And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel.
Transitions
How to bridge the epochs of change in our lives, how to pass from our visions to our tasks, from our apocalypses to the light of common days, for which they are to prepare us, carrying the best results of the one into the other, and bringing the former to true effect in the latter; this, surely, is something we need to know. These transitions are among the things to be counted upon, if our life have any sweep and movement at all. We ought to, but do not always, pass through them well. The heavenly gales which should have wafted us on to ports of power and usefulness leave us with strained masts and torn sails. How to pass through these epochs of transition without dimming the glory of the exalted mood is a question worthy of our most earnest consideration. The words we have made our text have bearing on this subject. They report the immediate sequel to the sublimest mood of spiritual exaltation. Yet that sequel was a sad blunder, involving both sacrilege and sin. Beginning the ethical application of this incident on the lowest plane, it shows us, first, that great men may make great mistakes and eminent saints fall into grievous sins. This should make us careful, humble, and charitable. We are apt to ask for a perfection in others which we know does not obtain in ourselves, and to deem our own virtue proof against the temptations to which others have succumbed. Perhaps the worst about this is that it militates against our reverence and appreciation of good men, and the influence and inspiration of their real worth, when we discover these defects. We ask for perfection in heroes, prophets, and saints; when we discover the fault, which mars the perfection butnot the essential worth, the effect of the work, teaching, and life is impaired, and perhaps the hero, prophet, or saint, exists for us no more. The truth is, God has given us naught that is perfect save Himself, and what flows directly from Himself; and He has no perfect representative on earth save Him who came forth from the bosom of the Father and was one with Him. But one life in which God is partially revealed in any mode is supplemented, corrected, and completed by others may take many heroes to fitly exemplify the power of God working in humanity; it may take many prophets to adequately set forth the truth of God so as to constitute a full, saving revelation, and it may take many saints to worthily illustrate the principle of a Divine holiness in human life, and there is a completeness and adequacy, not to say perfection, in the aggregate not to be found in the individual or section. But, more specifically, the text underscores a point of special peril in moral life. That point is the vanishing point of some special privilege, exalted mood, rich and radiant experience, or larger and intenser flow of life in any mode. We should learn to translate vision and transport into purpose and power. We experience the spiritual, intellectual, or emotional effects of sermon or prayer. Then, awakening from our ecstasy, we straightway fall down to worship before the feet of the angel which showed us these things. We praise the sermon, the service, the song, and magnify those who have ministered therein. All the subtle idolatries of sermon and service, church and creed, so prevalent in this time, are repetitions of the apostle’s error in falling to worship before the feet of the revelation angel. Other heavens than those of faith are opened to us, and other apocalypses than those of spiritual vision are accorded us--heavens of domestic felicity and apocalypses of human beauty, tenderness, and worth. Angels walk by our side and show us these things, transfiguring earth’s dull and prosy scenes, revealing to us the heavens of love, opening seals of affection and fellowship. But these visions fade, for they are not the perfect day, that abides; they are but prophetic gleams of a coming dawn. The scene closes. The ministering spirit is summoned from our side. Our danger, then, is of falling into idolatry of the departing angel. The house must be kept just as they left it. The clothes, and everything the loved one cherished, must be preserved as sacred mementoes, and the scenes of love’s vision become the shrine of love’s memorial and glorifying devotion. (J. W. Earnshaw.)
The temptation to creature worship
This incident is very decisive against anything approaching to saint or angel worship, but it yields a still deeper lesson suited to our times, which is this, that the most devout, the holiest of men, may be betrayed into thus falling. When we consider the state of things in the modern Church of Rome, two things strike us with astonishment. The first of these is the length to which this Church goes in encouraging the invocation of angels and departed saints. This is an increasing evil. It is greater now than ever it has been before. In Romish countries the worship of the Virgin in the way of Invocation far exceeds the worship paid to any Person in the Ever-Blessed Trinity. Theologians, it is true, make a distinction between the worship paid to the Virgin and saints and that paid to the Persons in the Adorable Trinity, but the vast mass of worshippers know of no such distinction. This, then, is the first thing; but another matter which fills us with astonishment, and some even with misgiving, is this, that notwithstanding this idolatry, so many devout minds have been won to this corrupt Church, and have themselves gone very far in this direction. How can it be, we ask, that men who know Scripture, and who unquestionably have their souls alive to the things of God and of Christ, can yet pay this idolatrous worship? This is staggering to some, but notif we read aright this very place of Scripture. For here we have an apostle, full of the Holy Ghost, called and taught by Christ Himself, one of those who had drunk in His profoundest teaching, twice needing the reproof, “See thou do it not; worship God.” Now, how could this be? I suppose none of you have ever been tempted to do such a thing as worship an angel, or a saint, or the Blessed Virgin? It is the very last temptation you are likely to be troubled with. How, then, was it possible that this temptation should assail an apostle? Because, I answer, he had a revelation granted to him such as you or I are not likely to have, because we are utterly unworthy of it. It is not for us who have never been so favoured, who, perhaps, some of us, have never believed in an angel at all--who have never realised or tried to realise our companionship with angels, or how God works by them--it is not for us to judge this apostle; but it may be well for us to learn somewhat from ]aim. How grand, then, beyond expression, must these visions of the New Jerusalem and its inhabitants have been if they could so affect an apostle who had lain in the bosom of Jesus Himself! (M. F. Sadler, M. A.)
Worship
The theme contained in this one word “worship” is much larger and profounder than any of us assume. We, all of us are likely to take it for granted that we know what “worship” is. Our simplest idea of it identifies it with the public services of the Church and with family and private devotions. The word “worship” necessarily associates itself with these. But these do not by any means exhaust its meaning. Let us inquire, then, more in detail what worship is; then we may possibly be able to see how necessary it is to the lifting all our faculties into a receptive attitude towards that Divine life out of which our life continually comes.
