^ The readers of this letter, who possessed the key to its comprehension, hidden from the common world, could not fail to be struck with the analogy between this New Name and the Imperial title Augustus. That also had been a new name, deliberately devised by the Senate to designate the founder, and to mark the foundation of the new Empire : it was an old sacred word, used previously only in the language of the priests, and never applied to any human being: hence Ovid says: "Sancta vocant augusta patres" {Fast., i. 609). That old word was appropriated in 27 B.C. to the man who had been the saviour of Rome, and whom already the popular belief had begun to regard as an incarnation of the Divine nature in human form, sent down to earth to end the period of war and introduce the age of peace. This sacred, Divine name marked out the man to whom it was applied as one apart from the world, standing on a higher level, possessor of superhuman power in virtue of this new name and transmitting that power through the name to his descendants.
The analogy was striking ; and the points of difference were only to the advantage of the Christian. His new name was secret, but all the more efficacious on that account. The readers for whom this letter was written — the Christians of Pergamum, of all Asia, of the whole world — would catch with certainty the hidden meaning. All those Christians, when they were victorious, were to be placed in the same position as, or rather higher than, Augustus, having a New Name, the Name of God, their own secret possession, which no man would know and therefore no man could tamper with by acquiring control through knowledge. As Augustus had been set above the Eoman world by his new name, so they would be set above the world by theirs.^
2. The name, then, expresses the character, the nature, the being, the meaning of the person who bears it. It is the man's
^ W. M. Ramsay, The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia, 310.
no VICTORY AND INTIMACY
own symbol, — his soul's picture, in a word, — the sign which belongs to him and to no one else. Who can give a man this, his own, name ? God alone. For no one but God sees what the man is, or even, seeing what he is, could express in a name-word the sum and harmony of what He sees. To whom is this name given ? To him that overcometh. When is it given ? When he has overcome. Does God then not know what a man is going to become ? As surely as He sees the oak which He put there lying in the heart of the acorn. Why then does He wait till the man has become by overcoming ere He settles what his name shall be? He does not wait; He knows his name from the first. But — although repentance comes because God pardoned — as the man becomes aware of the pardon only in the repentance, so it is only when the man has become his name that God gives him the stone with the name upon it, for then first can he understand what his name signifies. It is the blossom, the perfection, the comple- tion, that determines the name ; and God foresees that from the first, because He made it so ; but the tree of the soul, before its blossom comes, cannot understand what blossom it is to bear, and could not know what the word meant, which, in representing its own unattained completeness, named itself. Such a name cannot be given until the man is the name.
11 My heart was tender and often contrite, and universal love to my fellow-creatures increased in me. This will be understood by such as have trodden in the same path. Some glances of real beauty may be seen in their faces who dwell in true meekness. There is a harmony in the sound of that voice to which Divine love gives utterance, and some appearance of right order in their temper and conduct whose passions are regulated; yet these do not fully show forth that inward life to those who have not felt it ; this white stone and new name is only known rightly by such as receive it.i
3. The " new name " had been used by Isaiah and Jeremiah for expressing the new life of blessedness in store for those to whom it was applied. The land that had been forsaken and abandoned to destruction should be called " Hephzibah," as once more delight of her Lord. The daughter of Zion, that had sat desolate as a widow, should be " Beulah," as a bride over whom
1 The Journal of John JVoolman (ed. 1903), 48.
REVELATION ii. 17 11 1
the bridegroom once more rejoiced. Jerusalem herself was to be known by the mystic name of " The Lord our Kighteousness." In his own case and that of his brother, as in that of Simon Barjona — in Peter, the " Eock," and Boanerges, the " Sons of Thunder " — the Apostle had known a new name given which was the symbol of a higher life and a character idealized in its gifts. And so in this case the inner truth that lies below the outward imagery would seem to be that the conqueror, when received at the heavenly feast, should find upon the stone, or tessera, that gave him the right of entrance a " new name," the token of a character transformed and perfected, a name the full significance of which should be known only to him who was conscious of the trans- formation, just as in the experiences of our human life, " the heart knoweth its own bitterness ; and a stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy."