And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. 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. 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. And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever. And he said unto me, These sayings are faithful and true; and the Lord God of the holy prophets 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. And I John saw these things, and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel which shewed me these things. Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God. 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 which 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. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. 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. I Jesus have sent mine 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. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. 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. He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly; Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.—Rev. xxii.
The last chapter of the Apocalypse has often been compared with the second chapter of Genesis. There is ground for the comparison. But, as I endeavoured to shew you in a former sermon, the ground is not this, that the last Revelation in the Bible is the Revelation of a return to the state of which it spoke in the beginning. The man formed out of the dust of the ground, who became a living soul, has eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. All the members of his race have been eating of it ever since. And the evil has worked out its natural results—strife, degradation, death. And God, the true God, has been presenting 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 perceive that they were created for fellowship, for continual improvement, for eternal life. Following the tendencies of their separate, individual, Adam nature, they have realised the full meaning of the curse; they have sunk into themselves; in the midst of society they have been solitary. Claiming their rights as made in the image of God, they have found a second Adam, who is not a living soul, but a quickening spirit. They have left the garden with all its delights as a condition fit for babyhood, not for mature age. They have perceived that labour is better than enjoyment; the conquest of the thorn and the thistle than the eating of all things that are good for food, and pleasant to the sight. They have learned that the way to the tree of life is through death; that when it takes the form of the Cross, the flaming sword cannot keep any sinful mortal from approaching it. They see the river which watered the garden converted into a river of the water of life, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.
All then is progress. There is no revulsion to that primitive condition which we in our weakness and godlessness dream over and regret. God has been educating His creatures from the beginning by material things, by signs and sacraments, by the experience of toil and sorrow, by the anguish of sin, by the horror of death, to understand that they were born for an inheritance, incorruptible, and that fadeth not away—for a kingdom of righteousness, and peace, and truth. The son of Zebedee was one of the appointed 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, that those who believed in Him might not perish, but might have everlasting life; how He would give the living water, of which those who tasted should not thirst again; how it would be in them a well of water springing up into everlasting life; how they that thirsted might come to Him and drink; how, when He said this, He spake of the Spirit which they that believed on Him should receive after He was glorified.
I. Those who consider these passages in St. John’s Gospel, those who connect them with all that is said of eternal life in his Epistles, will be prepared for the first words of this chapter. That which was shown to John before was not a garden, but a city, the city of God; that society of men and of angels, that union of heaven and earth, which has been presented to us under the name of the new Jerusalem. And now, when we return to the symbols of Eden, it is that we may be reminded that as mere symbols they have passed away; that we have come to the realities which were denoted by them. “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 have not to find the equivalents for this language; St. John himself has translated it. We know that the Spirit who proceedeth from the Father and the Son is this River of Life. We know that it does not nourish trees, and seeds, and flowers, but the hearts, and wills, and reasons of human beings, the mystical body of Christ. And lest there should be any doubt of this, we are immediately recalled 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 that which quickens, invigorates, unites a society of men, made to partake of God’s likeness. The tree of life is He whom they behold, He in whom they see the perfection of their own estate, He from whom all vital power descends upon them. St. John has been explaining to us, throughout his Epistle and Gospel, how the Son of God is the Source of those different graces which all have received, grace for grace; who distributes His twelve manner of fruits in the proportions and at the times which are suitable to the characters and circumstances of each society or each man; who overshadows with His leaves those to whom the taste of the fruits is unknown; who makes all the outward ministrations of His Gospel and Church serviceable for the cure of the miseries which selfishness has inflicted upon 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.”
