The Pulpit Commentary — Revelation — Section 468

adornPd," eto. F,1ir nnd comely, rich and honoured, blessed becauee perfectly atisfled. Never has it been possible to describe the Church in such way before. (3) A new f"IIIZlizatioA ,qf GO<l. In intimate fellowship; as a tent shall he shelter and encloee them, tabernacling over them. '!'his abiding, "He.shall dwell with them." As to the depth of his love to them," They shall be his people, and he ••• their God."-8. C. Ver. L-" No mon Ma." We mnst remember that, to the ancient Jews, the 1811 was an object of almost unmixed terror. Nearly all the allusions to it in the Bible tell of its destructive power and of its peril. The Jew:s were never a 888.faring people. 'l'hey dreaded the sea. An added element of terror is given to the solemn warning addressed to them (Dent. xxviii. 68), when it is said, in case of their sin, that not only should they be ta.ken back to Egypt to their old bondage, but that they should go there in "ships." 'l'hey had no seaport worth mentioning. 'l'heir histories of the sea were all .associated .with ita terribleness: the Deluge; the Exodus; Jonah. The epitheta th!ly apply to the sea are none of them of a pleasing character, but all more or less forbidding and fearful. They tell of its being "troubled,'~ of its "raging," .. roaring," breaking ships, filling men with utter 'terror,.making them "reel. to and fro,■ "st~o-er like a drunken man," and be "at their wits' end" (Ps. cvii.). '!'hey noticed only its "noise," and they likened its. waves to the wild, cruel, fierce "tumults of the people." It was "great and wide," vast and lonely. To be "far off upon t~ sea" WAI the 811Illming up of all separateness and isolation. And .besides what was. the common feeling of the Jew, there was, in St. John's special circumstances, sufficient to account for the peculiar dislike of the sea which our text expresses. He was in exile, at Patmos, a lonely barren island, amid a proverbially tempestuous sea, and cut off by its waves fri;>m all he loved best. It is told how he was wont daily to ascend the hills, and· wistfl\lly look towards Ephesus and his own beloved land of Palestine. What wonder, then, that, in telling of the final, blessed, condition of the Church, in its new and eternal home, he should say, "And there was no more sea"? But we need not ~ hi, tJJOrda litm-allg. 'l'he surrounding Scriptures do not require it. How much of manifest metaphor there is in this chapter I Moreo.ver, such expressions as "thf! sea," "heaven," "earth," " sun," etc., are figures for great moral and spiritual facts, and their being removed or ehangod tell only of what shall be done in regard to these facts of which they are the figures (cf. St. Peter's quotation, on the Day of Pentecost, of the prophecy of Joel as to the" sun" being "darkened," and the" moon ·turned into blood,"- all which, be 11&id, Vl88 fulfilled then). But, literally, this did not happen; only greal moral changes typitied by them. And 80 here, "the new heaven• and the new earth" refer, not to literal facts, to the physical geography of the future world, but to a blessed new order of things in the moral and spiritual world. For this earth i11 to continue. How else shall the meek inherit it, and shall God dwell here with men? And the !J!l& like- wise, though it he typical of moral conditions which shall then cease to be. Moreover, in reality, though not in Jewfah conception, the sea iB ons of God', most blessed gifts to maft. Life would be Impossible without it. It has beon justly called "the 1ife- blood of the land," as the blood is the life of the body. "It is the vit-al fluid that animates our earth; and, should it disappear altogether, our fair green planet would become a heap of brown, volcanic rocks and deserts, lifeless and worthless a11 the slag cast out from a furnace.'' We remember, too, how God said of the sea that it was .. very good;" and no mistaken Jewish ideas must be allowed to reverse that verdict. Think of: L Its vapOW's. The corn-harvest is really the harvest of the sea. For the - yields up her strength in the form of vapour. These creat.e the clouds, which, touched and tinged by the sun, are eo exquisite in their loveliness. And these dis- charge tllemselves upon the earth in varied form. and 80 come the rivers which water the earth and make it bring forth abnndantly. 2. It, current,, bearing along the 81lll• li.ll&ied waters of sub-tropical climes, far away northward and southward,_ a.ad giving to regions like our own that mildness of climate which we enjoy; whereas, but for the ~ waters of the - , our shores would be bleak, inh011pitable, barren, ...U but .uninhabitable, like the shores of Labrador. 3. Ita breeau, so health-giving, iinJ,ll'rting fresh life to the feeble and the sick. 4, It, beauty, ever presenting some .fresh klrm of 'lovelinel!II in colour, movement, outline, sound, fragrance. Oh, how beautiful is th6 .bright_ bouudina 1&&1 6. Ju tiilfs, awecping up ibe. mouths. of our great riven and oa xx,, 1-27.J THE REVELATION· 01!' ST. JOHN THE DIVrnE. 519