Thou !
^ A. J. Gordon: A Biography, 186.
REVELATION xxii. 3, 4 359
And thus shall curse, and night, and sin, like shadows flee
away From out my life, and Light divine gleam through it every
day; The Throne of God and of the Lamb fixed deep within shall
be, Heaven's life and bliss already mine, and through eternity.^ ^ T. Crawford, HoroR Serence, 42.
The Alpha and the Omega.
Literature.
Aylmer-Stark (W.), Mens Jesu Ghrist% 195.
Bernard (J. H.), Via Domini, 216.
Bonar (H.), Light and Truth : The Kevelation, 33.
Brooks (P.), The Mystery of Iniquity, 310.
Burton (H.), The Coming of the Kingdom, 191.
Cairns (J.), Christ the Morning Star, 18.
Coffin (H. S.), University Sermons, 36.
Cook (F. C), Church Doctrine and Spiritual Life, 202.
Davieg (T.), Sermons and Expositions, i. 358.
Dewhurst (E. M.), The King and His Servants, 145.
Gibbons (J.), Discourses and Sermons, 297.
Gougb (E. J.), The Religion of the Son of Man, 155.
Hitchcock (F. R. M.), Harvest Thoughts, 7.
Houghton (C. A.), Problems of Life, 1.
Law (H.), Christ is All, 256.
McLeod (M. J.), The Unsearchable Riches, 31.
Macnutt (F. B.), Advent Certainties, 77.
Purves (G. T.), Faith and Life, 21.
Robinson (C. S.), Studies in the New Testament, 214.
Smellie (A.), In the Secret Place, 131.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, ix. (1863), No. 546.
Talmage (T. de W.), Fifty Sermons, i. 177.
Webster (F. S.), My Lord and I, 190.
Wells (J.), Bible Echoes, 203.
Wilberforce (B.), Inward Vision, 81.
Ch/ristian Commonwealth, xxxi. (1910) 121 (R. J. Campbell).
Christian World Pulpit, xxiii. 129 (W. Landels) ; lix. 29 (A. J. Mason) ;
Ixiii. 1 (H. S. Holland). Church of England Pulpit, xlii. 28 (T. B. Naylor). Churchman's Pulpit : Trinity Sunday, ix. 281 (F. C. Cook). Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, i. 43 (B. W. Bacon). Encyclopadia of Religion and Ethics, i. 1 (W. 0. E. Oesterley).
363
The Alpha and the Omega.
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.— Rev. xxii. 13.
There is one feature of the Apocalypse of St. John which must strike every thoughtful student of that wonderful book. Through all the majestic sequence of the symbolic visions in which it shadows forth the struggles, the defeats, and the victories of the Church of God, it views everything from above. Commencing with the charge to the Apostle, imprisoned in the mines of Patmos, to write down the things which he sees and send them to the seven Churches of Asia, that outlook is maintained to the end. It is human life seen in the light of the exalted Christ. As the mighty pageant of judgment and conflict unfolds itself before the Seer's eye, he stands always above time and its changes ; until at last the vision closes with the new heaven and the new earth, and the prayer, " Amen, come, Lord Jesus," passes into the familiar benediction of the saints.
The reason is plain. St. John has ever before his spirit the vision of the Eternal Christ. St. Mark's Gospel opens with the beginning of the earthly ministry. St. Matthew starts with the genealogy of Jesus, the Son of David, and the events which preceded His birth. St. Luke's Gospel of the Infancy commences earlier, yet even this sets out from the days of Herod the king. But St. John dips back into the eternity which was before the world was made, and there kneels in adoration before the Eternal Word, who in time became flesh and dwelt among men. His ear is full of the voices of the spiritual world which lies behind and above time and yet is immanent in it; and every voice that pierces the silence is eloquent of his Lord. To him was given an overwhelming sense of the eternal which transcends while it transforms the things which are nearest to us in the life of this present world. And so when the Apocalypse is finished and the pictured scroll of his
vision is just about to be rolled up, as if to pledge once more and
363
364 THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA
finally the truth and reality of the revelation that has been made, the Voice which is the undertone of all things speaks the tremend- ous words, " I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." Upon Him, the eternal Jesus, rests the solemn sanction of the message ; here lies its awful claim to be heard ; these are its credentials. It is the testimony of Jesus ; it is the word of the Eternal Word.
I.
GoD*s Alphabet.
1. An alphabet! What a strange world of possibilities lies hid in those few rudiments ! There they lie before our eyes, twenty-six odd signs from A to Z ; so unmeaning in themselves, so artificial, so queer. Could anything be less suggestive, less rational ? Their very shapes have long ceased to be intelligible, except to those who grope about in a remote past and follow their lives back to old-world pictures of houses and camels and water and snakes, through which by a fanciful transition they have come to stand for sounds which have no relation whatever to those which the signs represented. Yet, although they lie there covered by one glance of the eye, they are the materials out of which whole worlds of experience and of literature can find their expres- sion. Everything that has ever been said or thought or written by entire families or nations has found, in some combination of those quaint signs, its adequate realization. How incredible that those few artificial signs can adapt themselves to such infinite needs, the unnumbered shades of fleeting experience ! And, again, the melodious refrains, the fine and rare evolutions of metre, the play and counter-play of inwoven rhymes, all the craft of a thousand poets spent on giving to the intricacies of feeling their perfect form and sound — all this has been wrung out of these twisted fragments. And this capacity is wholly unex- hausted. Century after century will follow and still they will yield novel effects in prose and verse, and still there will be the endless delight of ever fresh combinations and complications to which the ear of man will delightedly respond, and in which the heart of man will discover itself anew.