What are these lovely ones, yea, what are these ?
Lo these are they who for pure love of Christ Stripped off the trammels of soft silken ease,
Beggaring themselves betimes, to be sufficed Throughout heaven's one eternal day of peace :
By golden streets, thro' gates of pearl unpriced, They entered on the joys that will not cease.
And found again all firstfruits sacrificed.
* C. J. Vaughan, Lectures on the Revelation of St. John, 192.
i84 THE REDEEMED
And wherefore have you harps, and wherefore palms, And wherefore crowns, 0 ye who walk in white ?
Because our happy hearts are chanting psalms, Endless Te Deum for the ended fight;
While thro' the everlasting lapse of calms
We cast our crowns before the Lamb our Might.^
1 Christina G. Eossetti, Poetical Works, 212.
The Noble Army of Martyrs.
X85
Literature.
Adams (J. C), The Leisure of Gody 219.
Alcorn (J.), The Sure Foundation, 195.
Bonar (H.), Light and Truth : The Revelation, 195.
Boyd (A. K. H.), Sermons and Stray Papers, 139.
Bradley (C), Serrtions, i. 1.
Bright (W.), The Law of Faith, 264.
Carter (T. T.), The Spirit of Watchfulness, 247.
Coates (G.), The Morning Watch, 373.
Foote (J.), Communion Week Sermons, 248.
Fraser (D.), Autobiography and Sermons, 209.
Greenhough (J. G.), Christian Festivals and Anniversaries, 176.
Hood (P.), Dark Sayings on a Harp, 331.
Johnston (S. M.), The Great Things of God, i. 309.
Laidlaw (J.), Studies in the Parables, 271.
Lynch (T. T.), Three Mmiths' Ministry, 73.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Epistles of John to Revelation, 331.
Matheson (G.), Searchings in the Silence, 77.
Morgan (J.), The Sacrament of Pain, 203.
Morrison (G.), The House of God, 175.
Ritchie (D. L.), Peace the Umpire, 157.
Ryle (J. C), The Christian Pace, 296.
Selby (T. G.), in The Divine Artist, 73.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxii. (1876), No. 1316.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), New Ser., xiv. (1877), No. 1022.
Woodward (H.), Sermons, 366.
Christian World Pulpit, viii. 300 (A. Mackennal) ; Ixvii. 387 (A. Whyte).
Ghwrch of England Pulpit, 1. 2 (H. D. Rawnsley).
Churchman's Pulpit : All Saints, xv. 431 (W. Bright).
Church Times, Oct. 23, 1914 (R. Keable).
Expository Times, xxi. 108.
Homiletic Review, xx. 142 (J. L. Withrow).
xM
The Noble Army of Martyrs.
And he said to me, These are they which come out of the great tribulation, and they washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.— Rev. vii. 14.
The Eevelation of St. John is a magnificent spectacular pro- phecy. It sets forth great principles in bold and brilliant pictures. It uses the bitter experiences which befell Christian hearts in dreadful persecutions, as the means of showing forth the Divine providence and purpose of deliverance. With the blood of present martyrdoms for a symbol, it depicts the struggle and woe of a world at strife. And with the white light shining in the Christian faith, it shows forth the blessed consummation of victory, the triumph of the Christ. It is one of the most stirring of writings. It moves the heart because it is so filled with the pathos and the tragedy of those days of bloody persecution in which it was written. " Without tears," says Bengel, " it was not written ; without tears it cannot be understood." It is a set of dazzling pictures, " wherein," says Herder, the great poet- theologian, " are set forth the rise, the visible existence, and the general future of Christ's Kingdom, in figures and similitudes of His first coming to terrify and to console."
In the passage which stands as the text, we have one of our glimpses of the victory which in those days of tribulation and anguish must have seemed so very remote and hard to believe. The innumerable throng in white robes, with palms in their hands, wear and bear the symbols of triumph. They stand forth in the din and clash of the contending forces depicted in this book, the happy participants in the glory and the purity of the victorious Lamb. Their white robes mean holiness. Their wavinor palms mean victory. The two symbols standing together set forth the triumph of holiness. That is the burden of the whole book. It is the glorious message which shines down to us from
all these stormy pictures. The victory of the good, the end of
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i88 THE NOBLE ARMY OF MARTYRS
strife in the purification of the world — this is the great thought poured out of the heart of that mystic utterance of the beloved Apostle. Victory through struggle and tribulation — that is the outcome of the world and the creation, prophesied in this vision of the multitude in white robes.
But tfhe form and suggestions of the vision bring to the mind not alone the victory, but the means as well. In the very thought of a victory, there is also the thought of a battle. Winning comes only of striving. The creation is to make its way to this victory through struggle. And the same thought which carries the mind to the consummation of toil and suffering carries it back also to the weariness and the pain and the conflict out of which that end has been wrought. " Lo, a great multitude, clothed in white robes, and with palms " — " These are they which come out of the great tribulation." There is a long look ahead in these words. But there is also a long look backward, as they, in one sentence, not only forecast the future but sum up the past.^