. They are continually ascending in higher circles; they have nearer glimpses of the eternal holiness and truth. The nearer the approach, the greater the awe; the greater the sense of distance. No ambition to climb, only to behold. An increasing discovery; an increasing adoration. To know truth in its diverse forms; to know it in its essential unity; to enter into a love which passeth knowledge, that it may go forth through them to the farthest ends of the universe;—here is the occupation, here is the aspiration of celestial Natures. But this beholding of truth, this entering into the joy of the Lord, does not exclude that other occupation of judging and governing which our Lord promised His disciples, when He said, “He that hath used his five talents faithfully shall have 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. Oftentimes it has been said in Christian pulpits, that heaven is but the continuance of the worship upon earth. Those who have found that worship on earth very dreary and unsatisfactory, have said that they should prefer any Greek Elysium or Gothic Walhalla to such a heaven. I think if we take St. John as our guide—if we accept his revelation as the true revelation—we may see a meaning in the assertion of the divine, and a meaning in the protest of the layman. All is worship there, because all are pursuing the highest good in contemplation and action; because all are referring their thoughts and acts to one centre, instead of scattering and dispersing them by turning to a thousand different centres; because each thinker and each doer is forgetting himself in the object which he has before him, in the work which is committed to him. But if the teacher supposes that there is any monotony of employment there; that any one grave, earnest task which has occupied the student here will be cast aside or broken off there; that any serious work in which men are engaged has not that which corresponds to it and fulfils it there; I would bid him consider well this opening of heaven to the Apostle, and correct by it his own fancies and speculations. The four living creatures, we shall find, are concerning themselves with all the movements and changes in the moral world; the very name of elders denotes that they are exercising the functions and faculties of judgment and direction over spiritual beings and over natural agents. Our worship must always be dreary, if it stands aloof from our daily life; if it does not interpret and transfigure that life. The heavenly worship is continuous only because growth in knowledge is continuous, and because all free action is continuous. In the many mansions there is room for every form of life; only the shapes of death can be excluded.
IX. I say, then, we have here the Christian Elysium, or Walhalla, or Paradise, that which you are all looking for when your thoughts are calmest and truest; when you are most tormented by the discords of the world around you, and of your own hearts; when you are most sure there must be a harmony without discords; when you long for scope to complete tasks which death will leave unfinished; when you wish to recover affections which have been broken; to know what you have been unable to know; to work bravely; to rest without ceasing to work. “I go,” said Hooker on his death-bed—and the words thrill through me more than all the ecstatic phrases that have been reported of such seasons—“I go to a world of order.” It was such a world—I have said already, and we shall find it more hereafter—that St. John was driven to seek by the tumults which were rending in pieces the world around him. Is Nero, is Vitellius, the King of kings, the Lord of lords? that was the question he had to ask himself. And this was the answer. He found that the kingdom of heaven, of which his Master had spoken to him as they sat in the ship, and to crowds of people besides him, was indeed a real kingdom; not far off in some distant star; connected by closest relations, by common pursuits and interests, with all that was passing here. It was much to know this; but he who knows so much must crave to know more. What binds together this calm life with our restless life? How can one be brought to act upon the other and to reform it? Will He who sits on that heavenly throne restore those children of earth who are trampled beneath the tyrant that is sitting on the earthly throne? These questions connect the vision of to-day with that which I hope to consider next Sunday; the vision of the book that was sealed with seven seals, and of the Lamb who prevailed to open it.