1. Worship implies some sort of knowledge. Agnosticism cannot worship. It may not be intellectualised knowledge, and yet it must be of the nature of knowledge. Many an unschooled man is intuitively a more knowing man than is many a schooled man. His insight, judgment, wisdom, are more trustworthy. I believe, however, that every man, in being a man, constitutionally that is, has knowledge enough of God to create in him worshipful tendencies and aspirations. In order to a fulness of knowledge there must be a fulness of humanity, and there has never been but one in whom dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
2. Let us say, then, that worship is the effort of the soul to realise the Divine presence and to partake of the Divine life. When the soul is perpetually as conscious of the Divine presence as of the presence of an external world, and partakes of the Divine life as really and as consciously as we partake now of each other’s life, then worship becomes no longer an act to which we compel ourselves, but a state--the constant state of the soul before God--as real, asnatural, as unforced, as genial, as sufficing, as gently reciprocal as that of two souls who, together in the same place and under the same conditions live one life. “Beholding” the glory of the Lord, ever doing it, constantly doing it, sitting with eyes fixed like an artist student before a great masterpiece, until the work becomes so real and living that it speaks quietly, silently, with unsyllabled speech to the soul of the man beholding, until his feeling is changed and his ideas are changed. The old ignorant self is no longer there--into the image of the great master he is changed, and the change keeps going on from state to state, each an advance upon the other, and all by the Spirit of the Great Master entering into him and subduing him.
3. There must also be, as has been suggested by the greatest of living English statesmen, a sufficient self-knowledge. This is the first indispensable condition for s right attitude towards the Eternal. Then, too, there must be a suitable frame of the affections--that humility and aspiration which self-knowledge ought to bring; and, again, sustained mental effort, in which each worshipper recognises that he is a priest unto God; to carry our whole selves, as it were, with our own hands into that nearer presence of God, putting aside every distraction of the outward sense, so that the feeling I am a living soul in the presence of the living God may be the controlling thought. Is it not Ruskin who says, “There is only one place in the human soul that God can occupy--the first place”? To offer Him the second place is to offer Him no place at all. How much of our public presentation of ourselves in Church services fails of being worship I need hardly suggest. Formal worship ceases to be worship. There is no worship when the heart is not in it, and yet worship is a Divine command, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.”
4. There must be some imperious necessity in our nature why we should worship, or such a command would not be recorded. There are some faculties which have the telescopic power to draw the distant near: to make that visible which, in the non-exercise of them, remains invisible. On its upper side, the faith faculty has this use. Does not the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews speak of it in this wise: “Now, faith is the giving substance to things hoped for--the proving of things not seen”? Doubt refuses to act, but faith acts, and so gets its proofs of things not seen. The imagination, again, is the right royal faculty of the soul. Without it we should have no poets and no prophets--many painters we might have, mere copyists, but no artists; no great masters in any department of things. We say such men have “genius”--the Bible says “vision.” They see, while we reason as to whether we can see or not. Faith, imagination, vision, these are the wings of the soul--its faculties which help it to soar, to bring the distant near” to worship. If we were doomed to a prosy, mathematical, legal, commercial life, there would be no need of them. When God gave them He said to man in the giving, “Thou shalt worship.” We are living in the midst of a spiritual world, whose presence, if we are living rightly, i.e., according to God’s laws for life, will be as real to us as is the presence of the material world. This spiritual world contains facts which we cannot deny, such as these--intellect, conscience, reason, imagination, affection, will--none of these are material facts. No chemist, however minute and thorough his analysis, can find them in matter. They do not belong to the material. They must inhere in some substance not material. Is it not reasonable to infer that we are here not to develop the material world, except as a secondary object, but to develop ourselves, these mental and spiritual powers in us? That if we fail in developing these our failure is complete? And in order to do it we must worship that which is above us. There is no other way. The highest response we are capable of giving to the spiritual world around us is the act we call worship. It is an attitude of soul, yet an act with an infinite variety in it. They who stand and wait before God in speechless expectancy, their face ever God-ward, even when making no verbal prayer, offering no syllabled request, yet hoping ever in God, are true worshippers. Wherever there is a soul delighting in God, rejoicing in God, there is worship. The perfected, glorified humanity will be one in which the worship of God is an instinct; a state of habit, an attitude of soul unforced and universal. (R. Thomas.)
The great invitation
This invitation is--
I. Very blessed--“Worship God.” Not man, nor angels, nor self.
1. By studying His book--“Seal not the sayings,” etc.
2. By believing His truth.
3. By proclaiming His gospel whether it be pleasant or unpleasant to the carnal mind (Rev_22:11). This invitation is--
II. Very urgent. For--
1. The time is short (Rev_22:10). “Behold, I come quickly.”
2. The reward is dependent upon conduct--blessings to the obedient, disgrace to those who continue without.
3. The promise is only limited. The invitation is--
III. Very dignified.
1. In consequence of its Author--Jesus Christ, the Alpha and the Omega, etc. Not a doctrine or an invitation but comes from Him in His own voice.
2. In consequence of its importance. God is the Highest Being in the universe, and to worship Him is the noblest employment.
3. In consequence of the Assistant. The Saviour speaks and all things re-echo His words. “The Spirit and the Bride say, Come.” (Homilist.)
Christ, the object of worship
There are two propositions-laid together in these words: the one negative--you must “worship” nothing that is not “God”; and thesecond positive--whatever is “God,” “worship.” Therefore at once, if Christ is God, He is to be “worshipped.” And it needs only to be quite sure of His Godhead, to be certain also that not only we may, but that we ought to pray to Him “Worship God.” Suffice it, then, just to remind you of one or two passages, which are the simplest upon that subject. In prophecy--“His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God.” In praise--“Unto the Son He saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever.” In teaching--“Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifest in the flesh.” In argument “But God commendeth His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christdied for us”--the whole force and sequency of the thought lying in Christ being God. In Christ’s own testimony--“I and My Father are one”--“he that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” But let us see more distinctly what actual Scriptural example and sanction there is for paying this adoration, and addressing our petitions to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is certain that when He was upon earth many did come and make supplication to Him with every external demonstration of worship--kneeling, bowing, falling to the ground. And Christ never, in a single instance, put away the worship, or reproved the worshipper, or denied the prayer. It is matter of fact, too, that Christ told us that “all men were to honour the Son, even as they honour the Father.” And a part, a great part of the Father’s honour, is the prayer and the praise which His creatures offer Him. And we have the same truth, stated often in the New Testament, upon a wider range. For it is a name several times given to Christians--those who call upon the name of Christ. And not tomultiply more, it is beyond all question, that in that world, which is the copy of us all--not the angels only, but the saints, do all, with one accord, direct their loftiest strains and their devoutest worship to Jesus Christ. We do not wonder, then, that resting itself upon this authority of Scripture, it has been the habit of the Church always to pray to Christ. In the whole, both of the Eastern and Western Churches, the custom has been universal, and never questioned, to pray to Christ. Alas! for that manor that Church which would ever forbid us, in song or in supplication, to worship Him, “the only wise God our Saviour,” who, blending so comfortably the wonders of His majesty with the tenderness of His brotherhood and the humiliations of His sufferings, has said freely to the whole world, “Come unto Me, all that travail and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
He that is unjust, let him be unjust still … and he that is holy, let him be holy still--
The misery of the unjust and impure, and the happiness of the righteous and the holy
Our first remark on this passage is, how very palpably and how very nearly it connects time with eternity. The character wherewith we sink into the grave at death, is the very character with which we shall reappear on the day of resurrection. The moral lineaments which be graven on the tablet of the inner man, and which every day of an unconverted life makes deeper and more indelible than before, will retain the impress they have received unaltered by the transition to the future state of our existence. Our second remark suggested by this Scripture is, that there be many analogies of nature and experience which even death itself does not interrupt. There is nought more familiar to our daily observation than the power and inveteracy of habits, insomuch that any decided propensity is strengthened by every new act of indulgence; any virtuous principle is more firmly established than before by every new act of resolute obedience to its dictates. The law which connects our actings of boyhood or of youth with the character of manhood, is the identical Jaw which connects our actings in time with our character in eternity. Be he a saint or a sinner, he shall be followed with his own ways, so that when fixed in his own place of everlasting destiny, the one shall rejoice in eternity in the pure, elements of goodness which here he loved and aspired after; the other, the helpless and degraded victim o! those passions which lorded over him in life, shall be irrevocably doomed to the worst of all torments--the torments of his own accursed nature, the inexorable tyranny of evil. Our third remark suggested by this Scripture is, that it affords no very dubious prospective of the future hell and future heaven of the New Testament. It is indeed be true that the moral rather than the material be the main ingredient, whether of the coming torment or the coming ecstacy, then the hell of the wicked may be said to be already begun, and the heaven of the virtuous may be said to be already begun in the breast of the good man. The one, in the bitterness of an unhinged and dissatisfied spirit, has a foretaste of the wretchedness before him; the other, in the peace, and triumph, and complacency of an approving conscience, has a foretaste of the happiness before him. Each is ripening for his own everlasting doom, and, whether in the depravities of the one or in the graces of the other, we see materials enough either for a worm that dieth not, or for the pleasures that are for evermore. But, again, it may be asked, will spiritual elements alone suffice to make up either the intense and intolerable wretchedness of a hell, or the intense beatitudes of a heaven? In answer to this question, let us go in detail over the different clauses of the verse now submitted to your consideration, and let us first turn your attention to the former of these receptacles; and we ask you to think of the state of that heart, in respect of sensation, which is the seat of a concentrated and all-absorbing selfishness, which feels for no other interest than its own, and holds no fellowship of truth, or honesty, or confidence with the fellow-beings around it. The man of cunning and concealment, however dexterous or triumphant in his wretched policy, is not at his ease. The stoop, the downcast regard, the dark and sinister expression of him who cannot lift up his head among his fellow-men, or look his companions in the face, are the sensible proof that he who knows himself to be dishonest feels himself to be degraded; and the inward sense of dishonour which haunts andhumbles him here, is but the commencement of that shame and everlasting contempt to which he shall awake hereafter. Now, this is purely a moral chastisement, and, apart altogether from the infliction of violence or pain on his sentient economy, is enough to overwhelm the spirit that is exercised by it. Let him, then, that is unjust now, be unjust still--and in stepping from time to eternity he carries in his own distempered bosom the materials of his coming vengeance along with him. Character itself will be the executioner of his own condemnation; and instead of each suffering apart, the unrighteous are congregated together as in the parable of the tares, where, instead of each plant being separately destroyed, the order is given to bind them up in bundles and burn them. But there is another moral ingredient in the future sufferings of the wicked, besides the one we have now spoken of, suggested by the second clause of our text, and from which we learn that not only will the unjust man carry his fraud and falsehood along with him to the place of condemnation, but that also the voluptuary will carry his unsanctified habits and unhallowed passions thitherward. “And he who is filthy, let him be filthy still.” The loathing, the remorse, the felt and conscious degradation, the dreariness of heart, each following in the train of guilty indulgence here--these form but the beginning of his sorrows, and are but the presages and precursors of that deeper wretchedness which, by an unrepealed law of our moral nature, the same character entails on its possessor in another state of existence. They are but the penalties of vice in embryo, and may give at least the conception of what these penalties are in full. It will add inconceivably to the darkness and disorder of that moral chaos in which the impenitent shall spend their eternity, when the uproar of the bacchanalian and licentious passion is thus superadded to the selfish and malignant