(Lincoln’s Inn, 8th Sunday after Trinity, August 6, 1854.)
‘And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called 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 and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.’—REVELATION xix. 11-17.
There have been many discussions about the time and place in which the battle described in this chapter has been, or shall be fought. I do not know which of the opinions on the subject is entitled to most regard. Each of them, I think, must have its value, for I find it difficult to conceive of any place and of any time, in which the combatants spoken of by the Apostle have not been fighting with each other; I am quite sure the fight will be more terrible before the end comes. Whatever place may not be the scene of it, I am convinced England cannot claim to be that place. To whatever distant times it may be prolonged, I would tell you with all earnestness, that we who are met here this afternoon are in the midst of it now. The thought may be an alarming one—if we lay it to heart, it will be;—but it is also a very cheering one. I know not any which may give us so much purpose and so much hope.
Are there any gifts which we feel to be so needful for us, as these? Are there any which we are so conscious of wanting? What a number of utterly purposeless men and women do we meet with, as we journey through the world! What noble powers do we see going to waste, because there is nothing to fix and concentrate them on one object! What fine affections are squandered upon nothing, or upon a multitude of nothings! What precious stores of information are accumulated only to be dissipated in talk! How, in severe moods, one condemns these misusers of time and opportunities! how, in kindlier moods, one mourns over them! Yet, in the midst of our censures or our sorrow, what proofs we have that we are labouring under the same infirmity! How continually we are reminded that we, too, have been chasing shadows; that we have been drawn aside after one tempting project or another; or that we have been merely revolving in a circle!
How many times our conscience whispers to us, that we have been merely carried along a current of customary notions and observances; that our acts have been determined by accidents and circumstances, not by our will!
And how much has the indifference and listlessness which we witness to do with want of hope? How strenuous, we are sure, some of the laziest people about us might become, if they had but any goal in the distance which might some day be reached. If for a moment they do catch sight of such a goal, if they only fancy that they do, what a movement there is in the midst of their torpor; how the dry bones shake, are ready almost to come together, to start up, to live. But it seems as if these impulses were to become rarer and rarer. We feel sometimes as if we were born into a busy, and excited, and yet into an exhausted age; when men, even boys, have become prematurely wise about the vanity of human wishes; when the words of preachers about the emptiness of pleasure and ambition, and the poor results of study and enterprise, are all too readily taken for granted. I do not mean that we pursue pleasure or profit less, but we pursue them without exhilaration. The appetite must be kept alive by continual excitements. The ordinary tradesman, and the man of fashion, seem as if they both required gambling to give them an interest in their different pursuits, and to preserve them from utter vacuity.
We have succeeded in persuading people that they have nothing to live for, that death has set its mark upon everything. They say, reasonably enough, that they do not want to come to church to be convinced of that, they are convinced of it already. Unhappily, we have convinced them of nothing else. We have spoken to them of a future state, which shall be altogether different from the present state. But, they say, that all the visions we have given them of it, when we wish to describe it in fair and glowing colours, are vague and indistinct; that there is nothing in them which a man, who is either occupied with the world, or sated with it, can take hold of. And if there were, they say they are reminded in all our discourses, that they have no part or lot in these anticipations. The happy future belongs to a few souls, who are fenced round, and distinguished, by inward signs and outward badges, from the race of which it is their misfortune to be members. The future state has nothing to present to that race generally but images of gloom and horror. So men on all sides of us affirm, and whether their complaint is reasonable or exaggerated, true or false, the result is evident. There is a decay of hope, and of all the moral strength which hope awakens. Men are not content with what they see about them, far less content with themselves, yet they do not look for anything higher or better. They do not think it is worth while to struggle to retain that which they have, any more than to grasp that which they have not. They expect changes, they assume them to be inevitable. But they expect no good from them, more than from the continuance of that which they find so wearisome. There is a sleepy, dreary, fatalism into which we are settling down. The sleep is disturbed from without by the noisy clatter of disputing sects, and by the groans of suffering multitudes. It is disturbed from within, by dreams of what we ought to do, of what we might be. We need something more than an earthly or a human voice to break that slumber, and prevent it from passing into death.
