2i8 THE LAMB AS A SHEPHERD
and that touch is given in the words which close this vision, which, beginning with tribulation, ends with tears, but leaves the whole space between calm and undimmed. The mighty Hand that bore away their sins, and led them in royal majesty, touches them with more than a mother's yearning. " And God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes." Tribulation gone from their steps; sin washed out of their hearts; now all the fountains of their tears are dried up. Truly the right hand of the Lord hath done valiantly in its mighty deeds of salvation ; but this, its last touch of ineffable pity, moves us to the uttermost with the tender- ness as well as the omnipotence and infinitude of love Divine.
Meanwhile to us, as we look up to that vision, is given the sweet pain of noble tears, and we feel rising within us the longing desire of the Great Dreamer, who in his vision followed the pilgrims from the City of Destruction to the City of the New Jerusalem, till he saw them " go in at the gate. And after that they shut up the gates ; which, when I had seen, I wished myself among them."
^ A great sorrow after a time becomes idealized. It presses at first with overpowering weight, but gradually it rises till it becomes a thing of contemplation on which we can dwell with calmness, and which leaves a mellowing influence behind. One has seen the dew, bequeathed by the darkness, weigh down the flowers' heads, but sunlight relieves the pressure, dries up the tears, and leaves only their memory in refreshment and fragrance.^
^ What will be the complete rest to which we are aspiring when all the history of the world is wound up and God is all in all ! What retrospects of home repose, and wanderings here and there, of earthly histories wrought out and consummated ! How can we conceive of a complete joy if those we love are not there with us ? I dare hardly turn my eyes this way. It is like the beginning of an agony to think of Eternal separation ; it seems as if it would fill Eternity with tears. What is that view of Truth that will wipe all tears away ? What that consent to the Divine Kectitude which cannot permit a diminished joy even when the wicked are silent in darkness ? I need help for such thoughts as these — God bring all we love safe within that circle of glory. God grant we may have no loves on earth that will not be ever- lasting.2
' John Ker, Thoughts for Heart and Life, 125. ^ Letters of James Smetham, 140.
REVELATION vii. 17 219
If The summer of 1826 was, I believe, the hottest and driest iu the nineteenth century. Almost no rain fell from May till August. I recollect the long-continued sultry haze over the mountains of Lome, Loch Etive daily a sea of glass, the smoke of kelp-burning ascending from its rocky shores, and the sunsets reflecting the hills of Mull and Morven in purple and crimson and gold. I can picture a sultry Sunday in that year in the quaint, rudely furnished, crowded parish church, then beside the manse, and the welcome given to the sublime imagery of the Apocalypse in the words which formed the text : " These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more ; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat." ^
And now, all tears wiped off from every eye, They wander where the freshest pastures lie. Through all the nightless day of that unfading sky I*
* A. Campbell Fraser, Biograyhia Philosophical 17. ' Horatius Bonar.
The Kingdom of our Lord.
Literature.
Arnold (T.), Sermons, iv. 310.
Davies (J. LI.), Social Questions, 147.
Drummond (R. J.), FaitWs Certainties, 381.
Fox (W. J.), Collected Works, i. 290.
Halsey (J.), The Spirit of Truth, 20.
M'Kim (R. H.), The Gospel in the Christian Year, 320.
Macleod (D.), Christ and Society, 107.
Marjoribanks (T.), The Fulness of the Godhead, 84.
Ridgeway (C. J.), The King and His Kingdom, 29.
Westcott (B. F.), The Revelation of the Risen Lord, 154.
Christian World Pulpit, xxviii. 371 (R. Glover) ; xxxiii. 264 (J. Halsey) ;
Ivi. 389 (W. Watson) ; Ixx. 56 (P. M'Adam Muir) ; Ixxvi. 182
(T. E. Ruth). Church Times, Dec. 13, 1912 (W. C. E. Newbolt). Commonwealth, xix. (1914) 62 (N. E. E. Swann). Treasury (New York), xviii. 502 (C. A. Vincent).
The Kingdom of our Lord.
The kingdom of the world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ : and he shall reign for ever and ever.— Rev. xi. 15.
The vision of the author of the Book of Revelation presents a sublime drama of the unfolding of the Divine idea in the world and its conflict with the secular spirit. It sets forth the play of spiritual forces and their victorious issue. What the Seer beheld was Christ triumphant in the whole sphere of human thought and feeling. By " the kingdom of the world " he did not mean merely the realms over which kings reigned. He meant the ruling ideas of the world — its dominant forces, social, intellectual, political. All these were, and are to be, brought under the dominion of Christian principles. All departments of life are to be consecrated and sanctified by the spirit of Jesus. The text suggests the vision of a world-empire, once dominated by an usurping power, which has now at length passed into the hands of its true Owner and Imperator.