passions of our nature, and when the frenzy of unsated desire, followed up by the languor and compunction of its worthless indulgence, shall make up the sad history of many an unhappy spirit. Before quitting this part of the subject, we have just one remark to offer. It may be felt as if we had overstated the force of mere character to beget a wretchedness at all approaching the wretchedness of hell, seeing that that character is often realised in this world, without bringing along with it intolerable discomfort or distress. Neither the unjust nor the licentious man is seen to be so unhappy here as to justify the imagination, that there these characteristics will have the power to effect such anguish and disorder of spirit as we have now been representing. But it is forgotten, first, that this world presents in its business, its amusements, and its various gratifications, a refuge from the mental agonies of reflection and remorse; and, secondly, that the governments of the world offer a restraint against those outbreakings of violence which would keep up a perpetual anarchy in the species. But we now change this appalling picture for a delightful contemplation. The next clause of the verse suggests to us the moral character of heaven. We learn from it, on the universal principle, that as they that are unjust shall be unjust still, so also the righteous now shall be righteous still. Just imagine, for a moment, that honour, and integrity, and benevolence, were perfect in the world; that each held the property, the rights, the reputation of his neighbour to be dear to him as his own; that the suspicions, and the jealousies, and the heart-burnings, whether of hostile violence or envious competition, were altogether banished from human society; that the emotions, at all times delightful, of good-will on one side were ever and anon calling the emotion, no less delightful, of gratitude back again; that truth and tenderness held their secure abode in every family; and, in stepping forth among the wider companionship of life, that each could confidently rejoice in every one he met with as a brother and a friend, we ask of you if, by this simple change--a change, you will observe, in nothing else than the morale of humanity--though winter should repeat its storms as heretofore, and every element of nature were to abide unaltered, yet, in virtue of a process and revolution altogether moral, would not our millennium be begun, and a heaven on earth be realised? Now, let this contemplation be borne aloft, as it were, to the upper sanctuary, where, we are told, “there are the spirits of just men made perfect; where those who were once the righteous on earth are righteous still.” Let it be remembered that nothing is admitted there which worketh wickedness or worketh a lie; and that, therefore, with every virulence of evil, detached and dissevered from the mass, there is nought in heaven but the pure, the transparent element of goodness. Think of its unbounded love, its tried and unalterable faithfulness, its confiding sincerity; think of the expressive designation given it in the Bible: “The land of uprightness.” Above all, think of the revealed and invisible glory of the righteous God, who loveth righteousness, there sitting upon His throne in the midst of a rejoicing family, Himself rejoicing over them, because formed in His own likeness; they love what He loves; they rejoice at what He rejoices in. The last clause of the verse is, “Let him that is holy be holy still.” The two clauses descriptive of the character and the place of celestial blessedness are counterparts of the two clauses descriptive of the character and the place of eternal woe. He that is righteous in the one stands compared with him that is unjust in the other; he that is holy in the one stands contrasted with him that is licentious in the other. But I would have you to attend to the full extent and significance of the term holy. It is not abstinence from outward deeds of profligacy alone; it is not a mere recoil from impurity in action. It is a recoil from impurity in thought; it is that quick and sensitive delicacy to which even the very conception of evil is offensive; it is a virtue which has its residence within, which takes guardianship of the heart, as of a citadel or inviolated sanctuary, in which no wrong or worthless imagination is permitted to dwell. It is not purity of action that is ell we contend for; it is exalted purity of heart--the ethereal purity of the third heaven; and
II. it is once settled in the heart, it brings the peace, and the triumph, and the untroubled serenity of heaven along with it. In the maintenance of this, there is a conscious elevation; there is the complacency, I had almost said the pride, of a great moral victory over the infirmities of an earthly and accursed nature; there is a health and a harmony in the soul, a beauty of holiness which, though it effloresces in the countenance and the manner and outward path, is itself so thoroughly internal as to make purity of heart the most distinctive evidence of a work of grace in time--the most distinctive evidence of a character that is ripening and expanding for the glories of eternity. (T. Chalmers, D. D.)
Only one probation
What is your life? A question of solemn import to every one of us. Viewed simply as to its brevity, the present life is a vapour, a dream, a tale told; but viewed in its relation to eternity and man’s everlasting destiny, it assumes an awful amount of importance. The most solemn aspect of the present life is, that, brief and transitory as it is, it is the only period in which our depraved and guilty nature may experience a moral and spiritual renewal. Viewed in this light, it is impossible to overestimate the awful significance of the life that now is. Whatever be your character when you sink into the grave will be your character when you rise on the resurrection morn.
I. That there is but one probation. The whole Bible is written on this supposition. In admonitions, warnings, entreaties, threatenings, and promises all presuppose that there is only one probation. The vast agencies put into operation for reclaiming erring man imply that this is his only chance. The infinite pains and toils of the Holy Spirit and His agencies; the persistent efforts of Satan and his agents indicate that the final issue of the battle is to be decided here.
1. This truth is confirmed by the universal consciousness of men. Somehow or other man everywhere feels that if he fails here, he fails for ever. The idea, more or less, haunts him through life. Hence his dread of futurity. Wherever the notion of futurity obtains, the mind generally associates with it the idea of fixedness, changelessness. There are two perversions of this truth among men. In some heathen lands the doctrine of the transmigration of souls obtains. But this is a perversion wilfully adopted because more congenial to the depraved heart than an inexorable destiny. Popery has also perverted this truth, so deeply fixed in the human soul, by teaching its vassals to pray and pay for the souls of the departed, that, by the intercessions of the priesthood, they may be delivered from purgatory or have their sufferings mitigated. It cannot be denied that there is in the deepest heart of humanity an intuitive sense that the world to come is one of fixedness. This is true not only of Bible lands, but of heathen countries; of the barbarous as well as of the civilised. Pagan men, by their costly ceremonials, their pilgrimages and penance, are seeking to set themselves right with their gods; but is there not underlying all these cruel rites the conviction that this life is the only period in which such a reconciliation may be effected? Moreover, we think it a wise and gracious provision that there should be but one probation.
2. The prospect of a second probation would tend to counteract upon the mind of man the influences of the first. If you knew to a certainty that you were going to have a second probation, the inevitable tendency of a depraved heart would be to say, “I may safely resist any good influences that come upon me during my earthly life,” since I am certain of having them again, or similar ones, in another state of being.
3. The knowledge of a second probation would furnish an inducement to delay. The procrastinating principle would be strengthened. Even now, with the know]edge that there is but one probation, untold numbers delay until it is too late, and utter ruin overtakes them.
