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‘The four and twenty elders fall down before Him that sat on the throne, and worship Him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne.’
Rev_4:10
What do these crowned beings say to us? They remind us of true human greatness. They were not slaves, the insignificant or small people of the earth. They wear crowns. What a marvellous symbol is the crown! Next to the Cross, I suppose, there is none more rich in meaning than the crown, which speaks of honour, and power, and yet the responsibility that must always go along with power. But beyond all other ideas it represents most of all the idea of completeness. Like a circle it represents that which is absolutely and entirely finished. It represents the best, the completest experience of life.
What are you doing with your crown? There is only one answer that will satisfy God, or that will really satisfy ourselves. It is to know that we have cast our crowns. ‘They cast their crowns.’
I. The secret of their greatness.—They were never so great, those crowned ones in the picture, as when they cast their crowns. It is always so. The man who takes what God has given him or what through God’s help he has made for himself, and then looks up into God’s face and says, ‘It is not my own, though it looks as if it were mine. All things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee’—that moment when he seems to be parting with his crown, he is himself most crowned, that moment when he is abasing himself, and cutting himself off it seems to be from chances of worldly success, he is being swept up into the fellowship of all consecrated life. The grandest and greatest moment for him is when he forgets himself. The one who casts his crown is joined on to all who in every age have remembered others and forgotten themselves, who, like the glorious company in the vision of St. John, have cast their crowns.
II.—The attitude of human life in the presence of God.—It is the attitude of reverence. They do not only cast their crowns, but they fall down before Him. You do not always find these two things together. Very energetic people, very self-sacrificing people, are not of necessity very reverent people always. These elders were both. They cast their crowns, there is the secret of their greatness; they fell down before Him, there is the reverence that goes along with it. It is because they are so great that they are so reverent; it is because they are kings that they recognise God’s Kingship. It is because they wear crowns themselves that they recognise that there is another crown more glorious and more splendid than their own. It is a great truth that as men grow more great they grow more reverent. The more crowned they are, the more ready they are to cast their crowns, and to fall down before God.
III. The secret of the inspiration of life.—They fall down before Him, they cast their crowns. Yes, but what is the secret of it all? What was behind that prostration of themselves, what was behind that casting of their crowns? He that sat upon the Throne was the inspiration of the whole thing, for Whose sake the whole thing was done. It is the personal element entering in and inspiring all their worship, and their work. And it is always so. The secret of all unselfishness, of all surrender, of all service, of all true worship, is the Personal Christ Who sits upon the Throne. When once you have got that impulse you have got the inspiration of your life.
—
Bishop F. E. Ridgeway.