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His servants shall do him service; and they shall see his face; and his name shall be on their foreheads.—Rev_22:3-4.
It is a promise not merely for a far-off heaven, but for a present practical earth. Ever since Jesus stood in the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth, the prosaic place of honest labour has become holy ground. Experience has taught us that there are certain fundamentals of character which cannot be learnt from pleasure or from pain, but only from work.
Often indeed it is as useful as it is delightful to look through such revelations upward; to use the Divine promise—not our mere aspirations, but the promise—as the means by which thought may reach toward the better world. Our vision will be but dim, at the clearest; but light from that pure eternity, even shed through clouds, can bring with it a strange reality of peace, and hope, and courage. So, when the two Pilgrims in the great Allegory looked from the Delectable Mountains through the perspective-glass of the Shepherds, “their hands indeed did shake, yet they thought they saw something like the gate, and also some of the glory of the place”; and they went forward singing on their way. But more often it is our duty and our safety not so much to gaze up into heaven as thoughtfully to remember that we “pass through nature to eternity.” To us, we may be sure, if the path thitherward is not a reality, the brightness of the end is but a dream.
Heavenly bliss is no arbitrary beginning of existence over again. It is the carrying out into endless issues of the process which grace begins on this side the grave. It is a joyful harvest reaped in the sunlight of an eternal summer; but it is reaped off the very fields which were ploughed and sown beneath the clouds and showers of time.1 [Note: H. C. G. Moule, Christ is All, 214.]
The text gives three elements of the perfected life—Service, Vision, Likeness.
Service
“His servants shall do him service.”
1. The highest life is a life of service. In heaven itself there is no emancipation from the bonds of God. The holy nations are eternally bound, in absolute obligation, to the will of God and of the Lamb. It is no part of the Creator’s promise to raise or to educate the creature to independence, to self-dependence. That could not be, without a profound and fatal contradiction. The created soul cannot be the basis of its own being; how could it be the source of its own joy and power, or the law of its own eternity? We read what is but likely when we read that the nearer and the clearer is the sight of the Creator granted to the creature, the better the creature recognizes the blessedness of self-surrender; the nearer the approach, the more entire the service.
I used as a child to pore over the Apocalypse, which I thought by far the most beautiful and absorbing of all the books of the Bible; it seemed full of rich and dim pictures, things which I could not interpret and did not wish to interpret, the shining of clear gem-like walls, lonely riders, amazing monsters, sealed books, all of which took perfectly definite shape in the childish imagination. The consequence is that I can no more criticize it than I could criticize old tapestries or pictures familiar from infancy. They are there, just so, and any difference of form is inconceivable. In one point, however, the strange visions have come to hold for me an increased grandeur; I used to think of much of it as a sort of dramatic performance, self-consciously enacted for the benefit of the spectator; but now I think of it as an awful and spontaneous energy of spiritual life going on, of which the prophet was enabled to catch a glimpse. Those “voices crying day and night,” “the new song that was sung before the throne,” the cry of “Come and see”—these were but part of a vast and urgent business, which the prophet was allowed to overhear. It is not a silent place, that highest heaven, of indolence and placid peace, but a scene of fierce activity and the clamour of mighty voices.1 [Note: A. C. Benson, Joyous Gard, 119.]
2. The ideal life, though full of activity, knows the truest rest. There is a rest which is mere inaction—the quiet of the stone, the stillness of the grave, the exhaustion of a spent and feeble nature. But there is a nobler rest than this. There is rest in health; there is rest in the musical repose of exquisitely balanced powers; there is rest to the desiring faculties when they find the thing desired; there is rest in the rapture of congenial employment; rest in the flow of joyful strength; rest in the swift glide of the stream when it meets with no impediment. Such is the rest of the glorified—perfect beings in a perfect world, rejoicing in their native element, having no weakness within, and no resisting force without, to check the outflow and expression of their loving natures; their activity, therefore, being easy, natural, and necessary as light is to the sun, and fragrance to the flowers of spring—activity to them is rest.
