O Name, all other names above,
What art Thou not to me, Now I have learned to trust Thy love
And cast my care on Thee !
What is our being but a cry,
A restless longing still. Which Thou alone canst satisfy.
Alone Thy fulness fill !
Thrice blessM be the holy souls
That lead the way to Thee, That burn upon the martyr-rolls
And lists of prophecy.
* Phillips Brooks, The Infiuence of Jesus, 99. ' Letters of James Russell Lowell, i. 182. REV. — 8
114 VICTORY AND INTIMACY
And sweet it is to tread the ground O'er which their faith hath trod;
But sweeter far, when Thou art found, The soul's own sense of God!
The thought of Thee all sorrow calms;
Our anxious burdens fall; His crosses turn to triumph-palms,
Who finds in God his all.i 1 Frederick Lucian Hosmer.
A Dead and Alive Church.
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Literature.
Bindley (T. H.), The Messages to the Seven Churches, 60. Carpenter (W. B.), The Revelation (Ellicott'3 New Testament Com- mentary), 52. Cook (H.), in The Home Preacher^ 464. Crosby (H.), The Seven Churches of Asia, 102. Davies (T.), Sermons and Expositions, i. 481. Elmslie (W. G.), Memoir and Sermons, 119. Jerdan (C), Pastures of Tender Grass, 155.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Epistles of John to Revelation, 232. Parker (T.), Collected Works, ix. 1. Peabody (F. 6.), Mornings in the College Chapel, i. 102. Pounder (R. W.), Historical Notes on the Book of Revelation, 135. Ramsay (W. M.), The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia, 354, 369. Scott (C. A.), The Book of the Revelation, 113.
„ (J. J.), The Apocalypse, 67. Trench (R. C), Commentary on the Epistles to the Seven Churches in Asia,
157. Watkinson (W. L.), Studies in Christian Character, ii. 106. Whyte (A.), Bible Characters : Our Lord's Characters, 284. Christian World Pulpit, xlix. 305 (A. Maclaren) ; lix. 33 (H. S. Holland). Church of England Magazine, liii. 128 (W. Stevenson). Dictionary of the Bible, iv. 405 (W. M. Ramsay). Expositor, Ist Ser., iii. 204 (E. H. Plumptre). Literary Churchman, xxxiii. (1887) 197 (J. B. C. Murphy).
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A Dead and Alive Church.
And to the angel of the church in Sardis write ; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars : I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead.— Rev. iii. i.
1. Sakdis, the capital of the Lydian Empire, was one of the great cities of primitive history. It had been noted for its commercial prosperity ; it had been an important centre of trade ; its situa- tion on a high plateau in a district of great natural fertility marked it out as a ruling city. Wool-dyeing was invented there, and its manufactures of rugs and carpets, the raw material for which was furnished by the vast flocks of Phrygia, were as noted in their day as Persian or Morocco carpets are in modern times. The gold-laden sands of the river Pactolus which flowed through the city, and deposits of the mysterious metal called electrum, together with the minting of gold and silver coin, which was there first carried out, added to the fame, wealth, and reputation of the city in which Croesus, richest of kings, had ruled, the city which Solon, wisest of men, had visited, and where he had rightly augured ruin, because he had mistrusted material wealth as necessarily hollow and treacherous.
2. The natural position of Sardis on a high rocky bluff over- looking the plain of Hermus, and separated by a considerable de- pression from the mountain range behind, was such as to give it the reputation of being impregnable. On three sides of the city the cliff was understood to be unscaleable ; it was only necessary to guard the " causeway " by which it was connected with other high ground behind, and that could be held by a score of men against thousands. An impregnable city, but one which had often been taken — that was Sardis. The first time it was captured was in the sixth century B.C. The army of Croesus had suffered defeat beyond the Halys, at the hand of Cyrus, and though the
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ii8 A DEAD AND ALIVE CHURCH
victorious enemy appeared before the walls of Sardis before a new army could be collected, neither Croesus nor any of the in- habitants believed there was any danger of his penetrating their impregnable rock-fortress. The only way of approach, along the connecting isthmus, was strongly fortified *and carefully guarded. The city slept securely. But accident or treachery revealed to the invaders the possibility of ascending the rock-face by some crack or ledge, the existence of which had been overlooked by the defenders. By this the soldiers of Cyrus clambered up, and Croesus awoke to find his capital in the hands of the Persians. Cyrus had come upon Sardis " like a thief in the night."
11 The Church is never in a more perilous state than when she has quiet and peace.^
3. Long afterwards in Greece the fate of Croesus and of his city served to point the moral of overweening self-confidence and thoughtless security. But even the fact that it had thus become a proverb for foolish confidence did not save Sardis from suffering the same fate again, when, some three centuries later, it was captured by Antiochus through the exploit of the Cretan Lagoras, who climbed the steep hill and stole unobserved into the acropolis. For some time previous to the date of this letter to the Church at Sardis, the city had been slowly sinking in im- portance. Its manufactures and commercial position had been lost. Outdistanced by its younger rivals, Ephesus and Smyrna, on the sea-coast, it became a melancholy spectacle, a place of third-rate importance, unable to forget that it had once been chief. Even as a city, Sardis was pretentious and self-satisfied, yet mori- bund, having a " name to live " and yet dead. It was a city of failure; a city whose history blazoned forth the uncertainty of human fortunes, the weakness of human strength, and the short- ness of the step that separates over-confident might from sudden and irreparable disaster ; a city whose name was almost synony- mous with pretensions unjustified, promise unfulfilled, appearance without reality, confidence that heralded ruin.