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 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
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 Section 
 
 
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 Number. 
 
THE EPISTLES OF OUR LOfiD 
 
 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA, 
 
THE EPISTLES OF OUR LORD 
 
 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 BY 
 
 KEY. MAKCUS DODS, M.A. 
 
 RENFIELD FREE CHURCH, GLASGOW. 
 
 EDINBUEGH: 
 JOHN MACLAREN, PRINCES STREET. 
 
 MDCCCLXVII. 
 
Edinburgh : 
 Printed by John Greig d- Son. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 PUBLICATION is in these days not so rare 
 an enterprise that one need be at pains to 
 justify it in each instance. Without, therefore, 
 attempting to analyse and explain the motives 
 which may have prompted the issue of this 
 little volume, I would, by it, invite the con- 
 tinued attention of those into whose hands it 
 may come, to one of the richest portions of the 
 Word of God. What they shall find in the 
 following lectures is no more than may, in con- 
 formity with the present ideas of preaching, be 
 delivered from our pulpits, a popular exhibition 
 of the meaning of the text, and an application 
 of the truth thus discovered to the various ' sorts 
 and conditions' of men who come together in 
 the pew. For the execution of the former part 
 of this twofold task I am greatly indebted to 
 the able and well-nigh exhaustive commentaries 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 of Alford, Stier, Trench, and Oosterzee; and 
 in respect of the latter hranch, while equally 
 conscious of obligation to others, I neither find 
 it in my power to make acknowledgments to 
 individuals, nor am I sure that, though I could 
 do so, they would count it a proper expression 
 of gratitude to connect their names with this 
 volume. 
 
 M. D. 
 
 Glasgow, November 1866. 
 
/ 
 
 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. EPHESUS. 
 II. SMYRNA. 
 
 III. PERGAMOS. 
 
 IV. THYATIRA. 
 V. SARDIS. 
 
 VI. PHILADELPHIA 
 VII. LAODICEA. 
 VIII. CONCLUSION. 
 
 PAGR 
 1 
 
 27 
 51 
 75 
 101 
 127 
 149 
 175 
 
(Bl^l^CBUB, 
 
RET. II. 1-7. 
 
 Unto the angel of the church of Ephesus write ; These things 
 saith he that hoJdeth the seven stars in his right hand, wlw walketh 
 in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks ; 
 
 I knoio thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how 
 thou canst not hear them which are evil : and thou hast tried 
 them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found 
 them liars : 
 
 And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my Jiame's sake hast 
 lahoured, and hast not fainted. 
 
 Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left 
 thy first love. 
 
 Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, 
 and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, 
 and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. 
 
 But this tlwu hast, that thou hatcst the deeds of the Nicolaitancs, 
 which I also hate. 
 
 He that hath an ear, let him hear ichat the Spirit saith unto the 
 churches ; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of 
 life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God. 
 
logic: 
 
 I. ^J^HE Person of our Lord as here described. — 
 Our Lord here assumes a title which de- 
 clares his right to address authoritatively all the 
 seven churches. It is He who is the Upholder 
 and Governor of the churches who is about to 
 speak : * He that holdeth the seven stars in his 
 right hand, who walketh in the midst of the 
 seven golden candlesticks.' Any expression 
 which brings the Head of the church out of the 
 dim distance, and gives Him a place and a 
 work among us, is to be valued. This expres- 
 sion tells us not of His eternal character, but 
 of his present occupation. It reminds us of His 
 connection now with ourselves. He is not dis- 
 tant nor idle ; He walketh among the churches. 
 The inheritance so dearly purchased is still His 
 care. He does not abandon it to be trodden 
 and wasted at the pleasure of His enemies. 
 He does not leave it to chance whether His 
 
4 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 yineyard shall produce any fruit, or only worth- 
 less fruit. On the earth he fought for dominion ; 
 and still this battle-field is dear to Him, — dear 
 not only as the scene of His victory, nor only 
 as bound to Him by singular associations, but 
 as containing still in a precarious state much 
 of what He laboured to secure. Those who 
 represent Him on earth, therefore, He holds 
 in His right hand : to be lifted up, or to be 
 cast down; to be commissioned, to be impelled, 
 \o be strengthened ; to be sheltered also and 
 guided, and held in safety to the end. This is 
 now occupying His attention, and on this He is 
 spending His strength ; so that, if we will 
 receive the full force of the figure, Christ is so 
 employed in this work, that, to our concej)tion 
 at least. He has only His left hand free for any 
 other occupation. If, then, you are in any 
 real sense Christ's cnuiel or messenger, — if 3'ou 
 recognise that as the Father sent Him, so has 
 He sent you into the world to do His work, — if 
 there be any department of Christian exertion, 
 life, or enterprise, with which you have, in a 
 manner, become bound up, — be not afraid 
 either of opposition, or of what is much more 
 alarming, of your own strength failing; for in so 
 far as you have thus given yourself to His work, 
 
EPHESUS. 5 
 
 in so far will you be ke^Dt by His strength, — 
 upheld, and guided, and encouraged also by 
 the friendly and unfailing grasp of that hand 
 out of which none can pluck you. Persevere 
 in all arduous Christian duty, assured that 
 though there is no firmness in you to hold to 
 Him, there is all strength in Him to hold you 
 to Himself. This is not the relaxing grasp of 
 one that has fallen asleep at his work, but the 
 active, conscious, ever-renewed holding of One 
 who is alive to the fact that all depends on His 
 wakefulness. ' Behold, He that keepeth Israel 
 shall neither slumber nor sleep.' 
 
 He has passed from earth, but still ^ walketh 
 in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks'; 
 is ever superintending, visiting, and acting 
 upon His churches on earth ; never, in the 
 great need of one, forgetting the difficulties of 
 the rest ; never so bestowing His presence and 
 favour upon one, as to desolate and chill any 
 other ; never so taken up with the prosperity of 
 one, as to sit content in it, and build a palace 
 in it ; but unceasingly and unweariedly passing, 
 in the plenitude of His grace, from rich to poor, 
 from poor to destitute, — His paths dropping 
 fatness, and causing the mountains, that stand 
 by His strength, and the valleys, whose lowli- 
 
6 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 ness He clothes with freshness and fertilit}', 
 alike to rejoice on eveiy side. When special 
 need of His aid arises, He is not far to seek, 
 nor hard to inform. Alread}^ He is in the 
 midst, — not to he sent for from afar, not high 
 ahove, so as to see only the outside and general 
 appearance of things here helow. View a city 
 from a height, and you see the outline and 
 main features of it : you see persons moving to 
 and fro, all apparently much the same ; but go 
 down to their midst, and you know a difference; 
 there are not two you would address alike. 
 You see the passion, hardly restrained, that 
 marks one face ; the exulting vain-glory and 
 pride of life that shines in another ; the self- 
 possessed determination or open friendliness 
 that characterises a third. And what is here 
 claimed by our Lord is not the bird's-eye view, 
 but the close inspection of a bystander, so much 
 interested as to have all his attention aroused, — 
 not so much involved in what is passing as to 
 be hindered in calm and discriminating observa- 
 tion. The great Overseer of the churches thus 
 walks among them, so that He can say to each, 
 as none other can, ' I know thy works.' 
 
 It is on this ' I know thy works ' that Christ 
 founds whatever He has to say to the churches ; 
 
EPHESUS. 7 
 
 and what He says plainly declares the omni- 
 scient range, thoroughness, and precision of His 
 knowledge. The characters He speaks of are 
 distinct from one another; all are not con- 
 demned in the mass, nor are all commended 
 for the same virtue. Praise and blame are 
 mingled; mingled, not so as to balance one 
 another, and leave the result nothing, as is 
 sometimes done in human rebuke or counsel : 
 the praise is thrown in, not by way of saving 
 the friendship that may have been endangered 
 by the blame, nor with the hope of making the 
 reproof more acceptable and useful ; but still 
 all proceeds from this source, ' I know thy 
 works.' So that often where the church would 
 have been ready, wincing under the rebuke, to 
 plead some offset to her sin, — some abundant 
 fruit in one direction making up for the omis- 
 sion and barrenness in another, — some severe 
 and righteous administering of discipline and 
 regard to decency of worship, more pleasant to 
 look upon than a cooling down of love and hope, 
 — our Lord himself passes on to these, shewing 
 that no breadth and glare of corruption could 
 blind Him to what was worthy of approval, — 
 no recent iniquity blot out the memory of their 
 former service. 
 
8 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 All thcat you have yourselves striven to for- 
 get ; all that hypocrisy smooths over or self- 
 deception buries ; all that falsehood or artifice 
 (practised till it has become instinctive) keeps 
 out of view and screens from censure, — is borne 
 on the mind of your Lord : but also much that 
 you have done with such gladness and freedom 
 of service, that you did not count it meritorious 
 but only pleasant ; much that you have done, 
 out of good and honest hearts, in the everyday 
 way of duty, and have long since forgotten, or 
 never observed ; much of what was so mingled 
 with evil, that you would not undertake to 
 separate the good, and say, ' This was worthy of 
 being remembered ' ; much of w^hat you did 
 hesitatingly, in great darkness and fear, — has 
 been accepted of your Lord, and is now known 
 by Him, — held in that eternal omniscience 
 from which the future is not hid, and from 
 which the past does not fade; while the pre- 
 sent — the w^hole present of all men and all 
 worlds — stands palpable in every minutest de- 
 tail of it ; from which the striking parts of 
 your character and habitual actions do not blot 
 out the occasional and transient expression of 
 your inward disposition in your outward car- 
 riage ; in which there is room for all your 
 
EPHESUS. 9 
 
 inconsistencies of conduct, each to be sepa- 
 rately weighed, and in which there is sufficient 
 material held, as well for the guidance of the 
 church now, as for the ultimate award of the 
 day of the Lord. 
 
 But you know that more is required in one 
 who arrogates the right of rebuking or advising 
 you than merely a distinct knowledge of your 
 character. Indeed, you so shrink from the 
 man who penetrates to the springs of your life 
 by sheer intellectual acuteness, that his know- 
 ledge of you can do you small good. There must 
 be also sympathy and affection, — something to 
 shew that his knowledge of yoti is resting on, 
 and is rendered intelligible to him, by his own 
 experience. He must have stood in your place, 
 been urged by the same feelings and desires, 
 and exposed to similar temptations. He must 
 thus be able to enter into your present experi- 
 ence, and teach you from within, — not merely 
 apply advice from without. Who, then, so fit 
 to counsel the church and its individual mem- 
 bers as He who has passed before as the church's 
 Forerunner, in whose footsteps the path of the 
 church's experience runs, and without whom 
 there would have been no church, and no 
 church experience, no believer, nor any course 
 
10 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 from sin through grace to glory, — no Christian 
 life, with all its various incident, its doubts and 
 fears, its strong purpose and its sense of weak- 
 ness, its perseverance, and final and blessed 
 event ? It is because Christ has lived that the 
 great mass of your feelings, and thoughts, and 
 struggles have been what they have been ; and 
 it is because Christ lives that out of these you 
 may hope to issue a fully redeemed son of God, 
 into the everlasting brightness of peace with 
 God, and consciously abundant life in Him. 
 And it is not by one act of grace that He can 
 bring you out of all your evil into all His good, 
 but by the unending constancy of His care, — 
 the patience of His love administering willingly 
 and freely, as at the first, the seasonable advice 
 and help. You refuse to have your sore places 
 touched by one whose motive you are not sure 
 of; but the motive of Christ is, that He may 
 ^ present jou faultless before the presence of 
 his glory with exceeding joy.' 
 
 n. The Condition of the Church. — From the 
 first the church of Ephesus had been highly 
 favoured. For three years the apostle of the 
 Gentiles had there delivered his message to 
 Jew and Gentile ; and so mightily, in that 
 
EPHESUS. 
 
 11 
 
 great centre of commerce, religion, and philo- 
 sophy, did the word of God prevail, that books 
 of magic, to the value of 50,000 pieces of silver, 
 were burned by their penitent owners. Not 
 often has so striking a sacrifice to the truth 
 been made ; nor was it a small movement in 
 the land which could shake the world-renowned 
 and fabulously wealthy temple of Diana of the 
 Ephesians. It was here that Apollos, the elo- 
 quent man, mighty in the Scriptures, mightily 
 convinced the Jews ; it was here that Timothy, 
 who from a child knew the holy Scriptures, 
 laboured in building up the church ; and it was 
 here that the profound and loving John spent 
 those last years of his life, which called into 
 writing all his memories of his Lord, and all 
 the ripe experience which a century of arduous 
 labour, of danger, and of calamity had made 
 his own. From the writings of John, and from 
 the Epistles of Paul to Timothy, while resident 
 in Ephesus, and to the Ephesians, we may 
 conjecture what the character of this church 
 was. And we find it, as might be expected, to 
 be in harmony with that here described. 
 
 The temptations of the Christians of Ephe- 
 sus were the sensual indulgence and the hast- 
 ing to be rich to which they had once been 
 
12 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 given, and which some of them apparently yet 
 advocated on pretended Christian principles. 
 For these Nicolaitanes here mentioned seem to 
 have heen men who had sprung up within the 
 church, and who turned the grace of God into 
 licentiousness. Such there have been always, 
 and such there could scarcely fail to be in a 
 city like Ephesus, where there was much oppor- 
 tunity for gross sin and much cultivation of 
 sophistical reasoning. This heresy of the Nico- 
 laitanes was not a mere doctrinal error, such as 
 a people like the Ephesians, who gave heed to 
 any vain jangling and babbling that would 
 minister question and discussion, might readily 
 fall into ; it was a heresy whose main expres- 
 sion was in the life. It was their 'deeds' our 
 Lord hated, and their ' deeds ' the faithful in 
 Ephesus condemned. And if even Timothy 
 had to be warned to hold the due mean be- 
 tween abandonment to youthful lusts and that 
 bodily asceticism which profiteth little, how 
 subtle and manifold must have been the allure- 
 ments to sin to which those who inhabited 
 that city were exposed ? 
 
 And as we find that, even in his earliest 
 charge to the elders of Ephesus, Paul foretells 
 that * of your own selves shall men arise, speak- 
 
EPHESUS. 13 
 
 ing perverse things, to draw away disciples 
 after them,' we are not surprised to learn that 
 such false apostles had plentifully arisen, and 
 that the testing of these had been one great 
 test of the Ephesian church herself. Men 
 abounded there well read and highly educated 
 in the learning of the time, skilled in the 
 Oriental wisdom, having all the old Eastern 
 traditions and speculations concerning things 
 divine wrought out by Grecian culture, and on 
 this grafted that deepest revelation of Chris- 
 tianity given to them by Paul in his Ej^istle, 
 till they seemed to themselves to have made a 
 better gospel, and to have come by their much 
 learning to the knowledge of new truth. They 
 needed nothing but to be recognised by the 
 church, and they would lead multitudes astray. 
 But the church was firm. Whatever errors 
 had arisen within her pale, all her intellectual 
 activity was not misguided. She was a clear- 
 sighted and firm-handed church, a church that 
 knew her position and responsibility, and acted 
 boldly as for her Lord. The false teachers 
 were not suftered to mislead the ardent or the 
 ignorant, not on any plea. They assert they 
 are apostles ; they tell the people or insinuate 
 that they are more zealous for the truth than 
 
14 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 the recognised teachers, that they are not cold 
 and lifeless as the ordained elders, but can 
 teach deeper things and bring to hand a readier 
 salvation. Well then, says the church, let us 
 bring it to the proof ; let us test your claim ; 
 shew us now the signs of your apostleship, and 
 we will sit at your feet. Let us sift this gospel 
 you preach ; but if it be another gospel, then 
 silent in the church you imist he, for it is to us 
 the charge of this flock has been committed; 
 and as at the peril of our own souls we suffer 
 any of the weakest to be led astray, so we 
 command you to leave them unmolested. This 
 is the unflinching utterance of a church bold 
 in her conviction of the truth ; knowing that 
 she is charged of the Lord, and understanding 
 the responsibility of her commission, not to be 
 blinded by any claims to extra grace or power, 
 but believing that she is expected to try all 
 teachers, and straightforwardly acting out her 
 belief. And whether such an example is all 
 unneeded in our own day, no man ^vill find it 
 hard to answer. 
 