Stagnation is as incompatible with the life that is lived in the heavenly city as it is with true life here. To represent heaven as a place of rest merely is to present it as a place where men would be less truly men than before. Peace and fellowship with God do not exclude activity; rather must they stimulate it.
I count that heaven itself
Is only work to surer issues.
Heaven means the bringing to maturity and perfection of those powers and energies which are only partially developed here. “His servants shall do him service”: in love without a grain of selfishness, in faith without a spasm of doubt, in knowledge without a shadow of uncertainty. All “those instincts immature,” all “those purposes unsure,” which we recognize in ourselves or have guessed in others, find their full development, their completion, when “that which is in part is done away.”
What here is faithfully begun
Shall be completed, not undone.
The deepest rest and the highest activity coincide. They do so in God who “worketh hitherto” in undisturbed tranquillity; they may do so in us. The wheel that goes round in swiftest rotation seems to be standing still. Work at its intensest, if it is pleasurable work, and level with the capacity of the doer, is the truest form of rest. In vacuity there are stings and torment; it is only in joyous activity which is not pushed to the extent of strain and unwelcome effort that the true rest of man is to be found. And the two verses in the Book of Revelation about this matter, which look at first sight to be opposed to each other, are like the two sides of a sphere, which unite and make the perfect whole. “They rest from their labours.” “They rest not, day nor night.”
Whatever may be the inability, in this present life, to mingle the full enjoyment of the Divine works with the full discharge of every practical duty, and confessedly in many cases this must be, let us not attribute the inconsistency to any indignity of the faculty of contemplation, but to the sin and the suffering of the fallen state, and the change of order from the keeping of the garden to the tilling of the ground. We cannot say how far it is right or agreeable with God’s will, while men are perishing round about us; while grief and pain, and wrath, and impiety, and death, and all the powers of the air, are working wildly and evermore, and the cry of blood going up to heaven, that any of us should take hand from the plough; but this we know, that there will come a time when the service of God shall be the beholding of Him; and though, in these stormy seas where we are now driven up and down, His Spirit is dimly seen on the face of the waters, and we are left to cast anchors out of the stern, and wish for the day, that day will come, when, with the evangelists on the crystal and stable sea, all the creatures of God shall be full of eyes within, and there shall be “no more curse, but His servants shall serve Him, and shall see His face.”1 [Note: Ruskin, Modern Painters, pt. iii. sec. i. ch. xv. § 12 (Works, iv. 217).]
3. This life is distinguished by variety. The blessed God delights in variety. In all His works, along with perfect order, there is eternal change. There is no mountain exactly like another mountain; there are no two trees whose boughs bend into the same network of interlacing lines; no two leaves alike; no two clouds alike; no two waves alike; but the face of nature is infinitely diversified. So also is the Church. You see no two men with like endowments; no two spheres marked by exact similarity. Each one has his own peculiar gift for his own peculiar station; some have to serve their Lord with the power of the pen, others with the power of the tongue; some by their poverty, others by their wealth; and each one has a distinct individuality of power and place and opportunity. We see Aaron with his eloquence, and Moses with his stammering speech. There is a Jeremiah to give the prophecy, and a Baruch to read it; a Paul to plant, and an Apollos to water. One man is a “son of consolation,” another a “son of thunder.” One servant has five talents, another two, and another one. As the Church in heaven is but the consummation of the Church on earth, we may infer that the law of variety which shines in this earthly exhibition of Christianity, and which prevails all over this region of existence, sheds its fascinations over paradise.
The highest service that we can render is to reveal God. It is true that at the best we can only reveal certain aspects of God to another. One by his sterling integrity gives a glimpse of the Divine righteousness; another by his purity, a glimpse of the Divine holiness; a third by his sympathy, some reflection of the Divine compassion; a fourth by his tenderness, some idea of the Divine love. Only once has there been a man—the Divine Man—who could reflect every aspect of the Divine perfections; for He was the brightness of His Father’s Glory, the express Image of His Person.