4. Man would enter upon his second probation with hardened sensibilities and confirmed habits. Frequent resistance of truth would render him less susceptible. The probability of conversion would be less.
5. And then, in case he passed the second without repentance, his condemnation would be so much greater. Surely it is hell enough for you to endure the penalties of resisting the moral agencies of one probation, without incurring the more awful condemnation resulting from resisting the additional agencies of a second probation.
II. When probation is over, character is unalterably fixed. Men wedded to their lusts, and unwilling to abandon the wretched connection, entertain the vague notion that there is some inherent power in death to change the moral character, as if the soul must necessarily-undergo some process of change for the better in its passage between this world and the next. This delusion holds many captive by its spell. There is not a syllable breathed in the inspired volume to suggest such a theory. Death is nowhere represented as a moral renovator. It is true it changes theaspect of the body. By severing it from the soul, death subjects the body to decay, corruption, and decomposition. But death touches not the soul. It affects not the character; it leads the soul through no purifying stream, nor bathes it in any cleansing fountain. Death is a disrobing, but it is a disrobing of the body and not of character. You cannot place your sins and habits in the grave with your body, there to moulder and decay. Your friends cannot do this for you. No. Every pollution uncleansed by atoning blood the soul must carry with it into the dread future. Christ alone is the Purifier. Besides, if your hope be well founded, if death must necessarily, by some mysterious process, change your character, why do you fear death? If it can and will remove evil from your nature, and fit you for a higher world, it will be your benefactor, your friend. Why therefore stand in awe of death? The agencies which regenerate are brought to bear upon man only in the present state of being. The only power that can change the human soul from a state of sin to a state of holiness is the power of the Holy Ghost. The world we now occupy is the only theatre of the Divine Spirit’s operations, the only land through which the streams of salvation flow. Probation is not so much a test of character as a test of the effects of God’s truth on character.
III. That character will constitute our weal or woe in the coming world. The text implies that your retribution, if wicked, will consist in your being wicked for ever; if filthy, in being filthy, morally polluted, for ever. Even on the supposition--a supposition which we do not admit that there will be in the future world no elements of retribution without us, yet it is certain that we shall find them within us, if unforgiven and unholy. These elements are stored up in every guilty man’s bosom. They are not now in full play. In this world of mercy they are under restraint. They sometimes haunt and harass the transgressor here. In the world to come, these materials of vengeance will be let loose upon him without check or hindrance of any kind. It is difficult, if not impossible, to conceive fully the difference between your feelings when revelling in mirth and sin, and your feelings afterwards when you come to reflect upon your conduct. Presently, however, you are cast on a bed of sickness, where you lie languishing and miserable. Companions are gone. Thelight of enjoyment has fled. Memory is busy recounting the past, looking back on the scene so gladsome. Oh, what a different aspect does it wear in the retrospect! Reflection turns it into agony. Your body may be racked with pain, but there is a keener, deeper, intenser anguish--anguish of mind. So intolerable does this become in some men that refuge is sought in self-destruction. If, then, by the united action of memory and conscience all this anguish and agony may be produced here in a world where there are so many restraints and alleviations, where mercy lifts her banner to allure the guiltiest, and where the hope of salvation sheds its radiance upon the most depraved, how much more terrific will these engines of torture become in a world where there are no restraints, no alleviations! By every transgression you are treasuring up wrath. Your own guilty hand has already gathered an awful store, and yet you go on accumulating. God in His mercy holds it from falling. It is suspended by the gracious interposition of the Mediator. But when the border line is crossed, when probation is over and the reign of mercy closed, voices shall be heard ringing through the universe, the voice of violated law, the voice of abused mercy, the voice of despised love, “In the name of the Holy Trinity cut all loose.” Then the storehouse of memory and conscience will be thrown open. The pent-up vengeance, the accumulations of your guilty life, will fall upon you and overwhelm you. Then there is the idea of being associated with those who are actuated by the same passions, and that for ever. There are neighbourhoods known to be so notoriously bad, so infested with base and dangerous characters, that you would not dare to enter them alone even in the day-time. If there be so much dread of approaching such characters here, with all the vigilance of police and the restraints of law, what must it be in a world where all the wicked in the universe are gathered together, without any of the restraints of conscience, or of the Holy Spirit, or of law, where they shall know no law but their own guilty passions, and when these passions, finding no means of gratification, must prey upon themselves and upon each other? Guilty men will need no demon tormentors in the world of retribution. Man will there be his own tormentor. His own bosom will contain materials of wrath which eternity cannot exhaust. The gloomy atmosphere of the world of retribution will thus be thronged with the visible and awful forms of your sins. You will have to live with them. They will constitute the furies that shall hunt, harass, and torment you. Escape them you cannot. Thesame principle applies to the reward of the good. “He that is righteous, let him be righteous still.” It is confirmed by your own experience that your happiness depends not on what you possess, not on circumstances, not on locality, not on friendships, not on surroundings, not so much on what you have as on what you are. The elements of my happiness are not without me but within me. It is what I am that makes me miserable or happy. Make me holy, and you make me happy. Leave me in my guilt and sin, and you leave me miserable. The redeemed will rejoice in a holy character and in the certainty that it will never more be tainted. Here you are agitated with a thousand fears lest, in a moment of weakness and unwatchfulness, the enemy should gain the advantage over you, and you should forfeit your righteousness: but there you will be for ever redeemed from all such fears by the gracious declaration of your Lord, “He that is righteous, let him be righteous still: he that is holy, let him be holy still.” You have seen the dewdrop trembling on the blade of grass, and glittering with varied hues in the morning light. The sun rises and kisses it away. It seems lost and irrecoverable. Not so. That dewdrop has disappeared, but it is not destroyed. It is in safe keeping. It is held in trust by the faithful atmosphere, and will descend in dew again upon the earth when and where most needed. So God treasures up every good thing that you have done, or said, or felt, or thought for Him and His great Name. You have sown purity and you shall reap it. God will reward you according to what you have done in the body. Now, what more shall we say unto you? If it be true that you are at this moment occupying the only world where character may be changed and where regenerating forces are in operation, how important that you should come to a right decision at once, this very moment. (Richard Roberts.)