 But these contests with false teachers had 
 not left the church unharmed. These constant 
 appeals to points of doctrine and discipline had 
 their effect. Always driven back upon her 
 
EPHESUS. 15 
 
 orthodoxy, she ceased to be the loving church 
 she had at first been. This atmosphere of 
 controversy had been too freezing for the 
 teachers. 'They left their first love:' that 
 ardent attachment with which at first they had 
 embraced the gospel and cleaved to Christ had 
 been chilled. And now the truth was becoming 
 more to them than the person of Christ. They 
 had been forced to learn the necessity of clear, 
 enlightened, and well-grounded teaching ; and 
 the necessity of loving had been forgotten. 
 Something of self-confidence, something of 
 pride, had been engendered, and gradually had 
 separated them from Christ. Yet there was 
 little outward symptom of decay : as yet the 
 church, though chilled at heart, maintained her 
 purity, her labours, and her patience. There 
 was yet among them, though not the fervent 
 love of the first espousal, a strong regard to 
 the name of Christ; His interests were still the 
 interests of the church ; the honour of His 
 cause would be upheld to the death by many a 
 man among them. There was a high church- 
 principle, and something more, still influencing 
 them to much good ; each man feeling himself 
 pledged to do his utmost for the Christian com- 
 munity, and maintain a good profession for 
 
16 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 the sake of the honour of Christ's name. In 
 labour and m patience, in the active and in the 
 passive virtues of the Christian life, they 
 abounded; in such exhausting labour as re- 
 quired severe effort and stern self-command. 
 Through all these weary years they had seen 
 their views misrepresented, their motives dis- 
 torted, their influence turned to evil by these 
 false brethren ; and yet they would not give up. 
 Though there was no loud and repeating echo 
 to their words, still they would teach ; let their 
 enemies do what they would, there would never 
 be lack of service needed for Christ, and that 
 service they would render still. There were men 
 still spell-bound by the magnificent mysteries 
 of the Ephesian goddess: these they would per- 
 suade. There were even in the midst of that 
 wealthy city poor to be relieved ; dying there as 
 elsewhere, always to be confirmed or instructed. 
 She was a church this of rare temperament, 
 finely balanced and admirable, who could 
 promptly seize every opportunity of labour, 
 and yet could also patiently wait or endure ; 
 with no sluggishness in her, and yet willing to 
 be held in check by her Lord ; vigorously and 
 indignantly ejecting evil-doers, and yet meekly 
 suffering when such was her calling. ^ Never- 
 
EPHESUS. 17 
 
 theless,' says our Lord, ' I have against thee 
 that thou hast left thy first love.' See then 
 the demands of your Lord. Here there was 
 rendered all severity of doctrine and discipline, 
 purity of life and avoidance of the corrupt, 
 abundant labour and untiring patience ; and 
 yet there is something beyond all this required. 
 So then, though you could have lived in that 
 church up to its high standard, though there 
 are labours of yours written in the book of 
 God's remembrance, though the name of Christ 
 is in high esteem with you, yet one 'never- 
 theless ' may ruin all when the lips of your 
 Lord open in judgment. See to it, therefore, 
 that in the midst of your self-congratula- 
 tion there be no 'nevertheless' to ruin all; 
 that there be not at the end of all your hard 
 path of duties, alms-deeds, prayers, godly 
 works, and well-sustained trials, this bottom- 
 less abyss swallowing and for ever hiding them 
 all. Could anything more ominously reveal 
 that terrible fairness of judgment, that tells us 
 that, after every allowance has been made, truth 
 and right must proceed ; that, all being said on 
 the one side, the other must equally be heard. 
 And how sore is this particular rebuke to 
 every one who is open to it ! Christ, who so 
 
18 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 loved us, whose love for this world first taught 
 all angels and men what love is and can, and 
 whose love remains the same, unchangeable, — 
 who, having loved His own, loved them unto 
 the end, and who, for all His love, asks only 
 love in return, hut does expect that, — He is 
 here obliged, in His very first address to His 
 church, to say. Thou hast left thy first love ; 
 thou hast not loved me enough ; thou hast not 
 loved unto the end. ' Love is love for ever- 
 more,' increasingly devoted and building itself 
 up unceasingly to a complete and perfect union; 
 but this love had not been so. Inexpressibly 
 sad, because ahsohitely causeless, is such decay 
 of love. Every reason stood, and always does 
 stand, on the other side, urging, pleading 
 for increased love. Would that this first re- 
 buke had never needed repetition ! How far it 
 does so now, is not to be answered to any but 
 Him whom it concerns. This is a matter be- 
 tween the Bridegroom and the bride — between 
 Christ and each one of us ; to be answered in 
 that privacy from all others to which the pre- 
 sence of Christ does separate the soul. And if 
 there be any joy in fellowship with Him, if any 
 strength, living eternal strength, through faith 
 in Him ; if any hope of finished joy and glory 
 
EPHESUS. 19 
 
 through meeting Him and being where He is ; 
 then this possibility of decline in our love for 
 Him who is our all must fill us with anxiety, 
 and lead us to inquire how we may be recovered 
 from such a state. 
 
 ni. The exhortation of our Lord to this 
 church, and to all in an analogous state, is, 
 'Rememher from whence thou art fallen, and 
 repent, and do the first works.'' — Something is to 
 be done with the mind, something with the 
 heart, and something with the hand. For all 
 declension and falling away, here is the cure. 
 Kecall distinctly your former state ; do not 
 forget its joys, nor its high purpose and effort, 
 its zeal and its abundant fruit. Eemember it, 
 not to call yourself a fool for being righteous 
 overmuch, not to please yourself with the self- 
 complacent reflection that you once had your 
 time of usefulness as others now are having 
 theirs ; but remember it, to recall distinctly to 
 your sense all that you have lost : let its bright- 
 ness awake you to the darkness of your present, 
 its hopes again gleam through your spirit and 
 enkindle something of the old earnestness, 
 though with a shame that used not to be there. 
 No more bitter command can be laid on a man 
 
20 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 than this, 'Eemember -whence thou art fallen. 
 Why is it that such peculiar pathos gathers 
 round such sentences as these : 'How art thou 
 fallen from heaven, Lucifer, son of the morn- 
 ing ! ' and, ' Thou Capernaum, which art exalted 
 unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell ; ' 
 but that there is in every one of us an instinc- 
 tive conviction that we should be advancing, 
 without check, from one degree of blessedness 
 to another, and from one degree of excellence 
 to another ? And for this reason, it is a bitter 
 thing to be shamed by comparison, not with 
 another, but with yourself; to remember pur- 
 poses unaccomplished, hopes unfullilled and 
 now lost hold of; to be forced to acknowledge 
 that you were further on long ago than now ; 
 and to awake to the conviction that the works 
 you long ago proudh' gave up were, after all, 
 really the right works. Food enough of re- 
 morse it is that we are not what we might have 
 been ; but bitterest of all, and quickest of all, 
 and most earnest of all, should be the re- 
 pentance of those who are not what they once 
 were. So far is this declension from health, 
 that the rule of Paul has to be reversed to suit 
 the diseased condition ; instead of forgetting 
 the things that are behind, and which have 
 
EPHESUS. 21 
 
 long since been eclipsed, you have been losing 
 wa}^ and have now to set before you as your 
 future attainment what once you had passed. 
 Over however long an interval, then, you have 
 to look, in order to find that better period of 
 your life, let the memory do its work till re- 
 pentance be wrought and urge you to the first 
 works. Probably the Ephesians thought that 
 their first works — burning their magical books 
 and so on — were rather better forgotten, some- 
 what too enthusiastic and youthful ; that they 
 were past that now. Probably, when they did 
 think of them, while there was a suppressed 
 conviction that they were in a more healthy 
 state then, there would be the reflection, * We 
 might have kept these books, and found them 
 very useful : we need learning of all kinds, as 
 we now find to our cost ; and at all events it 
 was a hasty deed, a very profitless demonstra- 
 tion.' No, says their Lord, these works, that 
 shewed you had taken your side, and had com- 
 mitted your all to that side, — these first, works 
 that gushed fresh from young faith and love, 
 and that would not ask for the control of 
 reason and deliberation, because they were 
 instinctive and irrepressible, — these are the 
 works you should be doing now, and to these 
 
22 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 repentance will again lead you as its meet 
 fruits. 
 
 Though this condition he undouhtedl}' com- 
 mon, yet do not take it for granted that it is 
 yours. Especially do not mistake the calmer 
 attachment of riper years for a cooling down 
 from youthful love. Often, though less demon- 
 strative in word, less excited, it is really more 
 intense, more confirmed, and more ahundant in 
 good works; just as in commendahle human 
 love the first passion of youthful friends is ex- 
 pected to suhside, hut to leave in its place some- 
 thing hetter than itself — a strong, and steady, 
 and enlarged aftection. Let the works he still 
 the test. Are you doing the first works ? 
 
 And if you do not need this rehuke as a cure, 
 at least use it as a preventive. Assuredly you 
 will he tempted to relapse. Be thankful if your 
 present feeling prompts you to say, ' Though I 
 should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee ; ' 
 hut he preparing all the same, for other moods. 
 There may come to you, as there has come to 
 others, the desire to relax after great effort, — 
 temptation to say, Now I need not keep my 
 mind so filled with earnest and serious thoughts; 
 my affections may w'ander a little now after this 
 strain ; these works are very well for a while,' 
 
EPHESUS. 23 
 
 but I cannot expect to be always so self-sacrific- 
 ing. Be prepared for such feelings, and then 
 remember this advice of your Lord, and con- 
 tinue you in your first works. Hold on to them 
 as the safe, unmistakeable standard of what is 
 required of you. Can it ever be right to say, 
 ' Fall away; do less; remember the things that 
 are behind, to go back and settle in them ' ? 
 What would you think were another to say to 
 you, ' You love Christ too much, serve Him too 
 warmly ' ? And if you say it to yourself, it is 
 only the more dangerous. 
 
 IV. In conclusion, notice the Threat and the 
 Promise. — The threat is appropriate to her fault. 
 Thou who hast so depended on doctrine and 
 discipline, who hast held so high a church-prin- 
 ciple, thou shalt be unchurched. No threat of 
 Heaven is idle ; none is made merely for the 
 sake of threatening. This one has fallen on 
 the church and on the city. Where there was 
 once the chief church of the apostolic age, there 
 are now not four souls professing the name of 
 Christ; and where this great city Ephesus once 
 stretched mile after mile of stately buildings, a 
 few huts of mud now lie, and scarcely the ruins 
 of the former magnificence are seen. But while 
 
24: THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 the threat has been performed, the promise also 
 has doubtless been performed to many a one. 
 Safely may we people the heaven of our ex- 
 pectation with many an Ephesian who heard 
 and held to these words, and by them overcame ; 
 many a slave, hard wrought by his idolatrous 
 master, with sore trial laid in his way, wickedly 
 to ensnare him and make all his life difficult, 
 who yet through all had the glorious love of 
 Christ for his comfort, and these words evermore 
 reviving his hope and becoming more and more 
 his own ; many a listless and feeble Asiatic 
 woman aroused suddenly to a sense of her in- 
 dividual responsibility and her personal destiny, 
 and with these words, glad and strong within 
 her (changing all her nature, and day by day 
 renewing her life), able to hold forward to the 
 end, bearing all with cheerfulness and labouring 
 with zeal ; many a man too, maddened by the 
 violence of his own desires and the luxuriance 
 of temptations all around, sorely tempted to 
 throw himself — body, soul, and spirit — into the 
 alluring world, and imbibe its life at every pore, 
 and only preserved by this promise from shaping 
 his life according to his own evil nature, and 
 draining every form of earthly pleasure ; but 
 still, through hope of that tree of life, with its 
 
EPHESUS. 25 
 
 twelve manner of fruits, possessing his soul in 
 patience, — not easily, but fighting hard to the 
 end, and only through daily and severe self- 
 denial, that no man knew of but himself, — 
 passing at last to the paradise of God for ever- 
 more. All are there who kept their faith and a 
 good conscience by making this promise their 
 own, remembering in every struggle that the 
 church militant is always becoming the church 
 triumphant, and that every faithful Christian 
 militant becomes the Christian triumphant. 
 These have now overcome : danger to them of 
 falling away is no more; they have entered the 
 paradise of Him who is their God, because the 
 God of their Head. They enjoy all the fulness 
 of God, appropriated for them by Christ, who 
 has claimed the father as his God, that through 
 Him He may also be ours. They have passed 
 to the presence of the Captain of their salvation, 
 not all in fresh and glittering harness, but 
 shewing the dint and stain of conflict, that tell 
 how hard it is to overcome. Nicolaitanes had 
 said throughout to them. Come with us, and 
 give your nature scope : why is there such a 
 fitness between these pleasures we offer and the 
 demands of your own heart, if it is not meant 
 that here and now you are to drink life to the 
 
26 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 full ? But the words of their Lord held them : 
 ' I will give thee to eat of the tree of life ; that 
 full life you cannot have in the world, but must 
 defer till the time of your warfare is accom- 
 plished. Only be saved by this hope from the 
 life pressed upon you by evil men, and you 
 shall find life, rich and lasting, in the paradise 
 of your God.' False teachers had said through- 
 out, ' Come with us and taste of the tree of 
 knowledge.' But again came the words of Him 
 whom they could trust, ' / alone have power to 
 give, and I will give thee of the tree of life. 
 Knowledge putfeth up, but will not strongly 
 nourish ; it is eating of that tree of knowledge, 
 which at first caused God to banish you, lest you 
 should put forth your hand and take also of the 
 tree of life, and eat, and live for ever. Again I 
 will give you entrance to paradise, if only you 
 will believingly wait.' 
 
II. 
 
 mjjrna, 
 
REV. II. 8-11. 
 
 A7)d unto the aiufcl of the church in Smtn'na xorite ; These things 
 saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive ; 
 
 I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty (but thou art 
 rich), and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, 
 and are not, b\it are the syna<jo<jue of Satan. 
 
 Fear none of those thimjs which thou shalt suffer: behold, the 
 dci-il shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried ; and 
 ye slmll have tribulation ten days : be thou faithful unto death, and 
 1 2HII give thee a crown of life. 
 
 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the 
 churches ; He that overcometh sJuill not be hurt of the second death. 
 
TN Epbesus, we were shewn a cliurcb with 
 much outward prosperity and much internal 
 strength ; we saw the church a well-organised 
 community, acting with authority and power, 
 with laws clearly ascertained and promptly 
 administered; able to fight her own battles 
 with the heathen rulers; winning the regard 
 of the world by her comely outward estate, 
 her munificent deeds, and the learning of her 
 teachers. In Smyrna, we find the church j)erse- 
 cuted, crushed, shorn of all beauty, scarcely 
 able to maintain the appearance of a separate 
 society in the eye of the world. Any adherent 
 of the Ephesian church, going down to Smyrna, 
 would find that different graces were needed 
 there. If he had been induced to join the 
 former community merely through admiration 
 of the eloquent and convincing reasoning of 
 her teachers, or through a somewhat laudable 
 
30 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 ambition to share in her Tvorks of usefulness, 
 he would be much surprised, and probably dis- 
 couraged, by the different state of things in 
 Smyrna. Here the kiss of salutation and 
 fellowship was given him by lips which much 
 suffering had closed with a firmer set. The 
 letters of commendation, written for him by 
 the successful churchmen of Ephesus, were 
 opened by hands hardened and stained with 
 ill-requited toil ; and, on inquiring for the 
 Christian place of meeting, he would be led to 
 the unfrequented part of the city, and intro- 
 duced to no stately edifice. 
 
 Such a change may have operated benefici- 
 ally on some of those who in Ephesus had 
 been chargeable with having left their first 
 love. For in the church of Smyrna there was 
 little to choose but Christ only. And on be- 
 coming connected with it, a man would be 
 thrown back upon his real motive in joining a 
 church at all, and be awakened to indignation 
 against himself that he had been seeking for 
 something more than Christ, or, to speak more 
 truly, something less than Christ, in attaching 
 himself to the Ephesian community. Such an 
 experience has many a one to pass through. 
 Advantage after advantage, that first made the 
 
SMYRNA. 31 
 
 profession of Christ's name interesting and 
 desirable, is taken away, until Christ and his 
 benefits are left simple and separate, and a 
 man learns what kind of faith his has been : 
 whether the church, and all the church gives 
 and has, — church teachers, interesting truth, 
 useful works, respectable station, and com- 
 mendable character, — whether all these have 
 been nothing to him in comparison to Christ, 
 — whether Christ has been in them all their 
 attraction. The man who begins at Ephesus 
 is often, after a while, brought do^^ni to Smyrna, 
 and learns, in much tribulation, that active 
 and respected living is not the foundation of 
 the Christian character ; that, when all church 
 activity, and almost church life is quenched, 
 there may still remain the essence of the Chris- 
 tian character — faithful adherence to Jesus 
 Christ ; and that for learning this, there is no 
 school like that of affliction. Humbled, he 
 sees the grace of Christ in sustaining him ; 
 stripped of gifts, the person of the Giver stands 
 out more distinctly in its own intrinsic worth 
 and unchangeable glory. And as we may well 
 believe that many a wise Christian parent of 
 these early times would tell his children of this 
 suffering church, that their hearts might be 
 
32 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 prepared against a day of trial ; and as we 
 know that written accounts of the constancy of 
 this church were circulated for the confirmation 
 of others ; so may we, hy the consideration of 
 its case, catch something of its spirit, and be 
 helped, in our easier circumstances, to main- 
 tain that fidelity unto death, which is no less 
 our calling than that of the faithful in Smyrna. 
 Lying about forty miles to the north of 
 Ephesus, Smyrna has been from remote anti- 
 quity, and continues no less to be still, one of 
 the most populous and thriving cities of the 
 land. The ancients who came trading by land 
 and sea, struck with the advantages of the 
 position, and the care with which these had 
 been used, named this city the ' Glory of Asia.' 
 Her own name, Smyrna (meaning myrrh), was 
 not less significant, — telling boastfully of the 
 fragrance which her wealth and reputation 
 shed through all the trading world; telling 
 now to us, still more significantly, of the bitter 
 myrrh-like discipline by which she proved these 
 Christian citizens. It was in such a city that 
 this poor church had to bear her burden and 
 reproach. To be poor among the poor, would 
 have been no such severe trial ; but to be poor 
 among the rich, and among men who esteem 
 
SMYRNA. 33 
 
 all things by tlieir money value, is quite 
 another matter. The form of persecution most 
 common in this city, was such heavy fining as 
 deprived the Christians of all their worldly 
 possessions, and such branding of them as 
 would effectually prevent the most industrious 
 from again rising in the world. In a city re- 
 dolent of thought like Ephesus, the doctrines 
 of Christianity would with many receive a fair 
 and interested hearing ; in the hurry and eager 
 business of Smyrna, every sentiment that 
 seemed to slight wealth would be at once con- 
 demned. The Christians there would soon be 
 stamped as enthusiasts, and kept as separate 
 as possible from those whose worldly policy 
 was so different from theirs. Unless this 
 poverty had been unexpected, it would scarcely 
 have been mentioned here ; and that it is so 
 mentioned, bids us at once picture a church 
 composed not only of poor men, but of ruined 
 men. Many among them, having enjoyed 
 opulence and station, gave up this for the re- 
 proach of Christ's name. And now they were 
 daily carrying this cross : seeing on the streets 
 the insolent and contemptuous glance of former 
 friends ; hearing the jibes and taunts, spoken 
 loud enough for their ear ; and seeking difli- 
 
 c 
 
34 THE SEVEN CHUIICHES OF ASIA. 
 
 cult and precarious livelihood on those quays 
 where once they had seen their own wealth 
 lading and landed. And they had themselves 
 been of this city, and not of another; they 
 had themselves eagerly grasped the world, had 
 known the excitements of large ventures, and 
 entertained hopes of affluence and ease at last. 
 They, too, had been brought up to value a man 
 by what he could earn; and they, too, had 
 learnt to despise and condemn poverty. And 
 often must these former feelings have risen up 
 again within them, more loudly than ever 
 asserting whatever truth there was in them, — 
 asserting that a man's earnings do, in a rough 
 way and as a general rule, represent his value 
 to his neighbours ; that every man ought to 
 provide for his family ; that all their influence 
 was lost with their wealth, and whatever else 
 could make their present poverty bitter through 
 the remembrance of former riches. And let us 
 bear in mind, what to many among them would 
 be as sore a part of their poverty as any, that 
 they would now have scarcely any opportunity 
 of disseminating the views they felt so worthy 
 of universal reception. Nothing more gene- 
 rally evidences the vigour of the early church 
 than her desire to propagate the truth. That 
 
SMYBNA. 35 
 
 God had dwelt on earth a few miles from them- 
 selves ; that now He was gone before them, to 
 watch over and bring them to himself; that 
 immortality and glory were offered to the 
 feeblest and worst of heathen, — these truths 
 were then too fresh and living to be buried in 
 a man's own breast — too full of joy to be all 
 enjoyed by himself. The Christians of Smyrna 
 knew what they had received in giving up all 
 for Christ, — they knew at least that all worldly 
 possessions and hopes were as nothing com- 
 pared to Him ; they could leave all the future 
 a blank, emptying it of all the dreams of youth 
 and the resolve of their manhood, and enter it 
 with Christ. They knew the value of Christ, 
 not as we know it, but as men who had 
 to act on their estimate. And as they 
 saw their former associates, and men of in- 
 fluence from other lands, blind to the truth, 
 did not that poverty, which separated them, 
 and made them contemptible and unheard 
 by these others, become a harder and harder 
 bond ? 
 
