04 The Lamb opening the Sealed Book

Chapter 4 THE LAMB OPENING THE SEALED BOOK

Sometimes still I come here for a little, and speak a word Of peace to those who wait. The slow wheel turns, The cycles round themselves and grow complete, The world’s year whitens to the harvest tide, And one word only am I sent to say To those dear souls who wait here, or who now Breathe earthly air — one universal word To all things living, and the word is Love.

We have looked on the steadying vision of the Lamb in the midst of the throne, holding the scepter and controlling the forces of the universe ; we have viewed Him as Lord of nature, providence, and the higher universe of redeemed souls ; we have seen how such a thought is fitted to thrill and soothe us, and yet we desire something more. God tells us nothing about Himself merely to gratify our curiosity. It is a principle of revelation that its light is a light to guide the feet. God teaches us not in order that we may know, but in order that we may do. There is nothing given merely to make us wise, but all knowledge is bestowed to make us good. Revelation is not a mass of theories and principles, but the knowledge of His will ; and hence it is that much mystery and darkness is left, and will be left. Many questions unanswered, and many problems unsolved — these exist, and will exist. Only there are mysteries so terrible that we can hardly live and work without some rays of light on them. The burden of the unintelligible world would be too heavy were there nothing to relieve it ; and so we are told in a sublime vision that the Lamb of God opens the seven-sealed Book of God’s purposes and man’s destinies, and our tears over the mystery of things are to be dried, and our complaints turned into praise at that great sight. It is foreign to our purpose to enter into the details of apocalyptic interpretation, suffice it to say that the book contains the key to the true knowledge of life, and that He who opens it is the Lamb.

I

1. First of all, we have the mystery of nature. There are moods and aspects in which nature seems full of the goodness of God. Look on a summer day at the quiet meadows, the nestling homes, the delicious haze in which all is wrapt, and the whole fair land seems a haunt of peace ancient and undisturbed. Listen to the cheerful hum that rises from animated creation, happy in so fair a home, and you are inclined to echo the saying, " It is a happy world after all." The general tendency of Christian men till recently was to maintain that nature illustrated perfectly the wisdom and the goodness of God. The exquisite skill with which her work was finished, and her instruments adapted for their purpose, the radiant blossoms of spring, the glories of summer, the golden treasures of harvest, the lavish ministration to man’s sense of beauty as well as to his material needs — these were dwelt upon to the exclusion of other sterner aspects. Of late years, however, various tendencies have opened men’s eyes to facts old, indeed, and always partially known, but never set in so clear a light as now. We see how the east wind blights the blossom ; how the rain destroys the harvest ; how the noblest and sublimest scenes of nature have, as the inevitable accompaniments of their beauty, misery and pain. We find always imperfections in the most exquisite and skilful creation ; the ideal is never reached ; nothing perfectly attains and expresses the end aimed at. When we look below the surface we see how, under all the beauty, there is the tumult of the contest — how the lowest forms of life devour and are devoured, how nature is red in tooth and claw. We perceive that the law of life is a law of struggle — struggle in which innumerable individuals and species are blotted from the book of being. We perceive that the whole lower world is full of cruelty, full of acts of violence — one individual preying upon another. We see how the highest forms of animate creation are, in their turn, subdued and oppressed by man, whose sin has brought such misery to his humble friends, and has cast so dark a shadow over all the fields of life. A deeper study shows us that the first glance was superficial, and that nature is full of imperfection and pain.

2. And if the mystery of nature be great, no less terrible is the mystery of history. John wrote these words in a day of storm and earthquake, a day of overthrow and catastrophe such as the moral world had never before seen. He wrote in the age of slavery. It was the age of the amphitheater. It was the age of blood ; when life was hard, fierce, brutal — full of savagery and pain. It was the age of war ; the world was filled with terror and massacre. It was the age of famine, when people died in thousands, when the supplies of life were easily and often stopped, when sights of nameless horror had been witnessed in the endeavor to preserve existence — a dark and tragic time, leaving lurid ineffaceable tints on the pages of the book of Revelation. And yet, was it so much more terrible than other times that have been ? The good old times — we speak of these ; but we know, when we look soberly at the matter, that they never existed. The past was even more full than the present of misery in its various and complicated forms, and it is only because the cries of pain have died and the scenes of woe are veiled that our imagination has liberty in the far off distance, and paints what should have been, but was not. Famine, war, disease — we toss the mere words about and talk of them in a wholesale way. But let any one take, for example, the Inquisition, and seriously investigate all that is covered by that word, and this vague way of looking at things will disappear, and he will come to understand how hard of solution is the problem of history.

