Bible Commentaries
Revelation 7

Verses 9-10

The Redeemed

After these things I saw, and behold, a great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation, and of all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, arrayed in white robes, and palms in their hands; and they cry with a great voice, saying, Salvation unto our God which sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb.— Revelation 7:9-10.

1. The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia end with the third chapter of the Apocalypse. The fourth and fifth chapters describe two great acts of worship. In the fourth chapter God is worshipped as the Creator. The four Cherubim, or Living Creatures, representing all created life, are seen in perpetual adoration of their Maker. The four-and-twenty Elders—the patriarchs of the Old Covenant and the apostles of the New—fall down before the throne and worship God, saying, “Worthy art thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the glory and the honour and the power: for thou didst create all things.”

The fifth chapter introduces the great work of redemption. The Lamb appears in the midst of the throne, typical of the eternal Son, the Redeemer of the world. As He takes the Book of Doom from His Father’s hands, the four Living Creatures and the four-and-twenty Elders fall down before Him and sing a new song, the song of the redeemed. The angel chorus pours forth its chant of thanksgiving to the Lamb, and every creature in heaven and earth and sea joins in the act of adoration.

Then at the ninth verse of the seventh chapter this second great act of worship enters on a new stage. The congregation, which hitherto has been drawn from the twelve tribes of Israel, is now seen to be a great multitude which no man can number, and it is taken from every nation upon the earth.

2. The redeemed are at worship. Where are they? They are in heaven, no doubt. But heaven is not to be identified with the world to come. Life before the throne God says Swete is life wherever spent, if it is dminated by a joyful consciousness of the Divine Presence and Glory. And he adds that the present picture must be correlated with hat of chapters 21. and 22.

The text suggests, first, the number of the redeemed; second, their variety; and thin, their unity—their unity being seen (1) in their position or standing; (2) in their character; (3) in their feeling; and (4) in their occupation.

I

The Number of the Redeemed

1. “A great multitute, which no man could number.” It is a vision. But St. John had some material to work upon. Says Harnack, “The vigour and the variety of the forms already assumed by Christianity in these quarters are shown by the seven epistles to the Churches in the Johannine Apocalypse, by the whole tenor of the book, and by the Ignatian Writings.”

Tacitus, the careful Roman historian, in writing of the persecution of the Christians, under Nero in 64 a.d., says of their number that they were a huge multitude—“ingens multitudo.” The expansion of Christianity in the first years of its existence is one of the marvels of history. When it first began to be preached it was ridiculed and lampooned by the ablest satirists of the day. Every foul crime was charged upon its followers. The believers in the Christ were tortured, mutilated, thrown to wild beasts. Yet in spite of everything the church grew, grew and increased rapidly in numbers and in power.

Seventy years after the founding of the very first Gentile church in Syrian Antioch, Pliny wrote in the strongest terms about the spread of Christianity throughout remote Bithynia, a spread which in his view already threatened other cults through out the province. Seventy years later still the Paschal controversy reveals the existence of a Christian federation of churches, stretching from Lyons to Edessa, with its headquarters situated at Rome. Seventy years later again, the Emperor Decius—the fierce persecutor—declared he would sooner have a rival emperor in Rome than a Christian bishop. And are another seventy years had passes, the cross was sewn upon the Roman colours. 1 [Note: H. T. Sell, Studies in Early Church History, 150.]

2. But the vastness is the outcome of faith much more than of sight. In another place St. John states the impression which the physical eye receives: “We are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness.” The eye of faith is the eye of that God who invited Abraham to go out into the evening and count the number of the stars. It is the eye of that Christ of God who planted the mustard seed which grew into a great tree.

As their praise was erst not of men but of God, so now their number is known not to men but to God. “So many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the seashore innumerable.” “I beheld,” says St. John: and you with your eyes, I with mine (please God!) shall yet behold. 1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, The Face of the Deep, 31.]

3. The text is an answer at last to the question, “Are there few that be saved?” Were we to answer that question by sight we should probably answer it quite otherwise, our judgment being formed partly from the state of our own heart, and partly from what we see around us. With our own heart we cannot be too stern. To it Christ’s answer is addressed, “Strive ye to enter in.” With our neighbour we cannot perhaps be too lenient. In any case our neighbour has a right to ask, “Who made thee a judge or a divider over us?” We do not know enough to form a judgment.

Who made the heart, ’tis He alone

Decidedly can try us;

He knows each chord, its various tone,

Each spring, its various bias.

Then at the balance let’s be mute,

We never can adjust it;

What’s done we partly may compute,

But know not what’s resisted. 2 [Note: Robert Burns.]

It is recorded of Daniel Webster that he was travelling in a then uninhabited part of Western America which is now covered by great and populous cities. As he and a friend were exploring that vast solitude, Webster suddenly lowered his head and seemed to listen.

“What are you doing?” inquired his friend.

“ I am listening for the tramp of the coming millions!” replied Webster, his face aglow with confidence in the future greatness of his country.

II

The Variety

1. The variety is as great as the number. What a distance St. John has travelled! It is a long way for his feet from the shores of Galilee to the isle that is called Patmos; but how much father for his heart, from his hope for the seed of Abraham to this assurance of all nations and tongues! There is nothing that some men seem so sure about as the limitation of our Lord’s outlook. It is true He was not sent in His lifetime on earth but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But it was Christ, and not St. Paul, that enabled St. John to see the variety of the redeemed.

2. Every nation, and every variety of individual in every nation, every variety of gift and ministry—singers in choirs, nurses and doctors, visitors of the sick, priests, prophets, pastors, missioners, Bible-women, mothers, daughters—“I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.” These are of the redeemed now. They do not need to wait for death to find their place in St. John’s majestic vision. “For all the saints who from their labours rest”—yes, certainly, for Livingstone and Gordon and Shaftesbury, for Lawrence and Martyn and Duff and Grenfell—but also for the saints who are still bearing the burden and heat of the day. O blessed union, fellowship Divine! “Next to the presence of God and the Lamb,” says Hort, “the highest blessing is the presence of them who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.”

3. What an encouragement it is to the missionary! “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.” We are only now realizing that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the communication of the love of God to the hearts of men; that Christianity is a spiritual power and impulse stirring all that is great and noble in the soul, not only making righteousness a dream, but also making it a dream realized in hearts transformed into the image of God. Christianity is indigenous in every land and among every race because Christianity is the love of God out-flowing to men—and than primal feeling of love every race knows. But it is only in this last generation that we have realized it. In times of strife Christianity was thought of as a system which put iron in the blood. When we pierced down to the heart of Christianity, felt its throb again, realized that it was the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, then the way opened out for the sending of the gospel to the heathen world, and the nations were moved at its approach, as if they, too, were prepared for its coming.

There never has been a day of opportunity like this in the history of the Church and the world. The way is open; the door is open; the hearts of the nations are open. Will the Churches rise to the great call which summons them? Will they, failing to obey Christ, and failing to communicate Him, themselves lose Him? Is the element of the heroic still vigorous in Christianity? Does Christ still stir the hearts of His people so that they are willing to die for Him?

“A people is upon thee loving death as thou lovest life,” was the message of the Mohammedan of old to his enemy. Is there still in Christendom the spirit which loves death for Christ’s sake? If there be, then in this, the great day of opportunity, the tide of the world’s destiny will be turned towards the Lord Jesus Christ. And it will be turned. For the Spirit is still in the midst of the Church, and until the end adoring lips will cry—

“Now let me burn out for God.” 1 [Note: N. Maclean, Can the World be Won for Christ? 174.]

In the early days of New Zealand history, Governor (afterwards Sir) George Grey was walking, on a lovely Sunday afternoon, with Bishop Selwyn. They entered a tent, followed by a messenger bearing dispatches which had just arrived. One letter to the bishop brought the news of the death of Siapo, a Loyalty Islander, who had become a Christian, and was being educated at Auckland under the bishop’s supervision. Overcome with grief, Selwyn burst into tears. Then turning to the Governor, he exclaimed, “Why, you have not shed a single tear!” “No,” replied Grey, “I have been so wrapped in thought that I could not weep. I have been thinking of the prophecy that men of every race were to be assembled in the kingdom of heaven. I have tried to imagine the joy and wonder prevailing there at the coming of Siapo, the first Christian of his race. He would be glad evidence that another people of the world had been added to the teaching of Christ.” “Yes, yes,” said Selwyn, “that is the true idea to entertain; I shall weep no more!”

III

The Unity

The multitude that no man can number is a Society. Their robes have become white because every stain of selfishness has been washed from them by the blood of the Lamb. Their palms show that they have gotten the victory over those causes which have destroyed the unity of kindreds and nations here. There is no dull uniformity, no single tongue: all is harmonious amidst diversity. Here, some have glorified power to the destruction of meekness; some have pretended that meekness is incompatible with strength. There, all give glory to Him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb. Here, men who are sealed in the Name of God have thought that they glorified that Name most by declaring His damnation of His enemies or theirs. In that company, the one word which is connected with the Divine Name is salvation—salvation from the curse that men have made for themselves.

“All nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues.”—Never, since Babel, a unison; no longer, since the first Christian Pentecost, an inevitable discord: for ever and ever, a harmony. Babel dissolved the primitive unison into discord: Pentecost reduced the prevalent discord to contingent harmony, but reclaimed it not into unison. Unison is faultless: harmony is perfect. On earth the possibility of harmony entails the corresponding possibility of discord. Even on earth, however, whoever chooses can himself or herself keep time and tune: which will be an apt prelude for keeping eternity and tune in heaven. 1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, The Face of the Deep, 231.]

