1 W. M. Taylor, The Parables of Our Saviour, 303.
2 Christina G. Rossetti, The Face of the Deep, 439.
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of the Lamb. This invitation will be addressed only to the people of God, the saved. The other invitation is addressed to all men, and the date is — now. The command of the King to His servants as they go to invite the guests is, " As many as ye shall find, bid to the marriage." Shall we not all gladly welcome and eagerly accept the invitation to-day ? And shall we not make it the one great object of our desire, the one grand effort of our life, that we may form part of that glorious and blessed company ? ^
From the dust of the weary highway,
From the smart of sorrow's rod, Into the royal presence.
They are bidden as guests of God. The veil from their eyes is taken;
Sweet mysteries they are shown. Their doubts and fears are over.
For they know as they are known.
For them there should be rejoicing
And festival array. As for the bride in her beauty.
Whom love hath taken away — Sweet hours of peaceful waiting
Till the path that we have trod Shall end at the Father's gateway.
And we are the guests of God.^
3. Whilst the scope of the invitation to the marriage supper may be wide, the context makes it clear that Christ must not only be on us as a robe, but also be in us as a life, if we are to have the hope of glory. To say this in no way interferes with our completeness in the Beloved alone, or with the fact that not by works of righteousness that we have done, but by grace, are we saved through faith, and that not of ourselves ; it is the gift of God. All our salvation is of Christ, but the change upon us must be internal as well as external. The idea suggested in the verse following the text, that the raiment in which the ransomed saints shall appear at the marriage supper of the Lamb will have been woven out of the deeds done in the body, imparts a new and quite transcendent value to our earthly life. It sets the vanishing
1 J. Kehnan, Redeeming Judgmenty 194. * Mary Frances Butts.
270 MARRIAGE SUPPER OF THE LAMB
present in causal relation to the eternal future, and stamps the homely duties of our common days with an incalculable worth. Although God may be said to clothe the soul in fitting raiment for the marriage supper of the Lamb, He certainly does not do so mechanically from without, but vitally from within. Character must ever be the determining factor of destiny. That character we are weaving now, and it will be the garment of the soul through its eternal years. The possibility of a wedding garment has been placed within easy reach of all by the royal grace of the King. That possibility lies in the acceptance of His will as the rule of our life. Immediately upon its acceptance that will becomes within us the force of a new life-principle, conforming us to the mind of God, and forthwith assimilating to itself a body after its kind. Behind this veil of flesh sits this mysterious prin- ciple, throwing its invisible shuttles, and investing the soul with the garments in which it must finally stand in the bridal-hall of the King.
^ What the guest wanted who lacked the wedding garment was righteousness, both in its root of faith and its flower of charity. He had not, according to the pregnant image of St. Paul, here peculiarly appropriate, "put on Christ " ; — in which putting on of Christ both faith and charity are included, — faith as the invest- ing power, charity or holiness as the invested robe. By faith we recognize a righteousness out of and above us, and which yet is akin to us, and wherewith our spirits can be clothed; which righteousness is in Christ, who is therefore the Lord our Eighteous- ness. And this righteousness by the appropriate and assimila- tive power of faith we also make our own ; we are clothed upon with it, so that it becomes, in that singularly expressive term, our habit, — the righteousness imputed has become also a righteousness infused, and is in us charity or holiness, or more accurately still, constitutes the complex of all Christian graces as they abide in the man, and show themselves in his life. . . . We may affirm of the wedding garment that it is righteousness in its largest sense, the whole adornment of the new and spiritual man; including the faith without which it is impossible to please God (Heb. xi. 6), and the holiness without which no man shall see Him (Heb. xii. 14), or shall, like this guest, only see Him to perish at His presence. It is at once the faith which is the root of all graces, the mother of all virtues, and likewise those graces and virtues themselves.^
* E. C. Trench, Notes on the Parables of Our Lord, 241.
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^ In June, G. F. Watts wrote asking him to lunch any day at Little Holland House. He knew nothing of the work Shields was commencing, but said : " I should like to have an occasional chat about serious art. I wish you would kindly send me a line and tell me the correct colours for the draperies of Faith. I know you are an authority." To which Shields replied: "For answer to your question and compliment, I am no 'authority.' I know none on the subject but the Authority of the Word re- vealed. Paul declares Faith is God's gift. She is Heaven-born. She is the assurance of Heavenly things to mortals shut in by sensuous things, therefore the skies' hue is hers, her mantle and her wings : and for her robe, white — unspotted. And this because they who seek righteousness by works fail of that which only Faith gives. The 'fine linen of the Saints' symbolizes their righteousness in the Apocalypse, and it is said that their robes were made * white in the blood of the Lamb.' If I seek where alone I look to find, this is what is given me, and it is the best I can offer in response to your question. I bow to tradition only where it agrees with the written word." ^