06 The Marriage of the Lamb

Chapter 6 THE MARRIAGE OF THE LAMB Jerusalem makes melody For simple joy of heart, An organ of full compass she, One tuned through every part.

While not to day or night belong Her matins and her even song. The one thanksgiving of her throng.

Jerusalem, where song nor gem. Nor fruit nor waters cease, God bring us to Jerusalem, God bring us home in peace. The strong who stand, the weak who fall. The first and last, the great and small, Home one by one, home one and all.

I The various descriptions of the state of final blessedness in connection with the Lamb rest upon two great principles, with which we start.

1. The state of heaven is a state of grace. The entrance is through the grace of redemption: the blessed have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. It was by grace that we were called from the state of trespasses and sins into the life of Christ. It is by grace that we are comforted in our sorrows and upborne in our conflicts. It is grace that helps us to die peacefully, and it is grace to which all is due, when our palm-bearing hands are at rest and the fight lies behind us, and we sit down with the Saviour, who has overcome, in the new kingdom. There is never a moment in which any enjoyment of eternity is to be ascribed to our own desert, and this is one great reason why the state of heaven is represented as a state of praise. The praise is the utterance of the gratitude of full hearts, which praise because only praise can speak their feelings, and do not cease praising because they never cease receiving, and because all that they can express of thankfulness leaves a great deep unuttered. Why do they sing ? It is because speech is too weak to tell what they feel. Words are the feeblest language of the soul. How poor an instrument is speech for the great multitude who never acquire any real mastery over it, and who feel it rather a bar against which the tide of feeling breaks, than a channel for the full river of emotion to flow in. Each of us has felt in trying to put into words our grief, our gratitude, and love, that we have not been able to tell the half. If this is felt on earth, how much more is it felt in the deeper hearts of heaven, and is it wonderful that they try to utter themselves in praise ? " Worthy is the Lamb that was slain," they sing, because He has redeemed them to God by His blood.

2. The other principle is that the experience of the Church on earth and that of the Church in heaven are essentially the same. Glory is only the superlative degree of grace. Grace is glory in the bud; glory is grace in the flower. A golden thread of unity ties together all the experiences and possessions of the Christian, from the time that he first opens his eyes on the light, on through the endless pulses of an unbroken eternity. And the way to feel heaven real, and to desire it as we should, is to have Christ dwelling richly in us now. Paul, in arguing for the reality of a life to come, built upon the great fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In one sense that is the final proof of immortality. The great mountain wall which bounds human experience and human life is cloven in one place. Through the narrow pass come gleams of light, and a way is disclosed by which the fair form of hope may lead us on and on through the darkness. But the final proof to the Christian is " Christ in you the hope of glory." When we are tempted to think that " this little life-boat of a world with its noisy crew of mankind will vanish like a cloud speck from the azure of the all," we remember Christ in you. Like a light in the cabin of a ship tossing on the stormy sea it marks a path across the waters, refuses to be extinguished by all the tempests of life, and will, we know, outlive the last winds of death.

It has been said that the belief in immortality, even the desire for immortality, have become weak in our day ; and it has been suggested that the faith and the desire will revive if the future life ceases to be considered as a state of blissful idleness, and comes to be viewed as a prolongation of all noble energies and all generous activities. It may be so, but it is more certain that the result will be reached if here on earth Christians have a deeper experience of the preciousness and the power of Christ. If a higher type of Christian life becomes common it will be felt impossible not to believe that grace must of necessity be crowned and consummated in glory.

II The description of heaven we have chosen under which to group the rest is that in which the Church triumphant is described as the Lamb’s wife. This very tender and deep conception occurs elsewhere in the Bible, and involves various ideas.

1. The Bride is presented in perfect purity. In Oriental manners it was indispensable that there should be one to give away the bride to her bridegroom, and the Apostle Paul, speaking of that last great time when humanity shall be wedded to her true husband, says that the Church shall be presented to Christ without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. Pure in virginal beauty shall she stand before the perfect judgment of God, shaking from her all fault and stain, as water is shaken from the white wing of the swan as it rises, the end of her Creator and the desire of her husband being satisfied at last. Not only will there be perfect purity — the absence of every speck of dust — but the purity will be lustrous. Clothed in fine linen, clean and white, means a very sunburst of purity, dazzling and brilliant, drawing all eyes. Then shall the righteous blaze out like the sun in the kingdom of the Father. The armies of heaven follow Christ not in armored steel, but in the fine linen which is the righteousness of the saints.