Moral character becoming unalterable
I. If it is not altered before death it is not likely to be altered at death. There is no opportunity afforded at death for such a work as this.
II. If it is not altered before death it is not likely to be altered by death. There is no tendency in bodily changes to effect spiritual reformation. Such changes in the body are constantly going on here. Wrong moral principles and habits do not pass away from us as the particles of our body depart day after day and year after year.
III. If it is not altered before death it is not likely to be altered after death.
1. A change in moral character can only be effected by the force of moral truth.
2. We cannot conceive of moral truth in a mightier form than we have it here.
3. The longer the force of truth is resisted the less likely is it to succeed. (Homilist.)
Permanence of character
These words are usually applied to the future state, and properly so. They also refer to this present life, as seen in the fact that character is permanent; that along the same lines we have hitherto progressed we shall in all human probability continue to go.
1. Notice, ‘in confirmation of this statement, the small number of reformations from evil practices. Where one does return multitudes never leave the husks of sin and come to their Father’s house.
2. Notice how few enter an evil course late in life. Prison reports show the inmates to begin their crooked ways between ten and fifteen years of age. One criminal traced his career of sin back to childhood when he pilfered a few pennies.
3. The conservatism of age is another. The moral character which one has attained at thirty-five is a trustworthy index of what he will be to the end. Every year you delay becoming a Christian helps to fix you in indifference, and render conversion less and less probable.
4. Certain duties grow out of these facts.
(1) The duty of forming the character of those who are in a plastic state.
(2) The duty of forming our own characters.
(3) Do not shrink from these duties as being too heavy to perform.
You must meet them. If you shirk them they remain for ever neglected, and at your peril. To doubt is disloyal, to falter is to sin. (C. F. Thwing.)
The sunward side of habit
One of our quaint earlier English poets sings--
“Wearebutfarmersofourselves,yetmay
Ifwecanstockourselvesandthrive,uplay
Muchgoodtreasureforthegreatrent-day.”
It is a great thing to have mighty forces working for you instead of against you, so enabling you “to aplay much good treasure for the great rent-day.” Mr. Emerson puts the matter well: “The water drowns ship and sailor like a grain of dust; but trim your bark, and the wave which drowned it will be cloven by it, and carry it like its own foam, a plume and a power.” But there are certain vast moral forces at work within every one of us, which make life if they be working for us; which make death if they work against us. Habit is such a moral force. Think of the laws controlling habit.
1. “Habit diminishes feeling and increases activity”--e.g., the empire of a musician over an instrument. At first all sorts of feelings against--dislike of practice, inability to deftly use the fingers, etc.; and also only slow and laboured activity both of mind and body. But when the empire has been established, all these hindering feelings have been overcome, and activity has become so easy as to be almost spontaneous.
2. “Habit tends to become permanent and to exclude the formation of other habits.”
(1) See, then, what a boon it is if a man get this force of habit working in him and for him on the side of righteousness and nobleness! Habit of pure thinking and feeling. Habit of prayer. Habit of Bible-reading. Habit of church-going. Habit of a scrupulous integrity. Habit of steadily seeking to please and test things by the Lord Christ. Habit of testimony for Jesus.
(2) But if you are bound by evil habits and so have this great force working against you instead of for you, break at once their force by one grand volition for Christ, and He will impart power. The legend on the banner of John Hampden’s regiment in the battle of Englishmen’s rights against a law-breaking Stuart dynasty, tells the way into the breaking of bad habits and into the possession of habits’ sunward side. On one side the banner was written, “God with us”; on the other side, “Vestigia nulla retrorsum”--no steps backward. (W. Hoyt, D. D.)
Truth and its results on character
The direct bearing of this statement is that of an argument for the writing and publishing of these revelations, and the holding of them up to the view of all men, over against the non-effect or ill-effect they may have upon the wicked and unbelieving, or upon the Antichrist and his adherents, who is emphatically the unjust and unclean one. Though “wicked men and seducers shall wax worse and worse,” and even wrest what is herein predicted of them as if it were a license for their wickedness or a fixing of it by an irresistible necessity, and so are only the more encouraged and urged on in their injustice and abominations; still, this is not to prevent the freest and fullest proclamation of the whole truth. Let the unjust one be the more confirmed in his unbelief and wickedness--let the filthy one go on in his idolatries and moral defilement with all the greater hardihood and blasphemy--that is not to restrain the making known of what shall come to pass. If it accelerates the antichristian development, and the wicked are only the more indurated in their wickedness, let it so be. Though the sun breed pestilence and death in the morasses, and only hasten putrefaction in what is lifeless and rotten, it must not therefore be blotted from the heavens, or hindered from shining into our world. There is another side to the question. If it is an ill thing to what is ill, the life of what is living requires it. Believers must be forewarned and forearmed, or they too will be deceived and perish. And if the wicked are made the wickeder, the righteous and holy will be the holier, and without it cannot be defended and kept as they need to be. Therefore, let not this holy book be sealed up, nor its grand prophecies shut off from the fullest record and the most unreserved proclamation. (J. A. Seiss,D. D.)
