And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see. 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. And when he had opened the second seal, 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. 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. 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 the beasts of the earth. 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. 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 bondman, 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?— Rev. vi.
Much has been said respecting these seals. There has been great diligence in commentators to fix what seal was opened in one age, what in another, what remain to be opened in our own days or in days to come. As I find no times alluded to in the prophecy, I shall 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 any of our own for them.
I. The Lamb has been revealed in the midst of the throne, and in the midst of the elders, and in the midst of the four living creatures. The Lamb is said to have the seven horns of power, the seven eyes of wisdom. As He opens the first seal, the prophet “hears as it were the noise of thunder, and one of the living creatures says, Come and see.” This Divine creature we must assume to be the Lion of the previous vision. He presents that aspect of the Divine nature which we commonly oppose to the lamblike. That is not the doctrine of the Apocalypse. He that sits on the throne is fully manifested in Him who was slain. The power of the lion is as much his as the weakness of the calf. The question to be determined is this: Is the root of power, of that power which actually does rule the world, of that power which all shall one day confess, self-will or self-sacrifice? Does one of them or the other express the will and being of God? To that question all others are subordinate.
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.”
Another symbol is presented to us here which will be repeated often in this chapter. Man’s dominion over the horse has been as much to the Arabian in the desert as to the Greek of the Ionic city, the type of his dominion over all the animals, the sign and pledge that he is himself of a higher origin. The hero is educated by the Centaur; his own characteristic title is the horse-tamer. In the book of Zechariah, to which I shall have to refer in a later part of this sermon for another purpose—which, in some respects, is more closely related to the book of the Apocalypse than any other book of the Old Testament—there is a vision of a chariot with red horses, of another with black horses, of a third with white horses, of a fourth with grisled and bay horses. These are described to him as the four spirits of the heavens, which go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth. The black horses “go forth to the north country: and the white go forth after them: and the grisled go forth toward the south country. The bay seek to go to and fro through the earth.”
Such language belonged, I apprehend, peculiarly to the time of Zechariah, the time after Judæa had sunk into a portion of the great empire, and when it was rising again into the dignity of a nation. Zechariah had been charging his countrymen to rise and build the temple; he had been showing them how its ordinances were witnesses, how Joshua, its high priest, and Zerubbabel, its lawgiver, were witnesses, that not outward might, but God’s Spirit, is supreme. He had been speaking of a polity grounded on the opposite principle to this, which had its first home and its full development in the plain of Shinar. Then he passes to the vision of the horses which went forth into different lands. He could not, I conceive, any longer be content to think only of his own land as cared for by God, as watched over by Him. He felt more than ever that it had a vocation of its own; that to maintain its distinctness was the greatest of all duties, as it was the divinest of gifts. But the more he felt its pre-eminence, the more he was obliged to contemplate the other nations as having distinct callings, distinct powers, however these might be abused. They might not know the highest God, Him from whom all power came,—that was the lesson with which the Jew was to bless them. He could only do so while he saw every energy or faculty which those nations put forth—even if they made it an excuse for self-exaltation or for idolatry—as a divine energy or faculty, as a “spirit of heaven going forth from the Lord of the whole earth.”
When therefore the Lamb breaks the first seal, and when the Lion calls on the prophet to come and see what form then presents itself, I apprehend he gives him a light on the nature and issue of conquest, which he needed especially in his generation, and which every man has needed in his own generation. What meant those wonderful conquests of Asiatic monarchs; of the Macedonians; still more of the Romans, to whom all had bowed down? Did they prove, as they seemed to prove, that a Lion God was reigning; that power came forth from him; and that all were to be trampled under the feet of these white horses? 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 had been won; not for the Asiatic, not for the Macedonian, not for the Roman; not for self-willed arbitrary dominion at all; but for Him who was slain and who lives.
