1 H. H. Snell. 2 d_ Butler, Thomas a Kempis, 133.
i68 AN OPENED BOOK AND A NEW SONG
4. Men who come to Christ always find the key to destiny in His hands. He has opened the book, and for them no longer fate but Jesus Christ is lord and master of their lives. It is not only the Lamb, but the Lamb slain that we see ; not only love but sacrifice. The Lamb has death-wounds on its body, as it stands in the first pathos of death, slain though not yet fallen. This is indeed the kind of love that conquers destiny. There are many kinds of love — placidly selfish love, good-humoured and easy-going affec- tion, that knows nothing of sacrifice. But this is by far too great a task for such love. The book of destiny remains for ever closed to selfishness. So we come in sight of the ancient truth, old indeed as the world though but slowly apprehended, that man must sacrifice to destiny. To gain either the understanding or the mastery of fate we must give up ourselves. It is a hard lesson, but it is the way in which the world is made, and we must all learn it. It is sacrifice, and sacrifice alone, that avails in the last resort to give either peace or victory.
Many a song of praise had previously been sung on earth and in heaven to the glory of the self-existent and eternal God. Many a psalm had also been chanted in honour of the coming Messiah ere He made His advent in our world. When He had completed His work of redeeming love on earth, He ascended into heaven amid the acclamations and songs of thousands of angels. But now the redeemed around the throne behold their Lord, whom they remember as the Lamb slain, the Victim which suffered for their sins, taking up and carrying on the design of God in the administration of His Kingdom, so that He may make all things redound to His Father's glory and to the completion of human redemption. Then they burst forth in this new song.
The song sung by this great multitude, including even the repre- sentatives of nature, now " delivered from the bondage of corrup- tion into the liberty of the glory of the children of God," is a new song, for it is the song of the " new creation " ; and its burden, it will be observed, is not creation, but redemption by the blood of the Lamb, a redemption through which all partaking of it are raised to a higher glory and a fairer beauty than that enjoyed and exhibited before sin had as yet entered into the world, and when God saw that all that He had made was good.
As we see Christ moving on towards Calvary, we tremble as
REVELATION v. 9 169
we realize how the fate of the world turned on that cross. By accepting it, He revealed the meaning of man's destiny, and He conquered it for man. The Lamb slain prevailed to open the book. The revealing power of the cross has showed how through suffering man is made perfect, and changed the mystery of pain to the hope of glory, the bitter cry to the shout of victory, and the victims of life to the sons of God.
1} " Thou didst purchase us unto God with Thy blood." The slave of past guilt, of besetting sin, of frailty and futility, of dark despair, Jesus ransomed me. And not by a mere act of sovereignty and might. No, but by breaking the alabaster vase of His un- blemished body for me, and by pouring forth the costly spikenard of His blood. Can I ever forget it ? will it not be the theme of my praise through the unending years of the future ? ^
^ Others have been compelled to acknowledge mysteries of reason which prepare for and harmonize with the mysteries ascribed to re- ligion by the Christian Church ; they have felt that the Incarnation and Passion are not incredible to those who believe and meditate on the earlier mystery of creation ; that the difficulties which beset the one are the same in kind as the mysteries which beset the other ; that in the region of philosophical thought an acting is a suffering God, and that whatever inclines a commencing inquirer to reject as absurd a belief in a " Lamb slain before the foundation of the world," the same principle if pursued into its philosophical consequences would lead to rejecting the belief of any personal God at all.^
O Lamb of God, our Light, of fleece how luminous ! If speech would come, as water-lilies rise From the deep founts and offer sacrifice.
Then might I hope
In majesty of many a trope To open unto man the glorious Sign How Thou the Lamb even as a lamp dost shine.
White must Thou be that we may recognize Thou art the Host, and there must be * In Thy appearing marks of Calvary : But deep in thought, untainted by event. Even as from Thy Father's Bosom sent, Thou must be manifest. The great " I am " Shines through prevailing fleeces, Abel's Lamb.^
^ A. Smellie, In the Hour of Silence, 97.
2 Life of Sir William Rowan Hamilton, 465.