The stereotyping of human character
There comes a time--there will come a time to each one of us--when, whatever we are, that we shall be; when the seal of permanence will be set upon the spiritual condition; when the unjust man shall be unjust for ever, and the righteous man shall be for ever righteous. I know of nothing more serious, in itself more alarming, than this reflection. There is no one now living in sin who does not intend at some future time to turn from it and be saved. And we all have great reliance upon the power of the human will. We all think that what we are we are because we choose so to be; and, at all events, that what we wish to be in the future we can be and we shall be. And we know from God’s Word that we are to a great extent dealt with on this supposition (Psa_95:7-8; Eze_18:32). And we know that in early years there is a great susceptibility of impressions. A death in a family, a sin discovered and punished, nay, a single sermon, has often, in God’s hands, changed the course of a young life from evil to good. And it is so both ways. A particular companionship, casual in its origin, has led a young person into folly or worse than folly: the companionship is broken off as casually as it was formed; the snare is broken with it, and the young life delivered. And we observe a wonderful versatility and changeableness in that part of life. From year to year, almost from week to week, we have seen a vicissitude and an alteration. One week thoughtful, diligent, exemplary; the next week trifling, idle, troublesome. One month an attentive hearer, a reverent worshipper; the next month uninterested in the things of God; a listless and languid listener; a careless, indifferent, almost profane, member of the congregation. Thus the experience of one part of life seems almost to encourage the hope that the unjust man may not be unjust for ever; almost to suggest the fear that the righteous man may not be for ever righteous. And we cling to that hope, for others and for ourselves. I may spend, we say, forty or fifty years in sin and ungodliness, and yet have twenty or thirty years for faith and calling upon God. And the Christian minister, and the Christian man knows,indeed, no such thing as a limit or a terminus of God’s mercy and of God’s grace. But we feel that there is also a truth, and a very solemn and needful truth, on the side of the text which speaks of the permanence, of the unchangeableness, of human character. Yes, for one man who changes, a thousand change not. They pass on through life, and they end it even as they began. He who in childhood was a spoilt and wayward child, he who in boyhood was an idle and self-willed boy, he who in youth was a passionate and a dissolute young man, he who in manhood was a self-seeking and a worldly man, will probably be in old age an avaricious or an irreligious old man, and in the end one who has had his portion in this life, has received his good things here, and must look only for evil things hereafter. The experience of life as a whole does not encourage the hope of many sudden changes, of many reversals of character, of many bad beginnings and good endings. As a general rule, the unjust man will be unjust still, and the righteous and holy will be holy and righteous still. But, at all events, this will be true at a certain point, after a certain time. The connection of the words before us shows that it will be so as the end draws on; when Christ’s coming is instant there will be no change in human character. When the last conflict once sets in there will be no room and no time for changing sides. When the armies are once marshalled for their final encounter, there will be no fresh desertions and no new enlistments. (DeanVaughan.)
What a man takes into the other world
If we look at it truly, his past life is just the one thing that a man does take with him when he dies. He takes himself. And that self is theproduct of all his past experience and action. As an oak bears in itself the results of every shower that through long years has freshened it, of every gale that has toughened it or stripped its boughs, of the sunshine that has fed it, and the drought that has parched it; so a man, when he stands at the end of life, is what he has been made by all his joys and sufferings and actions. That is what he takes into the other world his own character. (H. W. Beecher.)
Christian character not gained in sickness
“One should think,” said a friend to the celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson, “that sickness and the view of death would make men more religious.” “Sir,” replied Johnson, “they do not know how to go to work about it. A man who has never had religion before no more grows religious when he is sick than a man who has never learned figures can count when he has need of calculation.”
Character and crises
Conduct is always reaching crises and entering upon its consequences. It may be cumulative in degree, and reach crises more and more marked; it may at last reach a special crisis which shall be the judgment when the soul shall turn to the right or left of eternal destiny. (T. T. Munger, D. D.)
Finality in character
When the future life begins every man will see Christ as He is, and the sight of Him may of itself bring a finality to his character and destiny, as it discovers each man fully to himself. (PresidentPorter.)
Deeds and destiny
Sow an act and you will reap a habit; sow a habit and you will reap a character; sow a character and you will reap a destiny. (W. M. Thackeray.)
Death fixes character
The hour of death may be fitly likened to that celebrated picture in the National Gallery, of Perseus holding up the head of Medusa. That head turned all persons into stone who looked upon it. There is a warrior represented with a dart in his hand; he stands stiffened, turned into stone, with the javelin in his fist. There is another with a poignard beneath his robe, about to stab; he is now the statue of an assassin, motionless and cold. Another is creeping along stealthily, like a man in ambuscade, and there he stands a consolidated rock; he has looked only upon that head, and he is frozen into stone. Such is death. What I am when death is held before me, that I must be for ever. When my spirit departs, if God finds me hymning His praise, I shall hymn it in heaven; if He finds me breathing out oaths, I shall follow up those oaths in hell. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
I come quickly; and My reward is with Me.--
The coming of Christ
Learn hence--
1. That the notices of our Lord’s coming are usually, in Scripture, ushered in with great solemnity, with a mark of attention and observation. “Behold!” (Jud_1:7).
2. That the special distribution of rewards and punishments is reserved till the second coming and appearance of Jesus Christ; “My reward is with Me, to give to every man according to his work.”
3. That it is our wisdom and duty to represent, by actual and solemn thoughts, the certain and speedy coming of Christ to the righteous judgment of the world. (W. Burkitt M. A.)
To give every man according as his work shall be.
Work appointed and rewarded by Christ
“The modern majesty,” says Carlyle, “consists in work. What a man can do is his greatest ornament, and he always consults his dignity by doing it.”
I. Christ appoints every Christian’s work.
1. Each has his own work to do for Christ.
2. Each must receive the appointment from Christ Himself.
3. Each one, therefore, is responsible to Christ alone.
II. Christ, returning, brings with Him every man’s reward. “Behold!” A call to attention, energy, and eager expectation. The startling character of this announcement--“Behold, I come quickly.” When Christ comes He will bring every man’s reward or recompense. His clear knowledge of the life and work of each of the vast multitude. The reward will be in proportion to the work done. (Samuel B. Stribling.)
Man meeting his actions again
In the province of Amherst, in Burmah, the foresters cut down the teak wood far up the country, then cast their logs into the river and let them float down the stream. In some instances they will float two hundred miles, when they are caught by a cable stretched across the river. They are then brought ashore and stored. When the foresters come down, every man knows his logs by his own private mark. Such are all our labours and actions. They are so many logs cast upon the stream of time and floated on to eternity. When we reach the judgment seat of Christ we shall find them each presenting the characteristic mark we have stamped upon it. (Chas. Graham.)