Here the whole Deity is seen,
Nor dares a creature guess,
Which of the glories brighter shone
The justice or the grace.
“Because I live,” saith our Lord, “ye shall live also,” and as living, be partakers in that which belongs to Life: freedom, expansion, and variety. It has been often remarked that each one among the branches of our Lord’s great family preserves some portion of His teaching more faithfully, reflects some aspect of His character more clearly, than is done by the rest, and passing from churches to individuals, we shall find that they who are in Christ will resemble each other in so much as they resemble Him; they will be like each other (as in earthly relationships) without being alike. Our natural characteristics are not obliterated; rather is the man renewed after Christ’s likeness restored to Himself, that excellent thing for which God made him at the first, the type from which he had consciously fallen away.1 [Note: Dora Greenwell, The Patience of Hope (ed. 1894), 139.]
Gladstone, Newman and Rainy—perhaps the three most remarkable men of their day of those who really applied their minds to the matters of Christian faith—were all in agreement not only as to personal experience of religion but also—if we except certain matters about the Church (and these are not in the Creed)—as to the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. But the intellectual attitude of each of these minds to these doctrines was distinct. Gladstone’s mind was essentially and constitutionally orthodox and he was never critical regarding ecclesiastical dogma. Newman’s was essentially and constitutionally sceptical, and the Church’s authoritative system was to him less the native home of his mind than its only refuge. Rainy’s mind was well content to lodge in Catholic forms of doctrine, but he neither denied the element of imperfection and difficulty in such forms nor was disturbed by it, for this only made him more deeply feel “how great a thing it is to believe in God.”2 [Note: P. Carnegie Simpson, The Life of Principal Rainy, i. 287.]
Vision
“They shall see his face.”
1. The face is the index to the character and distinctive attributes of any being. In the poetry of the primitive ages, the “face” is another word for the character; and thoroughly to know it, and see into it, is thoroughly to know the real man. “The face of God,” let it be reverentially spoken, is the character of God; to see it is to know what God is. The greatest revelation of the Father, according to St. Paul’s teaching, was in “the face” of the Redeemer. St. John here tells us that this is the face which Christ’s servants shall see by and by. But had not John seen this face already? Yes, in a sense. He had leaned upon the Master’s bosom many a time, and looked up into that face, and if there was anything in Christ’s human nature that expressed to John His Divine glory and tenderness beyond all other, it was that countenance. But John also saw only as much of that face as to awaken within him an intense yearning to see more. “We shall see him as he is,” and “they shall see his face,” are his fond refrains. He practically says, “It is true that for a brief time I saw His face, but there was so much of hiding in His incarnation, that I only saw dimly its deep meaning. By and by I shall see Him without any of the mist of His humanity that gathered round Him while on earth to lessen the brightness of His glory or the full beauty of His face.”
For anyone who knew the previous life of the author, the fitness of her roadmender to present herself and her ideals was obvious. “After all,” he says for her in that opening chapter, “what do we ask of life, here or indeed hereafter, but leave to serve, to live, to commune with our fellow-men and with ourselves, and from the lap of earth to look up into the face of God?” That aspiration to service and communion had been in her no affair of mere aspiration: it had been a burning force, not a quietistic scheme. Yet always her heart and soul rested gladly in “the lap of earth”; and she turned her face towards the face of God as she discerned that vision everywhere, in earth and earth’s little ones, and in the face of Man_1:1 [Note: Michael Fairless: Her Life and Writings, 54.]
Day after day, O lord of my life, shall I stand before thee face to face? With folded hands, O lord of all worlds, shall I stand before thee face to face?
Under thy great sky in solitude and silence, with humble heart shall I stand before thee face to face?
In this laborious world of thine, tumultuous with toil and with struggle, among hurrying crowds shall I stand before thee face to face?