III. The Lamb opened the second seal, and there came forth another vision. “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.” A vision from which an optimist would turn away, but which a prophet must look steadily at, for it is the vision of facts. This red horse of tumult, of civil war, of mutual hatred, does stand forth before the eyes of men, does rise up in every time of the world’s history. I need not say how wildly that horse was plunging in the days after the death of Nero, and before the establishment of Vespasian. I think, too, that there is a significance in the living creatures who called John to contemplate the vision. There is a lion-worship among men; there is a calf-worship among men. The former connects itself with the admiration of mere conquering strength; the latter connects itself with prostration, degradation, moral slavery. Each is evil because it is a divided worship. The triumphant beast is reverenced by the consciously strong; the feeble beast is reverenced by the consciously weak. The strength becomes cruelty and tyranny; the weakness becomes meanness. The Lamb will raise men out of one as well as the other. And this miserable aspect of humanity, like that gorgeous one, is a step in the revelation of him as the 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 beast had the face of a man. We have here not a vision of war at all, in either of its forms, either in the grand one which it takes when we think of a Nebuchadnezzar, a Timour, a Napoleon, or in the wretched one when we look upon the mere rending in pieces of countries or families in some civil commotion. The images here are all of peace. The sword is changed for the balances. Men are studious about barter and exchange. They are tender of the oil and wine. And so they think that the qualities of the beast have all been thrown aside; they are humane and civilised. But, alas! for the manhood which belongs to this anti-brutal condition of society! The animal is gone; what has taken his place? The oil and the wine are more precious than he who uses them; what the measure of wheat and barley shall cost is more than the life and heart of those who sow and reap them. It is said that St. John heard those earthly cries—those notes of merchandise—from the midst of the four living creatures. What can that mean? I think it clearly means this, brethren, that we picture to ourselves a heavenly world which is not interested in the doings of the earth, which stands altogether aloof from it; that the heavenly world which was revealed to St. John enters into all the concerns of men, the highest and the lowest; is not indifferent to the needs of the most insignificant creature who feeds or starves below; is not indifferent about our sordid ways; but desires to raise us above the scorn of anything which is human, however low it may appear in the eyes of vulgar pride, above the reverence of anything that is inhuman, however splendid it may appear in those same eyes.
V. And as in the former cases the Lamb claimed the Lion’s strength and the Calf’s weakness for His own, so does He now emphatically claim for His own the face of the Man, and all that appertains to the nature which He took. The black horse and the red horse and the white horse 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.”
That living creature which had the wings of an eagle bids the prophet contemplate this ghastly picture. It is one which has oftentimes been contemplated on earth, with no heavenly guide to interpret it. Famine and Pestilence travelling together, and hewing down hosts of men before them; the violence of the sufferers aggravating the diseases which are preying upon them; the accompanying moral recklessness which the great Greek historian describes so wonderfully in his narration of the Athenian plague, and which has been noticed by all who have recorded such calamities since: here, surely, we have the pale horse with Death for his rider and Hell following after. That this should be the last of the sights which the four living creatures can present; that their work is accomplished when they have led us to the mouth of this yawning abyss; might be at first an appalling consideration. But pause a little and light will dawn upon you. This is the downward course of mere animal power. Its different aspects have been shown to us; each has stood out clearly apart from the rest: it is now exhausted; it has done all that it can do. If there is no power but this animal power—ay, though there be added to it that power of calculation, of reckoning the measure of wheat which can be got for the penny, of providing for the oil and the wine, which we attribute peculiarly to man—if this be the power of the universe, then we have reached the climax of its history. Then the pale horse and its rider is the last form which we shall have to gaze upon. Death and Hell have got the victory. Let us meditate that result well; let us ask ourselves fairly, whether the mere facts of earth, supposing all glimpses of some different kind of power be shut out, are not tending to this issue.
VI. I say, brethren, another kind of power; for merely to contemplate this power as raised to omnipotence, is not to remove the confusion but to make it hopeless. Do not suppose for a moment that the Apocalypse is repeating the old story of a trial between the Giants of the earth and a Giant of Heaven, which shall prevail. Farther still be the notion from us that it is describing the struggle between a Prometheus, who would wrest some of the Divine wisdom for the use of man, and a jealous Jove, who is determined to rule men, but not to share his counsels with them. No! understand it well. It is precisely with this form of omnipotence, with this conception of a Jealous will, and with all the religious and moral horrors which are thence derived, that the Lamb is fighting. So long as mere power, whether physical power or intellectual power, is that which men covet most for themselves, so long will they attribute that same covetousness to the beings whom they worship; so long will they find themselves hemmed in by cruel conditions and provisions which restrain the might that is working restlessly and confusedly within them; so long, in the effort to break through these impediments, will they destroy the freedom which they want, and create the tyranny which they protest against. And so long will all the legends of the world and all the histories of the world, only echo the same cry. There is a pale horse with Death for his 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 a creation of priests. Alas! priests have been shamefully guilty in preaching of Hell rather than of deliverance from Hell; so far as they have done that, so far they have violated their commission, and have been witnesses for any one rather than the Lamb who is the Conqueror of death and hell. But Hell is not the creation of priests. It haunts and torments every man. He may conceive it under one form or another; so far as he conceives it under a form at all, he takes away something of the blank and horror which surround the thought of an impenetrable solitary void, the home of a living, conscious, reflecting creature. Till a man throws off the coil of self, he cannot throw off this coil. The more he becomes wrapped in self, the more impossible it is for him not to have this pale death vision before him, and another following it which is to swallow up himself, his kindred, the universe.