I believe that voice is speaking to us in the text. I need not repeat what I have said to you so often, that the opening of heaven, in this book, and elsewhere in Scripture, does not imply the discovery of a distant or future paradise, but of that kingdom of God which is in the midst of us; the divine order which is hidden from the eye, but apart from which nothing that the eye beholds has any meaning or substance. What was opened to the Seer at this time was then, as I believe, the mystery of our human condition, of the world within us and without us, of the power which is working for every man and against every man, of the relation in which every man stands to one of those powers and to the other, of the purpose which may govern every man’s life, of the sure and certain hope which is set before mankind, a hope of which every man is an inheritor, if he does not disclaim his manhood. Blessed be God! it is no sweet Arcadian picture of felicity which is offered to us here. Behind, indeed, there are visions of a most glorious peace, of a wonderful order, of a new Jerusalem descending from God out of heaven. But the way to them is through battle and blood. If it were not so, these visions would have nothing to do with us. We should say, They may be for some beings of another mould, but we cannot be intended to realise them. It is true that the Person whom St. John saw, when the heaven was opened to him, was the same whom Isaiah calls the Prince of Peace. But mark how Isaiah introduces His description of that Prince, on whose shoulder the government was to be: ’ For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise and garments rolled in blood. But this shall be with burning and fuel of fire.’ The battle which was to assert the Name, and vindicate the rights, of the Child that was born, of the Son that was given, would not be less terrible than other battles. The very essence of all that was fiercest in them, would be in it. If all peace was the efflux of that peace which dwelt in Him, all war would be the expression and outcoming of that in which He was the Leader and Champion.
It is then very necessary, brethren, that we should not lose ourselves in the sublimity of the Apostle’s language; that we should not cheat ourselves with the miserable notion that he is dealing with fine oriental hyperboles. We must be assured that he is speaking of the most intense reality, that he is spurning fictions, that he would make us acquainted with facts, that his language is the most divine, most inspired he could find, but that it is only language still; that the truth it speaks of, the truth which we may know in ourselves and in the history of the world, the truth which we shall certainly know one day to be at the root of both, is far deeper than any forms of human speech. And St. John’s is not, as some people may carelessly imagine, difficult or unintelligible language. It is particularly clear and transparent. We may cloud it with our conceits, we may interpose a number of shadows, thrown from ourselves, between it and our consciences; but if we will let it bear directly upon them, they will recognise its force, they will not wait to have it translated into one which is feebler and more formal. To some, the language of symbols may seem unsatisfactory; some may even denounce it as idolatrous and profane. They may speak as they like; but if they will have the Bible, they must have symbols; they must be content to let God speak to them through the forms of sense, because they are His forms, and because no others could convey His meaning to the hearts which He desires to take it in, so well as they do.
I do not, therefore, stop to give you some abstract equivalent for the image of a white horse and One that sat upon him. You know, far better than I can tell you, what an impression of human dignity and lordship that likeness has made upon men in all generations, and does make upon us now. This impression is not the effect of any peculiar or artificial training. You do not receive it from a picture or a piece of sculpture, or because you have been familiar from boyhood with the Homeric epithet for the hero. That epithet would have no force, if it were not an expression of actual human feeling; if it did not bear witness to that authority over the animal—over all the lower creation which belongs to our race in virtue of God’s original fiat. Here, then, we have the representation of this human authority and vicegerency, the Person in whom it was first vested, by whom it is really exercised, from whom it descends upon mankind, or upon any man.
The first titles by which the Horseman is described are Faithful and True. The old chivalry recognised and adopted these names. They denoted the knight who knew what his calling was. Gentleness in blood and in behaviour, might be his greatest and most necessary ornaments, but faithfulness and truth were to be the substance of his character. In men, like Louis IX., who at all acted up to their profession, we perceive at once that these words express the ideal which they set before themselves. What we are told here is, that they did not make that ideal. It was not a beautiful phantom projected from their own minds, the apotheosis of that which they had thought and dreamed. The Faithful and True Knight actually existed; they were but receiving a few imperfect graces corresponding to His graces,—a few partial treasures out of His fulness.
Oftentimes it was the hardest thing for them to discriminate between the right and the wrong—the false and the true—in the men who served them, and in those with whom they acted. They were sometimes deceived by hypocrites, they were sometimes unjust to honest people. Still they knew they had the faculty of judgment; they were permitted to exercise it in the open tribunal, in the ordinary business of life. They exercised it most safely and rightly towards others, when they dealt strictly and honestly with themselves. But in these secret transactions, also, they were liable to be imposed upon. Bribes which corrupted the judgment might be received with less sense of criminality, when they were pronouncing on their own acts and thoughts. There must be a judge over them, over their subjects, over all men. This Faithful and True Knight, the Apostle says, is the Righteous Judge; the discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart; the perfectly clear and equitable and effectual divider between that which is, and that which is not,—between the real thing, and the counterfeit which waits upon it.