I am Alpha and Omega.--
Alpha and Omega
I. Bring certain truths to the text.
1. Our Lord may well be described as the Alpha and Omega in the sense of rank. He is Alpha, the first, the chief, the foremost, the first-born of every creature, the eternal God. But though our blessed Lord is thus Alpha--the first--He was once in His condescension made Omega, the last. Marshal the creatures of God in their order, in the dread day when Jesus hangs upon the Cross, and you must put Him for misery, for weakness, for shame as the last, the Omega.
2. Jesus Christ is Alpha and Omega in the book of Holy Scripture.
3. Jesus Christ is the Alpha and Omega of the great law of God. The law of God finds not a single letter in human nature to meet its demands. You and I are neither Alpha nor Omega to the law, for we have broken it altogether. We have not even learned its first letter--“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,” and certain I am we know but very little of the next--“thy neighbour as thyself.” But if you would see the law fulfilled, look to the person of our blessed Lord and Master.
II. Now we will take the text itself, and show what are the truths which we assuredly believe to be in it.
1. Our Lord Jesus is Alpha and Omega in the great alphabet of being. Reckon existences in their order, and you begin--“In the beginning was the Word.” Proceed to the conclusion. What then? What is the Omega? Why assuredly Jesus Christ would still be “God over all, blessed for ever. Amen.”
2. Jesus Christ is Alpha and Omega in the alphabet of creating operations. Who was it that began to make? Not an angel, for the angel must first be made. Did matter create itself? Was there an effect without a cause? It is contrary to our experience and our reason to believe any such thing. The first cause stands first, and the first cause is God in the Divine Trinity, the Son being one Person of that Trinity. He is Alpha because His hand first of all winged angelic spirit, and made His ministers a flame of fire. As He alone began, so His power maintains the fabric of creation; all things consist by Him. If this world shall be rolled up like a worn-out vesture, He shall roll it up; if the stars shall wither, it shall be at Jesu’s bidding. He shall do it all, even until the end shall come, for He is Omega as well as Alpha.
3. Christ is Alpha andOmega in all covenant transactions. Everywhere the Lord Jesus is to be considered not as the friend of a day, or our Saviour only in His life on earth, but as the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world, the anointed Mediator set up from everlasting days.
4. Jesus Christ is certainly Alpha and Omega in all salvation work as it becomes apparent in act and deed. If you have been led to know your own emptiness--if you have received from His Spirit a hungering and a thirsting after righteousness, go not to the law; look not within; but come to the Alpha, drink and be satisfied. If, on the other hand, life is near its close; if you have been preserved in holiness; if you have been kept in righteousness, remember still to trust in the Omega; for these words follow--“He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be My son.”
III. A few things which flow out of the text.
1. Sinner, saint, let Jesus be Alpha and Omega to thee to-day in thy trust.
2. If you have trusted Him, let Him be Alpha andOmega in your love.
3. Surely He should be the Alpha and Omega of our life’s end and aim. What is there worth living for but Christ?
4. He should be the Alpha and Omega of all our preaching and teaching. If you leave out Christ, you have left the sun out of the day, and the moon out of the night; you have left the waters out of the sea, and the floods out of the river; you have left the harvest out of the year, the soul out of the body; you have left joy out of heaven, yea, you have robbed all of its all. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Christ the Alpha and Omega
This declaration is made of Jesus Christ. It is oft-repeated in this book to give it emphasis. It indicates the supremacy and absolute government of the Redeemer God. All creatures, all things, all relations and dispensations have their source in Him, and will find their end in Him.
I. Jesus Christ is the real, alpha and omega of the present order of things. He is over it all, and in it all, and the life of it all, and the genius of it all, and the substance and end of itall. By right of office the headship and kingship of it belong to Him. Before any creature or world existed, the eternal “Alpha” was. He is the “Everlasting Father,” as Isaiah styles Him--the Father of all the angels in heaven, as well as of all mankind. Creative power begins with and ends in Him. Providence is the executor of His will. Redemption underlies all the arrangements, counsels, and purposes of God. Here is our confidence. The Gospel promise cannot fail, for it is the word of Him who abideth for ever, the will of Him who is supreme over all, and the work of Him who made the earth and the stars.
II. Jesus Christ is the alpha and omega of all the Divine manifestations made to the creatures of God. We have in the material universe a most wonderful manifestation of God. All His natural attributes are thereby brought to light, and we are confronted with Deity. But the light of nature affords but an imperfect and uncertain idea of God. His moral perfections are His chief glory, and nature reveals nothing of these. It is the plan and work of human redemption which most clearly and signally makes God known to man, and even to angels. This work has Christ’s mediation for its basis, Christ’s atonement for its grand expression, and the Holy Spirit as its efficient agent. To accomplish it all power has been given to Christ, and all creatures, and all things in heaven and on earth are made subservient to Him. Not that Christ is a mere manifestation of God. He is as distinctly a person as the Father. But it is in Christ only that God speaks, shines forth, acts. The glory of the Godhead shines for us only in the face of Jesus Christ. We see in Him God’s moral perfections as well as His natural attributes. The goodness and mercy and holiness and justice of God find fearful expression in the person and work of the incarnated One.
III. Christ is the alpha and omega of the holy scriptures. He is the central character, the life, the essence, the burden, and the substance of them. To set forth Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life, is their chief end. He is the first promise of mercy made to man, and equally the last. His office, work, and history are blended and interwoven with thewhole structure of revelation.
IV. Christ is the alpha and omega of man’s salvation. Christ is the finisher of our salvation as well as its author. He completes whatsoever He begins. He never leaves or forsakes one who has felt His pardoning mercy, until he is safe in heaven. He will wash out the last stain of guilt from the soul, conquer the last enemy, and present us faultless before His Father’s throne with exceeding glory.
V. Christ is the alpha and omega of the life of God in the soul of the believer. By nature we are dead in sin, and no will or power of man can give us life. Christ is our life. He only has power to raise us up from the death of sin; to keep us alive; to cause us to grow in grace, and assimilate us to the character of God.
VI. Christ is the alpha and omega of the saints’ final glory. Heaven is the culmination of Christ’s power and of Gospel blessedness. Then
