REVELATION ii. 7 69
be impressed by his own extraordinary mercies ; the element of grace in life, of things better than he has worked for, bulks largely in his view. And when he comes to the end, and the question of the wages due to him comes up for settlement, the thought of self- assertion is far away; for the least of God's rewards has in it something that passes human expectation. A man might humbly ask only to be within the door, to have a sight, however distant, of that Face ; but to be within the door includes the whole — " a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." And those to whom that blessedness is given take it not as the deserved return for their poor services on earth, but as one last miracle of the grace of God, who gives men what they never could have earned ; and they take it from the hands of Him who " overcame the sharpness of death, and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers." For it is Christ who says, " I will give," Jesus Christ risen and enthroned, who has ascended on high, and has received gifts for men.
II The result of our Lord's varied teaching about life is to exhibit it as the ultimate and fundamental form of human good, the highest and the deepest blessing which man can in any wise attain ; and that especially because it is what most closely links him to God, and may most truly be represented as issuing from God's own being. But while the disciples were being led by this gradual and often indirect guidance to esteem rightly the precious- ness of life, they were learning also in like manner that the life thus highly exalted was in some sense embodied in the person of their Lord. After the earlier days of intercourse had brought them to recognize Him as a trustworthy teacher concerning life and the way to attain it, nay as Himself a giver of it, they soon came to feel that when He was giving them life He was giving them of Himself, for they received it after a fashion which the externality of such terms as "given" and "gift" renders them incompetent to describe.^
2. In the text Jesus Christ claims to be the Arbiter of men's deserts and the Giver of their rewards. He has said that He will give to all the multitude of faithful fighters who have brought their shields out of the battle, and their swords undinted, the gift of life eternal. In Christ risen from the dead we have, says St. John, the assurance of things which the past never had. The tree of life is promised, which was denied to Adam. The Eden of earth's sunrise
1 F. J. A. Hort, The Way : the Truth : the Life, 109.
70 THE TREE OF LIFE
had a beauty of its own, yet, fugitive and ill-secured, it was not fit to last ; but the things which Christ brought in are not to be with- drawn. If He undid by His long warfare an old disaster, it is for ever; the salvation of Jesus is irreversible. The text at least implies that there is some power in Jesus Christ to give lost things back again ; and those who know His work must have seen startling resurrections of old things — purity returning to those whose life had been sullied, hope returning to some who had sinned their chances all away. " I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten," says God. All is not lost ; and Christ holds the secret of how to give it back to men. Eden is not lost, it is with God ; and through the grace of God we may see what life took from us — the wishes too great, the hopes too fair, the knowledge too wonderful. After all, it is a heathen fancy that the golden age is behind ; it is the thought of those who erred, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God ; and we should learn from Jesus Christ to trust Him to do better for us than the best the past has seen.
^ Of all the various ways in which the imagination has dis- torted truth none has worked so much harm as reverence for past ages. It is this which inspired poets with the notion of a Golden Age, in which the world was filled with peace, and crime was unknown. And it is this same principle which diffused a belief that in the olden time men were not only more virtuous and happy, but attained to a larger stature and lived to a greater age than is possible for their degenerate descendants.^
^ The Golden Age is in the future, not in the past, whatever the poets may say. We look back with humiliation to one Garden, the defiled and deserted Paradise of Eden : we look forward with joy and hope to another Garden, the glorious and incorruptible Paradise of Heaven that shall never be destroyed.^
3. In the promise " I will give " there is involved the eternal continuance of Christ's relation to men as the Eevealer and Mediator of God. Not only when the victor crosses the threshold and enters the Capitol of the heavens, but all through the ages, Christ is the Medium by which the Divine life passes into men. True, there is a sense in which He shall deliver up the Kingdom to His Father, when the partial end of the present dispensation has come. But He is the Priest of mankind for 1 A. W. Momerie. ^ j, g. Maclean, The Secret of the Stream, 136.