 But not only was their poverty aggravated 
 by their former wealth and opinions ; not only 
 as they walked in poor raiment to their work, 
 did they see prosperous men, once their friends, 
 
86 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 and richly ornamented houses that had once 
 been their homes, but now knew them no 
 more ; not only had they to shun the jDresence 
 of the destitute, whom they had formerly aided 
 and relieved, now themselves experiencing the 
 pitiableness of the condition they had once 
 pitied in others ; not only had they to limit 
 and restrict their expenditure, and hourly to 
 be reminded, by privation and shame, of all 
 they had lost, and to suffer more acutely than 
 all from that inability to influence in the high- 
 est matters those who were once willingly 
 advised and guided by them ; but the whole 
 strain of this rested on the one feeling of 
 fidelity to Christ. They had brought them- 
 selves deliberately to this condition for Christ's 
 sake. It could have been helped, and still it 
 could be helped. It was open to them any day 
 to throw a handful of incense before the image 
 of the Emperor, and they would be at once 
 restored, from all the ban under which they 
 lay, to the society whose esteem and privileges 
 they had formerly enjoyed. And on many of 
 them, sometimes through kindness, sometimes 
 through simple malice of torment, this offer 
 was officiously pressed. Any day, when poverty 
 was felt more than usually bare and cold, some 
 
Q7 
 SMYRNA. "^ ' 
 
 officious tempter might presen himself i.vit- 
 in<T them to respectability and comfort by a 
 shm-t and apparently easy path. Every day, 
 as their tribulation increased,-as they saw 
 'children or parents lodged in the dungeons, or 
 barbarously scourged in the market-place or 
 exposed to ^vild beasts in the amphitheatre,- 
 constantly arose the question, 'Is Chnst .-orth 
 all this? Are these the great things He pro^ 
 mised^ Was the wld not kinder? And 
 constantly did they suppress and stifle all such 
 questioning ; remembering his o^n .vords : in 
 Jhe ^vorld ye shall have tribulation : but be of 
 good cheer ; I have overcome the world. And 
 thus, instead of being moved away from then 
 faith, they were wrought to a more persistent 
 and detemined choice of Christ,-pressed to a 
 closer attachment by all this out^^rd tribula- 
 tion. They added to their first love a 1 the 
 intensity of love tried and approved,-pleclg_ed 
 now not only by word but by suffermg ; Christ 
 becoming more and more precious the mo e 
 they gave up for Him, standing forth smglyas 
 the suificient and complete portion that remams 
 and fills the void that every loss has made, 
 the pearl of great price, for which a man will 
 aive all that he has. 
 
38 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 And shall not this example confirm us in our 
 choice, thankful that no such fier}^ trial rages 
 among us ; hut taking note here, in the case of 
 others, how kingly and unassailahle a position 
 the faithful Christian's is, and how absolutely 
 trustworthy, for all persons and emergencies, is 
 Jesus Christ. Would some have success in life 
 first before yielding to Christ? Would you first 
 secure that respectable position and competence 
 you have set your heart on ? Bear in mind 
 that you may now possess yourself of what is 
 far more valuable — of what is substantial 
 enough to weigh against worldly goods, and 
 which, when so weighed, outweighs all. You 
 may have at once far more than you laboriously 
 seek. You may have what these men gave up 
 their all that the}^ might keep. 
 
 One feature more of this church must be con- 
 sidered. They were exposed to the tormenting 
 persecution of the Jews, the wildest of all per- 
 secutors. Now that the Holy City was destroyed, 
 and themselves more than ever scattered 
 through the world; now that they began to 
 suspect that the Christians might be right, — 
 that the Messiah had come, and that they had 
 slain Him, — they were maddened by everything 
 that seemed to witness to their error and guilt. 
 
SMYRNA. 39 
 
 Their blasphemy was peculiarly sore to men 
 who w^ere giving up all for Jesus Christ. 
 * Believe/ they said, ' in Him whom our rulers 
 crucified ! choose Him as your king whom we 
 thought less worthy to be chosen than a robber! 
 trust in the help of one who was helpless on 
 the cross, and whose disciples have forged a lie 
 that He rose from the dead ! '—was it an easy 
 thing for these men, who had till lately been 
 heathen and alien from God, to hear these 
 things from God's own people? They knew 
 that to the Jews had been committed the oracles 
 of God ; that to them had come the promise. 
 Might they not be right after all ? When they 
 w^ere daily told, and told by those who had best 
 reason to know, that there was really no call 
 in the w^orld for their suffering as they were 
 doing; that their tribulation was wholly ultron- 
 eous and unreasonable, and would be wholly 
 without reward ; that it was vain to believe in 
 a man who had been put to death as a male- 
 factor, who was now beyond all help himself, 
 and could not think of or help others, — surely 
 this epistle must have come most opportunely 
 and gratefully; and what a flood of relief and 
 joy must have lifted up their souls, as they 
 triumphantly read in its very first words, 'I 
 
40 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 am the first and the last, who ^vas dead, and 
 am alive ! ' 
 
 As in the epistle to Ephesns we found that 
 the title assumed hy our Lord was a fit intro- 
 duction, at once to the whole series and to the 
 first epistle ; so here the fitness of the title to 
 the church addressed need scarcely be dwelt 
 upon. The church that is passing through the 
 valley of humiliation and the shadow of death, 
 is encouraged by the voice of Him who was 
 dead and is alive. To take this title and count 
 out all its fulness, is as impossible as it is for 
 the need of any human heart to exhaust the 
 fulness of Christ. The sum of the meaning is, 
 that through all the changes in the world and 
 in yourselves, there remains one unaltered and 
 untouched by any of them, 'the first and the 
 last,' who is unchangeable, and whose j^ears 
 have no end. And together with this is linked 
 that other truth, that He who thus existed 
 from eternity to eternity, the unchangeable, 
 untouched by all the vicissitudes that bring 
 man to the verge of dissolution, did, through 
 love of man, submit Himself to the greatest of 
 all changes, the change of death. This title, 
 then, first of all bids us remember, that beyond 
 all our experience of Christ there lies a rich 
 
SMYRNA. 41 
 
 fulness, so that to be ' in Him' is to be em- 
 braced on all sides by complete blessedness, 
 abundance, and securit3^ He is 'the first and 
 the last,' not as the Jews would have made 
 Him out, only a man despised and executed, 
 but the beginning of all things : the^rs^, without 
 whom nothing would have been; the last, 
 towards whom all things are proceeding, as 
 their glory and their Judge. This title, it is to 
 be observed, expresses his eternal existence, 
 not absolutely, but as in connection with all 
 He has made, — with us and all we have to do 
 with. He says not 'I am from eternity,' but 'I 
 am first,' reminding us of all that follows. He 
 says not ' I am to eternity,' but *I am the last,' 
 shewing His connection with all that passes 
 now in time. He names Himself from the 
 world, so to speak ; as if He were standing in 
 the church at Smj^na, looking before and after, 
 through all her trials and all the changes and 
 occurrences of time ; and from this point of 
 view He names Himself. Before all these 
 things which terrify you, all those so fearful 
 events that they shut out all memory of what 
 went before them, I am, — for from me are all 
 things. Through all these things that shall 
 come upon you, and after them all, you shall 
 
42 THE SE\rEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 find me, and find me your Judge and Rewarder, 
 as also of your enemies, — for to me are all 
 things. 
 
 Under this designation would our Lord be 
 known by that church, against which the might 
 of the world and the powers of darkness were 
 rising; presenting himself as the everlasting 
 Eock of Ages, against which the wear and 
 tumult of time may beat, but which stands the 
 same after every change ; which remains after 
 every bereavement, in which there is evermore 
 a refuge and security against all that the 
 creature can do. All that rises in its pride 
 against his friends, receives still its being from 
 Him, strength or weakness, continuance or 
 dissolution, as He sees fit, — for He is the first. 
 Never will the time come when the faithful 
 may despair, or when the enemies of Christ 
 may rise and triumph in strength of their own, 
 — for He is the last. Make therefore yours 
 this everlasting constancy of Christ, which 
 tenderly embraces your life in his eternity. 
 Eemember this, all ye who are in Christ, folded 
 in eternal refuge ; and all ye who are content to 
 take your chance among the waves of time, 
 tossed from one hope to another, now raised 
 high and seeing far before you, now sunk in the 
 
SMYRNA. 43 
 
 abyss and trough of disconsolateness, and 
 waiting still for the next change of lot, finding 
 no stability in yourselves and no constancy in 
 the world on which you can count. Christ 
 reveals Himself to all ; and with these words 
 would He comfort the heart of every desolate 
 or troubled soul, stablishing in His own eternal 
 sameness all that waver, and warning all that 
 do not own Him. What better thing could the 
 church of Smyrna learn, or what better thing 
 can we learn, than this, that through all 
 changes in the world, and all changes in our- 
 selves, Christ remains the same ; that when 
 this calamity, this disease, this terrible and 
 perplexing state of mind, has wrought all its 
 woe and spent all its force, we shall find Christ 
 at the end of it, — that it cannot get beyond 
 Him and leave Him baffled, carrying us out of 
 His reach for ever ? 
 
 But why are we sure that this unchangeable 
 and stedfast One will be to us all that He is ; 
 and how are we sure of His sympathy if He is 
 so above all change ? Because He is not only 
 the first and the last, but He was dead and is 
 alive. Do you demand proof of Christ's power 
 to sympathise with you ? Here it is ; He has 
 passed through a greater human trial than you 
 
44 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 have yet passed, — He has died. Do you ask 
 for proof of His willingness to sympathise, — of 
 his real sympathy ? Neither is this far to seek. 
 He, the Eternal, subjected Himself to the con- 
 ditions of time, counted out by days and hours 
 a human lifetime. He, the life of creation, by 
 the outgoing of whose power all is evermore 
 upheld and renewed, became dead. He who is 
 the first was born ; He who is the last, ended a 
 life. ' He was dead, and is alive ! ' He who is 
 alive is the same who was dead, with the same 
 human-heartedness and unmistakeable love. 
 Name the sacrifice lie will not make for you, 
 who has given Himself for you. Name the 
 difficulty He cannot overcome, who has become 
 man to save \o\x. Name the power He cannot 
 conquer, who vanquished death and burst the 
 grave. Can He not see and love you through 
 affliction, who saw and loved you through sin '? 
 Can anything separate j^ou from that love 
 which pressed to you across the whole distance 
 between the unchangeable Eternal and a dead 
 Christ ? 
 
 Already, then, in the very title under which 
 our Lord addresses His sufiering faithful, is 
 there a great depth of consolation ; and each 
 word of the epistle adds to it. 'I know thy 
 
SMYRNA. 45 
 
 works.' Smyrna finds no place in the records 
 of the axjostolic journeys, but the memory and 
 recognition of Christ is of wider volume. And 
 in this recognition is all needed support in 
 suffering. It was not because their Lord was 
 absent or forgetful that they were left to 
 struggle on. In temptations, in prisons, in 
 mockings and scourgings. He was with them ; 
 suffering along with them ; often most sensibly 
 * coming' to them and for them in cruel deaths. 
 And as the death of His saints is precious in 
 His sight, so doubtless, in its degree, is each 
 measure of your tribulation. Only beware of 
 that morbid craving for petty martyrdom 
 which, from the first, has been the snare of 
 many dispositions, — that officious self-sacri- 
 ficing for friends or for Christ which is uncalled 
 for and obtrusive ; a desire to exhibit grief ; an 
 undue exposure of what I am suffering for 
 Christ; an unseemly proclamation, by little 
 hints and actions, that I have been tried above 
 other men. Only give some people the credit 
 of suffering, and they will suffer to almost any 
 amount. Indeed, so deeply founded in our 
 natures is this feeling, and to such lengths will 
 it go, that the members of this model of a per- 
 secuted church had to be expressly admonished 
 
46 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 by their venerable ruler not to give themselves 
 up to martyrdom — to flee from persecution 
 when flight was possible. 
 
 Again, we are to take warning against the 
 temptation to reckon suffering, merely as suf- 
 fering, a virtuous thing. It is not all affliction 
 that is affliction for Christ; neither is it all 
 affliction that leaves us better than it found us. 
 To this suffering church the Lord said, ' Thou 
 art poor, nevertheless thou art rich.' Is this so 
 with you ? Or can your Lord say, 'I know thy 
 povert.y, but also thy murmuring, thy discontent, 
 thy meanness, thy covetousness'? Has your 
 poverty wrought inwards to 3'our spirit and 
 made it also poor ? Has the bitterness of your 
 outward lot, whatever it be, wrought inwards 
 and soured j'our spirit ? Has the hardness of 
 your trial made you callous and indifferent — 
 hard towards your neighbour and distant to- 
 wards your God ? 
 
 Again, many of you will probably feel a re- 
 buke in those words, which assure you that 
 trial has a limit assigned by your Lord. They 
 at first, and indeed throughout, bring comfort. 
 The Lord tells you that He sees your tribula- 
 tion, knows all its painful ingredients, but does 
 not on that account always put an end to it. 
 
SMYKNA. 47 
 
 It is a comfort, it is enough to know that He 
 requires fidelity, and that He knows how long 
 yours shall he tried — can say whether it is for 
 ten or twenty days. He does not reveal to 
 Smyrna how long she would be in such straits ; 
 but He reminds her that He knows how long 
 the time is, that it is a definite time which has 
 an end. This is all for true consolation, and 
 all the rather does it humble and rebuke us. 
 Can we but reply to these comforting words, 
 'Lord, Thou tellest me to be faithful unto 
 death, but I have not been faithful unto a great 
 deal less. A little annoyance has often been 
 enough to turn me aside ; a slight disappoint- 
 ment has clouded my brow, and turned my 
 praise into a sneer, my prayer into murmuring. 
 And how short has been my patience ! how 
 have I fretted and clamoured in my heart, 
 ' How long, Lord, how long ?' as if Thou hadst 
 forgotten Thy redeemed, or wert not pained in 
 Thy suffering member ; as if the time were not 
 fixed for my release and known to Thee ! ' 
 
 To all of us our Lord could as distinctly 
 reveal the future as He did to these persecuted 
 Christians ; to some among us He might reveal 
 a future full of strange events, of unlooked-for 
 change, of desolating calamity. In any earthly 
 
48 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 future these things are possible. To all of us, 
 the short ten-day future of our earthly life is, 
 "^hen looked at from our point of view, a time 
 of fearful hazard, wherein we may win eternal 
 glory or prepare eternal shame. 
 
 And what is to be our guide through the dif- 
 ficulties that thicken on our path ? what is to 
 be the light to our feet as we go forward into 
 that thick, heavy darkness ? what is to be the 
 strength of our souls and their firmness as we 
 advance into the land of uncertainties, and 
 pass through among dangers we know not? 
 These words of our Eedeemer : ' Fear none of 
 those things which thou shalt sufier : be faith- 
 ful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of 
 life.' Let these words haunt your hearts, till 
 they fill you with the strong expectation of the 
 approval of your Lord. 
 
 He does not utter these words carelessly, as 
 one who does not know how you stand shudder- 
 ing on the edge of pain or loss. While He says 
 this. His eye is resting lovingly on those whom 
 He sees attaining, and over whose heads He 
 already hangs the crown of life. He does not 
 promise carelessly, not seeing how it is to be 
 fulfilled. He ofiers you life such as it is worth 
 while to sufier and die for ; and He ofiers you 
 
SMYKNA. 49 
 
 this, foreseeing all that could possibly assail 
 or interrupt that life ; having in view that 
 second death, and all its power to perpetuate 
 whatever is evil in the first. He offers this to 
 yoiL because you need it. For, be assured, my 
 friends, that this is your concern as well ; that 
 your life is as solemn a thing for you, and 
 bears in it a hazard as momentous to you, as 
 that of any tormented to the death. You also 
 will one day be called on to deliver yourself 
 into the power of the first death, whose horror 
 is that it may hand over to the second. And 
 from whom are you to receive life, if not from 
 Him who here offers it ? Cast loose, then, 
 without fear and doubting, from all other hope, 
 from all fearful concern about the future. 
 Things which do in it so nearly and wholly 
 concern you as this second death He cares for. 
 And be it yours not to inquire how much He 
 will demand of you, but faithfully to discharge 
 what lies before you now. And bear in mind, 
 that in this life, untried as you may seem when 
 compared with these martyrs, you have oppor- 
 tunity of shewing a fidelity to Christ which 
 nowhere else you can shew. Here you may 
 bear a testimony to His powder and purity and 
 kingliness and love to rule you, which you will 
 
50 
 
 T^E SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 not be able to bear anywhere else, but in these 
 simple actions and words with w^hich you are 
 now building up your life. 
 