Not because men eat bread by the sweat of the brow are they cursed, but because they are under another government than that of God and the Lamb; because they have yielded themselves to tyrants who separate them from the true Master. Where the throne of God and the Lamb is there is no curse. When men understand that this is the kingdom in which they are living; when they are permitted to know what He is—to behold Him, to be like Him—there is no curse. Christ has taken it away. Christ has bound the children for ever to their Father in Heaven. Again, therefore, I say, brethren, we are not reading of some city to be set up at some distant day on this planet; we are not reading of a city in some other planet; we are reading of that of which Christ is the Ruler, and therefore of which all in every place who confess Him are citizens. We may have a very imperfect apprehension of its nature; that we are to pray God by His Spirit of revelation to deepen and expand; we or others may not admit that there is any such city at all; that unbelief we are to ask that the same Spirit will take away. But the truth of things is not altered by our judgment of them. The Apostle was shewn that which is; not that which is not. The muddy vesture of decay, which hinders us from knowing what surrounds us and what we are, was taken from him; and what was disclosed was not some mansion for him, but that Father’s house with many mansions which has been opened to us, 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 referred you to a few of those familiar sentences in which the Evangelist St. John speaks of Christ as the Life and the Giver of Life. I need scarcely remind you of those at least as numerous in which he speaks of Him as the Light of Man, as the Light of the World, as the Light that shineth in darkness, which the darkness had not comprehended. All his other teaching is connected with this. The condemnation of sin is, that light is come upon the world, and that men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. He who bore witness of the Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world, is said to have been he who bore witness of the Light, 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 confess themselves blind that they may receive His light. How consistent with this language is that of the text! 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 a full noonday. When any human creature is able to scatter any cloud from his neighbour’s sky, to show him his path more clearly across the earth—whenever the moral world is purified of any of the mists that make it dismal—when the physical world gives up any of its secrets to the humble and faithful seeker—there is a pledge that the visions of this book are not delusive. And the more thoroughly we become convinced that they are not delusive—the more we act as if God’s throne was set up amongst us, and as if we might turn to Him with the assurance that He does not wish us to dwell in darkness, but to see the light of life—the more shall we pass beyond the night circle ourselves, and bring fallen men out of it; the more shall we persuade them that they do not want the candle or the sun, though they may be thankful for both; that whatever brightness comes from either, He sends it, and that we may receive it from Him through whatever medium it is transmitted to us. Why does he add the announcement, “they shall reign for ever and ever?” Is it not because there is an essential, inseparable association between light and dominion? The sun and the stars were the dynasts of the old Eastern sages; they are so of the English peasant. Oh, that sages and peasants might learn how much grander and nobler they are than the most glorious objects they can gaze upon! Oh, that they might believe that the Light which made the outside orbs shine, can shine inwardly in their hearts and reason! That when it does shine, and they are content that it should, they have an imperishable, ever-increasing royalty! The kingdom of darkness must pass away; the kingdom of light is that which Christ established when He rose out of 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.”
Often before we have met with this testimony. These “sayings are faithful and true.” Why should such repetitions be necessary? We may all know why they are necessary. You and I are continually tempted to think that these are not faithful and true sayings. We suspect that they belong to a region that is at least half fantastic; we do not accept them as explanations of the parables of the world, but as themselves parables. And we adopt this opinion the more readily, because, in the midst of those solemn assertions, others occur which we suppose cannot be taken literally. “These things must shortly come to pass. Behold, I come quickly.” It has been my great object in these sermons to shew that such sayings also are faithful and true; that if we only read them together with the rest, the apparent contradiction in them will vanish. The old Jerusalem did not pass away till the new was revealed. All things from the beginning of the world had been advancing towards the revelation of Him in whom heaven and earth are united. That is the revelation which was vouchsafed to the Apostle John; to be as he says it was, a blessing to the men of his own day, and not less a blessing to men of all subsequent days. Those who kept it would understand what was implied in the earlier movements of the world—they would understand what was implied in the crises and agonies through which they were passing. Yea more, they would accept the Divine kingdom which God had set up among men; they would walk in the light of it; they would not invent any miserable counterfeit of it; they would not rend it in pieces. If they “did not keep the saying of the prophecy of this book,” if they regarded these sayings as idle tales, or projected them 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 that His Church is only the creation of human artificers, and which, therefore, human artificers may throw down; of unbelievers who should maintain that He takes no care of His own earth; of tyrants who should say that what He has neglected they may trample down at their pleasure.