3. And is the mystery of the present much less great ? Something has been accomplished, but how much remains unchanged and unremoved ? How full the world is of blood, of misery, of poverty, and despair. Could one have believed that such scenes as have been witnessed in the wars of the last decade could ever have returned ? They seem like a feverish dream, the torture, the cruelty, the massacre, the brutal defilement of the bodies of helpless Christian women, which are temples of the Holy Ghost. And even when the more terrible convulsions of society cease for a time, how awful are the miseries that go on unthought of, and unrelieved ; the frightful, irremediable contrasts between wealth and poverty ; the existence of the thousands and millions to whom life seems to bring no one good thing, no one good opportunity. How pathetic is the spectacle that steals into the imagination when one looks into the faces of a crowd and thinks what possibilities of happiness each has missed, what experiences of privation, disappointment, and suffering each has endured. How rayless and barren life is for the great multitude. The immense and awful gloom that broods over the world, the " oppression that maketh a wise man mad," the hopeless tardiness of efforts to amend and retrieve, the dull and paralyzed sense of justice in the minds of those who have power — these things sometimes so crush us that we seek relief from the burden of a life at once so miserable and so powerless. Nor less terrible is the mystery of our own life. Let any one past the first freshness of youth consider what he has had to bear, and what he knows lies waiting for him in the future — what pangs of separation, what bitterness of disappointment, what agony of hope deferred. If all these troubles seemed to be sent to soften and sanctify they would not press upon us as they do ; but many seem almost as if they were designed to harden us. The dear ones are taken from us whose love softened our hearts and opened them to better influences ; the hard earnings of a lifetime are lost when we were planning how to lay them out in the service of God ; the voices which spoke bravely for Christ are silenced, and the hands are tied that gladly did His bidding. The purposes and plans of our life which had least of selfishness in them, those efforts in which we humbly and sincerely sought the good of His kingdom come to utter ruin and defeat. Can we not join in the tears of him who wept much : " I wept much." " The words, ’I wept much,’ can only be understood by those who have lived in great catastrophes of the Church, and entered with the fullest sympathy into her sufferings. Not without tears was the book of Revelation written, and not without tears can it be understood." Doubt has been called the last trial of the sons of God, and it is perhaps the most terrible. Yet this was not a failure of faith, but the outburst of a heart loving God and his fellow-creatures and the light. The light came when the Lamb took the book.

II The Lamb opens this seven-sealed Book. The fact gives us not by any means a complete solution of mystery. Perfect understanding of all things may be beyond our capacities, and the power of tracing the golden thread of love which unites God’s ways, is a gift for the hereafter. What we receive is light enough to enable us to work and suffer and wait, patiently abiding God’s time.

1. The Lamb opens the seals, because He shows us God’s heart. The question that tortures us is : — " Does God care for our suffering? If there be a God, is He a being enthroned in an eternity of passionless bliss, who looks untroubled on the struggle and wreck of the world? If He does care, why does He not interpose, why does not His mighty hand turn back the tide of evil and suffering, and bring in rest and joy ? " Such questions have ever perplexed the heart, and will perplex it until the Revelation of the Lamb is understood. Nor will it be sufficient for us to believe, as devout hearts always have believed, that the great God on high in his eternal years, must pity the frail and fading creatures of a day — that His great heart must be touched with pity at the sight of our miserable struggles, our sad environment, and our inevitable defeat. There may be comfort in such a thought, but it is not all the comfort that we need ; and, besides, we want something that will prove it. Now, the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the Lamb, not only gives us a new view of God’s pity, but it gives us what was wanted as much, and that is an undeniable and irresistible proof. It gives us a new view of God’s pity, for it shows us not a God having compassion from the heights of the throne, but a God who of his own will left these heights, and came down into the depths of mortal darkness, that He might understand by actual experience, those evils which He had to relieve. It shows us a God with human eyes, filled with human .tears ; a God who has made trial of the strangest, most humbling, most afflicting experiences, and who has not shrunk from the crowning and final proof of love — giving up His own life. The compassion is turned into sympathy, and is far more welcome and dear because it comes from one who stands by our side, and not from one lifted infinitely above us in the glories and the eternities. But not only have we this new revelation of God’s feeling towards human suffering — we have it actually verified to us. In the Cross we gaze into the depths of God’s heart ; and in that tremendous and unimaginable event, God dying upon the Cross for human sins, we see a proof, that never can be shaken, of God’s love towards men.