VII. But though the four living creatures have fulfilled their task when these four seals have been opened, there is another which the Lamb has to open, and the vision which is then disclosed is altogether unlike those that have gone before. “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 limiting these seals to some particular period in the later history of Christendom, it has been possible to limit the description which is given here to some school or sect of Christians, who are supposed to have borne (and I doubt not did bear) a witness against the evils that prevailed around them. I dare not confine the words even to Christian martyrs of any age. I apprehend the vision which the Apostle saw was of all who anywhere in the generations before his own, or in his own, or in the later times, have believed that there is another power than self-willed tyrannical power, another power than what men worshipped in the lion, in the calf, in the human intellect, in the flying eagle—another power than that of death and hell; who, in all anguish and despair from within and without, have held fast their faith; have cried to Him who is holy and true to show that He is mightier than those who counterfeit His Majesty, and abuse it to ends which are unholy and untrue. From these in all corners of the earth has gone up that groan, deep or loud, for deliverance; which He who sits on the throne has understood, if none else has understood it; 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 imparted to them His own mind. The sacrifice was accomplished when the self-willed tyrants of the earth, against whom they protested, 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, or the fire, or the hemlock. Then first it became distinct and intelligible; then first it mingled in clear full harmony with all that had been ascending from those who had fallen in other lands or other times; then it was fully known by themselves that they had not been pleading for their own redemption, but for the redemption of the earth from its tormentors. And that was given them which they longed for most; the white robe of innocence; purity from all the passion and selfishness that had been mingled with their witness for God and their prayers for men. And the assurance was given that if they waited, the answer to their prayer would come.
VIII. Here is a 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 recognised 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 and tune with those that shake in pieces nations and fill men’s hearts with dismay and anguish. Since no time is spoken of by the prophet I would not introduce any. The description may suit many periods. It may have been realised by many in the days of Alaric, and of Attila; of Zinghis Khan, or Timour; when Constantinople fell; when Napoleon laid the nations low. Do you think it must point to some more distant day still? Have you dreamt that it must refer to a destruction of the earth? We shall see whether the Apocalypse leads us to expect any such destruction at any period; whether it does not tell us of a redemption of the earth, such as the saints beneath the altar prayed for. I believe that if you study the description of this earthquake carefully, you will rather be led to think of a still earlier fulfilment of it than those to which I have alluded; a fulfilment which enables us to understand better what they denoted. 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 not those trembling, yes, and falling at the very time when St. John was at Patmos, before the preaching of a few fishermen and a tent-maker? It was not earth that was moved only, but also heaven. I do not regard the revolution of the first century as in this respect an exception in the history of revolutions, but a precedent for them. There has never been one which did not try the faith and worship of men as well as their policy and government; there never has been one which has not proved how inseparably these are connected. And I believe there never has been one which has not demonstrated the falsehood of self-will, or arbitrary will, and the truth that all power is centred in Him who gave up all power and took on Him the form of a servant.
There are many excellent men in our day who will agree with me altogether in the opinion that the Apocalypse points to the deliverance of the earth, not to its extinction. But they will say that the great men and chief captains who called the mountains to fall upon them and the hills to hide them, were flying from the wrath of the Lamb. The prophet must therefore describe a manifestation of the Lamb, a manifestation of Him as the actual Lord of the earth. Assuredly he does: there is nothing in human language more evident. And there is no lesson, it seems to me, so important—none which 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. Oh, may the Spirit of Him who is faithful and true root and ground us in the conviction that the world never has been governed, never can be governed, by oppression and lies; that these have at no time whatever upheld its order, but have subverted its order; that whether they are throned by false religions in heavenly places, or seated by usurpation in the high places of the earth, they are cursed and doomed; that the very conquests to which they have themselves contributed—the civil tumults, mercantile frauds, plagues and famines, which they have promoted—have been their appointed punishments; that the cries of the weak and the suffering have been ultimately stronger than they; that the revolutions which have been most portentous while they lasted, from the crimes which provoked them and the crimes which were provoked by them, from the collision of human evil in its opposite forms, have been the instruments of putting down counterfeit powers, and asserting the power which is and which must abide; that all righteous men and righteous institutions have been proclaiming who was, and is, and shall be the ruler over men; that the full revelation of the Christ that is to be will be the confirmation of all the true human authority, and all the true human liberty, that ever has been; that He will prove the first to have proceeded from Him, that He will claim the last for our race as the reward of His agony and death.