1. By the fall of this star from heaven, we see that apostasy from the truth in pastors is a Luciferian sin, and they thereby are like unto him.
2. Where saving grace is not, all other gifts and endowments soever will never avail to preserve from apostasy, and make one to persevere.
3. As there are no personal gifts, so there is no place or succession that is personal only thereto, that can privilege from apostasy; for here we see a star for light, and in heaven for place, yet to fall from heaven.
4. We see it is not small stars, but a great star that falleth from heaven; whereby we see whom Satan most assaulteth, viz., those that are in primest places and of most excellent gifts.
5. From shining as a heavenly star, by apostasy, we seethis star turns to be only as a burning earthly lamp: whereby we are taught what a change sin and apostasy maizes from the better to the worse, as in this star from heaven to earth, from standing to falling, and from shining to burning only; by fiery ambition and bitter contention like wormwood, hating most of any the professors of that truth which formerly they held. (Wm. Guild, D. D.)
Brilliant bitterness
Commentators say that the star Wormwood of my text was a type of Attila, king of the Huns. He was so called because he was brilliant as a star, and, like wormwood, he embittered everything he touched. A more extraordinary character history does not furnish than this man, Attila, the king of the Huns. The story goes that one day a wounded heifer came limping along through the fields, and a herdsman followed its bloody track on the grass to see where the heifer was wounded, and went on back, further and further, until he came to a sword fast in the earth, the point downward as though it had dropped from the heavens, and against the edges of this sword the heifer had been cut. The herdsman pulled up that sword and presented it to Attila. Attila said that sword must have dropped from the heavens from the grasp of the god Mars, and its being given to him meant that Attila should conquer and govern the whole earth. Other mighty men have been delighted at being called liberators, or the Merciful, or theGood, but Attila called himself, and demanded that others call him, “The Scourge of God.” The Roman Empire conquered the world, but Attila conquered the Roman Empire. He was right in calling himself a scourge, but instead of being “the Scourge of God,” he was the scourge of hell. Because of his brilliancy and bitterness, the commentators might well have supposed him to be the star Wormwood of the text. Have you ever thought how many embittered lives there are all about us, misanthropic, morbid, acrid, saturnine? The European plant from which wormwood is extracted, Artemisia absinthium, is a perennial plant, and all the year round it is ready to exude its oil. And in many human lives there is a perennial distillation of acrid experiences. Yea, there are some whose whole work is to shed a baleful influence on others. There are Attilas of the home, Attilas of the social circle, Attilas of the Church, Attilas o! the State, and one-third of the waters of all the world, if not two-thirds of the waters, are poisoned by the falling of the star Wormwood. It is not complimentary to human nature that most men, as soon as they get great power, become overbearing. The more power men have the better, if their power be used for good. The less power men have the better, if they use it evil. Some of you are morning stars, and you are making the dawning life of your children bright with gracious influences, and you are beaming upon all the opening enterprises of philanthropic and Christian endeavour, and you are heralds of day. Keep on shining with encouragement and Christian hope! Some of you are evening stars, and you are cheering the last days of old people. But are any of you the star Wormwood? Do you scold and growl from the thrones paternal or maternal? Are your children everlastingly pecked at? What is your influence upon the neighbourhood, the town, or the city of your residence? I will suppose that you are a star of wit. What kind of rays do you shoot forth? Do you use that splendid faculty to irradiate the world or to rankle it? Are your powers of mimicry used to put religion in contempt? Is it a bunch of nettlesome invective? Is it fun at others’ misfortune? Then you are the star Wormwood. Yours is the fun of a rattlesnake trying how well it can sting. But I will change this, and suppose you are a star of worldly prosperity. Then you have large opportunity. You can encourage that artist by buying his picture. You can improve the fields, the stables, the highway by introducing higher style of fowl and horse and cow and sheep. You can endow a college. You can build a church. You can put a missionary of Christ on that foreign shore. But suppose you grind the face of the poor. Suppose when a man’s wages are due you make him wait for them because he cannot help himself. Suppose by your manner you act as though he were nothing and you were everything. Suppose you are selfish and overbearing and arrogant. You are the star Wormwood, and you have embittered one-third, if not three-thirds, of the waters that roll past your employes and operatives and dependents and associates. Are we embittering the domestic or social or political fountains, or are we like Moses, who, when the Israelites in the wilderness complained that the waters of Lake Marah were bitter and they could not drink them, their leader cut off the branch of a certain tree and threw that branch into the water, and it became sweet and slaked the thirst of the suffering host? Are we with a branch of the Tree of Life sweetening all the brackish fountains that we can touch? What is true of individuals is true of nations. God sets them up to revolve as stars, but they may fall wormwood. Witness Thebes, Tyre, Nineveh, Babylon, and Imperial Rome. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
An angel … saying Woe … to the inhabiters of the earth.--
The body and the bird
“And I saw, and I heard an eagle, flying in mid heaven Woe, woe, woe, for them that dwell on the earth!” The true reading of the text is given in the Revised Version. It was not “an angel flying,” but a solitary eagle or vulture, that St. John saw. Hovering high overhead, a mere speck in the sky, and its harsh cry sounding as if it uttered over and over again the ominous words, “Woe, woe, woe!”
I. This eagle has often been seen. It has long hovered over and at last descended upon:
1. Corrupt communities.
2. Corrupt men. Many imagine that the great laws of God will be, no doubt, fulfilled amid nations and Churches and other bodies of men, but they will not take note of individuals.
II. It is good that it should be seen. In the physical world, if there were no scavengers, no agents whereby what is corrupt and corrupting could be rendered harmless, life could not go on.
III. Men sometimes think they see it when they do not. Poor Job--his friends, his comforters, would have it that his dreadful sufferings were judgments of God upon him.
IV. Men often fail to see it when they might and should.
1. The bird may be invisible. It may be so far up in the sky, so faraway, that our limited eyesight cannot travel so far, it is out of our range.
2. It may be restrained. God is “long-suffering, not willing that any should perish.”
3. It may have already descended, and be doing its work, and you not know it.
4. If it come not now, it will fasten on him the moment he reaches the next world’s shore. Ah, yes l if a man have made, is soul carrion-like, the eagle of judgment will find him sooner or later in trouble; from without or within, here or yonder--there is no escape. Remember, then:
(1) They are fools who make a mock at sin.
(2) Turn from it, and pray for the heart to love and dread the Lord,and to diligently live after His commandments. (S. Conway,B. A.)