To believe that there is such a Judge at the heart of society, close to the heart of each man, is an infinite security that the crude and random apprehensions, and the selfish schemes, of individuals, or of ages, shall not have power to make good evil, or evil good, however they may labour to do so. But yet the knight and king on earth demanded more than a judge over him and over his fellows. He felt that their wrongs needed to be redressed, that the weak must be raised, and the giants who trampled on them put down. How noble, often, were his efforts to this end! How salutary the example which they presented to mankind! Yet what confusion was there in the very best of these efforts, when directed by the best men! What an excuse after ages have had for saying, that the devotion and sacrifice which were exhibited in them were thrown away! nay, that they sometimes wrought positive mischief! How certain it is, that when the knight began to idolise his own work, and to perpetuate the mere forms of it, he became himself an oppressor, whom it was right and useful to dislodge by ridicule from the position which he could no longer honourably fill! What need, then, was it, that the true knight should ask in his own day, that the student of history should ask in our day, Whether there is no permanent defender of the weak, no permanent avenger of the evil doer, who knows exactly which are the humble who need protection, which are the proud that need to be abased; who is not misled by appearances in one case or another; who is bound by the forms and circumstances of no period or locality; who can compel the forms and circumstances of all periods and localities to serve His righteous purposes?
In righteousness, says the Apostle, shall this faithful and true Knight, both judge and make war. We look upon this great war, which has been waged among men, and upon that. We ask ourselves, Was it just? was it necessary? We are often puzzled for the answer; but we feel that the question is a reasonable one, that there are enormous differences between different wars; that with the objects of some, we can, in a great degree, sympathise; that some we must almost entirely condemn; and yet, that with respect to the actors in one as well as the other, there may be something to admire, something to denounce; and that the habit of pronouncing a promiscuous approbation, under the plea that war is in itself glorious,—or, under the plea that all war is destructive, and, therefore, must be hateful, effaces moral distinctions, and is injurious to the conscience. Then again, how we are perplexed when we find that wars we had reason to think unrighteous have produced blessings; and that wars from which we could not withhold our sympathy, have tended to demoralise a land. All these observations, and the conclusions we founded upon them, are utterly bewildering; and the refuge which we seek, in attributing all to a fixed necessity, is more disheartening still. But if there is One who in righteousness maketh war; who is aiming distinctly, and with no double or doubtful end, at the extirpation of falsehood, at the vindication of truth; then we may understand how all things that seem to thwart His purpose, are at last helping to forward it; then we may see, also, why every fraudulent and selfish plan of ours, however it may be designed to defend His power, is stamped with His curse, and is part of that which He is pledged to destroy.
All the time that I am saying these things, I feel how likely you are, because I know how likely I am, to think: “Yes; this conception of the Apostle’s is a very fine one. Such a Knight, and Judge, and Warrior, men have always talked about, or sighed for. It is a proof of their greatness that they can construct such a glorious specimen of Humanity, and can invest it with Divinity.” A proof of our greatness? Only take in the sense of the next words,—only reflect on them till you have made them your own,—and then say, whether St. John is not making you feel your littleness, your nothingness, the darkness and evil that is in you, by bringing before you One who looks into you, who sees you through and through, who has a right to command you, of whom you can know nothing, till He has first known you, and made you know yourselves. “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.” That—that is what you want; that is what you are trying to conceive of; because he has first conceived you and your whole race. Oh! if there is no such an One,—no one whom we cannot measure and fathom, but who measures and fathoms all that is within us;—no one who is King over each of us, and over the whole intelligent and voluntary universe, as well as over all nature—who has these many crowns;—no one who can say, “The Father, and the Father only, knoweth the Son, as the Son, and the Son only, knoweth the Father;” what a mere chaos is this which we call a creation, what a dream of a shadow is man!
The Apostle, St. John, declares that there is such an One, and that “He is clothed with a vesture dipped in blood.” We have heard of His fidelity, of His truth, of His clearness of vision, of His royalty, of His personality. One sign is needful still to identify Him. These garments speak of a Sacrifice. He has been slain—He has given up Himself—it is His own blood with which He is stained. This is the token that His faithfulness and truth have encountered the spirit of selfishness, the great enemy of both, and have prevailed; this shows that no one dark film dims the insight of the Judge; that no one partial inclination sways, to right or left, the sceptre of the King; that the Name which He bears is not that of some separate individual, but of the Man, the Brother and Head of Men. And that Name cannot, therefore, be expressed in the terms which belong to our nature, though it is so intimately, and inseparably involved with that nature, and with its interests. His Name is called the Word of God!