V. “And I John saw these things, and heard them.” The language of the senses is the only real language—the only language—which presents spiritual things to us as they are, not modified and disturbed by our understandings, not as if our perceptions of them were the grounds of their existence. So it has been throughout the Scriptures; the lesson is brought home to us in this its closing passage. And there is another which we need as much. The Bible has been throughout a testimony against idolatry—a testimony, at the same time, of every man’s proneness to idolatry. We talk of Semitic races which had some special inclination for the worship of the invisible. The teachers of that branch of the Semitic race which bore the most weighty and enduring protest against the worship of the visible, declare that their countrymen were ready to fall into it at every moment. The old Jewish Apostle, seeing and hearing the divinest truths, entering into the heart of the spiritual world, assures us twice that the 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!—thou who spurnest idolatry, and tramplest upon those who fall into it—did it ever occur to thee that thou mightest not be wholly beyond the reach of a danger which pursued to the last the beloved disciple? Did it ever strike thee that He might say to thee, Judge not, that thou be not judged; be not high-minded, but fear.
Here, as I observed in a former chapter, there is no apparent change of persons. It is not by formal sentences and words that we are taught to distinguish the angel from Him who sent the angel. God Himself enabled the prophet to distinguish; it is He who enables us to distinguish.
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 forbidden to lay up his prophecy as if its contents were for another age, and not for his age. “The time was at hand.” I do not wish to insist upon the assertion more than he insists upon it; when he is taught that he ought to draw our attention to it, we must listen. The evidence of its fulfilment would not depend upon those who should understand and receive 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 shew that they had heard it? The unjust will be unjust still. The sentence would go forth—“Thou hast chosen thy path, abide in it. Thou lovest wickedness: feel and know what wickedness is. Thou lovest the right, the pure, the good; feel and know what the right, the pure, and good, is.”
When the light of the world shines fully forth, then will each man be found to have the thing for which he has toiled. The wages of sin, the gift of God—each will be received in its fulness. We are continually fancying that there will be some reversal of that law; that somehow we shall not reap what we have sown. The delusion hangs about us all; we try to persuade ourselves that God’s grant of pardon is a warrant for it. God does more than pardon in our poor sense of that word. He gives repentance. All our experiments to measure and confine that grace of His are weak and impious. But it is the grace of turning us from darkness to light, not the cruel mercy of permitting us to go on in darkness, not the impossible mercy of giving us the blessing of a light which we hate. Good and evil were set before man at the first; they are set before him to the last. The Divine will has been acting from the first upon man’s will, that he might choose the good and reject the evil. We pray—Christ prays—that that will may prevail altogether. But so long as there is resistance to it, so long there is misery. There has been no change in the Divine order; no conversion of any one thing into its opposite. We are reading of a revelation, not of a scheme. God is bringing all contrasts into manifestation, just as He is bringing all that He has created into harmony.