And when my work shall be done in this world, O King of kings, alone and speechless shall I stand before thee face to face?2 [Note: Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, 70.]
“It comforts me much,” said Whitefield in the last sermon he ever preached in London, “to think that, whenever God shall call for me, angels will carry me into the bosom of Abraham; but it comforts me more to think that, as soon as they lay hold of me, my first question to them will be, ‘Where is my Master? Where is my Jesus?’ And that, after all my tossings and tumblings here, I shall be brought to see His face at last.”3 [Note: L. Tyerman, The Life of the Rev. George Whitefield, ii. 562.]
Lord Houghton’s notes of Carlyle’s talk contain the following: “I would rather have one real glimpse of the young Jew face of Christ than see all the Raffælles in the world.”4 [Note: The Life, Letters and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes, ii. 481.]
Men oft see God
But never know ’tis He till He has passed.5 [Note: Memoir and Correspondence of Coventry Patmore, ii. 60.]
2. The full vision is possible only to the pure in heart. The pure in heart shall see God. In harmony with this, St. John, who wrote the words of the text, wrote also, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” Having thus predicted the blissful consummation of a perfect vision of Christ, St. John proceeds to show how this hope to see Him, and to be like Him, produces in those who cherish it the necessary fitness for such a vision and attainment—“And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.” Thus would be fulfilled in him the beatitude of the Saviour Himself, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Over the torno of the Convent of the Carmelites at Medina is Teresa’s beautiful advice to her nuns—
“Let your desire be to see God, your fear that you may lose Him; your grief that you do not enjoy Him, your joy in all which may lift you to Him. Thus you shall live in great peace.”1 [Note: H. H. Colvill, Saint Teresa of Spain, 124.]
When St. Paul speaks of the glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ, the context and its implied contrast show that he means the Face, and that his vision was a Face-to-face vision. And I think it was the vision of the Face that kept him so true to his message of the Cross. His question to the Galatians, Have not I seen Jesus Christ the Lord? means, inter alia, Have I not shut my eyes to all other seeing and turned away from all other vision? St. Paul’s art was limited, he would paint figures; no, one figure; faces, no, one face. “That one face.” “I love you,” said General Gordon to a friend of mine (both are now on the other side), “because you paint faces”; “I love you, Paul,” we may say, “because you paint one face, His. Even the Galatians would have given you their eyes for painting His. I would give you mine if I could see with yours.”2 [Note: J. Rendel Harris, The Sufferings and the Glory (1914), 138.]
3. The vision becomes clearer through service. We learn to know our friend, not only by conversation and correspondence, but still more by work. It is when we receive a note from him, asking us to come up and help him in his day’s duties, that we feel not only honoured by the request, but delighted with the prospect of getting that further insight into his character which a share in his work will certainly give. Perhaps the invitation is to be his secretary, and we shall then see how he bears himself in relation with others; or his messenger, when his mind will be laid open to us in the secrets he confides; or it may be he proposes to give us a piece of work to ourselves, and we shall have the happiness of discovering how it ought to be done. It is not otherwise with our Lord. His revelations are not reserved for those smaller and more definite acts of communion with Him which we call prayer. The larger parts of life are illuminated by His Presence. When we begin to realize that all our work is work for Him; that the work in the study, the office, and the shop may be His as truly as the ministry in the Church or the mission room, then we shall learn to expect such visits of encouragement and guidance as some great employer of labour now and again pays to his workpeople.
I find again and again illustrations of the saying, which I believe came from our Lord’s own lips, though it is recorded in no gospel: “Raise the stone, and there thou shalt find Me; cleave the wood and there am I.” The raising of the stone, the cleaving of the wood, are not works in themselves of an interesting or lofty character. They stand for the humble duties of life. Yet it is just then—when pursuing our daily tasks, which whether they be of head or of hand seem often so monotonous and so unprofitable—there at least as much as in our acts of private devotion, that I find from the experiences of Christian men and the witness of the Scriptures themselves that the Lord makes Himself known to us.1 [Note: F. Ealand, The Spirit of Life, 63.]