A Canadian bishop has lately described what he saw and heard one night. He and some friends were on one side of a great Canadian river; a company of Christian Indians on the other. As the Englishmen gazed into the falling fire they heard a hymn across the river. This was succeeded by a hush. The song of the Red men across the water drew out a song from them, and that touched the Indians to a prayer whose measured tones just reached them across the water. O sweet communion of saints! “What was the river between?” asks the bishop. What, indeed? On one side there rose prayers and praises in the language of Milton and Shakespeare, of saints and sages; on the other, in words borrowed by the wild hunters from the glee of the waterfall or from the sighing of the pinewood. Yet once again the whole earth seemed to be “of one language and of one lip.” Out from the darkness there rose not a mere picture—a reality. Not the white Christ, with the blood-drops trickling down; but the living Christ, radiant and mighty. The harp of language with its myriad chords rang out through the starry silence. Not the Indian and the English only. Not one language was quite absent from the chorus. No longer Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin. “All nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues.” 1 [Note: Archbishop Alexander, Verbum Crucis, 126.]

Principal D. W. Simon illustrates ( Twice Born, 194) the unity and diversity of the redeemed by quotations from the hymns of the world. First of all he shows how widespread is the acceptance of a hymn like “Rock of Ages.” Our English hymn-books, he goes on, teem with translations from the German, with translations from the Latin, with translations from the Greek—“Jesus! Thy boundless love to me” (German); “Jesus! Thou joy of loving hearts!” (Latin); “O happy band of pilgrims” (Greek). It is an illustration that might be worked out easily and with much effect.

1. They are one in their Position or Standing—“standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” Once they were “strangers and foreigners”; now they are “fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.” Once they were far off; now they are made nigh. Once they were afraid to draw near; now they have access with boldness. “Happy are thy men,” said the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, “which stand continually before thee.” Happy are they who stand before the throne and before the Lamb. It is this that marks the difference between the first vision and the second, between the worship of the Creator and the worship of the Redeemer. They who worship the Creator veil their faces with their wings; every one of the redeemed, however vast their number and various, is made nigh by the blood of Christ.

Longings for pardon, for rest, for peace are met by the simple acceptance of this Saviour, whose blood speaks peace to the conscience and whose love brings rest to the heart. So powerful is this sprinkled blood that it can carry a sinner into the holiest of all to hold communion at the Mercy-seat with a reconciled God and Father. “One touch of this cleansing blood seals the soul for service.” Its voice—like the sound of the waves on the shore—is ever speaking peace in a believer’s ear, “sometimes loudly, sometimes less clearly, but always speaking.” “If a believer can do without the blood he is a backslider.” “At the Bush Moses was forbidden to draw nigh, but afterwards on the Mount he went up into the very presence of God. What made the difference? At the Bush there was no sacrifice.” 1 [Note: Reminiscences of Andrew A. Bonar, 134.]

2. In Character—“arrayed in white robes.” The white robes, we are afterwards told, are the righteous acts of the saints. They are an exchange for the “filthy rags” of selfishness and selfrighteousness. If still here, they may not be wholly white; but even here He sees them in their shield, and looks upon them in the face of His anointed, and He sees no iniquity in Jacob and no perverseness in His Israel. And yet it is no hollow, fictitious righteousness. Their will consents. They themselves have washed their own robes—only they have not washed them in their own blood; they have made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

It is related of Queen Victoria that one day she visited a paper-mill, the owner of which showed her through the works, and, not knowing who she was, took her, among other places, into the rag-room. When she saw the filthy rags, out of which the paper is made, she exclaimed, “How can these ever be made white?” “Ah, lady!” was the reply, “I have a chemical process of great power, by which I can take the colour even out of these rags!” Before she left, the owner discovered that she was the Queen. A few days after, the Queen found lying upon her writing-desk some of the most beautifully polished writing-paper she had ever seen. On each sheet were stamped the letters of her name, and her likeness. There was also a note from the mill-owner, asking her to accept a specimen of the paper, with the assurance that every sheet was manufactured out of the dirty rags she had seen.

3. In Feeling—“and palms in their hands.” Archbishop Trench will have it that it is a feeling of joy. For the Apocalypse, he says, moves altogether in the circle of sacred imagery; all its symbols and images are derived from the Old Testament. And so he refers to the Feast of Tabernacles, when with branches of palm trees the people rejoiced before the Lord seven days. But the Seer of the Apocalypse was certainly familiar with the palm as a symbol of victory. And perhaps the two ideas are not so far apart. If it was joy, it was the joy of a great triumph, triumph over the world, the flesh, and the devil; the joy of being more than conquerors through Him that loved them. In the presence of Christ has always been fulness of joy, downward from the time in which “your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day.”

It is more natural to think that the mention of the palms here, together with the expression in Revelation 7:15, “He that sitteth on the throne shall spread his tabernacle over them,” is intended to indicate that the redeemed are represented as keeping the Feast of Tabernacles. At that feast not only was it the custom for the faithful to dwell in booths or tents, but also in the festal solemnities to carry in their hands palm branches with myrtles and willows, in fulfilment of the charge in Leviticus 23:40: “Ye shall take you on the first day the fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook.” These palm branches, or lulabs, as they were called, were borne in procession by the worshippers on each of the seven days of the solemnity, when they accompanied the priest to the pool of Siloam, as he went to draw water from thence, to bring it to the Temple and pour it out by the altar. So this great multitude which St. John sees bear palms in their hands when the Lamb is about to lead them to no earthly fountain or pool, but to “living fountains of waters.” This view seems also to obtain a further confirmation from the fact that the thought of the tabernacle feast is not unknown to the prophets of the Old Testament in connexion with the future of the Church of God, e.g., Zechariah 14:16. It was not merely that this feast formed the most joyous of all the festive seasons of Israel; it was rather that it was the “feast of ingathering,” a sort of harvest home, and was thus regarded as pointing forward to the final harvest when Israel’s mission should be completed, and all nations should be gathered unto the Lord.

The Feast of Tabernacles commences five days after the Day of Atonement and lasts seven days. Its observance is commanded in the Mosaic Law ( Leviticus 23:34), and its purpose is there explained as to commemorate the way in which the Israelites dwelt in booths ( sukkoth) during their journey through the wilderness.

Every Jew who owns a court or garden is required to erect a booth, or something more or less equivalent, and to dwell in it—or at least have meals in it—while the feast lasts. In order that the character of the original booth may as far as possible be retained, the modern counterpart is very lightly constructed. It “must not be covered with fixed boards and beams or with canvas, but with detached branches of trees, plants, flowers, and leaves, in such a manner that the covering is not quite impenetrable to wind and rain, or starlight.” The booths are adorned with garlands, flowers, and the like.

In the Synagogue the ancient and original character of the celebration as a Harvest Festival—the “Feast of Ingathering,” or thanksgiving for the gathered produce of the fields and gardens—is made prominent in various ways. The Synagogue itself is decorated with plants and fruits; and there are the palm-branch processions. The worshipper takes the palm-branch ( lulab) in the right hand, and the ethrog or citron (fixed in a metal receptacle) in the left, reciting as he does so the following blessings:

(1) Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast sanctified us with Thy commandments, and commanded us to take up the palm-branch.

(2) Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast preserved us alive, sustained us, and brought us to enjoy this season.

These are lifted up during the recitation of the Hallel (Psalms 113-118) in morning prayer. At the end of the Musaf or “Additional” prayer, a procession is formed, and the worshippers with the citron and palm-branch, make a circuit while certain prayers called “Hosannas” ( Hosha’anoth) are recited.

The joyous character of the festival finds its fullest expression on the seventh day, the popular name of which is Hosha’na Rabba (“The great Hosanna”). It is so called because the exclamation “Hosanna,” and the “Hosanna-processions” are much more frequent than on the preceding six days. Seven processions take place round the whole Synagogue, a separate “hosanna” hymn being sung each time.

At the completion of the processions, the worshippers being now in their places, the lulab is laid aside and the willow-bunch taken up, and a few more poetical pieces are said. All join in the messianic hymn beginning “A voice brings glad tidings, brings glad tidings, and says.” Then with the utterance of a petition for forgiveness of sins each shakes or strikes the willow-bunch on the desk before him till its leaves fall off, and throws it away. 1 [Note: W. O. E. Oesterley and G. H. Box, The Religion and Worship of the Synagogue, 397, 401.]

4. In Occupation—“they cry with a great voice, saying, Salvation.” Their occupation is worship, of course. All their life is worship. St. John cannot conceive any one of the redeemed otherwise occupied than in worshipping, whether he is in the home, or the field, or the market-place. But the special form of the worship that attracts his attention is praise. Their great cry is a song, and there is no discord in it. Every person of every tribe has a voice and sings in harmony with all the rest.

Their cry is the acknowledgment that their salvation—the salvation which they now taste—is due not to themselves, but to their God and to the Lamb. The salvation here must be taken in its most comprehensive sense, including every deliverance—from the curse of law, from the power of sin, and from the perils of life. This is “the voice of rejoicing and salvation which is in the tabernacles of the righteous,” when the Lord, who is their strength and song, “has become their salvation.”

Salvation to our God, our salvation is unto, is wholly due to, our God. “Salvation belongeth unto the Lord”: it is all His, from first to last; every step of the way, and its termination. Yes, self-confidence, self-righteousness, self-exaltation, vanity, there, in heaven, in God’s presence, will be as impossible as they are natural and common here.… The “great multitude which no man could number” of the ransomed and saved, standing in heaven “before the throne” of God, join with one voice in ascribing solely to Him and to the Lamb the praise of their salvation. And the Angels, “in whose presence,” while earth lasted, “there was joy over every sinner,” one by one, “who repented,” may well rejoice, with a joy accumulated and intensified, over the final ingathering of all who have been saved. Most of all, well may they echo the ascription of all glory to God and to the Lamb. Amen, even so; it is indeed He who hath kept us from our fall; it is indeed He who hath brought you back from yours! 1 [Note: C. J. Vaughan, Lectures on the Revelation of St. John, 192.]

What are these lovely ones, yea, what are these?

Lo these are they who for pure love of Christ

Stripped off the trammels of soft silken ease,

Beggaring themselves betimes, to be sufficed

Throughout heaven’s one eternal day of peace:

By golden streets, thro’ gates of pearl unpriced,

They entered on the joys that will not cease,

And found again all firstfruits sacrificed.