You might have expected, when you had been told of the vesture dipped in blood, to have heard another Name than this; one which speaks of Humiliation, of Sorrow, of Death. But if once we catch the least glimpse into the mind of St. John, we perceive that there can be no gulf between these ideas; that the very object of his whole teaching and life is to bring them together, so that we shall feel that the divine Word can only be known as the Lamb which was slain; that the death and sacrifice of the Lamb are nothing except as they reveal that Filial Word, who was in the bosom of the Father, and who has declared Him.
Dear brethren, if in the few broken hints I have been giving you respecting the nature and effects of sacrifice, I have, in any measure, been able to bring this thought home to you,—to make you perceive that the Cross of Christ makes known to us Him, in whom we are created, Him by whom we consist, Him who is the source of righteousness, of strength, of life to every man, because He is Himself the Eternal Son of God, and because by His acts He declares to us what God is working in us, to will, and to be, and to do—then I am sure, that what remains of this passage will come back to you in hours of overwhelming sadness; when you are thinking of those whom you have conversed with on earth, and whom you see no more; when the crimes and miseries of the actual world, and the centuries during which they have been growing, press upon you with an intolerable weight; when your own feebleness and incapacity for struggling with the pettiest temptation, for overcoming the most ignominious habit, seems to make it almost monstrous that you should be troubled about the transactions of the world, or the doings of other men.
Is it nothing to remember that the Word of God is not now treading the winepress alone, but that the armies which are in heaven are following Him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean? Is it nothing to think, that every true and faithful man who has ever wrestled with his own evil, and with the evil of his brethren, with the world the flesh and the devil, has been Christ’s soldier, cheered by His voice, inspired by His Spirit? Is it nothing to think, that you have seen but the beginning of their warfare,—when they were just learning the use of their arms, and wielding them very awkwardly (and how little did you know, how little they knew themselves, of the severest conflicts they were passing through!)—but that now they have entered upon a new stage of their service, and have profited by their sorrowful experience and many failures, and rule the things to which they often yielded subjection, and confess and obey the Leader, from whose yoke they so often broke loose? Is it nothing to believe, that now they appreciate each other better, and are not misled by appearances, and are not separated by hard thoughts, but feel that a common bond unites them, that the same banner is over them, and that they have been purified by the same blood from the vain wishes and petty vanities which kept them asunder? Is it nothing to think, that now they understand us and sympathise with us, as they could not do before; because, if they are more awake to our evils, they are more earnest to deliver us from them; and because they see us no longer as separate from Him who has loved them and us, and given Himself for us? I say, brethren, we have a right to cherish these thoughts about those who have gone before us. For we are not to judge them by our poor jaundiced sight, which oftener rests upon blemishes than beauties, even when we desire to discover them; but we are to contemplate them in the light of the great Sacrifice; robed and covered with Christ’s vesture; we are to believe that He who is in the midst of the throne is feeding them, as He fed them during their pilgrimage through the earth on which He died. If, indeed, they were purchasing a place for themselves there, by their sacrifices here, we might tremble for the best of them; but it is He, the Word of God, who has purchased for them the privilege and the power of sacrificing themselves. He has redeemed them from the miserable death of independence and selfishness, that they may lead the true and pure life of obedience and self-surrender. Do not, then, conceive of them as dwelling in some distant, unknown region, where they possess some felicity from which you are excluded. Think of them as still caring for the earth, and for the country, and village, and homestead in which they learnt their lessons of humility and trust; think of them as struggling that these may become fit habitations for Righteousness and Peace to dwell in.
