Prophecy, then, spoke of Messiah as the Star. The word indicated, probably, the royal dignity, touched and glorified with the light of Deity, or of Divinity at least.
T[ There is good evidence that in the time of Christ the " Star " of Num. xxiv. 17 was popularly identified with the Messianic King. This idea may have influenced those New Testament passages where Jesus is represented as the " Morning Star " (Eev. xxii. 16, ii. 28), though it must be remembered that the angels are described symbolically in the Book of Enoch (Ixxxvi. 1, 3) as "stars" — a metaphor which helps to explain the symbolism by which Jesus is here described as " the Morning Star." . . . The essential idea of the conception is present in all those passages of the New Testament which speak of the spiritual illumination that accompanies the revelation of the Messiah. . . . The remarkable description of the Messiah as the " Day spring from on high " in the Song of Zacharias (Luke i. 78), may possibly have been associ- ated in thought with the Messianic Star.^
2. But the Voice at Patmos not only claims the primeval prophecy for Jesus, as the King of the new Israel. It expands that prophecy, and discloses truth within truth treasured there. For the Lord does not only assert Himself to be the Star, the bright Star ; as of course His brightness must be surpassing if He is in any sense at all a Star. His own presentation of the
1 G. H. Box.
REVELATION xxii. i6 403
metaphor has in it something new and special — "1 am the morning star." Why was not the word Star left alone in the utterance? In pointing to Messiah as the Star, were not the ideas of brilliancy, and elevation, and all that is ethereal, sufficient ? No ; it was not to be so. Christ Himself so qualifies the word by this one bright epithet as to show Himself, not as the King merely, but as the King of Morning, around whom gathered, and should gather for ever, all that is real in tenderest hope, and youngest vigour, and most cheerful aspiration, and such beginnings as shall eternally develop and never contract into fixity and decline.
? H Some traveller of the Norman times is passing along an old English valley as the night begins to deepen. On the hillside facing him groups of peasants are returning from their fields, and they have kindled torches to frighten away the wolves. Through the open doors of the distant hamlet the faint glow of fire comes, and dim tapers flicker in the casements. By and by the valley becomes one long, unbroken shadow. And now at last the curfew sounds from the lowly church on the hill. The peasants have reached their homes, the lights in the casements are quenched, and the scattered habitations are shrouded in darkness. In the clear sky behind the shoulder of the hill a star shines which obeys no sound of curfew. It glittered over the triremes of the Eomans as they crossed to Britain's shores. It will hang undimmed over the grave of the youngest child cradled in the hamlet, and will watch the long procession of Normans, Plantagenets, Tudors, Stuarts, to their last resting-places.
And is it not thus with One who is described as the Bright and Morning Star ? Prophet, apostle, and evangelist hold out to the dark and erring world the light of life, and by and by the solemn curfew sounds across the heavens, and the light in which we were " willing to walk for a season " has passed from our path- way. The apostles are gone. The reformers have long since followed in their steps. The evangelists of the last century, of imperishable work and memory, do they live for ever ? The twilight knell is heard again, and the men who were the lights and guides of our spiritual childhood are no longer with us. But the Lord of the Church abides when His servants vanish; and from His celestial enthronement an unchanged Christ looks down upon each succeeding generation of men, to guide their feet into the way of peace.^
^ T. G. Selby, The Unheeding God, 381.
404 CHRIST'S WITNESS TO HIMSELF
3. This last self-witness of Jesus Christ reminds the disciple that his blessed Lord is no mere name of tender recollection, no dear relic of a perished past, to be drawn sometimes in silence from its casket and clasped with the aching fondness, and sprinkled with the hot tears, of hopeless memory. He is not Hesperus that sets, but Phosphorus that rises, springing into the sky through the earliest dawn ; the pledge of reviving life, and growing light, and all the energies and all the pleasures of the happy day. And the word speaks of a kind of joy for which the open day would not be so true a simile. It indicates the delights of hope along with those of fruition ; a happiness in which one of the deep elements is always the thought of something yet to be revealed ; light with more light to follow, joy to develop into further joy, as the dawn passes into the morning and then into the day.
Tf Do you say, But is this all that Christ is to His Church now — only a " star " ? Yes, all — in comparison with what He will be. But remember, " the morning star " makes the daybreak quite sure — it always precedes it — they are never divided — and it is itself brilliant to the midnight that would be without it. Four thousand years, in contrast, our earth was very dark. Nearly two thousand years " the morning star " has shone ; and many and many a child of the day has looked on it — been guided by it safe, and recognized its note of hope, and waited the more, with quiet patience, for the morning. And many of those children of the day are still looking on it, and say, as they look out for its coming, in their quiet resting-places, " How long ? How long ? " And surely it cannot be now very long till the "star" of our faith shall melt away into the sun of our sight ; and risen souls shall rise again to bask in its lustre.^