III. 
 
 ZX^KmOB, 
 
REV. II. 12-17. 
 
 And to the angel of the church in Pergamoa sprite; These things 
 saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges : 
 
 I know thy works, and where tlwu dwellest, even where Satan's 
 seat is: and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my 
 faith, even in tliose days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, 
 who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth. 
 
 But I have a feto things againM thee, because thou liast there 
 them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a 
 stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed 
 unto idols, and to commit fornication. 
 
 So hast thou also them tJiat hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, 
 which thing I hate. 
 
 Repent ; or else I will come nnto thee quickly, and toill fight 
 against them with the sword of my mouth. 
 
 He that Imth an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the 
 churches ; To him tJiat overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden 
 manna, and will give him a 2vhite stone, and in the stone a new 
 )iame written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it. 
 
rriHEEE are two means by which the influence 
 of the church may be defeated, her distinc- 
 tions obHterated, and her existence endangered. 
 The one is persecution, the other amalgama- 
 tion. The world may destroy the church by 
 slaying its members, or by making them world- 
 lings. In Ephesus, neither the one nor the 
 other could take effect. The church there stood 
 upon her prerogatives, was too proud to com- 
 promise with the world, and too powerful to be 
 crushed by persecution. In Smyrna, the world 
 assailed the bulwarks of the church by j)ersecu- 
 tion, and in Pergamos, sapped them by seduc- 
 ing doctrine and example. And, as we found, 
 that in passing from Ephesus to Smyrna, our 
 Lord indicated a very common path in Chris- 
 tian experience, so, in taking up the epistle to 
 Pergamos after that to Smyrna, one cannot 
 but reflect, that in this succession also, there 
 
54 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 is indicated an order which is frequently fol- 
 lowed in the case of the individual. Indi- 
 viduals learn that after the world has tried the 
 Christian with its frown, it more severely tries 
 him with its smile. Do you wonder that this 
 same truth should so often present itself as 
 you read the Bible ? Does it not equally pre- 
 sent itself as you read the world ? Have you 
 not seen men who have clung despairingly t(^ 
 the rock of their salvation, when all the billows 
 of adversity broke over them, relaxing their 
 grasp, and losing their footing as the gentle 
 tide of prosperity washes quietly and smilingly 
 around them, and lifts them on its placid 
 bosom? It is natural for the world to try 
 harshness first. In the order of time, most 
 Christians have first to meet some measure of 
 persecution ; they are sure to find more or less 
 of this in taking up their ground, in settling to 
 their position. Then, after your position is 
 known and acknowledged, after your character 
 for being a Christian is recognised, the conduct 
 of others towards you changes. Those who 
 used to scoff now^ seem to inquire, are ready to 
 meet you half way, will put up with a great 
 many of what they call your notions, if you 
 will only go in with some of their customs. 
 
PERGAMOS. 55 
 
 They seem to think it a fair thing, and possibly 
 they may make you think it a fair thing, that 
 as they yield a good deal to you, you should 
 yield a good deal to them. If they no longer 
 smile at, but decently put up with some of your 
 practices, they think they have fairly won your 
 approval of theirs. They will shew themselves 
 of the same mind with you, that, in truth, you 
 may become of the same mind with them. 
 Every one knows that when thus acted towards, 
 we are in a very difficult position. It is dis- 
 agreeable to seem ungracious to those who seem 
 so courteous to us. It is painful to take up a 
 higher position, and be obliged to say that we 
 are aiming at a higher life than they. Besides 
 that the ways of the world are naturally our 
 own ways, and that they are pleasant to us, 
 there is pain in severing ourselves from those 
 who follow these ways; in living through the 
 world with the consciousness always pressed 
 upon us that there is, — hide it as we may, 
 forget it as we may, — an essential difference 
 between us and many we love, — that these 
 names, 'the world,' and 'the church,' are not 
 names only, — that there is a line, seen by the 
 eye of God always, and often painfully visible 
 even to us, dividing (really and essentially 
 
56 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 dividing) men into two parties, running through 
 nations, through cities, through families, cut- 
 ting like a sword, or Masting, as the flash of 
 heaven's lightning, the bond that draws heart 
 to heart. You would that you and your friend 
 were at one on everything ; you begin to recon- 
 sider your position, to give up little by little, 
 step by step to draw nearer to him. You think 
 you will commend to him 3'our religious profes- 
 sion by shewing its liberality and liberty of 
 spirit, its freedom from moroseness and super- 
 stition and cant. A natural delicacy forbids 
 you to exhibit the Christian peculiarities ; the 
 sharp distinctions of your calling are rounded 
 off. And have you then acted kindly towards 
 that other person? Have you not just misin- 
 formed him as to the true relation in which 
 you stand to one another, and kept him at a 
 distance from the truth, adding to the rapidity 
 and heaviness of his fall all the weight of your 
 influence ? Still, so powerfully does natural 
 affection and love of the good will of one 
 another draw us, that on no feeling will Satan 
 more readily rest the chance of his success in 
 drawing a man from strict adherence to the 
 faith he has professed. 
 
 So it was in Pergamos. Satan's seat was 
 
PERGAMOS. 57 
 
 there. In this city all the arts on which he 
 most depends for our destruction were put 
 forth, and here we find that the temptation of 
 the church was to hecome conformed to the 
 world. Very probably Satan's rule in this 
 city had been manifested in many another way. 
 Certainly persecution had been tried in this 
 city as well as in Smyrna. But the persecu- 
 tion which had begun here was over. Either 
 it had not produced the expected effects, as very 
 seldom it did, or it had only been devised as 
 a temporary expedient to subserve the more 
 effectual temptation to follow, to give the church 
 an appetite for peace, by giving her first to 
 taste the bitterness of death. That the perse- 
 cution had been short, may be gathered not 
 only from the days of it being already spoken 
 of as past, but also because only one mart}^ is 
 mentioned. 
 
 The condition of the church in Pergamos is 
 distinct and easily understood. In this city 
 the Roman governor of the district held his 
 court. The members of the church were, many 
 of them, in the service of the government, ex- 
 hibiting the fidelity, high integrity, and industry 
 of the new life in important civil offices ; mixing 
 continually with men of the highest rank and 
 
58 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 influence in the empire, and themselves brought 
 up to all forms of refined and courteous de- 
 meanour; trained to a delicate consideration 
 for the feelings of others, and accustomed to 
 hold in abeyance all opinions which could give 
 offence ; men also, who, from their earliest 
 consciousness, had been taught to bow before 
 the supremacy of the law and religion of Rome, 
 and to identify themselves with the interests of 
 the state ; who had scarcely recognised any 
 personal responsibility until called by God out 
 from among other men ; who had looked on 
 themselves much as a part of a great system, 
 until forced to attach themselves one by one to 
 Christ ; who, until they were brought to this 
 great act of faith, wherein a man stands alone 
 with Christ, and must act by himself and for 
 himself, and thenceforward has a connection 
 which cannot be interfered with nor burst by 
 any accident or power, by any change or chance, 
 — a connection whereby he himself, as a man, 
 independently of every relation he may sustain 
 to other men, or systems, or societies, obtains 
 a hold for himself, a life for himself, a duty for 
 himself, a God for himself, and that eternally, 
 — until they came to this act of faith, they had 
 been merely servants of an earthly kingdom, 
 
PERGAMOS. 59 
 
 their persons devoted to it as their hopes were 
 bounded by it. In short, they had been Eoman 
 citizens, and now they were Christians.* 
 
 And now, what was to be their course ? 
 Were they no longer to name Csesar as their 
 ruler, having believed in the name of Christ ? 
 Were they to throw up whatever offices they 
 held, and renounce the service of any king but 
 Jesus ? No, certainly ; at once they saw so 
 far. If called upon to pay divine orders to 
 their earthly monarch, then their Antipas was 
 ready to stand forth and suffer death rather 
 than seem to dishonour the name of Christ, or 
 put any in competition with Him. And so 
 evidently was this the general tone and mind 
 of the whole church, that such tests w^ere soon 
 discontinued. The path of Christian duty was 
 there clear; the reality of Christian faith in 
 following that path was too strikingly revealed 
 to serve Satan's purpose. But other modes of 
 seduction were at hand. There were public 
 banquets served in the temples of the idols; 
 and there were private banquets where meat, 
 which had first been presented at the heathen 
 altar, was served to the guests. The Christians 
 might maintain their own worship at home, 
 
 * See Trench in loc. 
 
60 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 might even worship Christ in spirit at these 
 heathen tables, might see only a stock or a 
 stone, 'an article of furniture,' where a pagan 
 saw a god ; but was he to eat within the temple, 
 or was he to eat the meat that had been offered 
 to an idol ? No ; for though he knew there 
 was no more in these idols than in any other 
 piece of stone or gold ; though he knew there 
 was no difference between the meat offered to 
 him at a heathen banquet and any other meat ; 
 though he knew there was in itself no com- 
 promising of his faith by being so far a par- 
 taker with the heathen, yet the heathen judged 
 it to be a compromise, — thought it a victory 
 over a Christian to make him so eat, — and for 
 this very reason invited him to eat, and there- 
 fore the Christian would refuse, would not 
 suffer the heathen to think he held his faith 
 lightly, or that it was all one how a Christian 
 acted, supposing he professed the name of 
 Christ. All that the heathen wanted was to 
 bring the Christian to a life similar to their 
 own. It made no matter to them what faith 
 they had, what name they grasped in their 
 hearts as their treasure, so long as they could 
 induce them to join with themselves in the 
 ordinary actions of life. You may easily fancy 
 
PERGAMOS. 
 
 61 
 
 how a subtle heathen would persuade a Chris- 
 tian to give in to such actions. ' You cannot,' 
 he would say, 'do Christ any dishonour by 
 coming with us ; it is merely to bow to that 
 image, which to you means nothing in the 
 world, your heart may meanwhile bow to your 
 true Lord; but only conform in these quite 
 external actions, and you will thus win the 
 good will of the people, and put an end to all 
 murmurs against you as unfit for your office !' 
 And with many such reasonings prevailed, and 
 from eating of meat offered to idols, they had 
 gone on following the heathen to the grossest 
 
 sins. 
 
 Is there any one who fails to see in this state 
 of matters the image of our own condition? A 
 church in which there were many thorough 
 and straightforward Christians holding Christ's 
 name, and living as faith in Him led them, 
 together with many of most ignorant views and 
 corrupt lives. Is there no such temptation met 
 by you as was presented to these believers? 
 And who are they that tempt you, who compose 
 *the world?' Is it not very largely, almost 
 wholly, made up of men who, far from denying 
 the faith you profess, have themselves pro- 
 fessed it, who have been, like you, baptized 
 
62 THE SE\T:N churches of ASIA. 
 
 into the name of Christ, and have partaken of 
 the communion of His body and blood ? It is 
 quite a right thing, and a highly proper thing, 
 every one admits, to take the name of Christ, 
 to be a Christian, but is that to shut you out 
 from society? is that to prevent you from 
 making use of those means of advancement 
 used by all? is that to bring any loss upon you 
 — loss of pleasant companionship, of pleasure, 
 of means, of affection or reputation ? You are 
 told, are you not, that there is a certain amount 
 of faith that is a very good thing, but that it 
 very easily grows to fanaticism or extravagance? 
 Is it not virtually said to you by the whole 
 course of the world, by the palpable and mani- 
 fest fashion of the world, and by what it 
 requires from you in your place, that to believe 
 in Christ is very well so long as that belief is a 
 mere internal act (that is, so long as it is a 
 mere pretence, and nothing), but that it really 
 will not do to live to Christ ? The world is just 
 as anxious as ever it was that the church should 
 be like itself; just as much as ever scorns the 
 idea of an entire surrender to Jesus Christ. 
 Satan has not yielded his throne ; nor is he 
 content now, any more than before, to have it 
 established only in the dark places of the earth. 
 
PERGAMOS. 63 
 
 And if from that throne he can rule your 
 actions, he cares not what you profess. He 
 will encourage you in that ' kind of faith which 
 produces no fidelity.' Your danger is, that you 
 are allowed to think highly of Christ — to 
 worship Him — to admire His fitness to be your 
 Saviour. Were the world to forbid you this, 
 were your fellow-worshippers to tell you it was 
 foolish to hold Christ's name dear, you would 
 need no further warning; but, allowed in all 
 this, you are constantly besought to do things 
 inconsistent — besought by men whom you desire 
 to please, whom you must suppose to be as 
 well instructed, and whom you have been 
 accustomed to consider as sincere as yourselves. 
 And if you ask how you are to be saved from 
 being gradually moved away from the Christ- 
 approved course of life ; if you really desire 
 above all things to walk consistently before 
 Him, then seek to know Him as 'Him that has 
 the sharp two-edged sword;' that is, continually 
 refresh your memory with this powerful symbol 
 that so vividly sets forth the right and the 
 power of Christ to judge. He bears the sword ; 
 with Him rests the supreme fountain of all 
 lawful authority. He can dethrone Satan 
 when He will. He will destroy him, and with 
 
64 THE SE^^N CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 him all your enemies. His is the sword where- 
 with all that is evil shall be separated from all 
 that is good, — the sharp two-edged sword of 
 swift, sure, sheer justice, — the sword which 
 shall at last disentangle the subtlest interweav- 
 ing of truth and falsehood in the church and 
 in the individual, which shall as with one stroke 
 sever all false professors from those who in 
 truth hold His name. And this sword, we 
 read, ' goeth out of His mouth.' As this same 
 Balaam was first rebuked by the word of the 
 Lord at the mouth of the beast he rode, and 
 then was threatened with the sword of the angel 
 in his path, so that same justice, which shall 
 thoroughly sift and separate all unrighteous 
 ways and fashions, and for ever destroy them 
 in the end, is now among us laid down in the 
 written word as a code of justice for our 
 guidance, and by which we may destroy the 
 evil in ourselves that mingles with and infects 
 the good. ' For the word of God is quick and 
 powerful, and sharper than any two-edged 
 sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of 
 soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, 
 and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents 
 of the heart.' Is not this the very instrument 
 you need, to preserve you from all false ideas 
 
PERGAMOS. 65 
 
 of sin and duty, all false rules of life that have 
 grown strong with the habits of your life, and 
 are as closely bound up with your nature as the 
 marrow lives within and cleaves to your bones? 
 What else is able to sever from you the evil 
 without harming the good, to enable you to 
 reject false intents and motives, and live a 
 balanced life — balanced between courage and 
 delicacy — rendering to others all due deference, 
 but acting still independently as Christ guides ; 
 letting no false delicacy prevent you from pro- 
 fessing in your conduct the name of Christ, 
 but neither, on the other hand, forcing an 
 unnatural and formal confession ; never being 
 backward, honestly and candidly, to shew that 
 you desire Christ to rule you in all things, to be 
 the supreme name to you, and yet never being 
 self-confidently, ambitiously, and offensively 
 forward to obtrude unnecessarily your peculiar 
 standard of duty ; never mistaking sanctimoni- 
 ousness for sanctity, nor indifference to the 
 opinion of others for firm adherence to the 
 truth in Christ ? And who is sufficient for 
 these things? Not certainly the man that 
 thinks his own wisdom and knowledge of the 
 world a sufficient guide, but he who fears lest 
 his knowledge of the world may betray him, — 
 
66 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 lest his appreciation of what is good in men,, 
 and his natural, even his Christian love of 
 them may Wind him to their errors, — lest his 
 modesty should prove traitor, and betray him 
 into a selfish and easy non-interference, and 
 hiding of his light, and vrho therefore prays, 
 ' Lord, lead me in thy Tvay, by the light of thy 
 truth ; sanctify me by thy truth, thy word is 
 truth.' 
 
 With our Lord's command to this church to 
 repent, there is coupled the assurance that He 
 was mindful of their position, and how difficult 
 it was to live a spotless Christian life in the city 
 of Pergamos. *I know,' He says, * where thou 
 dwellest ; ' and again. He speaks of their dwell- 
 ing-place as being that of Satan. He knew 
 how they were daily exposed to temptation ; 
 yet it was in that city He had called them to 
 holiness, and in that city He would have them 
 live holy lives. He does not tell them that 
 because their temptations were so many and so 
 sore, therefore He would not enter into judg- 
 ment with them ; that because they were more 
 tempted than other men, therefore they might 
 sin more than others. Should we become more 
 lax, or should we not be girt with a stricter 
 carefulness, did we remember that our Lord 
 
PERGAMOS. 67 
 
 knows our temptations ? Surely these words, 
 ' I know where thou dwellest,' are powerful to 
 reanimate our fainting spirits, and keep us 
 from wearying in well-doing ! Is it nothing 
 that your lively and painful sense of the hard- 
 ness of your position is accompanied hy Christ's 
 lively knowledge of the same; that the ungodli- 
 ness of the age, of the neighbourhood, of the 
 business you are in, is known to Him, while 
 felt by you ? He knows you in connection with 
 all that ; not as a separate soul, but as a man 
 living where you are living. You are what you 
 are, very much because you are in the place 
 you are, and thus Christ judges you, and for 
 you thus situated He is the helper. You are 
 known by Him not only in some striking 
 periods of your religious experience, — remem- 
 bered by Him not only as you kneel in prayer 
 or come before Him in His house, — but in the 
 business where your mind is wholly absorbed 
 by the cares of this life. He knows that it is 
 not as easy for you to act a Christian part 
 among all those with whom you have to deal, 
 as it is for you to pray among your fellow- 
 worshippers. He knows how your time is 
 demanded by the world, and how your Christian 
 resolves are hindered bv the world, and how 
 
68 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 your high Christian hopes are mocked and 
 often crushed by the petty labours in which you 
 have hourly to engage. . He knows the insigni- 
 ficance or the responsibility of your life, and 
 knows what makes up either. He knows its 
 dreary routine or its multifarious demands; 
 He knows the seduction of its society or the 
 temptation of its solitude. 
 