One may see something of the new light Christianity has brought into the world, by looking at pictures which may sometimes be seen hanging side by side — the glowing deities of the classic religions, in the ecstasy of sensual bliss, and the Son of God, with streaming wounds, and a face of pain and sorrow. " God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son." The very centre of our religion is a suffering man. " If God made the world," said the pessimist philosopher of Germany, " I should not like to be in the place of God ; its woes would break my heart." He knew not what he said. The woes of the world did break the heart of God manifest in the flesh.

2. Again, there is rest and peace in the thought, in the measure in which we make it ours, that the government and destinies of the world belong to the Lamb. He who died for the world, has in His hands the empire of the world, and with that empire He has all power given unto Him. Can we not trust Him ? Surely He has done much which ought to make trust easy. He has shown His love for the world by dying for the world, and the care of a world which He loved so well, and for which He did so much, may surely be left quietly in His own keeping. He alone knows the ways He must travel to reach His great end. Verily, His way is in the sea, and His path in the great waters, and His footsteps are not known ; nevertheless, He leads His people like a flock. Why should we not trust Him ? Why should we grieve Him with our doubt ? Shall we doubt the love that died, and shall we seek to wrest the destinies of the world from the wisdom and power, and love of the Lamb ? Most restful and blessed is the thought, that He to whom all power is committed, is He who has shown that He knows best how to use it.

3. Again, the Cross shows us how, what seems at the time to be irretrievable and unalleviated disaster may be the chiefest blessing. When Jesus Christ died, the very strongest faith was overwhelmed. All forsook him and fled, and even those who seemed to have entered furthest into the meaning of his mission were hardly braver than their neighbors He died lonely, forsaken by men, even by those who might have been expected to cling to him longest and last. Nor is this very wonderful, for to human eyes it seemed that the Cross of Jesus meant the defeat and the extinction of all his hopes. It is hard for us looking back, with the history of Christianity in our minds, to understand the depth of the darkness which wrapt God’s ways, even to the most faithful, when Jesus was crucified. We know now that the Cross is the spring of all Christian life. We know that the death of Christ has poured the life-blood of a new hope into the heart of the world ; we know that the Cross turns not back but goes on ever to win new victories. Let us take the light of that Cross and throw it upon all other smaller crosses. Does it not throw its light upon the shadows of nature and show us the meaning of the great law of sacrifice that rules there? We see in nature not a mere blind and purposeless waste of life, but a striving towards a fair end of things. Nature is ever seeking to repair waste places, and to cover desolation with loveliness, and the final result of all the struggle will be beauty, and a true and gracious issue will be reached when the pain is past, and a universe will exist in which nothing will be deformed or fading. The teaching of St Paul on the vanity of creation is one of the many thoughts of scripture that has not yet been thoroughly incorporated into the Christian consciousness. He recognized as clearly as the latest men of science the existence of a law of struggle, and the misery thence arising. But to him these pains were the birth throes of a new creation. He refused to believe with scientific teachers that the groaning and travailing of creation will end in stagnation and despair. Life is not to cease when anguish ceases, creation will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. " God will restore to a perfect state the world now fallen together with mankind." And the same is true of history. Looking back on the darkest and most disastrous times, on volcanic eruptions which seemed for the time to devastate the earth, we see that they were needed for the clearing of the air. for the overthrow of tyranny, for the entering in of a better time. In the lesser trials of our own life we see the working of the same principle. We can look back on the old dead griefs and see how they were all intended to bless us, and how Christ was with us in them. Let us learn to see him by our side in the present furnace, to speak with Paul, of sufferings in which we now rejoice. In the very moment of the intensest pressure of the pain, when the iron is entering into our souls, let us be aware of the love that chastens us for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness.

He himself sustained his faith so. Remember how when the Greeks came to him a transient pang seized him at the thought that so great and fruitful a work was to be so soon arrested by death. But he recalled that his shameful uplifting on the tree was to be the true glorious elevation to which the world was to turn. He remembered that death was to be infinitely more fruitful than life. He projects the shadow of the piece of wood on which he was to be lifted a few feet from the ground into the heaven of heavens, and says, " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me." These who had come to him were but the first ripple of the full tide of humanity that was to roll shoreward to his feet. His Cross was his throne, and its light is flung back on all the lesser crosses of Nature and of Man.