But if we may comfort one another with these words concerning those who have fallen asleep, what comfort can we find when we look upon this earth, and the portions of it which we have most to do with, and see in them the habitations, not of Righteousness and Peace, but of Tyranny, and Superstition, and Atheism? What happy dreams of that which has been, or of that which may be to come, can make us endure the sight of that which actually is? No such dreams assuredly can help us much. But these words that tell no dream, that contain no soothing music, that are full of sternness and terror, may be of mighty strength to us, if we will consider them rightly. “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 wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.” Cannot we mitigate the severity of this passage a little? May we not make a slight allowance for the Jewish education even of the Apostle of Love? God forbid! As long as there is oppression, and anarchy, and evil in this world of ours, they are cowards, and enemies of their species and traitors to charity, who would wish one word here to be milder than it is, who do not rejoice that every word has its real counterpart. How utterly mournful and unbearable is the history of mankind, if we do not believe that wars, and plagues, and pestilences, that revolutions in kingdoms, that the convulsions of Churches, have been authentic testimonies that the Son of God Himself is calling those whom He had set as stewards over His household to answer for their trust; that He is proclaiming the captive and the slave to be His—the purchase of His own blood; that He is uttering, and bringing forth into act, the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God against those who are destroying the heritage which He has redeemed. Oh, believe that it is not some other, but the Saviour of the world, the meek and lowly Jesus, who is executing this wrath and vengeance of His Father. Ask that it may burn on, till all that is resisting His love, and hindering the manifestation of it to mankind, be utterly consumed. Accept every message of it, when it comes near to ourselves, as a witness that there is some abominable thing, the fruit of our selfishness, which must be destroyed, and which God has doomed. Remember, that when Christ prevails, it is over human wills; that as long as these are refractory, the battle must still go on; that when He enters His new Jerusalem to claim the triumph of the conqueror, the multitude that go before and that follow, will shout with their hearts and lips, “Hosanna! Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.” And, therefore, whatever holds the will in bondage, whatever makes these tongues incapable of praising their true King, must be swept away, that He may be known for what He is; that His heavenly glory may not be for ever hid behind the clouds which have been drawn up from the earth. And this may reconcile us, nothing else can, to that which is the most dismal spectacle of all—the decay of faith in the Churches, which have been called out to witness of the Word of God, to testify that He is the King of kings and Lord of lords. It must be shown, by clear and manifest tokens, that the universe does not, as they have supposed, stand upon their faith, their holiness, their sacrifices; that it stands upon Him who is faithful and true, upon His all-perfect Sacrifice by which God has reconciled the world to Himself. So long as a Church, as any Church, bears witness of this truth, so long it will be doing its work, and the armies of heaven and He on the white horse will be working and fighting with it. But when one Church or another, under whatever pretext, inverts the principle of sacrifice, and puts the acts of man in place of the act of God, and denies that He has redeemed and restored mankind in His wellbeloved Son, and that His mind towards men is one of Peace and not of evil; it becomes a plague and curse to the earth which it was appointed to bless, and the sharp sword which goeth out of the mouth of the Word of God will cut it asunder.
Once more, brethren, let us not be cast down, nor lose our heart and hope, for anything that we may feel within, any more than for anything that we may see around us. When the world seems most desolate of God’s presence, most rushing downward by its own impulse and gravitation to a deep abyss, the Word of God who created it is still upholding it, and directing the movements of it, let them be ever so irregular and tortuous, to His own gracious and glorious ends. When it seems most as if all acts and all events obeyed a law of selfishness, that law is really producing nothing, accomplishing nothing; it is merely intercepting, for a little while, by its feeble, insolent, vacillating rebellions, the calm, onward march of those armies which obey the true law of the universe, the law of sacrifice. A man may ask in sadness and bitterness: “But how can I ever be joined to these armies; how can I ever yield to that law? If self be but a rebellious power, yet in me it seems a victorious one. I try to oppose it, but each hour it comes upon me with fresh might. The trophy of yesterday is exchanged for the more shameful defeat of to-day. I shall be forced to yield at last, however I fight. I may as well yield at once.” When any man says this—as we all have said it in the misery of our hearts, in mockery of the better convictions that were working in us,—oh, let him recollect, that He, from whom those holier desires have proceeded—weak as they may seem, ineffectual as they have proved—hath on His vesture and on His thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS. The secret of strength, friend and brother, of all moral purpose is to assure thyself that thou art not engaged in a battle between two portions of thy own nature. It is Christ in thee who is inviting thee, urging thee, commanding thee, to every brave, and true, and earnest effort. And in His commandment is life; what He bids thee do, He will enable thee to do. The might of His own sacrifice is with thee. He who gave up Himself without spot to God, will enable thee to offer thyself, an acceptable and reasonable sacrifice, to do His will, to glorify His name.
And with moral purpose will come hope. When we think of Christ as a Being at a distance from us—who has merely done a mighty work; when we eat the bread and drink the wine in remembrance of an absent Friend, not as pledges of a near and present one; the pressure of evil that crushes down our faith, and hope, and love, seems to make the past redemption wholly unavailing for our great necessity. But Christ in us, as St. Paul told the Colossians, is the hope of glory. What we want is not that we should attain some separate and selfish bliss, but that He, who has been striving with us all our lives through, to deliver us from the separation and selfishness which have been our torment and our curse, should finally effect His own purpose; that He should be manifested to us, and to the world, as the King who has vanquished by sacrifice; that we should be His willing servants, the free children of His Father, formed into one family and body by His blessed Spirit for ever. Amen.