 It is to men whose actual position in the 
 world He thus thoroughly holds in view, that 
 the promises of *the hidden manna' and 'the 
 stone with the new name written thereon ' are 
 made. Let us not, then, think them unpracti- 
 cal. They are, doubtless, not fully intelligible 
 in this life, nor to be fully enjoyed in this life ; 
 yet, presented to us under symbols which are 
 of this world, and being intended for men 
 wearied by conflict with this world, they do, 
 when examined and received, afford us refresh- 
 ment and satisfaction. Both are given in 
 opposition to what the world was offering to the 
 Christians of Pergamos. Daily besought to 
 fall in with the world's ways, and, while they 
 lasted, to enjoy the palpable, visible, present 
 advantages and pleasures of the world, Christ 
 says to them, ' I will give thee the hidden 
 manna.' Threatened with the loss of 'that dear 
 
PERGAMOS. 69 
 
 name of Eoman citizen,' and of whatever title 
 the governor's favour had conferred, Christ 
 opposes His promise : ' I will give thee a new 
 name.' 
 
 And if one may speak of the artistic heauty 
 of these epistles, — of that truth to fact, and 
 pervading truthfulness in dealing with fact, 
 which runs through them all, and makes each 
 part consistent with every other, — there is 
 here a striking instance of this. For, having 
 compared the sin of this church to the sin of 
 the Israelites in the wilderness, and having 
 threatened the church in words that recalled 
 the wilderness-state of the Israelites, and how 
 they were rebuked through the rebuke of 
 Balaam at the mouth of the ass ; so now is the 
 promise also given under a symbol which 
 recalls the wilderness. It is as if He said : 
 ' Your enemies no longer persecute you, their 
 fear is upon you no longer, and now you 
 desire to go back to the flesh-pots of Egypt ! 
 You do not relish the discipline of my separate 
 people, but would risk the dangers, if so be you 
 may share the pleasures of the world. But be 
 not afraid that, though you do not enjoy what 
 the nations enjoy, you will therefore be joyless 
 and lifeless. The hidden manna is yours; it is 
 
70 THE SE\'EN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 with your Father in heaven, and will be given 
 in the time of your need. It is hidden ; you 
 cannot provide it for yourselves; but it is yours.' 
 And so, if we will only receive the promise, our 
 life also is hid with Christ in God. Christ is 
 this manna — not seen by the world, but given 
 to all who depend on Him. Are you cut off, by 
 the simple following of what you see to be duty, 
 from much that nature sighs for ? then do not 
 yet faint, the world is not your life, nor any- 
 thing the world can do for you. 
 
 The stone given to the overcomer has in 
 itself no significance ; it is merely the medium 
 of the inscription. It is white, as being the 
 colour of victory ; and on this stone is written 
 a name which no man knoweth save him that 
 receiveth it. Here, then, is a jDcrsonal trans- 
 action between the victor and Christ. The 
 manna was a common gift ; but the specialty 
 of this gift is that it is individual. Each man 
 receives at Christ's hand a separate token of 
 victory; and as if this were not enough, there is 
 inscribed on this a name, which is known only 
 to Christ and that single soul. It is not that 
 Christ takes indiscriminately, as from a heap, 
 and gives the first that comes to the first 
 comer; there is a specially prepared reward 
 
PERGAMOS. 71 
 
 for each, that would be a reward for no one 
 else. Corresponding to each believer now 
 striving forwards through this life, there is a 
 reward above, which none will receive but those 
 for whom it is made ready. This is yours also, 
 if you will receive it ; and what surer pledge, 
 what more absolute token could there be of the 
 personal affection of Him who is highest and 
 best ? You desire a separate friendship, — not 
 a common, but a special and individual con- 
 nection with Christ ; you have an experience 
 peculiar to yourself, gradually unfolding within 
 you, and at each step of it you are brought 
 alone to deal with Christ ; your severest tempta;- 
 tions must be met in privacy from all others, 
 your most earnest purposes must be formed 
 before Christ only, and you seek, therefore, to 
 have some special recognition of you by Christ, 
 — that He reveal Himself to you as an indi- 
 vidual, and not only in common with all 
 sinners, — that He exercise towards you a loving- 
 kindness adapted to yourself, and a treatment 
 suitable to your condition. There are secrets 
 between you and Him, if you be a true Chris- 
 tian, — the secrets of your life. It is useless to 
 compare the nearness and power of this friend- 
 ship with any other, to ask you to remember 
 
72 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 how a secret known separates two persons from 
 the largest and friendliest company, and binds 
 them together in an inner sphere of affection. 
 The secrets which you have delivered to Christ 
 are such as you could not think in presence of 
 a fellow-man, nor dream of breathing to your 
 dearest friend. These Christ knows and has 
 regard to ; and as a pledge that the inmost 
 necessities of your soul are understood and 
 sympathised with, that the whole past history 
 of your life has been appreciated. He will give 
 you this secret name of His. As you have 
 revealed yourself to Him as you would do to no 
 other, so He will reveal Himself to 3'ou as He 
 would to no other. That secret name of His 
 which yon shall receive, none other shall. It 
 would be meaningless to every other. But to 
 you it will be full of meaning. It will reveal 
 Christ as connected with you; will reflect in 
 His character of Saviour all your past history 
 as a sinner ; will unfold to you how you were 
 followed and known in every step of your 
 course, and how every thought of your heart 
 was received by Him, and will thus give you 
 also eternal assurance of His love and sa^dng 
 power. So that, if you will allow the expres- 
 sion, — and may you reverently ponder it, — in 
 
PERGAMOS. 73 
 
 all that great company there will be none 
 other of whom with such truth you can say, 
 ' We understand one another.' And he who 
 receives this promise, let the world do its best 
 or its worst, — let it offer its highest title or 
 threaten the destruction of the man's own 
 name,— he will stand fast, still hold the name 
 of Christ, and still be very glad in the hope of 
 holding at Christ's hand this white stone, and 
 reading thereon the new name, which no man 
 shall know but himself only. 
 
IV. 
 
REV. II. 18-29. 
 
 And unto the o.nr/el of the church in Thyatira write; These 
 things soith the Son of God, who hath his eyes like unto aflame of 
 ,1ire, and his feet are like fine brass ; 
 
 I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy 
 patience, and thy icorks ; and the last to he more than the first. 
 
 Noticithstandinfj I Jiave a few things against thee, because thou 
 sufferest thfit xoonuin Jezebel, ichich calleth herself a jJrophctess, to 
 tcarh and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat 
 things sacrificed unto idols. 
 
 And I gave her space to repent of her fornication ; and she 
 repented not. 
 
 J Behold, I mil cast her into a bed, and them that commit actultery 
 with ha' into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. 
 
 And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches 
 sJuill know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts : and 
 I will give unto every one of you according to your works. 
 
 But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira (as many as 
 June not this doctrine, and which have not hiovm the depths of 
 Satan, as they speak J, I will put upon you none other burden : 
 
 But that whi^h ye have already holdfast till I come. 
 
 And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to 
 him wiU I give power over the nations : 
 
 And he shall rule them with a rod of iron ; as the vessels of a 
 potter shall they be broken to shivers; even as I received of my 
 Father. 
 
 And I will give him the morning star. 
 
 He that hath an car, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the 
 churches. 
 
TTAD our Lord been visible in the body as the 
 •^-^ Superintendent of the churches, and had 
 He followed the customary route of a traveller 
 from Pergamos, the third church, to Sardis, 
 the fifth. He would have passed close by the 
 city of Thyatira. And as in all things our 
 Lord exhibits Himself as one that is well 
 acquainted with the actual condition and 
 appearances of this earth, so here, as if He 
 were one of ourselves on a journey. He passes 
 from Pergamos to Thyatira. And as His 
 searching eye saw at once the distinctive 
 characters of the other churches, and directed 
 His epistle pointedly to each, so that the re- 
 buke of one would have been unjust to another, 
 and the promise given as the hope and hold of 
 one would have been less valuable to another, 
 so here in Thyatira He unfolds, by His rebuke 
 and commendation, by His exhortation and 
 
78 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 threatening, by His promise, and not least by 
 the title He assumes, a distinctly marked phase 
 of Christian life. The condition of Thyatira is 
 the exact converse of that of Pergamos. In 
 both the world and the church are amalgamat- 
 ing- — are too closely allied. But in Pergamos 
 the world was the aggressor ; in Thyatira it is 
 the church that acts the aggressive part. She 
 attempts to deceive the world, and rule in the 
 Avorld; and in order to effect this with less 
 trouble, she lowers her morality to the world's 
 level, and arrogates powers to which she has 
 no claim. She strives to embrace the world, 
 and to include in herself all the characteristics 
 of the world. 
 
 Of facts concerning the church in Thyatira, 
 l)eyond what are implied in this epistle, there 
 are absolutely none. In lieu of better informa- 
 tion, some have drawn upon their own fancy, 
 and have supposed that Lydia, the seller of 
 purple of the city of Thyatira, whose heart the 
 Lord opened that day when Paul had none but 
 women to speak to by the banks of the river at 
 Philippi, had borne to her native city the tidings 
 she had learnt to value. It is certainly against 
 this that it should be recorded in the Acts, that 
 she had a home and a household in Philij)pi — 
 
THYATIRA. 79 
 
 that she was permanently resident there. 
 There were a thousand other channels by which 
 the gosjDel might reach Thyatira. She might 
 commend to the prayers of Paul her former 
 and native place — might even pray him to see 
 to it that some one did preach the gospel there ; 
 and as her power of persuasion, and her active, 
 purpose-like character are distinctly brought 
 out in her short intercourse with the apostle, it 
 may have been indirectly through her that this 
 church, which still exists, was founded. Its 
 fortunes were none of the best. Not guided in 
 the truth by wise and able rulers as Ephesus 
 had been, not sifted by trial like Smyrna, she 
 soon outran Pergamos in error, and the heathen 
 themselves in corruptness of life. Corruption 
 was here not only allowed, but represented and 
 ruling in the church. To an observer who 
 regarded merely the outside, things might seem 
 most prosperous. Influential the church cer- 
 tainly was, and no doubt numerous. Probably 
 there were very few professedly heathen in the 
 city, or at least they were a powerless minority. 
 To one who judged by what lay a little deeper, 
 heathenism would appear almost respectable 
 beside this church, or rather beside one part of 
 it. For let us bear in mind that here there 
 
80 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 were two parties in the church : those who held 
 the truth, but were too weak to exercise the 
 required disciphne ; and those who maintained 
 error, that thej^ might win the world. The 
 rulers of this church most run after were men 
 of the world. They found they could be more 
 men of the world by being churchmen; had 
 more wealth, more imi^ortance, more applause, 
 more power ; every way could move and use 
 the world more effectually by belonging to the 
 church. They may, some of them, have been 
 of very little note or consequence until they 
 identified themselves with the church and be- 
 came authoritative only by using its authority. 
 And as our Lord so distinctly separates these 
 two parties, and as, probabl}^ they would be 
 distinctly known by party names to one another, 
 let us view them separately as here presented, 
 — not omitting to notice how forcibly the 
 tenderness as well as the omniscience of Christ 
 is here declared. Those who could receive His 
 commendation were very probably fewer in 
 number than the rest, and not all uncon- 
 taminated by so near contact with the impure ; 
 3^et they are His church, and of this He will 
 remind them. It is not to the most popular 
 teachers He addresses Himself, but to those 
 
THYATIRA. 81 
 
 who, neglected by Christ's professing people, 
 might be ready to believe they were neglected 
 by Himself. They had nothing to shew such 
 as the other party had, — no show of miracles 
 and gifts of tongues ; no eloquence nor striking 
 demonstrations, nor any crowd of half-made 
 converts; and there might be some shame 
 beginning to possess them, some temptation to 
 believe that the others must be right; and that, 
 after all, they must throw in their lot with 
 them — adopt all those ceremonies that were 
 hateful and cumbrous to their simple faith, 
 connive at those pious frauds whereby the 
 heathen were astonished into acquiescence, and 
 sit silent while iniquities were practised in the 
 name of Christ. To men thus tempted, how 
 appropriate is this full and hearty commenda- 
 tion ! Did their false brethren make the least 
 of all they had done ? Christ would make the 
 most of it ; and therefore we have here the 
 fullest and richest commendation that we find 
 in any of these epistles. His searching eye is 
 not detained by the outward appearance ; does 
 not only examine the outside, and calculate 
 what is within; does not, from long observation 
 of the deeds, conclude what the motive is ; but 
 passes inwards, and sees, in one view, the 
 
82 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 whole history of each action and each word, — 
 sees, along with each expression in the life, the 
 particular intention and the state of the heart 
 from which it springs. Looking at the fruit. 
 He sees not the fruit only, but each deepest 
 fibre of the root, and the inmost sap of each 
 furthest fibre. All fruit that is merely hung 
 on, — diligently fixed up to make a show and 
 semblance of fruitfulness, but has no vital con- 
 nection, does not naturally f/ww out of the 
 living tree, — He leaves there to wither. But 
 in the case of the faithful in Thyatira, there 
 was more than outside : it is not a mere crust, 
 behind which is only hollowness ; a sepulchre 
 well whited, but within full of corruption and 
 death. ' I know thy works,' He says, ' and 
 charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience; 
 and thy last works to be more than the first.' 
 
 See here, then, what your Lord commends, 
 and inquire, if you need to inquire, whether it 
 be such a record He makes in passing through 
 you. Has He to stop at the very first ? Are 
 there not even works of the right kind, or are 
 these works only performed unwillingly by you, 
 that you may less painfully see your own defect 
 of all that is true and right-hearted and enduring 
 in character ? Do you find it far easier to do 
 
THYATIRA. ^^ 
 
 the law, hard as that is, than to have that love 
 which is the fulfilling of the law ? Do you say, 
 'Any grace hut this of love,— this levelling, 
 equalising grace, that hrings me really to con- 
 sider all men as much as myself,— this is too 
 humhling. I will, as I can, give alms to them 
 that need, service to those that acknowledge it; 
 I will fulfil all that I am engaged to any one to 
 perform, and my respect shall not he lacking to 
 those who are ahove me ; hut love— no, unless 
 there be any profit in deceiving myself, I need 
 not say I love all or many ?' And yet, all that 
 is accepted of Christ must bear love's mark upon 
 it. Without this it is nothing towards the ful- 
 filment of His law, whatever else it may do or 
 advance. And do not say there is no room for 
 love in your employments ; you might just as 
 well say there was no time for you to think or 
 breathe. Nothing is the worse done for being 
 done in this spirit, and nothing is less effectively 
 done because it springs from this source ; nay, 
 there is nothing so important that love will not 
 increase the value of, and nothing so small that 
 love will not enhance and give an eternal value 
 to. You believe that, for some situations or 
 occupations in life, love is needed: for watching 
 the sick; for abandoning all prospect of ad- 
 
84 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 vancement, and carrying the tidings of salvation 
 to the savage and heathen ; for entering and 
 residing in an hospital of lepers, to give aid to 
 the helpless and abandoned; or for any of those 
 less important occupations, which do not, how- 
 ever, the less distinctly shew that the person has 
 very little thought of self, and a great deal of 
 consideration for others. Now, it is quite true 
 that there is such a distinction, and that in 
 sacred Scripture these works of self-denying 
 love are distinguished from other good works, 
 and are called 'ministry,' or, as here, 'service.' 
 But in no part of sacred Scripture is there 
 ground given you to suppose that these offices 
 of charity should be left to certain persons, 
 much of whose life is spent in them ; and 
 that while they continue to perform this ser- 
 vice, there is no call for yours. On the con- 
 trary, as Christ came to minister to you, so He 
 expects that you will minister to Him ; and 
 though now you cannot, like these women of 
 old, minister to the wants of His person with 
 your substance, He tells yoa that the poor are 
 always with you, though He is removed, and 
 that whoso gives a cup of cold w^ater in His 
 name, gives it to Himself. Suppose that you 
 knew He Himself were on earth, and were 
 
THYATIRA. 85 
 
 sick or weary or athirst, would you be in doubt 
 whether or not it was your place to relieve 
 Him ? would you not feel some grief if another 
 got before you and ministered to His wants ? 
 He tells you that you may novv, living where 
 you are, render Him similar service. You 
 please Him as much by relieving any that 
 need relief, as you would by relieving Himself. 
 You serve Him as well. And whoso thinks 
 his love finds sufficient expression in his 
 ordinary business, and will not put forth his 
 hand to any works of charity that somewhat 
 test his love, — to any service which he could 
 not do, had he not true love to Christ, — that 
 man may fear lest his religion be, or be becom- 
 ing vain. No doubt love must be the root of 
 all you do ; but unless you be doing something 
 you could not do except in the strength of love, 
 then it may not certainly follow, but it very 
 probably will, that your love will die. And 
 why ? Because the truth is, we do need to be 
 driven to Christ ; practically we do. We need 
 to learn that we cannot get on without Him ; 
 need to have duties meeting us which cannot 
 be performed unless our hearts be right with 
 Christ, and which will send us back to Him for 
 strength, — will drive us to renew our faith on 
 
86 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 Him. For, of course, as the words before us 
 further shew, it is faith that is the root of love. 
 You cannot make yourself love whom you will, or 
 because it is right ; you may complain for ever of 
 the hardness of your heart, and it will become no 
 more tender. What you are to do is to learn of 
 Christ, the meek and lowly; to wait on Him for 
 the renewal of your heart ; and if it do not fol- 
 low in your case that faith worketh by love, then 
 one sinner will at last have been found whom 
 Christ is unable or unwilling to help. 
 