There is a beautiful legend which tells that one shepherd was kept at home watching a fevered guest the night the angels came to Bethlehem with the announcement of the birth of Jesus. The other shepherds saw the heavenly host, heard their song, and beheld the glory. Returning home, their hearts were wonderfully elated. But all the night Shemuel sat alone by the restless sufferer and waited. His fellow-shepherds pitied him because he had missed the vision and the glory which they had seen. But in his patient serving he had found blessing and reward of his own. He had missed, indeed, the splendour of that night in the fields, and in his serving he gave up his own life, for the fever-poison touched him and he died. But he had tasted the joy of sacrifice, and then his eyes saw a more wondrous glory when he entered the Divine presence.
Shemuel, by the fever-bed,
Touched by beckoning hands that led,
Died and saw the Uncreated;
All his fellows lived and waited.2 [Note: J. R. Miller, Our New Edens, 106.]
Likeness
“And his name shall be on their foreheads.”
This is not some mystic mark that no one can understand; it is the beauty of holiness. When we study the Gospels and see Christ Himself, we learn what that name is which shines on the forehead of His friends. It is nothing mysterious or occult—it is patience, gentleness, thoughtfulness, humility, kindness, the spirit of forgiveness, meekness, peace, joy, goodness. People have no difficulty in discovering the marks of Jesus on those who wear them.
The variety of nature is as useful as it is beautiful. What if faces had been like coins, and each one had to carry his name on his forehead to be known? His name on his forehead! There is an obscure way in which character imprints itself on the face. The very attempt to conceal writes—Hypocrite. In the future world this shall be complete, the soul and face keeping time like work and dial-plate,—infinite variety of character, perfect transparency in all.1 [Note: John Ker, Thoughts for Heart and Life, 236.]
1. The name on the forehead is the sign of possession. Under the old dispensation a frontlet was worn upon the forehead as well as upon the left arm. The frontlet upon the left arm was tied on with a thong, which was wound around the arm until it reached the tip of the longest finger. This seemed to indicate that the power of service on the part of the individual was consecrated. The frontlet placed on the forehead between the eyes, on the contrary, was intended to express the fact that the whole intelligence of the man was consecrated to God. Thus St. John, having already referred to the service rendered, now speaks of the impress of Divine ownership which the noblest feature of man shall bear—“His name shall be on their foreheads.” More than that, as the plate upon Aaron’s forehead had the words written on it “Holy is the Lord,” so shall those who once were God’s servants become His temple priests, and, seeing His face, shall also wear upon their foreheads the name of their God, and thus bear silent but eloquent and everlasting witness that they are His.
Devout Hindoos always have marks on their foreheads, showing the particular god they worship. The trident indicates the worship of Vishnu; while ashes made from cow-dung are rubbed on their foreheads if Siva is their special deity. What impresses one so much is that they are not ashamed to own that they are followers of their gods, while we too often are ashamed to confess that we are followers of the true and living God, and of His Son, Jesus Christ.1 [Note: H. S. Streatfeild, Glimpses of Indian Life, 4.]
J. M. Neale remarks that the Holy Name was set forth everywhere by the Saints of the Middle Ages; not merely in church art but in household and domestic furniture. “Go, for example,” he says, “into many of the farms round here, and notice the fire-dogs that stand in the yawning chimney; how they are wrought at the sides into those most blessed of all letters, the IHC by which our dear Lord is set forth. Nothing so mean, that it was thought unworthy of this monogram; nothing so glorious, that it was considered unfit to have that excellent glory added thereto. Silver and gold and gems conspired together to mark out this Name on the paten, or the chalice, or the shrine; the manufacturer of Limoges worked it out in his enamel, the art of producing which we are only beginning to recover; in the monastery potteries they burnt it in on their tiles; in convents they embroidered it on chasuble and cope; in the glorious windows of churches the light came in, sanctified, as it were, and hallowed by the name of the true Light. I know all this very well. But I know also that the poor peasant was encouraged, with his clasp knife, to consecrate his house by carving the same name on the hutch of his door, or the barge-boards of his roof; the Name of Salvation could never be out of place among the dwellings of those who looked to be saved; the Name which to adore will be the work of eternity, could never be out of place for the meditation and the worship of earth.”2 [Note: J. T. Stoddart, The New Testament in Life and Literature (1914), 358.]
