Evening, December 19
Go To Morning Reading
“And there was no more sea.”
Revelation 21:1
Scarcely could we rejoice at the thought of losing the glorious old
ocean: the new heavens and the new earth are none the fairer to our
imagination, if, indeed, literally there is to be no great and wide
sea, with its gleaming waves and shelly shores. Is not the text to
be read as a metaphor, tinged with the prejudice with which the Oriental
mind universally regarded the sea in the olden times? A real physical
world without a sea it is mournful to imagine, it would be an iron
ring without the sapphire which made it precious. There must be a
spiritual meaning here. In the new dispensation there will be no division —the sea separates nations and sunders peoples from each other. To
John in Patmos the deep waters were like prison walls, shutting him
out from his brethren and his work: there shall be no such barriers
in the world to come. Leagues of rolling billows lie between us and
many a kinsman whom tonight we prayerfully remember, but in the bright
world to which we go there shall be unbroken fellowship for all the
redeemed family. In this sense there shall be no more sea. The sea
is the emblem of change; with its ebbs and flows, its glassy smoothness
and its mountainous billows, its gentle murmurs and its tumultuous
roarings, it is never long the same. Slave of the fickle winds and
the changeful moon, its instability is proverbial. In this mortal
state we have too much of this; earth is constant only in her inconstancy,
but in the heavenly state all mournful change shall be unknown, and
with it all fear of storm to wreck our hopes and drown our joys. The sea of glass glows with
a glory unbroken by a wave. No tempest howls along the peaceful shores
of paradise. Soon shall we reach that happy land where partings, and
changes, and storms shall be ended! Jesus will waft us there. Are
we in him or not? This is the grand question.