 The patience here commended is not endur- 
 ance of actual suffering, but that patient con- 
 tinuance in well-doing, which, without seeing 
 any great results, yet feels equally bound, at 
 every moment of its course, to serve the Lord 
 Christ. This patience will, in the long run, 
 shew where our works are coming from, — 
 whether they are done to keep the person of 
 Christ and His claims distant from us, — to 
 grant Him so much, that He may not further 
 interfere, — or whether they be flowing from His 
 person through us, who are keeping within 
 reach of His influence, and living thus or thus 
 because He would have us to do so, and en- 
 ables us to do so. And so will your last works 
 necessarily be more than your first. Were it a 
 
THYATIRA. 87 
 
 monstrous thing that a child should be born, 
 but never grow ? And is it a thing to be ex- 
 pected as natural and seemly, that, once you 
 are born of the Spirit, you should remain the 
 same? Are you proud of advance in every- 
 thing else, but ashamed to be recognised as 
 leading a holier life than once you did ; 
 ashamed of being more led by the influence of 
 Christ than once you were ; more afraid of soil- 
 ing your conscience and neglecting means of 
 grace ? It is a bad case with you if you have 
 to go back upon your own experience. The 
 good works you then did should have opened 
 up a way to better, and fitted you for better. 
 Why is it that old age is garrulous of the 
 achievements of its youth ? Because it has no 
 present that it sees to be worth living in. Did 
 it recognise and perform the duty of the pre- 
 sent, it would not be forced back to the past. 
 What Christ commends is, that you be from 
 day to day surpassing yourselves : He will take 
 care of your past ; and you may be very sure 
 that anything you may have done worth pub- 
 lishing is remembered by Him. It is not what 
 you icere, but what you are, that most concerns 
 you to inquire ; not what you have done, but 
 what you are doing. Things that once called 
 
88 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 forth your whole strength, should now be easy ; 
 acts that were once only occasional and done 
 with effort, should now be habitual ; duties you 
 could once scarcely bring your mind to, you 
 should now do cheerfully. And if it be so with 
 you, — if it be so that jou would rather be 
 judged by the things freshest in your memory, 
 than by any selection you could make from 
 your lives, — if to-day or yesterday is your best 
 day, then aim higher still. With no disparage- 
 ment of what you are, it may be said to you, 
 * Be more.' If you are not prepared to add 
 anything to your efforts, — if you do not see why 
 you should thus put yourself about to surpass 
 yourself, — do you value Christ's commenda- 
 tion ? Something must be wrong if you would 
 do no more for Christ knowTi twenty years, 
 than for Christ known ten. Were the reasons 
 then to serve him many? and are they not 
 multiplied now ? 
 
 The other party in the church is described 
 in language drawn from the Old Testament 
 history; not now, as in Pergamos, from the 
 wilderness condition of the Israelites, but from 
 the kingdom. The condition of the church in 
 Thyatira was the New Testament likeness of 
 the Old Testament kingdom, but not, alas ! in 
 
THYATIRA. 89 
 
 the best state of the kingdom,— not in the 
 David and Solomon days, which typified all 
 that was good in the kingdom of Christ, and 
 taught men all the glory and benefit of the 
 kingdom state, and inspired them with strong 
 desire to see all this carried to its ideal in 
 Christ; but the imagery which can alone be 
 used of Thyatira is drawn from the days of 
 darkest declension — from the days of Ahab the 
 king, of whom it is written that ' above all that 
 were before him he did evil in the sight of the 
 Lord.' Of Ahab it is written : ' It came to 
 pass, as if it had been a Hght thing for him to 
 walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, 
 that he took to wife Jezebel, ^he daughter 
 of Ethbaal, king of the Zidonians (a people 
 abominable in their idolatry beyond all others, 
 and beyond all we can realise), and went and 
 served Baal and worshipped him. And Ahab 
 did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to 
 anger than all the kings of Israel that were 
 before him.' And again it is written : ' There 
 was none like unto Ahab, which did sell him- 
 self to work wickedness in the sight of the 
 Lord, ivhom Jezebel his wife stirred up. And 
 he did very abominably in following idols.' 
 What this wickedest of women dealt in as her 
 
90 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 chief wickednesses may be gathered from Jehu's 
 answer to Joram when he came out to meet 
 him, and said, * Is it peace, Jehu?' and Jehu 
 answered, ' What peace, so long as the whore- 
 doms of thy mother Jezebel and her ivitchcrafts 
 are so many?' 
 
 To this woman the wickedness of the false 
 teachers had linked the church of Thyatira. 
 This is the person they are most like, and this 
 the period of the kingdom of Israel that most 
 fitly depicts their fallen condition. Far be it 
 from them to have set up so execrable a model, 
 yet this is what they have come to. And as 
 every form of wickedness seems to have at least 
 once in the history of the world found a man 
 to practise and carry it to its full horror, so 
 that now, when any extraordinary criminality 
 presents itself, instead of describing in detail 
 its perpetrator, we say shortly, ' He is another 
 Nero,' 'a second Dominic:'* here our Lord, 
 instead of at length laying to the charge of 
 these teachers all their abominations, far more 
 effectively shews them their frightful corruption, 
 by setting before them one whom they already 
 hated, and in whom they yet saw as in a 
 
 * Trench m loc. 
 
THYATIRA. 91 
 
 mirror their own very image. Jezebel, He 
 says, is risen from the dead, and with increased 
 subtlety and power lives and rules among you. 
 They lived as the worst of pagans in God's 
 kingdom, and seduced God's subjects to their 
 abominations. They had gained authority in 
 the church, and used this authority for no 
 godly end; but by lying wonders and the 
 terror of their name, as prophets and anointed 
 of God, blinded the servants of Christ and 
 drove them to all iniquity. Jezebel did not 
 refuse the power she held through Ahab, the 
 anointed king of Israel, but never had she a 
 thought of using this power for the good of her 
 subjects, — of any one but herself, — and least of 
 all for God. She was glad of it, because 
 thereby she could do her pleasure ; she ex- 
 ercised a power among God's people against 
 God's will, and maintained it by terror and 
 sorceries. And in the church of Thyatira all 
 thi^ was reproduced : they called themselves 
 prophets (ver. 20), and spoke of knowing the 
 depths (ver. 24) ; they had left Pergamos far 
 behind; they would use no arguments with their 
 people, but if questioned on any point of the 
 doctrine which they authoritatively laid down 
 they used to say, * It is a depth ' — it is not for 
 
92 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 you to know, you must receive our teaching 
 and do our bidding. Yes, our Lord says, they 
 are depths in very truth, 'as they speak ;' but 
 they are depths of Satan. They veil with these 
 mysteries of theirs a very hell; they are in- 
 itiated, they are profound ; but it is because 
 already on earth they have found all the craft, 
 callousness, and corruption of hell, and are 
 plunged in the depths of it. 
 
 And it were mere affectation to pass this 
 description without saying that we see very 
 well its living counterpart. We cannot deny 
 that in some of its parts we may be warned 
 against temleneies perceived in ourselves ; but 
 neither can we shut our eyes to the fact that 
 every feature of this description occurs in the 
 Church of Rome. There is no room here to 
 draw a detailed parallel between the two, and 
 there is very little need to do so. Like Thyatira, 
 the Church of Rome is set in the midst of the 
 churches, so that all the churches know her ; 
 and you have only to examine her, as here in- 
 vited by Christ, to see that while much of the 
 commendation may belong to her as well as to 
 the original Thyatira, the rebuke also is strik- 
 ingly merited by that powerful, deceiving, and 
 corrupt church. 
 
THYATIRA. 93 
 
 And who is the strong Jehu, furiously driv- 
 ing, yet steady and self-restrained, able to draw 
 from his tossing chariot of war an unerring 
 arrow at the joints of the harness, who shall 
 remorselessly, because righteously and justly, 
 cast down this Jezebel, and tread her under foot, 
 and kill her children with death ? ' The Son 
 of God, who hath his eyes like unto a flame of 
 fire, and his feet are like fine brass.' There 
 was no fear in Jehu's heart, for God sent him ; 
 and shall not the Anointed, to whom God hath 
 said, ' Thou art my Son, .this day have I be- 
 gotten thee' — shall not He, who has received 
 power over the nations from His Father, accom- 
 plish His pleasure among them ? When asked 
 to go out and face Jehu, and fight for their 
 father's house and throne, the sons of Ahab 
 * were exceedingly afraid, and said. Behold two 
 kings stood not before him ; how then shall we 
 stand ? ' And who shall stand before Him who 
 hath His eyes like unto a flame of fire ? 
 Though Jezebel were a king's daughter, yet did 
 the conquering Jehu tread her under foot, and 
 the dogs coming after him left nothing that 
 could be gathered up and buried; what then 
 shall be the destruction when He comes whose 
 feet are like fine brass, and the trampling of 
 
94 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 whose judgment shall break the nations to 
 shivers? In that terrible, swift, unswerving, 
 and irresistible advance of Jehu, messenger 
 after messenger was sent out in alarm to meet 
 him, saying, 'Is it peace?' and to each his 
 answer was still the same, ' What hast thou to 
 do with peace ? turn thee behind me.' And so 
 at the coming of the Lord it is too late to be 
 sending forth messengers of peace ; the time 
 for that is for ever by. ' I [lavc her space to 
 repent,' says our Lord, ' and she repented not.' 
 And now she will receive according to her 
 works. 
 
 What would be the effect of this epistle read 
 before the congregation ? Do you think that 
 men would then need to say, 'Lord, is it I'? 
 or would not the conscience of each accuse or 
 excuse according as the works of each had 
 been ? And though there are men in our own 
 day, as in others, whose j^rominence in wicked- 
 ness teaches, and whose terrible fate writes 
 again for the reading of all who have eyes to 
 see, this principle, ' Every man according to 
 his works,' let us not forget that the principle 
 applies equally to all, and that those whom 
 men could not rank on one side or other are 
 open to Christ, and ought to be known also to 
 
THYATIEA. 95 
 
 themselves. What life are you building up? 
 Is it such as you can present before God, and 
 say, * According to this, Lord, let it be unto me' ? 
 Eemember you are making your own future : 
 while you are so lightly passing time day by 
 day into oblivion, your eternity is shaping. 
 This principle of which you are so con,stantly 
 reminded in God's word, and which He keeps 
 ever before you in providence, is at work now, 
 and at work in the case of every one of you ; 
 no life can escape it, and every eternity will 
 reveal it. Hell, you say, is for great sinners, 
 for men very different from you ; but God does 
 not judge in the mass ; 'though there were only 
 one man worthy of hell, hell would be prepared 
 for that man.' It is ' every man' according to 
 his own works. You may be very unlike many 
 with whom you will spend eternity, and what 
 you have to do is not to be sufficiently like 
 others whom you may judge to be safe enough; 
 it is to do such works as you know God ap- 
 proves, and as you are prepared to reap the 
 fruits of. Do not then deceive yourself by 
 thinking that as there are but two parties, and 
 as you are liker the one than the other, there- 
 fore you are safe, and the Judge may come 
 to-day so far as you are concerned. It is very 
 
96 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 true there are but two parties ; but you will be 
 judged as if there were none but yourself in the 
 world, and to you will be rendered, not accord- 
 ing to the general merit of the church, or the 
 character of those you spend your life with, 
 but solely according to the works you have 
 done. And if you speak of a connection with 
 Christ, then remember that God admits no con- 
 nection which is not vital and productive, real 
 and not fanciful. 
 
 You have seen how richly He commends, how 
 long He forbears, how swiftly and terribly 
 Christ comes to judgment. Now, see how liber- 
 ally He promises. He has Himself earned all 
 the glory and the power; but not to Himself 
 does He keep it. As He has received of the 
 Father, so He offers to you. What God has 
 judged worthy to give to the one He most 
 honours in the universe, — what Christ, who 
 values everj^thing at the truth, has deemed 
 worthy to receive, — is offered to you. Would 
 that every man would only believe the liber- 
 ality of God's love, and be content to wait for 
 a while for these gifts of His, instead of spend- 
 ing his strength for nought and in vain, — seek- 
 ing to earn w^hat the grasp crushes when found ! 
 To understand the significance of the promises 
 
THYATIRA. 97 
 
 here delivered, you must remember the state of 
 the first recipients : tempted to assume autho- 
 rity ; to serve themselves of God's people, or of 
 those whom they could awe by their deceits. 
 To these Christ says, ' You shall rule the 
 nations, but not thus; you must follow my path 
 to my kingdom. Keep my works, who pro- 
 claimed myself not a king of this world, but not 
 the less a king. There is a right side to your 
 error ; all things are yours, because you are 
 mine. I have authority over all men in all 
 their concerns : the world is mine, and the 
 fulness thereof; nevertheless, you are not to 
 assert this authority now ; you are not proudly 
 to claim all as your right because you are 
 Christians. It is "the meek" who shall in- 
 herit the earth ; — those of you who faithfully 
 hold fast that which you have, and are satisfied, 
 through trial, through scorning and poverty, 
 through weakness and loss in this world, still 
 to keep my works, and, following my footsteps, 
 to inherit my power. Learn to rule by obey- 
 ing. Self-restraint is the only school for the 
 king. In the end this will find its reward. In 
 the end all things shall be shewn subject to 
 me : those who are nearest to me shall be really 
 in all things highest; those who are opposed 
 
98 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF APIA. 
 
 to me shall be destroyed. But the time is not 
 yet. You need yet a training for the rule you 
 are to exercise ; it is too great to be committed 
 to men untried. Wait for the honour I shall 
 give, and the power, the advantages, and the 
 employments, and you irill find that, just in 
 proportion to your faithfulness to me, will j^ou 
 be served of all things. You will know that all 
 things are mine ; that all God has made, — all 
 He has, by His infinite wisdom, contrived to 
 bless and to enrich — all that actually exists 
 anywhere, and all that His infinite resources 
 can call into being, — are mine ; you will know 
 this by the manifoldness, the wealth, and the 
 suitableness of your ovra possessions and power. 
 You know not how 3'ou limit my promise 
 when you envy earthly rulers, and would serve 
 yourselves of this world. The "morning star" 
 shall be yours, — that star which, when the 
 darkness of this world is past, and when all 
 the other stars of this world pale and flee 
 away before the coming day, still shines. Yours 
 shall be that glory which hangs about the 
 morning of the everlasting day, and which is 
 seen brightest when the darkness is streaked 
 with the signs of sunrise. Your glory and 
 brightness shall be more glorious and bright 
 
THYATIRA. 99 
 
 when the signs of my commg are certain.' If 
 there be any who fear that, in the coming of 
 the Son of God, their hope, their glory, their 
 possession, their all, may he precarious ; if 
 there be any who have been or are in darkness, 
 and who weary and moan as they that watch 
 for the morning ; then why is it so, when these 
 promises are proclaimed and laid open freely to 
 'every man that hath an ear to hear' ? 
 
SariJis. 
 
REV. III. 1-G. 
 
 And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write ; These things 
 saith he that hath pie seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars ; I 
 kncno thy works, that thou hast a name tfiat thou Hvest, and art 
 dead. 
 
 Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are 
 ready to die : for I have not found thy works perfect before God. 
 
 Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold 
 fast, and repent. If therefore thou shall not watch, I will come on 
 thee as a thief, and thou shall not know what hour I will come 
 upon thee. 
 
 Thou lutst a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled 
 their garments; and they shall iralk with me in white : for they 
 are worthy. 
 
 He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment ; 
 and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will 
 confess his name before my Father, and before his angels. 
 
 He that hath an car, let him hear iit/iaf the Spirit saith unto the 
 churches. 
 
rriHE first thing which strikes a reader of this 
 -^ fifth epistle is, that it represents a cir- 
 cumstantially different church-condition from 
 any of the former. Here is no mention of 
 heresy, of false prophecy, of idol worship, or of 
 persecution. In looking forward to the sixth 
 and seventh epistles, we find that a similar 
 distinction is ohservahle in them. There are 
 no longer outward enemies nor heretics to 
 contend with ; hut there is an equally danger- 
 ous internal weakness. We are not told of 
 anything peculiarly trying in the church of 
 Sardis (unless it were the absence of everything 
 peculiarly trying) ;* and, in the case of Laodicea, 
 we find that it was the very exuberance of 
 advantages that brought upon her such poverty. 
 \Ye are to see then, in these remaining epistles, 
 how the church will succeed in favourable 
 
 * See Stier in loc. 
 
104 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 circumstances ; to see whether she will be 
 altogether a different and better church when 
 her position is recognised, w^hen her teachers 
 are orthodox, and when her reputation is un- 
 blemished. How will she walk when she is set 
 in the right way, and left undisturbed? And 
 so there is a kind of interruption here in the 
 series. In the title our Lord here assumes. 
 He reminds us of that under which He addressed 
 the church in Ephesus. He makes a second 
 beginning, — shewing Himself once more as the 
 Head of the churches, who has the seven stars. 
 Again, the separation of this second part of the 
 series from the first is shewn by the form of the 
 promises, which are no longer delivered under 
 symbols of the Old Testament history, but of 
 the New Testament church. Further, the three 
 remaining epistles have this in common, as 
 distinguishing them from the former, that in 
 each of them our attention is directed more 
 forcibly forwards to the coming of the Lord. 
 
 If you ask how this church was formed, or 
 how it acquired its name for life, no answer can 
 be given beyond what you may suppose from 
 its position. It is not so very difficult a matter 
 to get a name for anything. The difficulty is 
 to attain to the reality which the highest 
 
SARDIS. 
 
 105 
 
 names signify. Without even any will of our 
 own, — before we are conscious of our own 
 identity, — we receive the highest of names, 
 being called Christians ; but if you have at all 
 possessed yourself of the w^ealth w^hich that 
 name bears, it has not been without strong 
 efforts of will,— resolutions that are connected 
 with a change in the springs of your life and 
 conduct. Now, this is just the key-note of 
 this epistle ; the difference between name and 
 reality; or rather, the difference between the 
 name that has no reality underlying it, and 
 the name w^hich expresses the real condition. 
 Christ tells us here that w^e may have a name 
 which may be only deceiving us, — which is 
 nothing but a name; and we may have a name 
 written in the book of life, and whereby we 
 shall be known to God and angels, — a name 
 wrought out by us in this life, and to be deeper 
 stamped upon us as our eternity exercises, 
 develops, and confirms the graces given us. 
 ' There are names,' says our Lord, 'among you; 
 worthy names, names of life : some of you are 
 strangely satisfied with the mere name, which 
 is nothing; possess yourselves of the reality 
 which your name signifies, and yon will be 
 possessed of a prize which you will deem worthy 
 
106 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 of my gift, and of your reception.' This is 
 briefly what our Lord says through Sardis. 
 