2. The name on the forehead means that the imprint of the Divine perfections will be open and visible. By the seal of the Spirit the servants of God even on earth bear this impression; and it is essential, in order to authenticate their claims. But, too frequently, the mark is scarcely seen; it is within their hearts, but it is not upon their foreheads, to be known and read of all men. Only He who knows the heart can trace it with absolute certainty. Infirmities disguise, or obscurities of station hide from view, the mystic name written on many a pillar of grace. It is like some dim inscription on a monument, mouldering into indistinctness, and veiled by trailing leaves, overlooked by the casual traveller, and deciphered only by the antiquary’s eye.
As fire is hidden in the unstruck stone, as the future flower is hidden in the present root, as the gem is hidden by the rough incrustation round it, the grace of God is frequently hidden by the weakness and waywardness of man. But there it will not be so. No one in that world will be satisfied with a secret and latent piety; not one will say, “I make no profession”; no deprecating voice will make the plea, “Lord, I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth; lo, there thou hast that is thine!” To intimate that the name of Jehovah will be so conspicuously visible on all His servants that you must see it if you see them, it is said to flame upon their very foreheads.1 [Note: C. Stanford, Central Truths, 231.]
The forehead is in itself an inscription; it is the mark of Man. For no other creature bears this smooth-domed architrave and metopon over the portal of its communication with the world. The birds, with their swiftness and airiness of motion, lack the forehead altogether; and the beasts, notwithstanding broad and heavy frontlets, designed, as it were, to push and thrust through the jungle or against the foe, have not the arched dome on which a name might be written. When there is the lofty dome of Shakespeare or of Sir Walter Scott, or “the bar of Michael Angelo,” we estimate the genius which resides and works within by the stately span of the arched building. But even the humblest human brow is far removed from that of the noblest ape; on the ape’s brow nothing can be written, but on the man’s is at least written this: that he is a Man. It is this meaning and mark of the forehead which gives the imaginative glory to Milton’s figure, when he says that the Star
In meditation his face appeared to some a little severe; in relaxation none could be more gracious and genial. In his last years the light of heaven played about his features. This radiancy, which was but the symbol of the life within, was startling at times. On one occasion an Irish servant-girl opened the door for him at a house where he was calling, and on announcing him said that she had forgotten his name, but that he certainly had the face of an angel. This strange spiritual light was neither the silver shimmer of the hair nor the deep benignity of the farshining pupil, nor the calm of the features. It seemed to be all these suffused with something else too subtle for description, something ethereal, rare, beatific.1 [Note: A. J. Gordon: A Biography, 186.]
They do His will, they see His Face, their foreheads bear His name,
Who stand before the throne of God, and give the Lamb acclaim;
No curse can ever enter in, no night the glory dim,
Where shining souls, thus triple-crowned, eternal praises hymn.
Obedience such as theirs, O Lord, teach me even here below;
The vision of Thy blessed Face in bright effulgence show;
Thy name and image, clear and pure, grave deeper on my brow,
Till all shall see that I am Thine—my Lord and Master Thou!
And thus shall curse, and night, and sin, like shadows flee away
From out my life, and Light divine gleam through it every day;
The Throne of God and of the Lamb fixed deep within shall be,
Heaven’s life and bliss already mine, and through eternity.1 [Note: T. Crawford, Horœ Serenœ, 42.]
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