And wherefore have you harps, and wherefore palms,

And wherefore crowns, O ye who walk in white?

Because our happy hearts are chanting psalms,

Endless Te Deum for the ended fight;

While thro’ the everlasting lapse of calms

We cast our crowns before the Lamb our Might. 1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, Poetical Works, 212.]

The Redeemed

Literature

Alexander (W.), Verbum Crucis, 127.

Barry (A.), Sermons Preached at Westminister Abbey, 247.

Bonar (H.), Light and Truth: The Revelation, 190.

Brooke (S. A.), The Spirit of the Christian Life, 237.

Conn (J.), The Fulness of Time, 200.

Dearden (H. W.), Parochial Sermons, 55.

Gibson (E. C. S.), The Revelation of St. John the Divine, 105.

Grimley (H. N.), Tremadoc Sermons, 63.

Hyde (T. D.), Sermon-Pictures for Busy Preachers, i. 189.

Johnson (J. B.), A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John, 77.

Jones (J. S.), The Invisible Things, 220.

Maurice (F. D.), Lincoln’s Inn Sermons, ii. 267.

Milligan (W.), The Book of Revelation (Expositor’s Bible), 124.

Paget (E. C.), Silence, 208.

Romanes (E.), Thoughts on the Collects for the Trinity Season, 293.

Rossetti (C. G.), The Face of the Deep, 231.

Skrine (J. H.), The Heart’s Counsel, 90.

Stone (S. J.), Parochial Sermons, 81.

Swete (H. B.), The Apocalypse of St. John, 99.

Trench (R. C.), Sermons Preached for the Most Part in Ireland, 360.

Vaughan (C. J.), Lectures on the Revelation of St. John, 191.

Christian World Pulpit, xliv. 174 (J. M. Wilson).

Churchman’s Pulpit: All Saints, xv. 363 (J. S. Jones).

Verse 14

The Noble Army of Martyrs

And he said to me, These are they which come out of the great tribulation, and they washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.— Revelation 7:14.

The Revelation of St. John is a magnificent spectacular prophecy. It sets forth great principles in bold and brilliant pictures. It uses the bitter experiences which befell Christian hearts in dreadful persecutions, as the means of showing forth the Divine providence and purpose of deliverance. With the blood of present martyrdoms for a symbol, it depicts the struggle and woe of a world at strife. And with the white light shining in the Christian faith, it shows forth the blessed consummation of victory, the triumph of the Christ. It is one of the most stirring of writings. It moves the heart because it is so filled with the pathos and the tragedy of those days of bloody persecution in which it was written. “Without tears,” says Bengel, “it was not written; without tears it cannot be understood.” It is a set of dazzling pictures, “wherein,” says Herder, the great poettheologian, “are set forth the rise, the visible existence, and the general future of Christ’s Kingdom, in figures and similitudes of His first coming to terrify and to console.”

In the passage which stands as the text, we have one of our glimpses of the victory which in those days of tribulation and anguish must have seemed so very remote and hard to believe. The innumerable throng in white robes, with palms in their hands, wear and bear the symbols of triumph. They stand forth in the din and clash of the contending forces depicted in this book, the happy participants in the glory and the purity of the victorious Lamb. Their white robes mean holiness. Their waving palms mean victory. The two symbols standing together set forth the triumph of holiness. That is the burden of the whole book. It is the glorious message which shines down to us from all these stormy pictures. The victory of the good, the end of strife in the purification of the world—this is the great thought poured out of the heart of that mystic utterance of the beloved Apostle. Victory through struggle and tribulation—that is the outcome of the world and the creation, prophesied in this vision of the multitude in white robes.

But the form and suggestions of the vision bring to the mind not alone the victory, but the means as well. In the very thought of a victory, there is also the thought of a battle. Winning comes only of striving. The creation is to make its way to this victory through struggle. And the same thought which carries the mind to the consummation of toil and suffering carries it back also to the weariness and the pain and the conflict out of which that end has been wrought. “Lo, a great multitude, clothed in white robes, and with palms”—“These are they which come out of the great tribulation.” There is a long look ahead in these words. But there is also a long look backward, as they, in one sentence, not only forecast the future but sum up the past. 1 [Note: J. C. Adams, The Leisure of God, 219.]

It is told of Robert Burns that he could never read the closing verses of this chapter without tears. It is no wonder. The poet is a man of larger heart, of broader and keener sympathy than other men, and with a corresponding power of expression. What all men feel he feels more, and can express better. All of us feel that in this and like words of the Holy Book, something in our hearts is met; a something which we may never have been able to define or utter—a faint vision of blessedness—a belief that at some time, we know not when, in some world or region we know not where, the brightest of those things which the soul can desire or conceive is possible to Man_1:2 [Note: J. Laidlaw, Studies in the Parables, 271.]

I

The Tribulation

1. Perhaps a more literal rendering of the original Greek would be “friction,” the rubbing which goes to make the fine polish, or the exquisite edge. And so we might render the text: “These are they which come out of the refining processes of great friction.” But the translator’s word “tribulation” is both apt and striking. Its original meaning is full of interest. It is derived from the tribula or tribulum which was used to crush the straw and separate the grain from the chaff. In its spiritual application it means chastening, the purification of the desires, the removal, through discipline of the soul, of what mars its progress, and the power of assimilating fresh influences of good. There are different kinds of tribulation. It may be the crushing on the wheel, or the stake of fire, or the slow, patient application of daily trials. It may be sheer savagery, or it may be the mere wear and tear of common life, some crushing burden, some hidden struggle against temptation, or grinding care, or sad bereavement, such as may possibly come, or it may be some slight misunderstanding, or misrepresentation, or the weariness and painfulness of commonest details.

I remember often, when a boy in my father’s barn, turning round by the handle of the fanners the big wooden fan inside, which by its motion created an artificial wind, blowing away, from the confused mixed stuff from the threshing-floor poured into its funnel, the chaff and broken bits of straw, and passing through the clean, assorted grain in a heap by itself. This instrument is very ancient in its form and use. It is a legacy from the Romans, and was called by them tribulum. It is from the Latin name of this instrument that our English word tribulation comes. The early Christians compared a trial or trouble to a passing through the tribulum or fanners, in order that by it their nature might be winnowed, that they might be sifted as wheat, and all their chaff blown away; and therefore they called it a tribulation when it had that effect. They said that “we must through many tribulations enter into the Kingdom of God”; and they were taught that this was not an evil but a good, that sanctified affliction to the believer was gain and not loss. It was a tribulation that separated the precious from the vile, that purified the nature of the believer, but preserved himself unhurt for the heavenly garner. 1 [Note: H. Macmillan, The Touch of God, 150.]

2. But the text. speaks of the great tribulation. So it is not the general sorrow and perplexity of human life that is referred to here; we must not compare this text with such passages as that in which Eliphaz, the Temanite, tells us that “man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” It is the tribulation which Christ foretold as the immediate result of His coming, the prospect of which was before Him from the first, making Him speak of His mission as one not of peace but of a sword, and which, in almost His last discourse in Jerusalem, He declared would be wider and greater than the world had ever known before. To the early disciples it took the form of persecution; and to this the text immediately refers, with this a great part of the Book of the Revelation is concerned.

The writer had lived through a period, perhaps more than one period, of persecution and martyrdom. He had seen the powers of this world employing all their resources to quench the light of Christ, and exterminate the hated sect which bore His name. He had seen or heard of dear friends slaughtered, Paul beheaded, Peter crucified, all or nearly all his fellow-apostles done to death, and a host of less known believers sacrificed to Rome’s fury and Rome’s lust. He had lived through days which it is difficult for us to imagine, when every Christian, in a sense, died daily, and when nearly every Christian household, like Egypt of old, had at least one dead: and he had watched them calmly facing all these terrors, and holding fast the faith with courage and patience which never faltered, and dying with triumphant hope when their hour came. He had seen all this, and now he looks up, and for a moment the veil of the unseen is drawn aside, and he has a vision of these once suffering saints in their glory, wearing the white robes of spotless souls, and waving the palm branches of victory. They have conquered in the earthly fight and received their reward, and they now serve God day and night in the inner temple. St. John speaks of them as a multitude which no man can number, out of all nations, kindreds, peoples, and tongues, all of whom had come out of great tribulation and been perfected, like the Master Himself, by their sufferings.

Christ came not to send peace on earth but a sword; against the restless and resistless force of the new religion the gates of hell should not prevail. But polytheism could not be dethroned without a struggle; nor mankind regenerated without a baptism of blood. Persecution, in fact, is the other side of aggression, the inevitable outcome of a truly missionary spirit; the two are linked together as action and reaction. To the student of ancient history all this will appear intelligible, perhaps even axiomatic. “The birth-throes of the new religion must needs be agonizing. The religion of the civilized world was passing through Medea’s cauldron.” Out of the cauldron there would come a new world, but not without fire and blood. Persecution, in short, is no mere incident in the life of the Church which might possibly have been avoided. Not so do we read either history or Christianity. Persecution rather was the necessary antagonism of certain fundamental principles and policies in the Empire of Cæsar and the Kingdom of Christ.

By a sure instinct the Church discerned in the death of the martyr the repetition, not the less real because faint, of the central Sacrifice of Calvary. “As we behold the martyrs,” writes Origen, “coming forth from every Church to be brought before the tribunal, we see in each the Lord Himself condemned.” So Irenæus speaks of the martyrs as “endeavouring to follow in the footsteps of Christ,” and of St. Stephen, as “imitating in all things the Master of Martyrdom.” In the early Church the imitation of Christ, as a formal principle in ethics, played but a secondary part, so far, at any rate, as the average member was concerned. The martyrs and confessors alone were thought of as actually following and imitating Jesus; they alone were the “true disciples” of the Master. It was enough for the servant that he should be as his Lord. 1 [Note: H. B. Workman, Persecution in the Early Church, 21, 51.]