2. The state of heaven is a state of love. Only one thing is the same in the Christian as in God, and that is love. All other emotions and parts of the religious life in us correspond to something in God, but they are not the same. Our obedience to His commandments, our faith in His promises, and such like, are, as it were, concave, to receive the Divine convexity to which they correspond. But love is the same.

He that dwelleth in love, says the apostle, dwelleth in God. He that dwelleth, not going into the sacred habitation for a moment, and then bustling out into the market-place, but day by day, night by night, inhabiting the secret place of the Most High. How different this calm, perpetual thought of God from the existence we most of us lead — fleeing to God in our trouble, and leaving the refuge in still weather. Here love is weak and secret, there strong and confessed. Here it is a little spark, there a great clear flame. Here doubtful and misty, there made perfect, so that we have boldness in the day of judgment before the light of the earth that streams from the great white throne. As in the old story, the prince who wooed and won his bride in the disguise of a beggar, brought her,to the capital city and the king’s palace, took leave of her on some pretext, and caused her to be led all shrinking and solitary into the chamber. When she looked she saw on the throne her lover, her husband, and all fear fled. So the Bride, the Lamb’s wife, wooed and won by Him, being found in fashion as a servant, lifts up her eyes and sees on the throne the old face she has learned to love, and is very glad and confident. Her love is made perfect, she has boldness in the day of judgment, and goes to dwell with love for evermore.

3. The next idea involved is that of perfect confidence. That is essential to any happy marriage — full mutual trust. In the blessed state all mystery shall have ceased, all pain, and all doubt. That does not imply that we shall know everything. The thought of eternity would be awful and confounding if it were not that we have to spend it with an infinite God. No ghastlier vision has risen before our later seers than that of an immortality without God. If eternity had to be spent with the limitations of finitude we should grow weary and sick of life. The endless existence would become intolerably burdensome. Our joy is that Christ is exhaustless. Only there will be no mysteries, no locked doors in His palace — doors infinite, but every one of them opening to our touch— to be explored throughout the endless ages. We shall understand His purpose and read His heart — close to Him as a loving wife is to her husband.

4. Again, the image carries with it the idea of satisfaction. Each satisfies the other ; each ministers to the happiness of the other. He satisfies us. We are told that He does so by ending all our sorrows and fulfilling all our desires. He wipes every tear from our eyes. Life has been so difficult and so hard that even at the entrance into bliss there linger on our cheeks traces of what we have had to bear, but these He removes, and they never return. There is no more death, neither sorrow nor crying. The shadow of the curse is for ever gone, and the former things have passed away. The virtue which is one of the highest in our present state, that, namely, of resignation, needs to be exercised no longer ; only, as Butler says, it is by the practice of this virtue that we have been prepared for the time when it is no longer necessary. There is a complete absence of everything that once disquieted us — no shadow left upon past, present, or future.

He supplies our needs as they rise. He feeds us and leads us by living fountains of water. The Lamb feeds us ; the Shepherd is of the same nature as the flock, and knows their needs and supplies them. A very important part of the symbolism of the Paschal Lamb was that after it was sacrificed it was eaten by the family. So we feed upon Christ; all our wants are supplied from the exhaustless treasury of His own nature. As if this were not enough He leads us by living fountains of water — the deep fountains that flow by the throne. No desire is indulged in vain, all are met to the full. On our side we satisfy Him. His servants shall serve Him. His slaves, more literally, shall serve Him as priests. The word "slave" in this book loses all its associations of humility, and is lifted up to a position of transcendent dignity. We spend eternity in the exercise of activity and obedience. Heaven is a prolongation of the multiform activities of life in their intensity. If men have cherished the idea of a lazy psalm-singing heaven, they have not found it in the Bible. Here are words that we might have found brand new in some magazine of the month — " His servants shall serve Him." Only all their service is to be priestly service. Even down here, the commonest acts of our life done with a thought of love " as to the Lord," flash up into worship.

" Nothing can be so mean, But with this tincture for thy sake, Doth not grow bright and clean."

