^ I remember on my first landing at a place [in West Africa] where there are three small factories only, but which I had seen marked large on the map, asking a resident white if this was all 1 Luther, TahU-Talk.
REVELATION iii. i 119
the settlement. " Oh no ! " said he, " this is only the porter's lodge; I'll show you the settlement," and he took me to the cemetery ; that cemetery justified the large lettering on the map.^
4. The social history of Sardis finds a singularly close reflec- tion in the history of the Church of Christ within its walls, so that the Apostle could point the moral of the one by using language which was suggested by, and suggested, the other. The city, though still a place of importance, was a city of the past, retaining the name of greatness, but decayed from its former estate. The words of the text are singularly appropriate to its history : " I know thy works, that thou hast a name, that thou livest, and thou art dead." The words are, of course, addressed to the Church of Sardis, and must be understood as describing its condition about 90-100 A.D., already decaying from its original high promise ; but it seems clear that the writer must have been conscious of the historical parallel, and chose his words so as to express it. When he goes on to say, " Be thou watchful ... for I have found no works of thine fulfilled. ... If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee," one's thoughts are carried back to the two occasions when, through careless watching, the impreg- nable citadel failed to keep up its reputation and name and to fulfil its works.
^ Living on one's reputation is a melancholy business. It is sad to see a threadbare merchant starving on the dwindling relics of his former fortune ; to see the failing orator reproducing stale scraps of knowledge and rhetoric which once commanded applause ; sad to listen to an old vocalist whose fame survives his voice ; and saddest of all are those professors of religion who acquire no fresh strength and treasure, but who contrive to keep themselves in countenance by making the most of an ever attenuating reputa- tion. We must not live in the opinion of others, but in our own rich and supporting consciousness; we must not live a fancied life in others' breath, but a real, true life in the purity and power of our own soul. It is not what we were, but what we are. How are things with us to-day ? The true spiritual life is never merely ■retrospective. What am I now, and what my hope ? Am I gaining victories, overtaking new work, attaining fresh graces, bringing forth fruit unto God ? ^
^ Mary Kingsley, in British Africa, 379. * W. L. Watkinson.
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I20 A DEAD AND ALIVE CHURCH
TI Obtain and preserve a reputation. It is the usufruct of fame. It is expensive to obtain a reputation, for it only attaches to distinguished abilities, which are as rare as mediocrities are common. Once obtained, it is easily preserved. It confers many an obligation, but it does more. When it is owing to elevated powers or lofty spheres of action, it rises to a kind of veneration and yields a sort of majesty. But it is only a well-founded reputa- tion that lasts permanently.^
A Church with a Name to Live.
1. Of the Angel of the Church at Sardis, and, by implication of the Society which he represented, it was said, " Thou hast a name that thou livest," — and yet thou " art dead." Surely there never was a more terrible word than that. A name to live, and yet all the _\yhi1p. de?^d ! The nominal condition, we should all say, aggravates the actual. Better be dead, and know it, and wear no disguise, and practise no hypocrisy, than clothe the ghastly skeleton with the semblance of vitality, and be dead indeed while in name thou livest. Sardis, once a living Church, was now existing on the recollection of what it had been and done. It had kept the name and cherished traditions of the past; but its present character was poor and its experience low. How easy to keep the old, beautified, stirring names and cries when all the reality, force, and glow of their origin have perished ! " Nominal " Christianity is a poor thing to live with. It is a poor thing in days of fierce temptation and of searching sorrow. In no days does it bring satisfaction to the heart. Nominal religion is a poor thing to die with. The mission of Christ is to bring in reality, to sweep away all mere semblances, artificialities, and names of religion ; His one great purpose is to establish real relations between our soul and God. Alas for us if we have only the name of Christ ! " If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." " God is not the God of the dead, but of the living."
^ When the church of Sardis was really dead, the principal means of keeping it in that condition was the name it had to be alive.* ^ Balthasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom (ed. 1892), 66. ' John Owen.