VII. For the old burden of the prophecy returns 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; of Him in whom past, present, and future meet. Does such a revelation carry us away into some transcendent region far away from our common tasks and duties? Hear 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 to do them; those that live day by day as if they were under the government of a gracious Father, and as if He were working in them to will and to do of His good pleasure; those who are eschewing their own evil, and turning to Him as the source of all good; they obtain power over the tree of life. The language of the Apostle is stronger than the more ambitious language which our translators have substituted for it. In one sense, all have a right to the tree of life, seeing that Christ has been set forth as the Life of the world; seeing that He has proclaimed Himself in death the deliverer from death. What we want is, not to assert a right, but to acquire a capacity for tasting and enjoying the fruits of the tree. We want the power to give up craving for that which is our own, the power of ceasing to eat the fruits which grow upon our own poor stock. This power is obtained in the daily discipline of sorrow; in the effort to do the thing which has to be done; in the struggle not to do the things which the evil nature is prompting us to do. For there is a continual warning of what it will have us do. Around the best man who is striving to live as a citizen of God’s city live those who refuse to be citizens of it, who prefer to be animals, who like lying better than truth. And he who keeps God’s commands, cannot say, with the Pharisee, “I thank thee that I am not one of these.” He is continually taught that he has in him all which has degraded them into dogs or sorcerers. It is only by turning to the tree of life, taking in the food of its fruits, and enjoying the shade of its leaves, that he can overcome these temptations; or hope for the day when the city of God shall utterly vanquish whatever in him or in the universe despises its invitations, and dwells as an alien beside it. Thus, in the very midst of the description of the heavenly inheritance—of the highest blessings which it is possible for us to receive, or God to bestow—we are still reminded of that which is dark, and foul, and terrible. Were the highest state one of mere innocence, one in which there is no knowledge of good and evil, this could not be. But if the innumerable company of angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, can find no more glorious object of contemplation than the Lamb which was slain; if the Cross is the true tree of life; then the blessedness which the New Testament reveals is not a blessedness which can ever be separated from the recollection of a triumph won over selfishness, and from the desire and hope to take part in the battle with 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 of all the previous 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 and morning star, whom Magians sought in their faithful ignorance—the Light of the whole earth—all these names had need to be repeated, that the Churches of Asia might receive the testimony which was sent to them concerning their King, and Brother; that they might send that testimony forth into the world; that we might take it not as an heirloom from them, but fresh from the lips of Him who is with us, as He was with them. Only because they believed that He was indeed in the midst of them could they deliver His message to mankind; only while we believe that He is with us can we deliver it. It is a grand, all-comprehending message, meeting all the wants of men, social and individual, penetrating 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 any little measure, believe these words—if we did, indeed, own that the Spirit of the Eternal God was Himself speaking them to the thirsty and broken spirits of men in all regions of the earth—if we did hear them echoed by the Church of all ages we might be permitted, each in his own little sphere, each by the strength and encouragement which he is able to give his brothers in their spheres, to bear a part in the work of breaking the chains that bind our race. And we shall be taught, brethren, in wonderful ways, that this power is bestowed upon the weakest, if they will but ascribe it to the Spirit and the Bride, and not to their own might or wisdom. Very feeble words will enter into the hearts of human beings, and will 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 addressed specially to us, the ministers of God’s word and sacraments; that it tells us that He will plague us if we add any fancies and theories of ours to that which He has revealed of Himself, and of His own character and purposes; that He will hide from us His truth, which is our deliverance, if we rob those to whom we are sent of that which 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 sure that it is unsafe to turn this language to the condemnation of any other man. I am sure it is needful for every man to ask that He who uttered it will use it for his own trial and purification. If we do ask that, I cannot doubt that the next words will be dearer and brighter to us than they have ever been.
XI. “He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly; even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
If I have in these sermons succeeded in showing you that the Lord Jesus Christ did, in very deed and truth, manifest Himself in the latter days of the old dispensation—that apostles and saints were not deceived in their expectation that the end of an age was at hand, and that a newer and more glorious age was to succeed it—I trust I shall have given you fresh strength and warrant for believing these warnings, and praying this prayer. Supposing the Apostle was disappointed—supposing what he looked for did not come to pass—the like calamity may be reserved for us. Admit the revelation of Jesus Christ the Son and Word of God to have been real for him, then it is real for us. We shall attribute the darkness which hides the Friend, the King, the Judge of the World from us to ourselves and not to Him. And then the clouds that gather about our own steps, or about the destinies of the earth, will be reasons for asking that He will come and scatter them. And every mist that has disappeared in past time will be a pledge for the future, because we shall own and accept it as a sign of the Son of Man,—a token that the daylight was breaking through our night.
XII. And the revelation to us will not be a revelation chiefly for us. It will be a revelation of the first begotten 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 all the earth. Even so every day, to him who is watching alone in his own sadness and despondency, to God’s every Church, in the midst of the world’s gloom; even so to all human beings; “Come, Lord Jesus.”