3. It is impossible, however, to confine the application of the text to the martyrs of the first century. The Seer beheld “a great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation, and of all tribes and people and tongues”; and he may have viewed as one great tribulation all the distresses that afflict the Christian generations. Just as the ten thousand lamps in a huge city blend their upcast rays into the cloud of red mist which invests it at nightfall, so the sorrows of Christ’s servants in all ages gather themselves into one great lurid mass before the view of the Seer. It is from the world’s great storm-centre of violence and whirling wrath that the children of light emerge into victory. “The great tribulation.” Common causes give rise to it. The stress and pain of the individual disciple is not peculiar to his own lot, but is part of a whole.

Some epochs may be marked by violent forms of persecution and distress, but in every age hostile tempers work against the outward happiness and well-being of Christ’s followers. The hounded apostle of the first century and the uncompromising confessor of the last stand beneath the same eclipse. There is under every form of government the same prejudice against the plain, pure ethic of Jesus Christ, the same tendency to pitiless rancour, the same sensibility to pain in the victims, the same subjection to death. This hostile temper works in one age by the engine of physical torture, and in another by sneer, slander, and social ostracism. The hot, bitter springs from which tears come are the same in all ages, and never run quite dry. That which the Seer here describes is a specific, undivided, palpitating pain running through the frame of Christ’s mystical body, filling up in all ages that which is behind of His sufferings.

It is quite the usual thing in the world for saintly men to be persecuted. It has been, as it were, agreed between God and His servants on one part, and the devil and his own on the other part, that the latter should persecute the former; that the good should suffer and be tortured, that the wicked should exercise upon them their malice, and that as long as they live in the world these should triumph, the others weep, and that after a short time all things be reversed. Let the wicked now raise up false testimonies, crushing them with affronts; let them be cast into prisons, exiled, covered with miseries as by a mantle; let them be loaded with all the misfortunes that can be devised, until they end this life by a sad death; all, all will be in the end the fulfilment of the arrangement assented to very long ago between the ancient serpent and man: “She shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” There is no need to fill pages with examples. It suffices for my purpose to say that no one can meditate on the life of any saintly man without discovering something of this, and in many of them a great deal; indeed, this fact has come to be so widely acknowledged that we ourselves do not hold a saint to be so who does not pass through all this. 1 [Note: F. J. de Siguenza, The Life of Saint Jerome (ed. 1907), 374.]

4. The imagery of this book seems to suggest that the stages of the tribulation are so ordered that it achieves the ends of a great spiritual discipline. The convulsions which rend the earth are one and all determined by movements before the throne of God in heaven. The saints are sealed ere the restless forces of destruction rush forth upon their errands, and the trials which are to prove high qualities take place under the eye of a watching God and amidst the ministries of His messengers. The distracted world is not a sheer anarchy of diabolism, as the sufferers might be tempted to think. The Sovereignty in heaven directs the path of the storms, and the storms do not break till the elect of God are made ready for their ordeals. The appointed cycles of tribulation test the faithful as they tested Job in the ancient days. Scenes of disquiet and calamity cannot work the spiritual havoc one might fear, making religious faith all but impossible. Innumerable hosts come forth out of the great tribulation. It is indeed the very discipline that prepares God’s people for their triumph. As needful is it that the children of light before the throne should be tried and perfected by their keen and manifold distresses, as that they should be washed from their sins in the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness. It is because their fidelity has been verified in the struggles of the past that they are before the throne, to the praise and glory of Him who redeemed them. They are welcomed with tenderness and fostered with exquisite care because of all that through which they have passed. The waving of the palm branches would have been mere pantomime, and the ringing jubilations an empty stage-chorus, apart from the stress, conflict, and vicissitude over which the Lord’s people have triumphed.

The Rev. J. W. Dickson of St. Helens supplies the following among the obiter dicta dropped by Dr. Paton during his lectures at the Institute at Nottingham:—“When Richard Baxter was told that he would have a glorious reward because he had suffered so much in the cause of Christ, he replied that he didn’t want any reward other than a little more persecution. He was not weary, but willing to have more of it, if God willed it. He gloried in tribulation, like Paul, and panted for more of it, resolutely assured that no foe could work anything upon him other than the will of God desired and permitted.” 1 [Note: John Brown Paton, by his Son (1914), 362.]

Presumably for most of us tribulation rather than ease constructs the safe road and the firm stepping-stone. Better to be taught with thorns of the wilderness and briars, than on no wise to be taught. Better great tribulation now than unexampled tribulation hereafter.

Good Lord, to-day

I scarce find breath to say:

Scourge, but receive me.

For stripes are hard to bear, but worse Thy intolerable curse;

So do not leave me.

Good Lord, lean down

In pity tho’ Thou frown;

Smite, but retrieve me:

For so Thou hold me up to stand

And kiss Thy smiting hand,

It less will grieve me.

“Tribulation,” that is, sifting: sifting reclaims and releases good from bad, while aught of good remains. “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” 1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, The Face of the Deep, 235.]

II

The Triumph

1. They all come out of the great tribulation. Now they celebrate their triumph. Every one of them carries the palm of victory. Some reminiscence of the Feast of Tabernacles perhaps lies in the background of the picture. The Jews were accustomed to observe that season of rejoicing by putting up triumphal arches, camping out upon the tops of their houses in arbours of evergreens and waving branches of trees, thus testifying to their joy at escaping from the hand of Pharaoh, and from the terrible plagues which had blasted the country of their sojourn. This vision assures the exiled Seer that the life beyond the veil is a festival of victory. He had perhaps been tempted to look upon himself and his companions in tribulation as defeated, crushed, fatally discredited, and overthrown. But the victims of a pagan persecuting Imperialism are now seen to be victors, and they ascribe their salvation to God and to the Lamb, who Himself conquered sublimely at the cross in His apparent overthrow. They have risen above those judgments of wrath which a retributive Providence let loose for a time upon the world to desolate the adversaries of Christ’s Kingdom. They have triumphed over unseen hosts, leagued together against God’s elect and the cause they had at heart. Through faith they have prevailed against the wrath of Antichrist, and the great pagan empires are led captive to adorn their triumph. They have proved stronger than their own frailties in all the distresses appointed for the testing of their fidelity. By their contemporaries they were counted as filth and offscouring. They left the world as defeated men, unpitied as they were thrown to the wild beasts, scoffed at as the sword fell upon them; but they reappear in the realms of light “more than conquerors.”

The palm, among many of the ancient nations, was an emblem of victory. Hence its branches were used to adorn triumphal processions. The general whose victories the triumph was intended to celebrate carried a small branch of it in his hand, and was thus recognized as a conqueror. Therefore when the redeemed are described as having “palms in their hands,” we are reminded that they were once soldiers who were not ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, but fought manfully under His banner, and by the strength of His arm completely conquered every enemy. The saints on earth indeed are warring the same warfare in which these glorified beings were engaged, and are continually obtaining victories in it; but then they must wait till all the days of their warfare are accomplished before they can have the triumphal chariot and the palm. The soldier never triumphs till the war is ended, and the enemy completely subdued. The saints in heaven have finished the painful conflict, and are now gone up for their reward to Jehovah’s temple.

In the spiritual realm there is no such thing as absolute and conclusive victory. We must not imagine that Adèle Kamm spent her latter years in undisturbed tranquillity and peace. Like an Alpine climber, who before he can reach the topmost peak must make his toilsome way along the edge of a precipice, she had to strain every nerve in order to keep her footing. It is not surprising to learn that she had to fight many a hard and lonely conflict, and though she nearly always managed to meet her visitors with a smile, yet when night came, and she was alone, the almost intolerable suffering would sometimes wring from her bitter tears. Either from stoicism or pride she would hide this feeling from those whom she did not know well; and she never spoke of it to those who depended on her brave example for inspiration. On the 9th of November 1909 she wrote to Miss Schlumberger:

“If you only knew, Lily, how strange it seems to me to have to struggle to live, when all the time I feel an irresistible longing to be with Jesus Christ. From month to month He becomes more wonderfully attractive to me, His Light seems more radiant, His words more living and deeper in meaning, and I feel so trustful, so happy, so joyful, that it is with real difficulty that I make myself stay here when I want to fly away, to throw off the burden of this suffering body, and to penetrate into that mysterious Beyond, to enter fully into the wonder of that intense Divine Love! Still, I am a very ordinary mortal, and it has been my habit ever since I was a child to put duty before inclination, and this view of things helps me more than I can say at this critical moment. Duty first! Those are my orders! and I must stick to my post and not neglect anything for that; I believe that I can live for a good while longer if only I am brave.” 1 [Note: A Living Witness: The Life of Adèle Kamm (1914), 165, 169.]

2. Those who came out of the great tribulation are arrayed in white robes. Their attire, as well as the palms they carry, proclaim their victory. White robes suggest that they are in the act of triumph, and occupied in a scene of rejoicing. And in this respect also their robes have been “washed and made white.” In their unredeemed condition they were captives, not conquerors; slaves, not kings; rebels, not priests; miserable victims, not rejoicing sons. But now all this is changed. Heaven rejoices over them as the lost found and the dead come to life, and they share in the joy. But it is all founded on the blood of the Redeemer. No doubt their rest after toil and their bliss after pain are augmented by the past of their own history, yet the ground of all their joy and triumph is the blood of Christ. They overcame by the blood of the Lamb and for the testimony of Jesus. It was given them even when they suffered for His sake, and they were made more than conquerors through Him that loved them.