 To Sardis Christ reveals her own condition 
 in these words : ' Thou hast a name to live, 
 and art dead; I have not found thy works 
 perfect before God ; yet thou hast a few names 
 even in Sardis which have not defiled their 
 garments.' The name was a great name — a 
 name to live ; the corresponding reality was to 
 fulfil the works appointed, and to keep unspotted 
 from the world. Not having this reality, the 
 name of life was all that overlaid and kept out 
 of sight the unseemly reality of death. There 
 was no church that had such a reputation as 
 this; she was the praise of all of w^iom she 
 was not the envy. She, if any, would have 
 been excused had she surveyed the progress of 
 the Head of the church, and congratulated her- 
 self on W'hat. He would find in her. He has 
 been grieved in Ephesus, grieved in Pergamos, 
 grieved in Thyatira ; but among us are no 
 Balaamites, nor Nicolaitanes, nor lying pro- 
 phetess. Of all the cities of Asia, this was the 
 one a cautious parent would have chosen for 
 the residence of his son. No fear there of 
 heretics, of idol worship, or of the world's 
 seduction. There are no strange opinions 
 
SARDIS. 107 
 
 started ; no, for all opinions are alike dead. 
 There is no contention ; no, the quiet and 
 peace of the grave are there. There is no 
 doubting, no questioning whether Scripture be 
 indeed the word of God, because Scripture is 
 received as a mere foundation for a creed, a 
 storehouse of arguments for doctrine, and not 
 as the very voice of God, which must be all or 
 nothing. All goes on comfortably and com- 
 placently. A sweet smile is on the face of 
 Sardis, and quiet calm over all her members ; 
 for deep slumber is upon her. There is none 
 of the tumult and danger of life, neither is 
 there any of its earnestness and its labour and 
 its progress ; there are no strange growths nor 
 wild offshoots, neither is there any good fruit ; 
 the tree is dead. There is none of the danger of 
 the tempestuous sea, but there is the more ter- 
 rible danger of the smooth and^oily circles of 
 the whirlpool; the noiseless and rapid rush of the 
 river towards its fall, — every wave and breaker, 
 every hindrance and bar sucked in and swept 
 down together in the one fatal direction. And 
 at Sardis were no such gross sins commonly 
 and openly committed as had stained the other 
 churches. The members were decent, well-con- 
 ducted, industrious, moral people, else they could 
 
108 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 never have acquired the reputation for life they 
 enjoyed. Their garments, it is true, were 
 defiled, but not by rolling and wallowing in the 
 filth in which some at Thyatira had sunk, but 
 rather by an occasional stain, contracted by 
 brushing too close to what should have been 
 distantly avoided, or splashed on them while 
 crossing the world's path. These spots were 
 noticed only by Christ, whose blood had washed 
 what was thus again defiled. It is not before 
 men there was any imperfection, but before 
 God. Their part was well played, so far as 
 men could see ; but the part God had assigned 
 them they did not perform. Their works were 
 not perfect. To all there is in the sight of God 
 a definite task appointed ; as if God were say- 
 ing at the beginning. This man can accomplish 
 so much ; and so much is expected of him in 
 the end. And their measure the church of 
 Sardis had not filled up : they had not com- 
 pleted their service ; had not rightly filled their 
 place ; had not used the opportunities of it, 
 nor generously and industriously discharged its 
 severer duties. And therefore they are con- 
 demned. In this orthodox and unimpeachable, 
 this man-applauded church, where every ordi- 
 nance was rightly administered, a crowded and 
 
SARDIS. 109 
 
 frequent worship maintained, a membership 
 regularly and satisfactorily increasing, — in this 
 church, which was an example and ornament 
 to the Christian world of Asia, Christ saw what 
 provoked His quicker condemnation than any- 
 thing his eye penetrated to in Thyatira. 
 
 Amidst all the corruption of Thyatira, all 
 that called forth the emphatic and righteous 
 condemnation of the other churches, there was 
 an activity and love, a faith and patience, 
 which proved that the church still lived. But 
 here, when the church gathered to hear her 
 expected commendation, striving to make a 
 show of humility, but very visibly anticipating 
 that the applause of men will be sealed by the 
 applause of their Lord, these are the words 
 that break upon their scarcely-crediting ear : 
 * Thou art dead,' — dead too, and not decently 
 hidden, but garnished and tricked out with all 
 the shows of life, — a great deception. It is bad 
 enough to be suddenly introduced to the dark- 
 ened chamber, and dimly make out the rigid 
 form of the dead wrapt in the unmoved and 
 uncoloured shroud ; but it is ghastly and fright- 
 ful to see the pinched and livid features and 
 the stiffened limbs clothed in the garments, 
 and decked in the ornaments of the living. It 
 
110 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 is the existence of the two things together that 
 creates the loathing and horror; the reality 
 of death with the appearance of life. Better 
 far to make no show, no profession, than to 
 have that onh\ Each article that suggests life 
 in the presence of death, makes death more 
 unbearable ; and so every word or act of mere 
 profession condemns, as nothing else can con- 
 demn, the lack of the reality. You come regu- 
 larly to the house of God. So important a 
 matter do you count His worship to be, that 
 there is nothiucj you more habitually, more 
 regularly, perform. Then, how does this con- 
 demn you, if, having come to His house, there 
 is no true worship in your soul ! You come to 
 the table of the Lord, and would judge that 
 man to be in a really hopeless case who refused 
 thus to come ; then what if, with this distinct 
 profession of the need of communion, you have 
 no real communion with your Redeemer ? By 
 every act of mere profession, you pass a dis- 
 tinct condemnation upon yourself — more dis- 
 tinct than if j^ou said, ' This I ought to do, but 
 this I do not : so urgent is this, that I would 
 not for much seem not to do it, or be convinced 
 that I am not doing it ; and yet I do it not.' 
 So needful do you perceive the ordinances and 
 
SAKDIS. Ill 
 
 work, the graces and realities of religion to be, 
 that you will rather maintain a constant self- 
 deception, than once for all be persuaded that 
 you are destitute of all that Christ gives. Like 
 the mother that clasps her dead child to her 
 bosom, and strives in her despair to pour her 
 own life into it, and will not believe that it is 
 gone, and cannot put from her as dead clay 
 that which has been her joy and her life, so it 
 is no wonder that scarcely can one persuade 
 you that in those names and forms, which to 
 some are all alive and instinct with bliss, there 
 is only death, • and the corruption of death, 
 to you. 
 
 But if the condition of any among you be so 
 suspicious, and if it would be such an utter 
 revolution and razing of years of comfortable 
 profession and reputation were you to come to 
 the knowledge of your condition, say how much 
 more appalling do you make- your condition by 
 refusing to face its truth ! Is this not why 
 Christ denounces hypocrites and formalists 
 with such woe as his lips pronounce on none 
 besides, because by their hypocrisy they at 
 once proclaim their need of Him, and refuse to 
 receive Him ? Why pretend to have what you 
 may have in reality at any moment ? Why de- 
 
112 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 ceive yourselves ? why put yourselves off with 
 a form ? why perish with the name, when the 
 reality of what you so acknowledge the value 
 of is before you, and made over to you by the 
 gift of God ? The mother may be excused 
 w^hile she deludes herself that that is not dead 
 for which there is no present resurrection ; 
 but for all these forms of Christian life there is 
 an immediate resurrection, if you will only be- 
 lieve. To the most glorious and promising 
 name you bear, there is an answering reality 
 for you as well as for another. Are you dead ? 
 does something now and then whisper, before 
 you can stifle it. After all, this is but a name ; 
 I, my inmost person and my life, are not 
 Christian ? — then, whatever Christ has said He 
 is, He is for you ; He is not a dead name, but 
 in Him remains life. 
 
 Let, then, this remain with us as a convic- 
 tion — that it is not always the best sign of a 
 church or an individual that things are going 
 on reputably and smoothly. Men are not 
 machines, and living men cannot be handled 
 as the dead. The very peculiarity of the state 
 here brought before us is — the thinking that 
 all is well. There may be no intentional de- 
 ceit, — no desire to have a character for what 
 
SARDIS. 113 
 
 you are not, — it may surprise you much to 
 learn the difference (or that there is any differ- 
 ence) between what you seem and what you 
 are. You cannot, therefore, know that this is 
 not your condition, without serious, earnest, 
 and patient examination. Habitual suspicion 
 of your state may produce many evil results ; 
 but occasional suspicion is nothing more than 
 the word of God enjoins, and the deceitfulness 
 of the heart requires. It is wrong, and is often 
 the sign of a secret love of sin, and shrinking 
 from the more arduous duties, or of very unen- 
 lightened or meagre faith, to be always doubting 
 of one's own condition; but those who never 
 doubt (if there be any such, who yet really live) 
 must be of a quite singular experience. Would 
 Christ, then, were He writing to us, have to 
 alter this epistle, and say : ' Thou hast a name 
 to live, and thou livest ; thou art called a mem- 
 ber of my body, and art filled with my Spirit, 
 and actuated by my will; you have received 
 the symbols of my body and blood, and you 
 humbly and penitently feel that out of me you 
 are nothing, — lifeless, hopeless, and lost ; you 
 are frequent in acts of devotion, and every act 
 is but the expression of your kindling and eager 
 spirit. I cannot bear any but living members ; 
 
114 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 but in you I find pleasure, for of a truth there 
 is life in you'? Some of you, as in Sardis, 
 Christ would doubtless affectionately separate 
 from the general condemnation; would feel 
 himself accused in your accusation ; and would 
 just as soon omit to present his own obedience 
 before the Father, as forget to present yours 
 offered through Him. The anxiety with which 
 you watch for the success of a friend whom you 
 have advised and aided; the fondness with 
 which a parent waits to hear of a son's ad- 
 vancement ; the exultation with which a com- 
 mander hails the victory of his troops, — are 
 poor similitudes for that tender and intense 
 watchfulness with which your Eedeemer bends 
 to accept yom- services, to which His blood has 
 redeemed you. His love constrained and pro- 
 voked you, and which His discrimination alone 
 could detect, and His grace alone receive. 
 
 To enter a little more into the definite idea 
 of this epistle, you will observe that the name 
 and garment are linked together throughout, 
 and suggest to us that rite of baptism in which 
 these two were also of old linked together. 
 This church, trusting too much to all outward 
 things, ordinances, and rites, and names, trusted 
 especially to baptism. They were all named 
 
SARDIS. 115 
 
 Christians, and had been baptised : was not that 
 enough ? It is in the rite of baptism that pro- 
 fession of becoming a member of Christ's body 
 is first made ; in other words, it is in baptism 
 that the name which includes all other names, 
 the name of Christian, is received. And in order 
 to see the force of this epistle, you must bear in 
 mind, that in these early times of Christianity, 
 baptism necessarily appeared in a somewhat 
 different aspect from that in which we com- 
 monly view it. They were not all infants who 
 were then received into the church. The 
 church had to be formed of men grown up in 
 heathenism. These men, when the gospel had 
 been preached to them, and when they were 
 convinced that they needed a Saviour, and that 
 Christ was willing and able to save all who 
 attached themselves to Him, were invited to 
 this ordinance of baptism, wherein they pro- 
 fessed themselves believers, adherents, or dis- 
 ciples of Christ. In this ordinance the initial 
 transaction of a man with Christ was (I would 
 not say represented, but) formally enacted. On 
 Christ's side there is the acceptance of the 
 man; on the man's side, the acceptance of 
 Christ. On Christ's side there is the pledge of 
 purifying and strengthening, i.e. of saving in- 
 
116 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 fluence ; on the man's, the pledge of complete 
 surrender to and trust in Christ. Observe, 
 then, that baptism was to these men the most 
 solemn ordinance, the time of baptism the most 
 solemn time of their lives : it was then that the 
 faith begotten within their hearts was confessed 
 with the mouth, and that by a deliberate act they 
 acknowledged their need of Christ, and their 
 belief that He, and He alone, could save from 
 sin ; it was, in fact, their entrance to the new 
 life. It was then they acknowledged the power 
 of that new name in the world. It was in this 
 ordinance they definitely came out of heathen- 
 ism, and became Christians. And then they 
 were clothed in white, to denote the purity in 
 the sight of God of those who are joined with 
 Christ : to denote that they were invested, as 
 we say, with a new and pure character, which 
 they would do their utmost to maintain. And 
 often, if not always, the converts at baptism 
 changed their own name, that they might yet 
 more distinctly shew the change that had now 
 passed on them ; as Christ changed the name 
 of Peter when he became a disciple. Now, 
 in singular correspondence with this practice, 
 there is mention made here of a book of life, in 
 which the names of the baptised are written. 
 
SARDIS. 117 
 
 So that these three things, the receiving the 
 name of Christ, the washing with water and 
 clothing in white, and the entering of the 
 Christian's own name in the book of life, were 
 the outside symbols of the great realities of 
 baptism. 
 
 There were the same realities underlying 
 our baptism, and conveyed to us in it. If you 
 say your baptism was nothing, if you have 
 made no use of it, then why is it so ? Is 
 Christ a mere name? Consider how He re- 
 veals Himself to those of this church that had 
 gone through merely the form of baptism. He 
 reminds them that He hath the seven Spirits 
 and the seven stars. He has the seven stars, 
 i.e., as we have found, the ministers of the 
 church universal ; so that whatever they do as 
 His ministers, they do for Him in His stead ; 
 whatever they do. He does; what they do in 
 symbol. He does in reality. And He hath the 
 seven Spirits, i. e., He has the fulness of the 
 Spirit to bestow, in all needed operation, on all 
 His people. If, then, your baptism has been 
 nothing to you, it is because you have been 
 wanting, not because He has failed ; because 
 you have been satisfied to cheat yourselves 
 with names, while He presses upon you the 
 
118 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 rich reality. If you find anjihing that He has 
 appointed as a means of grace barren, whatso- 
 ever it be, then do meet Him as He here reveals 
 Himself to you as the source of the life-giving, 
 all-filling Spirit. If your name of Christian 
 is nothing, if you might as well never have 
 joined yourself to the church, for all the prac- 
 tical good it has done you, then you have not 
 yet reached Christ as the holder of the seven 
 Spirits. In baptism you received the name of 
 Christian ; Christ presented Himself as ready 
 to bestow all that His name conveys, i. e. in a 
 word, salvation. But it is the law by which 
 God's giving in grace is regulated, that we re- 
 ceive by faith, that is, that we willingly accept 
 what He gives. In other words, He does not 
 force upon us salvation. And therefore you may 
 have the name of Christian, and be lost ; having 
 a name that jow are joined to Him in whom is 
 all support and life, you may find death. 
 
 What, then, has Christ to say to those who 
 are in this danger ? ' Eemember how thou 
 hast received and heard, and hold fast, and 
 repent.* Consider what was done in your bap- 
 tism. You were made over to Christ : and He 
 who hath the seven stars declared, by the act 
 of His minister, His readiness to receive you. 
 
SARDIS. 119 
 
 He pledged Himself there to be your faithful 
 and sufficient Saviour. And however you have 
 denied His grace, He abideth faithful ; He holds 
 to the promise He there gave, and is as ready 
 now as ever He was to make you the full pos- 
 sessor of all that union to Himself implies. 
 And is it not worth your while to take His 
 counsel, to go back upon that pledge of His ; 
 shaking yourselves from sleep, or at least 
 awaking to a brighter consciousness of the 
 nearness and personality of that transaction 
 with Christ wherein He received you in His 
 arms ? — God forbid to be put from Him as a 
 dead thing ! He has not words in our human 
 speech, nor figures, to depict the state and 
 danger of the man who draws around himself 
 this curtain and blind of a name, and will not 
 arouse to the real blessedness behind the name. 
 To those at Sardis, and through them to all 
 thus dead asleep. He cries, ' Be watchful, and 
 strengthen the things which remain and are 
 ready to die ; ' like those whom cold has sub- 
 dued to slumber, and slumber is changing to 
 death, and whose only chance is rough arousing 
 and cherishing the parts still alive. The cry 
 is sudden, as if a man slumbering were awak- 
 ened, not gently by the voice of his child's 
 
120 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 laughter mingling with his dreams, and gradu- 
 ally leading forth his consciousness to a reality 
 more pleasant than even the pictures of his 
 fancy, but by a sudden cry to save himself from 
 fire or sword. Not more startling was the 
 shout of the shipmaster which broke through 
 the deep slumber of Jonah as he lay dreaming 
 of his sunny home in Palestine, his vine and 
 his fig-tree, his wife and his children, and sud- 
 denly called him from the land of his dreams 
 to the lash and roar of the tempest, the strain- 
 ing and plunging of the vessel, with all help 
 past, and no hope between him and death, but 
 to rise and call upon his God. Not more 
 astounding to the dead Lazarus to wake and 
 find himself alive, and yet buried ; in the 
 world, and yet entombed. 
 
 But who hath ears to hear this cry ? For 
 whom is this letter sent among us? yea, rather, 
 for whom is it not ? Who among us may 
 safely pass it to his neighbour, saying, ' Not for 
 me ' ? Can you not believe that there is any 
 danger in your state ? — no fear that to you, at 
 least, the Lord may come as a thief in the 
 night? Have you had so short a time to go 
 back upon and secure that transaction with 
 Christ ? Has he far to come, that He should 
 
SARDIS. 121 
 
 not come soon ? or do you disregard that wise 
 proverb that was in the mouths even of the 
 heathen at Sardis,* that justice dwells nigh to 
 mortals, not seen but seeing ; that her feet are 
 shod with wool, but her hand cased and armed 
 with iron? Do you think those threatenings 
 that time after time, through the whole period 
 of the existence of men upon earth, have been 
 executed, will not be executed on you ? Do you 
 think you may safely disregard those warnings 
 which the case of thousands before you has 
 made necessary, and which thousands before 
 you disregarding have perished ? The words of 
 Christ are not arrows shot at a venture. How 
 the Christians of Sardis would have compas- 
 sionated any one who told them that a future 
 traveller in their city would seek in vain for a 
 Christian ! Theij, were not they the very 
 centre of Christendom? had they not heard 
 the apostles address them in their own tongue, 
 and had they not among their own members 
 men of almost apostolic gifts ? were not they 
 the very corner-stone of the church, which 
 being taken away, all would fall ? What need 
 to them of watching, whose works were ready 
 at any time for the examination of their Lord, 
 
 * Trench in loc. 
 
