vi. The Extent of it.
The words of the Seer are suggested by Is. xliii. 18, 19 : " Kemember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing." But, says Swete, the scope of the old prophecy is enlarged indefinitely by the words " all things." All the fruits of the New Covenant are included.
1. Man is included. — The new world begins in the human heart, and it occupies every part of the personality and every aspect of the life. By his words a man is now justified. His thoughts are brought into captivity to the mind of Christ. Moreover, the newness covers the relation between man and man. There will be the fulfilment of both commandments — the first and greater, and also the second which is like unto it.
1 G. W. E. Russell, Life of Sir Wilfrid Lawson^ 3.
REVELATION xxi. 5 327
2. The whole creation is included. — For "the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now." Change the man, and you change his world. The new self will make all around it as good as new, though no actual change should pass on it ; for, to a very wonderful extent, a man creates his own world. We project the hue of our own spirit on things outside. A bright and cheerful temper sees all things on their sunny side. A weary, uneasy mind drapes the very earth in gloom. Lift from a man his load of inward anxiety, and you change the aspect of the universe to that man ; for, if " to the pure all things are pure," it is no less true that to the happy all things are happy.
^ For to those in Christ all things are not only new, but they are growing continually newer. In the old world, and with the old man, it is just the other way. Things are always getting older, until life gets to be an insufferable burden, a dreary round, a wretched repetition, and we see backs bent with nothing but pure sorrow, and heads white with none other sickness than vexation of spirit, and men brought to the grave because life was too wearisome, and time too intolerable, and existence too aimless and stale, to be supported any longer. But in the new world, and with the new man, the whole is reversed ; and the new cry ever waxes more frequent and more loud, " Look, and look again, how the old is passing, how the new is coming, how things are getting new." Every day more of the old is weeded out, more of the new is coming in. Life is " fresher and freer " and fuller of promise. There are new discoveries of the Father's love, new revelations of Christ's grace, new experiences of the Spirit's comfort. Life becomes interesting, and entertaining, and significant, and splendid, and grand beyond belief. What views of life Christ's world contains ; what heavens of expansion overarch it ; what hills of attainment are reared upon it ; what distances of outlook are discernible from it! Yourself, Christ, God — what thoughts about them all you could never have conceived before! History, Time, Eternity — what feelings they stir in you, you never could have felt before ! Purpose, Progress, Achievement — what mighty motions of the will they produce ! ^
11 Dr. S. Eeynolds Turner, who superintends a Chinese col- porteur in Amoy, writes: "He is one of the most earnest Christians I have met in China, and a real red-hot evangelist. In visiting our stations I have seen a good deal of him on his native heath, and one remark he made sticks to me, since it was so
* R. W. Barbour, Thoughts, 130.
328 GOD'S NEW WORLD
strange from a Chinaman. We were standing on a hillside over- looking the sea, which at that part of the coast is dotted over with islands, and I was revelling in the beauty of the scene under a bright sun and clear skies. Suddenly he turned to me, and said, ' Isn't it beautiful ? ' I agreed heartily, but added that I thought Chinamen did not, as a rule, pay attention to such things. * Ah ! ' he said, ' I never saw anything about me, or thought any- thing beautiful or worth looking at, until I became a Christian ; but since then the world gets daily more beautiful, and the more I see of it the more I comprehend our dear Father in heaven.' " ^
^ I remember, as though it were yesterday, something that happened in my own life at least thirty-seven years ago. I was a boy, and there came to my father's house a young man who had been brought to Christ in some services my father had been conducting away up among the Welsh hills. This young man one day was out in our garden, and talking to me about all sorts of things. He interested me as a child, and I loved him. Suddenly he stooped down and took a leaf from a nasturtium plant, put it on his hand, and said to me, " Did you ever see anything so beautiful?" And I looked, and saw all the veins, and the exquisite beauty of it all. Then he said, " Do you know, I never saw how beautiful that leaf was until six months ago, when I gave myself to Christ ? " I have never forgotten that. How true I know that to be in my own experience ! ^