Often when generals have returned from battle they and the warriors have been clothed in white, or have ridden upon white horses. True, the Romans adopted purple as their imperial colour, and well they might, for their victories and their rule were alike bloody and cruel; but the Christ of God sets forth His gentle and holy victories by white; it is on a “white cloud” that He shall come to judge the world, and His seat of judgment shall be “the great white throne.” Upon a “white horse” He shall ride, and all the armies of heaven shall follow Him on white horses. Lo, He is clothed with a “white” garment down to the feet. Thus has He chosen white as the symbolic colour of His victorious kingdom, and so the redeemed wear it, even the newly born, freshly escaped out of the great tribulation, because they are all of them more than conquerors. They wear the victor garb and bear the palm which is the victor symbol. 1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]

(1) White suggests the immaculate purity of character of the redeemed. White signifies perfection; it is not so much a colour as the harmonious union and blending of all the hues, colours, and beauties of light. In the characters of just men made perfect we have the combination of all virtues, the balancing of all excellences, a display of all the beauties of grace. Are they not like their Lord, and is He not all beauties in one? Here a saint has an evident excess of the red of courage, or the blue of constancy, or the violet of tenderness, and we have to admire the varied excellences and lament the multiform defects of the children of God; but up yonder each saint will combine in his character all things that are lovely and of good report, and his garments will be always white to indicate completeness, as well as spotlessness of character.

What a miracle of grace! Yon clouds that walk in brightness beside the noonday sun transformed, transfigured by the marvellous processes of Nature from the briny sea, and the brimming river, and the standing pool, and the swampy meadow, and the foul marsh; but more marvellous the transformation when those who were sinners once walk in white beside the dazzling whiteness of the King of kings, and before the blaze of that great white throne on which He sits. 2 [Note: J. Laidlaw, Studies in the Parables, 277.]

(2) These white robes of victory and purity are also the uniform of service. A uniform usually signifies service; the soldier’s and the sailor’s uniform speaks of the particular service in which they are engaged. The nurse’s mantle, the scholar’s gown, the priest’s robes, all speak of special work. These are clothed after a special manner, and their distinctive clothing signifies honourable and responsible service. Their uniform is the sign of their responsibility, their clothes are symbols of their high calling. In the very beginning of this book, in its opening vision, which is a revelation of the Head of the Church, the risen Son of Man, even He, too, is revealed as specially clothed in the royal uniform of His Heavenly occupation. He is girt about the breasts with a girdle—that is to say, He is a Priest on active service. He is also a King, ruling from His throne in justice and in truth. He is the risen, glorious, acting Priest-King. His clothing symbolizes His office and His work. So, too, do those garments of the saints, those blood-washed garments of white. They mean honour, victory; yes, but also service. Therefore are they before the throne and serve Him. They are clothed for their Heavenly work. Thus, then, is it with the Church in Heaven, and that, too, is the calling of the Church below. We are called in Christ Jesus to co-operation in His vineyard, to understand His purpose, and to carry out His plans.

In “Sartor Resartus” Carlyle lays hold practically of this truth, and with his great imagination on bold wing, and with his wonderful humour coruscating and breaking out into lambent flame, he speaks of many things as clothes, and of the significance of clothes as seen in a great many things, and urges that however a man is clothed, such garments only mean responsibility and service. Rank, and honour, and titles, these are clothes in the thought of the great thinker. Social station, reputation, and privilege, these are a kind of clothing, or uniform, too. The judge’s office, the prophet’s calling, the king’s throne, what are they all but symbols and garments? And so we speak about men being clothed with honour, clothed with authority, or clothed with power. And going off on the eagle wing of his magnificent imagination and sweeping through great circles of truth, he speaks even of Nature herself—wonderful and glorious Nature—tripping forth in all the beauty of her summer raiment, or austere in her winter garments, as the time-vesture of God. But all such dress symbolizes something, and most of it calls to service and means responsibility. Apply this truth anywhere and you will find it true, but it is especially true in regard to the spiritual calling and honour conferred by Christ on Christian people. We are redeemed, honoured, crowned—for what? For enjoyment, for self-satisfaction, for indulgence, even refined and selfish indulgence in connection with religion? Never. We are redeemed, honoured, crowned, to serve. 1 [Note: D. L. Ritchie, Peace the Umpire, 162.]

(3) White is also the colour of joy. Almost all nations have adopted it as most suitable for bridal array, and therefore these happy spirits have put on their bridal robes, and are ready for the marriage supper of the Lamb. Though they are waiting for the resurrection, yet are they waiting with their bridal garments on, waiting and rejoicing, waiting and chanting their Redeemer’s praises, for they feast with Him till He shall descend to consummate their bliss by bringing their bodies from the grave to share with them in the eternal joy.

One of Dr. Paton’s former students, who took notes of his lectures, gives examples of his teaching on the great themes of the ministry. Speaking of heaven, the doctor said: “Fellowship with God—that is heaven. The full consummation of what we know of heaven will be in heaven only; but heaven is not to be limited to the future life. Heaven is the perfect development and fulness of what we have the beginning of here. The fulness of joy and service and blessedness of what is in heaven, I know here and now in some measure. In part, but it is a part only. If we haven’t heaven here, we shall not have heaven yonder. Christ is now at the right hand of God, and I am walking in fellowship with Him here now. And He has called me, by faith, up into fellowship with Him yonder. I see only darkly, but then I shall see fully and unveiled. The veil gets thinner and thinner day by day. Heaven is simply the perfection and fulness of what I have here. Heaven can give me no more, and I don’t want heaven to give me more. It has been a great mistake of evangelical preaching to put all joy in the future world. It is not so. It is not ‘the sacrifice of this world to the next.’ It is the opposite. It is the great heaven—the eternal world—that has come down to us. Heaven has sacrificed itself for this world. Heaven was in Calvary, or it was nowhere. Suffer with Christ now, and you reign with Him now. The more I suffer, the more I reign with Him now. We are born here into life eternal—and thus into that promised heaven. But heaven is not our due because we suffer: it is a gracious gift of God.” 1 [Note: John Brown Paton, by his Son (1914), 368.]

3. How came they by their robes? “They washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Their robes were white, like the white and glistering raiment of Christ when He was transfigured. The robes express their condition, as a purple robe expresses royalty, or filthy garments a condition of sin and misery. But it was not in love, or in any moral quality or virtue, that those robes were made white; it was in the blood of the Lamb. The figure of a washing, even of garments, in blood, is indeed a very strong one. In some Eastern countries of old, men who were oppressed with a sense of sin actually plunged their bodies into a stream or bath of animal blood, that their souls might be cleansed. But from such gross literalness we turn away. But let us never turn away from the truth which underlies the figure of garments made white by being washed in precious blood. There is cleansing for the soul in the atoning death of the Lord Jesus.

Now this is a material image which is used in the text, but of course no little child among us needs to be told that it is in some spiritual sense it must be understood. It is not in the literal sense that we are to understand these words. The human blood of Christ sprinkled upon us would not make our raiment white; and though it did, that would not bring us to heaven. Probably the Roman soldier who pierced the Saviour’s side with his cruel spear, would be (in the literal sense) sprinkled with His precious blood: but that would not save him: he remained, spiritually, after that exactly what he had been before. To have our robes made white in the blood of the Lamb means two things. It means that our sins are pardoned for the sake of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. And it means that our souls are made holy by the blessed Spirit Christ sent after He left this world. And there are two reasons why only those thus washed in the blood of Christ can be always before the throne of God. One is, They alone have a right to be there. The other is, They alone are fit to be there, and to be happy there.

One night, during that terrible winter in the Crimean War, Duncan Matheson, the evangelist, was returning, weary and sad, from Sebastopol to his poor lodgings in the old stable at Balaklava. He had laboured all day with unflagging energy, and now his strength was gone. He was sickened with the sights he had seen, and was depressed with the thought that the siege was no nearer an end than ever. As he trudged along in the mud knee-deep, he happened to look up and noticed the stars shining calmly in the clear sky. Instinctively his weary heart mounted heaven-ward in sweet thoughts of the “rest that remaineth for the people of God,” and he began to sing aloud the well-known scriptural verses:

How bright these glorious spirits shine!

Whence all their white array?

How came they to the blissful seats

Of everlasting day?

Lo! these are they from suff’rings great,

Who came to realms of light,

And in the blood of Christ have wash’d

Those robes which shine so bright.

Next day was wet and stormy, and when he went out to see what course to take, he came upon a soldier standing for shelter below the verandah of an old house. The poor fellow was in rags, and all that remained of shoes upon his feet were utterly insufficient to keep his naked toes from the mud. Altogether he looked miserable enough. The kind-hearted missionary spoke words of encouragement to the soldier, and gave him at the same time half a sovereign with which to purchase shoes, suggesting that he might be supplied by those who were burying the dead. The soldier offered his warmest thanks, and then said: “I am not what I was yesterday. Last night, as I was thinking of our miserable condition, I grew tired of life, and said to myself, Here we are, not a bit nearer taking that place than when we sat down before it. I can bear this no longer, and may as well try and put an end to it. So I took my musket and went down yonder in a desperate state about eleven o’clock; but as I got round the point, I heard some person singing, ‘How bright these glorious spirits shine,’ and I remembered the old tune and the Sabbath School where we used to sing it. I felt ashamed of being so cowardly, and said, Here is some one as badly off as myself, and yet he is not giving in. I felt he had something to make him happy of which I was ignorant, and I began to hope I too might get the same happiness. I returned to my tent, and to-day I am resolved to seek the one thing.” “Do you know who the singer was?” asked the missionary. “No,” was the reply. “Well,” said the other, “It was I”; on which the tears rushed into the soldier’s eyes, and he requested the Scripture-reader to take back the half-sovereign, saying, “Never, sir, can I take it from you, after what you have been the means of doing for me.” 1 [Note: J. Macpherson, Life and Labours of Duncan Matheson, 70.]

(1) Mere tribulation will not necessarily make the robes white. Tribulation, or affliction, or oppression—call it which you will—is overruled by a miracle of Divine grace so as to benefit the believer, but in and of itself it is not the cleanser but the defiler of the soul. Affliction of itself does not sanctify anybody, but the reverse. Afflictions of themselves arouse to an unwonted energy the evil which is in us, and place us in positions where the rebellious heart is incited to forsake the Lord. This will be seen if we consider the matter closely. The great tribulation is, under some aspects of it, a sin-creating thing, and if the victorious ones had not perpetually gone to the blood they would never have had their garments white. It was that alone that made and kept them white; they were familiar with the atonement and knew its cleansing power.