Consciously related to Him and advancing His glory, we serve as priests.

After a certain experience of life the craving of most men is for rest. The word seems to hold in it everything that is good for them. They have become so weary of the labour and the conflict that they desire to be done with all for ever, and nothing attracts them like the description of the place of rest. But were the rest reached, after a time it would become more irksome than the labour. The faculties would crave to be again employed, and so we read that heaven is a state of perfect rest, and at the same time a state of intense activity. Only there is nothing here of the modern adoration of work. Life, it has been well said, is not for learning, neither is life for working, but learning and working are for life. While they work they gaze on His face. Meditation and contemplation so hard to combine in this life in fit measure are perfectly united there. The Martha and the Mary, whom we so rarely find in harmony, do not any more conflict with one another. We dwell in Him in peaceful contemplation, in quiet communion, in meditative gaze, and at the same time we serve Him with all the perfected energies of our being. And by meditation we satisfy Him even as by action. The great desire of Christ for His people on earth is that they should remember Him. He loves their service, but He does not value a mechanical activity that takes no thought of Him, and does not consciously render itself up to Him. "This do," He said, "in remembrance of Me." In heaven His love is satisfied by His ever dwelling in the faithful heart of the bride, and by her faithful eyes never being taken away from His face.

Besides this, we satisfy Him by perfectly reflecting His character. His name is written on our brows. His character is visible and manifest before all who look. As the servants of the great Antichrist bear the marks of the Beast, so the spirits of the just made perfect bear the mark of Jesus. His name is His character, and the image means that His face paints itself upon ours, that, mirror-like, we reflect His beauty. " Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."

III In conclusion, it may be asked, what light do these meditations throw upon two great questions often and earnestly asked ?

1. Shall we know our friends in heaven? One after another they fall by our side, till at last a shadow is cast over every good-night and good-bye, and life comes to be a journey into the wilderness, there to die alone. Yet we do not cease to love them and desire them. Long lost, they are longer dear ; and the question we put is — " Is the Love of the Lamb so jealous and so strong as to absorb and consume all meaner passions, leaving no room for any but the one affection? " The answer is to be discovered by putting another question — " Do we find that our love for Christ weakens our love for those who share with His supreme affection ? " Is it true that all who love one another before they were in Christ, love one another less when they pass from darkness into light? Is it not emphatically the contrary? Are not all other loves hallowed, ennobled, and eternised by this other affection? The love of Christ includes our love for all those who are in Christ. It intensifies and perpetuates the earthly affection, and any heavenly love that does otherwise is diseased and perverted.

"He who being bold For life to come is false to the past sweet Of mortal life, hath killed the world above. For why to live again, if not to meet? And why to meet, if not to meet in love? And why in love if not in that dear love of old? "

" The sun, the more bright, and glorious, and gladdening, and life-elevating it is, is not necessarily on that account the only thing to be looked at and thought of; it is seen in the light it gives, and thought of for the delight it gives. So even in another world may it be with God: the clearer we see Him, the better and more rightly may we see and know all besides Him, all His creatures, and all that He has made. We have no reason to think that our fellow beings will be less interesting to us or less cared for by us there than here. It is the nearer presence and the clearer view of Him which will be the source of the truer understanding of and better sympathy with them."

2. Another question is, Can we conceive of heaven as material or is eternity to be thought of under spiritual conceptions which bar the efforts of imagination? In reply, we say that the fact of the resurrection of the body implies that heaven is a place in some sense material. The imagination may dream as it will. Conceive if you will all that you most desire — the old home, the old hill and streams, the dear old faces, for no conception will come near the reality. The highest hopes of future blessedness are wise, and modest, and sober, when we consider who it is that is preparing the place, and for whom He is preparing it. But many will be content to leave it to Him. He knows best. When His time comes He will make it known to us. He is busy behind the veil with a tender thought for every separate soul that is at last to be with Him. He prepares a fitting place for each; and, when the right moment comes, He will put forth His hand and roll back the curtain on its rings, " Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from before the foundation of the world."

Then — when sun nor moon, Time nor death finds place, Seeing in the eternal noon

Thy face.

Then — when tears and sighing Changes, sorrows cease, Living by Thy life undying In peace.

Then — when all creation Keeps its jubilee.

Crowned, discrowned in adoration Of Thee.