(2) It is the blood of the Lamb that washes out the stains and makes the garments white. How often did the martyrs have their garments stained and soiled when enduring a violent death in the arena; but in the very act of shedding their blood they became identified with Christ and so entered into the fruits of His victory. Robes that are washed in the blood would be expected to come out red; why should the result be so unlike the process? Because the process of sacrifice which makes me pure must leave no trace of itself. The blood which washes out my stains would, if perpetuated, be itself a stain. There can be no cross in my completed life. There is a shadow in its dawn, but not in its day. There is a struggle in faith; there is a struggle in hope; but there is no struggle in love. There are some cures which leave a scar; the disease is gone, but the red mark is left which tells of pain. Not all blood washes white. There are struggles in which I conquer, but from which I yet come down with the shrunk sinew; the battle is over, but, even in the daybreak, the wound remains. I have won the fight, but I have lost youth’s elastic spring; I halt upon my thigh. But the cross of Christ leaves on me no print of the nails. It heals its own scar. It dries its own blood. It wipes its own tears. It not only redeems, it restores my soul. It has no after-effects—no lameness, no sight of men like trees walking. There is no sense of langour, no feeling of soreness, no memory of pain. The cross of yesterday becomes the crown of to-day; the thorn of my winter is made the flower of my spring. The heart’s bleeding is staunched when law is one with love.

(3) Each individual in the triumphal throng had to perform his part in cleansing his robes. They washed their own robes and made them white. Faith is a fact embedded deep in their history, for it links their present blessedness with their past experience. All-important and blessed record! We are not told where they were born, where they died, or in what style they lived, whether in royal palace or smoky hovel; whether in their natural characters they were brilliant or humble, wise or foolish. This only is recorded, and this of them all—they believed on Jesus; they trusted to His cross; they came guilty to the fountain which was opened there, and out of it they went, washed and white, to heaven. If anything in the experience of the redeemed on earth be meant beyond this, it is their renewed and continual application to His blood for the pardon and cleansing of every day. Washed once for all and in one sense clean every whit, they need yet daily to wash the feet from the soil of sin that cleaves to them through time. And it is characteristic of Christ’s redeemed ones that the nearer they get to heaven the more completely they depend on the atoning death of Christ; in all the world none but Christ, and in Christ nothing that absorbs them so much as “him crucified.”

While to those who are without, the necessary, the meritorious death of Christ remains the stumbling-block and stone of offence, the chosen point of attack, ever openly assaulted, ever secretly undermined, to those who are within, the Stone thus set at nought and rejected is still the head of the corner; it is still the tried stone, the sure foundation, the Rock whereof Faith speaks, “Set me upon it for it is higher than I,” Love’s sure, abiding Pillar of remembrance, whereon Love’s secret is written and graven with a pen of iron for ever. To them who believe Christ is precious.… The death of Christ is that which most powerfully attracts the heart of man to God, and this because it is the strongest proof of love. Love kindles and calls forth love; “We count that,” says John of Wessel, “to be the most lovable which we know to be the most loving.” The love of Christ has achieved the greatest things, and hence must produce the most powerful effects; it has displayed the greatest devotedness, and consequently must possess the strongest attractive power. 1 [Note: Dora Greenwell, The Covenant of Life (ed. 1898), 47.]

The Noble Army of Martyrs

Literature

Adams (J. C.), The Leisure of God, 219.

Alcorn (J.), The Sure Foundation, 195.

Bonar (H.), Light and Truth: The Revelation, 195.

Boyd (A. K. H.), Sermons and Stray Papers, 139.

Bradley (C.), Sermons, i. 1.

Bright (W.), The Law of Faith, 264.

Carter (T. T.), The Spirit of Watchfulness, 247.

Coates (G.), The Morning Watch, 373.

Foote (J.), Communion Week Sermons, 248.

Fraser (D.), Autobiography and Sermons, 209.

Greenhough (J. G.), Christian Festivals and Anniversaries, 176.

Hood (P.), Dark Sayings on a Harp, 331.

Johnston (S. M.), The Great Things of God, i. 309.

Laidlaw (J.), Studies in the Parables, 271.

Lynch (T. T.), Three Months’ Ministry, 73.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Epistles of John to Revelation, 331.

Matheson (G.), Searchings in the Silence, 77.

Morgan (J.), The Sacrament of Pain, 203.

Morrison (G.), The House of God, 175.

Ritchie (D. L.), Peace the Umpire, 157.

Ryle (J. C.), The Christian Race, 296.

Selby (T. G.), in The Divine Artist, 73.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxii. (1876), No. 1316.

Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser., xiv. (1877), No. 1022.

Woodward (H.), Sermons, 366.

Christian World Pulpit, viii. 300 (A. Mackennal); lxvii. 387 (A. Whyte).

Church of England Pulpit, 1. 2 (H. D. Rawnsley).

Churchman’s Pulpit: All Saints, xv. 431 (W. Bright).

Church Times, Oct. 23, 1914 (R. Keable).

Expository Times, xxi. 108.

Homiletic Review, xx. 142 (J. L. Withrow).

Verse 17

The Lamb as a Shepherd

For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall guide them unto fountains of waters of life: and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes.— Revelation 7:17.

1. The seventh chapter of the Apocalypse contains the vision of the “multitude which no man could number,” which is among the most familiar and most highly treasured passages in the book. The meaning of the vision stands little in need of explanation; its value is not to be enhanced by exposition. It speaks straight to the heart of every Christian. The picture of the Church triumphant, drawn “out of every nation, and of all tribes and peoples and tongues,” offering the praise of heaven to God and the Lamb; the question, “Who are these?” and its answer; the description of their privileges as the flock shepherded by the Lamb, the people of God’s own care—these things speak for themselves. It is one of the many beautiful glimpses of the heavenly life which St. John gives us in this book of celestial visions. For a moment the veil is drawn aside, and we see the white-robed ones who have passed through great tribulation to their rest and reward. The figures used are suggestive of perfect and uninterrupted joy. The toils and pains and weariness of our mortal life have no place in the “land of pure delight.” Hunger and thirst are unknown. There is no want or unsatisfied desire. No sleep is needed, for the day’s work never tires, and the night is bright and animated as the day. The sunlight never burns, and there is no hot fever in the blood. The eyes are never dim with sorrow, for all tears are wiped away, and the purest and deepest longing of the religious soul is realized, for He whom they have loved dwells among them, and they do always behold His face.

2. The passage from which the text is taken is to a great extent made up of citations from the Old Testament. Isaiah furnishes St. John with his imagery and his language. “They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun smite them: for he that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water shall he guide them” ( Isaiah 49:10), and “the Lord God will wipe away tears from off all faces” ( Isaiah 25:8). But the quotation is wonderfully elevated and spiritualized in the New Testament vision; for instead of reading, as the Original does: “He that hath mercy on them shall lead them,” we have here, “the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd,” and instead of their being led merely to “the springs of water,” here we read that He leads them to “fountains of waters of life.”

I

The Lamb’s Place of Honour

1. Not in the confines of heaven, not on its distant borders, does the Lamb stand who shall pasture the redeemed. In the very centre and seat of power He has His place: He is the Lamb in the midst of the throne. There are few grander pictures in the Bible than St. John’s conception of the heavenly Kingdom. It is like one of those drawings by Doré of the Paradise of Dante, in which there is circle within circle of wheeling angels. That is the kind of vision which St. John had of glory, as if from its utmost and dim verge it were filled with ranks and choirs; and as the circles drew nearer and nearer to the centre, they were composed of nobler and more glorious beings. In the very centre of that mighty confluence was a throne—it was the throne of the immortal and eternal God. And in the very centre of the throne, standing in front of it, there was a Lamb. And not any angel from distant rank or choir; not even the flaming cherubim or glowing seraphim—not these, but the Lamb in the midst of the throne shall feed them. That means that the redeemed shall be fed not only gently, but by one who stands in the place of sovereign power. None can gainsay Him there; none can with-stand Him; none can contest His access to green pastures. The Lamb who feeds them is in the midst of the throne—the sceptre of universal power is His now.

All the universe and its forces are being administered for purposes of redemption. The Lamb rules and He rules as the Lamb. How calming to feel this, to look up from the turmoil of this visible, flaring, and lying world—from the shows and shams and the tinted scene of the theatre; from all in life that startles and appals, to Him who sits above it all. From Him all things proceed, and to Him they return in circular flow. The shadows are all passing; the reality is behind. Nothing lasts; our trials are all hasting away to oblivion; let the wind rave as it will, we look at the Christ who abides. How small all our conflicts and ambitions seem to be, how transient and easily borne our sorrows, when we look up as John looked from the rock and the wild waters to the serene King, against whose changeless purpose all the waves of time and circumstance break in vain. 1 [Note: W. R. Nicoll, The Lamb of God, 50.]

2. The first words which St. John ever heard of Jesus were words that described Him as a Lamb. When he was a disciple of the Baptist, drinking in inspiration from that stern teacher, he had heard these words fall from the Baptist’s lips, “Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” The Apostle was a young man then, aflame with eager hope, and the words of the Baptist sank deep into his heart—so deep that through all his after years he loved to think of Jesus as the Lamb. What experiences St. John had had, and what a vast deal he had suffered when he came to write this Book of Revelation! Life and the world were different to him now from what they had been in the desert with the Baptist. Yet in Revelation some seven-and-twenty times John repeats the sweet expression “Lamb of God”—the first words he had ever heard of Christ. Christ in heaven to-day is the very Christ who walked by the banks of Jordan. Here it is the Lamb “in the midst of the throne.” Here, in the glory, it is the Lamb slain, as in Isaiah it had been a lamb led to the slaughter. And we feel at once that not all the height of heaven, or all the inconceivable grandeurs of God’s throne, have changed the nature or the love of Him who was pointed to beside the Jordan. Somehow, we are prone to think that our Saviour in the glory must be different from what He was long ago. We know that He is no longer rejected and despised, and we know that the body of His humiliation has been glorified, until insensibly we transfer these changes from His outward nature to His heart, as though death and resurrection had altered that. So do we conceive Christ as far away from us, separated from the beating of the human heart; glorious, yet not so full of tender brotherhood as in the days of Capernaum and Bethany. That error is combated by the vision of the Lamb in heaven. Purity, gentleness, and sacrifice are there. The wrath of the Lamb grows terrible just as we remember that that wrath is love rejected and despised. And in the last Judgment, when the Lamb shall be our judge, it will not be the majesty of God that will overwhelm us; it will be that we are face to face, at last, with the love and with the sacrifice of Christ.

The wrath of the Lamb must be a wrath that can be justified. It is not, like so much of the anger of this world, unreasonable, hasty, and vindictive. It is the wrath of the Lamb, most gentle, most pitiful, most merciful, most long-suffering. Some have said that the wrath of the Lamb must be terrible because it is love turned to anger. There is no fire, it has been said, like the sheen of a dead affection; no enemy like one that has once been a friend. “To be wroth with one we love doth work like madness in the brain.” But while this is true of men, we cannot affirm it in the same way about Christ, because this very excess of resentment and passion is often an infirmity and a sin. We may say that in Christ, as the flame of love is purer and stronger, so the flame of anger may be; but we cannot say that anything in His anger is passionate or vindictive. The truth pressed on us is that we shall have no defender when the Lamb ceases to plead for us. No one is so abundant in the resources of mercy and patience, and when His resources are exhausted, on whose shall we fall back? 1 [Note: W. R. Nicoll, The Lamb of God, 115.]

Every fibre in Dean Church’s frame quivered with righteous passion against the cynical indifference to cruelty and wrong which dominated London “Society” at the time of the Bulgarian agitation. He saw a moral judgment at work, sifting the people. Freedom, righteousness, the honour of England, the belief in the Divine government of the world, all were at stake in the momentous issue. He found himself beset on all sides by a political and social temper which was worldly, godless, immoral, and he flamed with prophetic wrath. The wrath of one so sensitive, so delicate, so appreciative, so balanced, so wise, was like nothing else that I have ever known. Its heat was so utterly devoid of mere personal interest; it was the heat of moral judgment, of sheer holiness—the heat of the Apocalypse. 1 [Note: H. Scott Holland, Personal Studies, 234.]

II

The Lamb as Shepherd

1. Christ is the Lamb, and He is the Shepherd—that suggests not only that the sacrificial work of Jesus Christ is the basis of all His work for us on earth and in heaven, but the very incongruity of making One who bears the same nature as the flock to be the Shepherd of the flock is part of the beauty of the metaphor. It is His humanity—His continual manhood—all through eternity and its glories, that makes Him the Shepherd of perfected souls. They follow Him because He is one of themselves, and He could not be the Shepherd unless He were the Lamb. All Christ’s shepherding on earth and in heaven depends, as do all our hopes for heaven and earth, upon the fact of His sacrificial death. It is only because He is the “Lamb that was slain” that He is either the “Lamb in the midst of the throne,” or the Shepherd of the flock. And we must make acquaintance with Him in the character of “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world,” before we can either follow in His footsteps as our Guide or be compassed by His protection as our Shepherd.

This beautiful multitude in Heaven will be led by “the Lamb.” Very meek must they be whom the Lamb shall lead: very pure, not to shame Him who is without blemish and without spot: very innocent, to be made one flock with Him. 2 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, The Face of the Deep, 238.]

Before the creation of the world we were destined to be His flock, and He was appointed to be our Shepherd. Even if mankind had not strayed away from the paths of righteousness, the relation of shepherd and flock would have existed. But having so strayed He took our earthly form upon Him to arrest our wanderings and to lead us back to the fold. Jesus is our Shepherd, not only during our earthly pilgrimage, but also through eternity. “He ever liveth” to be our loving Master and Friend. “I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” In the many mansions of the Father’s house the flock of the redeemed shall hunger no more, neither shall they thirst any more, neither shall the sun smite them, nor any heat; for their Good Shepherd, Jesus, who hath mercy on them, shall feed them and lead them to fountains of living waters, and God Himself shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. 1 [Note: A. F. Mamreov, A Day with the Good Shepherd, 84.]

Beyond the human region, out among those Eternities and Immensities where Carlyle loved to roam, there is that which loves and seeks. This is the very essence of Christian faith. The Good Shepherd seeketh the lost sheep until He finds it. He is found of those that sought Him not. Until the search is ended the silly sheep may flee before His footsteps in terror, even in hatred, for the bewildered hour. Yet it is He who gives all reality and beauty even to those things which we would fain choose instead of Him—He alone. The deep wisdom of the Cross knows that it is pain which gives its grand reality to love, so making it fit for Eternity, and that sacrifice is the ultimate secret of fulfilment. Truly those who lose their life for His sake shall find it. Not to have Him is to renounce the possibility of having anything: to have Him is to have all things added unto us. 2 [Note: J. Kelman, Among Famous Books, 322.]

How fair and green yon blessed field

Beyond dark Jordan’s flood reveal’d!

Eternal waters from the Rock

Fall ever for that happy flock;

The Shepherd Lamb with endless care

Among them moves and guides them there.

Yet we who tread the desert still

Share even now that Shepherd’s skill;

The sands indeed around are spread,

The sun beats heavy overhead,

But where He leads us, there is traced

A long Oasis through the waste.

Our Elim still beside us moves,

With brimming wells and shadowing groves;

The mystic Rock is aye at hand

To cool and water all the land;

The Lord’s green footsteps now create

Heaven’s foretaste in our pilgrim state.

Then let us live as those who know

Eternal joys begun below;

Staff, shield, and sword, we need them yet,

For foes and traitors still beset;

But aye let harps and songs abound;

“ We’re marching through Emmanuel’s ground.” 1 [Note: H. C. G. Moule, In the House of the Pilgrimage, 13.]

2. The ministry of the Good Shepherd does not close when He has brought back a lost sheep to the fold, and the wilderness is not the only scene of its activities. In the unknown land into which our friends pass, and from which no messages come back to us, redeemed souls still need His guiding hand. They are not left to explore for themselves the mysteries of the strange world into which they have gone, and to discover its riches. He tends His own there just as graciously as in this hard, bleak sphere of peril and distress. They have faded from our view, old and young alike, and we can do nothing more to help them. But they are still under the eye and the hand of the Good Shepherd. He who guided the outgoings of His first disciples amidst the hills of Galilee and by the lake shore, through the plains of Samaria and in the highlands of Judæa, will guide the quests of the celestial life. The hand that multiplied the bread on earth will minister the mystic manna. The holy feet that went before the disciples will lead into the pathways of the living fountains. The old pastoral fellowship is re-established. He will give of the best things of His Kingdom on high just as freely as He made the disciples share every blessing of His own lot upon earth. The life to come will be infinitely varied, and the Lord Himself will show the way into the mysteries of its manifold blessedness. “He shall guide them unto fountains of waters of life.”

The rendering “unto fountains of waters of life” is more literal than that of the A.V.; still more literally we might render, “unto life’s water-springs”; the emphasis is strongly on the word “life.” In chap. Revelation 22:1, the water of life is as a river “proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” In comparison with the passage in Isaiah (“even by the springs of water shall he guide them”) the thought has taken a more distinctly spiritual meaning: the middle term will be found in the teaching of Jesus; cf. John 4:14, “The water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life”; also John 7:38. 1 [Note: C. Anderson Scott.]

The Lamb will tend His people as a shepherd tends his flock (the word translated “feed” in the A.V. has this force), and will lead them to the springs of the water of life. The Twenty-third Psalm rises at once to our minds. The Lord who was David’s shepherd ( Psalms 23:2), who was the Good Shepherd who sought and brought home the lost for whom He died ( Luke 15:4; John 10:11), does not forget the shepherd’s work in heaven. He who made His people to drink of the brook in the way ( Psalms 110:7), who gave to those who came to Him the water which alone would quench their thirst, leads them now to the springs of the living water, and makes them drink of the river of His pleasures ( Psalms 36:8). Significantly enough the springs of this living water are in the throne itself. Ezekiel saw the stream issuing forth from the Temple ( Ezekiel 48:1), but in the city where there is no temple we are carried to the very throne of God, to find the well-spring of every gladness. In this emblem of the water we have another allusion to the Feast of Tabernacles. Among the ceremonies observed at the feast was that of drawing water; the priest drew a vessel of water from the brook of Siloam, and poured it out in the temple-court by the altar of burnt offering, and the people sang the words, “With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation” ( Isaiah 12:3). Here the Lamb, who is also the High Priest, leads His people to the springs of the water of life. 2 [Note: W. B. Carpenter, The Revelation, 104.]

3. Of old the Good Shepherd made His flock to lie down in green pastures; He led them beside the still waters. These were the far-off streams, but now they have reached the well-head of all; they have come to living waters of life; and more than waters, to fountains. What a pathetic and ennobling summary of life is the old Eastern saying, “In the morning, mountains: in the evening, fountains!” And here it is in its highest fulfilment. Think of these spirits as now far up in the heights of glory! They lie down and drink deep of the very innermost fountain, where life—God’s life—pours itself, fresh and full, into their very being. This is more than even sonship, it is the life Divine that breathes and beats beneath the sonship. This is more than service, this makes the heart burn in sacrifice, and the lips break forth in song. This is more than subjection, this elevates not only before but to the throne of God. It is life, fountain life, the well of life springing up in them from the Divine fountain into everlasting life. Now, indeed, they comprehend with all saints the length and the breadth, the depth and the height; now they know the love of Christ that passeth knowledge, and are filled with all the fulness of God.

Dr. Schaff’s old friend Godet wrote to him in 1892 a loving letter of farewell, in which he said: “God has already blessed us both, and the 103rd Psalm should be our psalm. Farewell, my dear old faithful friend. Again let me repeat to you one of the last words of Tholuck. One of his old students was visiting him and recalled that he had once said that when one was old and feeble, one must put oneself into the arms of the Good Shepherd to be brought home by Him. Tholuck looked at him without seeming to understand, and then he spoke these words, ‘Ein alter müder Mann, ein guter treuer Hirte’ (An old tired man, a good faithful Shepherd). That which was true for our dear teacher is now true for us. Let us rest our tired heads and hearts, often bruised, upon the Good Shepherd. The nearer one comes to the end, the more one is inclined to look back to the beginning and that with a deep feeling of humble thanks. I have eighty years behind me; this is goodness enough, and each new day I regard as a donum superadditum. Happy are we who are able to look peacefully behind and ahead, thanks to the blood which flowed for us and the Holy Spirit who will keep us to the end and in the communion of our glorified Brother and Saviour.” 1 [Note: D. S. Schaff, The Life of Philip Schaff, 448.]

III

God as Comforter

1. The last touch in this picture sets forth the Eternal God as the Comforter of His saved people. “And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes.” Through all earthly vicissitudes He had been their light and salvation, illuminating their gloom, turning their mourning into joy, and appointing them beauty for ashes. It is an old relationship that He resumes and consummates. Not only is He the object of worship upon the throne; He comes nearer still to the redeemed multitude, healing all the smarts of earth, and dispersing the last memory of pain. The great tribulation leaves no scar or tear-stain upon the ransomed universe. The description reaches completeness in this exquisite and comprehensive promise. We can imagine a man placed under sunlit skies, breathing the exhilarating air of a new-created world, looking forth upon domains of unshadowed beauty, secure against privation and distress, welcomed into rare and gladdening fellowships, and yet sighing at some plaintive memory of the past, or chilled by the uprising of a bygone trouble. But these final words of the text leave no room for such forebodings. In winning and gentle friendship, God comes to each spirit of the redeemed from among men, and sweetens every hidden spring of bitterness and distress. We may be tempted to think that there are tragic and haunting memories which will steal into the high and holy place. Some griefs are so vast and mysterious that they threaten to make us pensive amidst the angels. It is difficult to see how some distresses can be obliterated, for no finite ministry can conjure them into oblivion. But the things impossible to the uttermost human sympathy and gentleness are possible to God. When God puts His hand upon the fountain of mortal tears, the fountain is sealed up for ever.

The eldest of the three [Ladies of Sorrow] is named Mater Lachrymarum, Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night and day raves and moans, calling for vanished faces. She stood in Rama, where a voice was heard of lamentation—Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted. She it was that stood in Bethlehem on the night when Herod’s sword swept its nurseries of Innocents, and the little feet were stiffened for ever which, heard at times as they trotted along floors overhead, woke pulses of love in household hearts that were not unmarked in heaven. Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and sleepy, by turns; oftentimes rising to the clouds, oftentimes challenging the heavens. She wears a diadem round her head. And I knew by childish memories that she could go abroad upon the winds, when she heard the sobbing of litanies, or the thundering of organs, and when she beheld the mustering of summer clouds. This Sister, the elder, it is that carries keys more than Papal at her girdle, which open every cottage and every palace. She, to my knowledge, sat all last summer by the bedside of the blind beggar, him that so often and so gladly I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight years old, with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations of play and village mirth, to travel all day long on dusty roads with her afflicted father. For this did God send her a great reward. In the spring-time of the year, and whilst yet her own spring was budding, He recalled her to Himself. But her blind father mourns for ever over her; still he dreams at midnight that the little guiding hand is locked within his own; and still he wakens to a darkness that is now within a second and a deeper darkness. This Mater Lachrymarum also has been sitting all this winter of 1844–45 within the bedchamber of the Czar, bringing before his eyes a daughter (not less pious) that vanished to God not less suddenly, and left behind her a darkness not less profound. By the power of the keys it is that Our Lady of Tears glides, a ghostly intruder, into the chambers of sleepless men, sleepless women, sleepless children, from Ganges to the Nile, from Nile to Mississippi. And her, because she is the first-born of her house, and has the widest empire, let us honour with the title of “Madonna.” 1 [Note: De Quincey, Suspiria De Profundis (Works, xiii. 365).]

2. What need that God should wipe away the tears when the Lamb has led to the living waters? Would not joy follow as a matter of course? If our hunger and thirst have been taken away, if our eyes have already rested on the sparkling fountains, surely God need not interpose to dry our tears; will not Nature do that? No. One’s first joy is not brought back by restoring one’s first surroundings. Grief itself robs us of something; it breaks the elastic spring. The child cries after it has ceased to be hurt. The hurt has put it in the valley, and the painlessness cannot at once lift it to the mountain. Someone must put right the spring, must restore the capacity for joy. The fountains in vain will sparkle if the heart has lost its shining. And so, this one ray, the tenderest of the heavenly vision—one bar, the sweetest of the heavenly music—marks the close of the text. It reminds us of perhaps the noblest passage in Handel—the Dead March in “Saul.” When the music surges free and escapes all gloom in the great burst of joy after the funeral wail, then at its highest there comes in a tremulous minor strain which makes the glorious vision of the swelling triumph more heroic and exultant as we see it through tears. Another touch could not be added to the vision; but it can be made more thrilling and pathetic by a hint of the “great tribulation” that is gone, by flashing it for a moment and unexpectedly through the dimming tears once so sad and familiar; and that touch is given in the words which close this vision, which, beginning with tribulation, ends with tears, but leaves the whole space between calm and undimmed. The mighty Hand that bore away their sins, and led them in royal majesty, touches them with more than a mother’s yearning. “And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes.” Tribulation gone from their steps; sin washed out of their hearts; now all the fountains of their tears are dried up. Truly the right hand of the Lord hath done valiantly in its mighty deeds of salvation; but this, its last touch of ineffable pity, moves us to the uttermost with the tenderness as well as the omnipotence and infinitude of love Divine.

Meanwhile to us, as we look up to that vision, is given the sweet pain of noble tears, and we feel rising within us the longing desire of the Great Dreamer, who in his vision followed the pilgrims from the City of Destruction to the City of the New Jerusalem, till he saw them “go in at the gate. And after that they shut up the gates; which, when I had seen, I wished myself among them.”

A great sorrow after a time becomes idealized. It presses at first with overpowering weight, but gradually it rises till it becomes a thing of contemplation on which we can dwell with calmness, and which leaves a mellowing influence behind. One has seen the dew, bequeathed by the darkness, weigh down the flowers’ heads, but sunlight relieves the pressure, dries up the tears, and leaves only their memory in refreshment and fragrance. 1 [Note: John Ker, Thoughts for Heart and Life, 125.]

What will be the complete rest to which we are aspiring when all the history of the world is wound up and God is all in all! What retrospects of home repose, and wanderings here and there, of earthly histories wrought out and consummated! How can we conceive of a complete joy if those we love are not there with us? I dare hardly turn my eyes this way. It is like the beginning of an agony to think of Eternal separation; it seems as if it would fill Eternity with tears. What is that view of Truth that will wipe all tears away? What that consent to the Divine Rectitude which cannot permit a diminished joy even when the wicked are silent in darkness? I need help for such thoughts as these—God bring all we love safe within that circle of glory. God grant we may have no loves on earth that will not be everlasting. 2 [Note: Letters of James Smetham, 140.]

The summer of 1826 was, I believe, the hottest and driest in the nineteenth century. Almost no rain fell from May till August. I recollect the long-continued sultry haze over the mountains of Lorne, Loch Etive daily a sea of glass, the smoke of kelp-burning ascending from its rocky shores, and the sunsets reflecting the hills of Mull and Morven in purple and crimson and gold. I can picture a sultry Sunday in that year in the quaint, rudely furnished, crowded parish church, then beside the manse, and the welcome given to the sublime imagery of the Apocalypse in the words which formed the text: “These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.” 1 [Note: A. Campbell Fraser, Biographia Philosophica, 17.]

And now, all tears wiped off from every eye,

They wander where the freshest pastures lie,

Through all the nightless day of that unfading sky! 2 [Note: Horatius Bonar.]

The Lamb as a Shepherd

Literature

Body (G.), The Good Shepherd, 96.

Bradley (C.), Sermons, i. 22.

Carpenter (W. B.), The Revelation (Ellicott’s New Testament Commentary), 104.

Cooper (T. J.), Love’s Unveiling, 137.

Foote (J.), Communion Week Sermons, 245.

Fry (J. H.), Tears, 65.

Gibson (E. C. S.), The Revelation of St. John the Divine, 108.

Greenhough (J. G.), The Cross in Modern Life, 209.

Hall (N.), Gethsemane, 323.

Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year: Miscellaneous, 340.

Lewis (F. W.), The Work of Christ, 23.

Mackennal (A.), The Life of Christian Consecration, 266.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Psalms I.–XLIX., 365.

Maclaren (A.), Last Sheaves, 115.

Matheson (G.), Searchings in the Silence, 16.

Morrison (G. H.), The Unlighted Lustre, 259.

Nicoll (W. R.), The Lamb of God, 37.

Scott (C. A.), The Book of the Revelation, 190.

Selby (T. G.), in The Divine Artist, 73.

Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xi. (1865), No. 643; xxx. (1884), No. 1800.

Christian World Pulpit, xii. 191 (T. de W. Talmage); xiii. 148 (J. C. Gallaway); xvi. 191 (W. Graham); xxiv. 75 (H. W. Beecher); lvi. 356 (J. M. Jones).

Church of England Pulpit, lxi. 642 (W. H. M. H. Aitken).

Plain Sermons, by Contributors to “Tracts for the Times,” viii. 228.