122 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 who were not children of the night hut of the 
 day ? But we read of no such Christian condi- 
 tion in all the word of God as can dispense with 
 watchfulness. You say there is no sign of your 
 Lord's coming. It is this very thing that our 
 Lord emphatically and constantly repeats, and 
 on this very fact that He grounds His warning 
 to you to watch. Have everything ready, and 
 hold fast. Take firm hold and keep firm hold 
 of the blessings He offers you in His ordi- 
 nances ; make sure that you have not a mere 
 fair outside before men, but the robe given by 
 Christ, and well-pleasing to the eye of God ; 
 make sure that you have not only the name, 
 appearance, and some of the privileges of the 
 Christian, but that you are one. Do this, 
 which you can do by meeting Him who hath 
 the seven Spirits, Fountain of all life, and 
 Restorer of all spiritual backsliding, Streng- 
 thener of all that is weak, and Eeviver of all 
 that dies, and you will be ready. 
 
 The promise offered to those who thus approve 
 themselves worthy, i. c, those whose lives ap- 
 prove their profession, whose walk is such as 
 becomes the gospel, who are uprightly and 
 sincerely depending on and lining by Christ, — 
 to those the promise is that they shall be clothed 
 
SARDIS. 123 
 
 in white, and have their names confessed before 
 the Father and His angels ; that is, they will 
 have all that the character and name of Chris- 
 tian here promises or implies. Seek for the 
 reality that Christ's ordinances contain, and 
 you will find and rejoice in it. The walking 
 with Christ in white implies that your purity 
 shall for His sake be approved in the sight of 
 God, and that your personal character also shall 
 be established in holiness. Is it very humiliat- 
 ing to have to come back, day by day, to the 
 blood of Christ to be washed from sin ? do you 
 find it very hard, you are tempted to say im- 
 possible, to keep yourself from being defiled as 
 soon as washed ? Christ here says to you. Be 
 not yet discouraged : the time comes when you 
 shall have society that holds you from sin 
 instead of tempting you to it, and when all 
 your occupations and circumstances shall so 
 conspire that your garments shall be kept 
 spotless. Hold fast even to overcoming, and 
 not only shall you be presented before the 
 Father spotless, but you shall be enabled to 
 company gladly, and though humbly, yet un- 
 ashamed, with Jesus Christ. You shall walk 
 with Him. 
 
 And when your name is found uncancelled 
 
124 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 in the book of life, and is confessed before the 
 Father and his angels, 3^011 will learn that the 
 receiving your name was no such insignificant 
 part of baptism as some would make you 
 believe. It may not be the thing, but it is the 
 necessary accompaniment of receiving the name 
 of Christian. There were some pagans whom 
 the Pioman Catholic missionaries used to bap- 
 tise in crowds, sprinkling them as they stood 
 packed indiscriminately together. Here one 
 most meaning part of baptism was forgotten, 
 viz., that Christ receives his people one by one, 
 knowing by name each one, knowing whom He 
 is receiving, and for whom it is He undertakes. 
 Besides, then, bearing the name of Christian, 
 you bear a Christian name ; besides belonging 
 to the mass whom Christ saves, you have Him 
 saving you by that special care and those 
 special aids you need in distinction from others. 
 And He deals with names very differently from 
 the scriptural manner of dealing with them, 
 who thinks it nothing that he got his name in 
 connection with, and as a significant part of, 
 a religious ordinance. You may have made 
 that name the synonym for much looseness 
 and carelessness of life ; those who know you, 
 when they name you, may have a very unchris- 
 
SARDIS. 125 
 
 tian character in their view ; you may have 
 draggled the name long ago received through 
 long paths of deep defilement, or may have 
 been proud it should be known as belonging to 
 and marking out a scoffer, or at least a non- 
 professor; but Christ remembers your name, 
 and He calls you this day to say whether you 
 will have it blotted out from His memory, or 
 confessed by Him before the Father. Is there 
 any among you who shrinks from coming out 
 and joining Christ, and accepting all that 
 blessedness which he knows Him to contain, 
 on this ground, because he fears that he must, 
 to do this, become so very different a person 
 from what he now is ? Do you fear that in 
 Christ there will be little scope for the develop- 
 ment of what is in you — that you can do more 
 and be more in the world than in Christ ? 
 Then know, that in Christ alone is there full 
 scope for you becoming all you are fitted to 
 become. In Him alone is there room for all 
 that makes up your personality to shew itself 
 and live. Everything that is yours will not be 
 kept, but all that is you will more abundantly 
 live in Him. This He teaches you, by telling 
 you that He alone can confess your name, 
 reading it from the book of life. He alone can 
 
126 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 introduce you as a named person, with 3'our 
 own distinct interests and character, into 
 eternity; He alone can give you a suitable 
 standing in the world to come. And this He 
 teaches by the forms of this world. Omit from 
 your life that religious event wherein you were 
 formally made over to Him, and you are name- 
 less in the world. It is in connection with 
 Christ that you have received a personal name, 
 and in Him you will receive all that can give 
 5^ou a separate standing before God, no longer 
 lost in the lost mass of our race. God was not 
 ashamed to be named after men, and to be 
 called the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 
 Let us, then, so live that Christ may not be 
 ashamed to confess our names, and acknowledge 
 Himself as our sanctifying Saviour before the 
 Father, but may present us faultless before the 
 presence of His glory with exceeding joy. 
 
VI. 
 
 ^tlatr^Ipfljta, 
 
REV. III. 7-13. 
 
 And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write; These 
 things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that Imth the key of 
 David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth ; and shutteth, and 
 no man openeth ; 
 
 I know thy works : behold, I have set before thee an open door, 
 and no man can shut it : for thou hast a little strength, and hast 
 kept my word, and hast not denied my name. 
 
 Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say 
 they arc Jews, and are not, but do lie ; behold, I vyill make them 
 to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I ftave loved 
 thee. 
 
 Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep 
 thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the 
 world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. 
 
 Behold, I come quickly : hold tluit fast which tliou hast, that no 
 mun take thy crown. 
 
 Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my 
 God, and he shall go no more out : and I will write upon him the 
 name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is New 
 Jerusalem, tchich cometh down out of heaven from my God ; and I 
 imll write upon him my new name. 
 
 He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the 
 churches. 
 
nnWO only of the seven churches received 
 -*■ from our Lord ej)istles containing no word 
 of rebuke : the suffering church of Smyrna, 
 and the weak church of Philadelphia. Two 
 only of the seven are still extant : four con- 
 gregations now representing the martyrs of 
 Smyrna, and 800 Christians now assembling 
 for worship within the still flourishing town of 
 Philadelphia. And that these two churches do 
 yet exist and flourish, can be referred to nothing 
 else than simply the fulfilment of the good-will 
 of Christ, promised to them so long ago. There 
 are not many churches that have so long a 
 history as these two, nor many that could tell 
 of such revolutions and emergencies safely 
 ridden through. Everything else in these 
 cities has felt the brunt of time. Conquering 
 armies have swept the country again and 
 again, leaving behind them little trace of the 
 
130 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASLV. 
 
 old, and bringing in new governments, new 
 manners, and new inhabitants ; the bond be- 
 tween the ancient past and the present has 
 been burst and burst again ; but still the 
 church of Philadelphia can trace an uninter- 
 rupted pedigree to this commended society. 
 
 Yet there is no one of these churches we may 
 set on an altogether higher level than the rest, 
 as there is none we may set on an altogether 
 lower level. The ideal of a church yet remains 
 unrealised. And thus we are warned "that our 
 hope must depend on some more sure founda- 
 tion than on that of belonging to this church or 
 the other. It is Christ that gives the promises, 
 not the church ; and except we possess what 
 we could live on, were we alone in the midst of 
 heathen, we have not what we can live on in 
 the midst of Christians. If we are standing 
 merely by the crowding support of those around 
 us ; if we are upright as others merely because 
 we cannot fall ; if we are leaning on something 
 that may be taken awa}^ then the church may 
 not be more to us than it ought to be, but Christ 
 is less to us than He ought to be. What if 
 you see it to be your duty to separate yourself 
 from the church, and go where there is not 
 one to join with you in worship of Christ, or 
 
PHILADELPHIA. 131 
 
 living to Him ; what if it be your lot to spend 
 many years confined to a generally solitary 
 sickroom ; what, when you come to be severed, 
 by the strange experiences of dissolution, from 
 all the appearances and forms which Chris- 
 tianity takes in this world, and when you find 
 that, do what others can for you, it is only you 
 yourself that has to grapple for yourself with 
 death ? The church has done her all for you, 
 and must now bid you farewell. Your dearest 
 friend cannot go further with you ; his hand 
 may clasp yours, but he cannot retain its 
 warmth, as your life gathers itself inwards, 
 and retires ; his voice may speak words of 
 strength, but the intelligence dies from be- 
 neath the ear; his eye strives to meet your 
 soul, but between you and him intervenes a 
 dead sense ; between you and all that is out- 
 ward there are new and separating experiences. 
 When this comes, what is it that your soul can 
 still keep, and round which it can rally, and 
 by which it can confidently follow the path 
 through the valley of death ? what is it you 
 would then rather have than anything else ? 
 what is it that you then can alone have, but 
 just the word of Christ ? 
 
 It is this which the church of Philadelphia 
 
132 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 illustrates, — the value of the word of Christ. 
 In the epistle to Sardis, we were taught the 
 folly, danger, and hlasphemy of resting in 
 names, and the wealth and glory which the 
 names which Christ has hrought into this 
 world do cover and set forth. In this epistle 
 we are taught that the security for all that 
 these names signify heing realised, is the w^ord 
 of Christ. This church of Philadelphia, which 
 passes without reproach, is descrihed as having 
 kept Christ's word, and, again, as having 
 kept ' the word of his patience.' The spiritual 
 characteristic of it was a simple, and therefore 
 humhle faith. She had little strength ; in 
 numhers few ; in worldly repute small ; in in- 
 fluence, whether through talent or wealth, 
 feehle. She knew this, and cast herself solely 
 on the word of her Lord. When other churches 
 made great display of what they had effected, 
 and shewed hefore her (or even at her) tokens 
 of the life that was in them, she was able 
 through her humility, not through sloth or in- 
 difference to the cause of Christ, to be content 
 that the weak as well as the strong have the 
 promise of Christ. When Jews, who were no 
 Jews, came to them and said, ' Ye are not of 
 the separate people ; ye go not up to meet 
 
PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 133 
 
 God at his one appointed meeting-place; ye 
 have no glorious ceremonial handed down 
 from generation to generation ; ye are of the 
 Gentiles, the uncircumcised, with whom God 
 has made no covenant, hut who have ever 
 heen aHens ; the stream of God's purpose and 
 favour has flowed past you, and you are left ; ' 
 —the Christians of Philadelphia still gathered 
 to their heart the word they had heard and 
 helieved. They could not explain that mystery 
 which had been hid from the ages of this 
 world ; they did not pretend to account for the 
 fact that God had only within a few years first 
 called the Gentiles ; they could not tell why it 
 was that the God of the whole earth should 
 have so confined Himself, a.nd as if limited His 
 presence to one little spot ; they helieved that 
 now it was otherwise. They had heen told by 
 men, who, they were sure, were no impostors, 
 that God had been manifest in the flesh, and 
 called all to repent and believe ; and by that 
 word of the Lord they clung. And when Gen- 
 tiles spoke to them of persecution, — when the 
 clouds were gathering thick, and rising from 
 the horizon heavy, massed, and dark, portend- 
 ing a sweeping and desolating storm, such as 
 might fitly foreshadow the great day of the 
 
134 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 Lord, — when they were carried forward to that 
 hour of temptation that was to come on all the 
 world, to try them that dwell upon the earth, — 
 when they felt that it was now to he every man 
 for himself, when mother could not help child, 
 and son could not help parent, — still they kept 
 the word of Christ, and denied not His name. 
 Very significantly, therefore, is the word spoken 
 of here as the 'word of my patience;' for the 
 word of Christ, as the Philadelphians knew it, 
 was not a word calling them to easy, and 
 luxurious, and applauded entrance into the 
 kingdom ; hut to much tribulation first, and 
 the kingdom, with the glory of it, afterwards. 
 
 And if the example of weak and tried men, 
 conquering through the power of the word, is 
 not for all of us, certainly it is for a very great 
 many. Interpret the words as we will, it is 
 still through poverty of spirit the kingdom is 
 inherited; still through much tribulation, in- 
 ward or outward, the kingdom is to be entered; 
 still the word of Christ is, to all who receive it, 
 'the word of his patience.' Take what joy we 
 will in this life, and receive to the full the joys 
 of a present salvation, still does that constant 
 testimony of the Bible to the bleakness and 
 misery of this life remain true. For affliction 
 
PHILADELPHIA. 135 
 
 we are taught to look ; and provision for afflic- 
 tion is made ready for us. Sore trial, when we 
 are called on to do the thing we would not, and 
 to cast behind us cherished desires, and sacri- 
 fice our heart's hopes ; long-continued diffi- 
 culty, and waiting for relief, when we may not 
 even take the comfort of murmuring, or of com- 
 municating our grievance or our sorrow ; deep 
 dejection of spirit, and felt separation from the 
 company of godly persons, by our own default 
 or weakness or pride ; looking on the church 
 and on the redeemed of Christ as from without 
 (with the spirit of Gentiles) — as if their in- 
 terests were not ours, and their hopes ours ; 
 feeling that all things are tending forwards, ac- 
 complishing the pleasure of God, but ourselves 
 left behind with no part nor lot in the matter; — 
 all this is in the way to the kingdom ; and 
 through this the word of Christ, the invitation 
 of God, can alone bring you. And there is 
 that which all Christians have in common with 
 the Philadelphians — the sense of their little 
 strength ; the sense, indeed, of their utter im- 
 potence, of their total inability not only to save 
 themselves from their sin, but to be of any use 
 in carrying forward God's designs ; a sense of 
 littleness and feebleness which causes them to 
 
136 THE SE\TEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 stand wondering if it can be that God calls 
 them. 
 
 For this weakness is not a thing to be 
 recognised only as proper for a sinner to 
 acknowledge ; it is that which makes itself 
 felt. You do not merely say that sin has 
 eaten out the strength of your life, and pretend 
 dependence on another; but you come to a 
 humbling, painful, distressing sense of your 
 own weakness; you arc humbled by your 
 little strength. And this humiliation does not 
 pass away as the morning cloud ; through 
 your whole career it will be your attendant 
 experience. You are not made independent of 
 Christ by once professing faith in Him ; you 
 remain just as weak in yourself, for saving 
 purposes, after as before. The Christian grows 
 strong not by once receiving the word, but by 
 constantly receiving strength he is strong, and 
 therefore often strongest when he feels weakest ; 
 often making most of Christ's word when he 
 finds how truly it is called 'the word of his 
 patience,' — the word that must be taken and 
 kept hold of by the weak, humbled, patient, 
 submissively waiting spirit. When a person 
 receives the word, his standing in the sight of 
 God is changed ; he is no longer what he was ; 
 
PHILADELPHIA. 137 
 
 but he is not, in the full and scriptural sense 
 of the word, a saved person. Christ is now his, 
 and therefore his salvation is sure, his Saviour 
 being received ; but his Saviour being received, 
 or having received him, has still the work of 
 salvation to perform in the believer's spirit and 
 life. The Bible does not tell us, what would be 
 so obviously contradicted by fact, that once a 
 man accepts the word of the gospel, he is trans- 
 lated to a different world. He remains in the 
 same world, but not of it ; the word is now in 
 the world along with him, and separating him 
 from it, so that he knows that it is not that of 
 which he is a part, and whose destiny shall be 
 his. He is saved by hope, and the sole ground 
 of his hope is the word. He feels all the uncer- 
 tainty attaching to this world ; but the word 
 gives him a security for his future. He is often 
 at a loss to see the mercy of God; but the word 
 forbids despair. He is often overcome by temp- 
 tation — sometimes even trodden under foot of 
 his own corrupt heart ; but the word remains 
 the same, commanding him to rise. He some- 
 times, in the bitterness of his heart, even seeks 
 to find in the word some justification of his 
 enmity against God, some sentence that may 
 commit him irretrievably to sin and rebellion ; 
 
138 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 but calmly, ' inexorably merciful,' the word bids 
 him live and love. All his evil is met by, and 
 overcome by, its good. And believing this 
 word, it purifies him; for it is the word of truth. 
 It clears away from around him all that is false 
 and deceitful, and settles him in the sure know- 
 ledge of what has been, is, and is to be in this 
 world. It does not tell us that there has been 
 no sin in the world, but that the Son of God 
 has been in it. It does not tell us there is no 
 misery in the -world, nor even that it may be a 
 very paradise to some ; but it says there is a 
 paradise, where you who are now in the world 
 may hereafter be. It does not say, * Whoever 
 believes shall be at once delivered from all 
 trouble and ill;' but it says the truth, that 
 whoso believes shall have a refuge in every time 
 of trouble, and shall be kept through all ill, and 
 at length enter where there is no more curse. 
 
 To all, then, who are in this Philadelphian 
 state, — all who are thinking that, for such as 
 they are, purity, strength, peace can never be, 
 — who feel weak and shut up, so that hourl}'- 
 they are tempted to let go the word, — Christ 
 presents Himself as ' He that is holy. He that 
 is true ; ' who, having the key, hath set open 
 before you a door. Do you not seem to be 
 
PHILADELPHIA. 139 
 
 gaining forward ? Do all those promises, from 
 which you expected so much, seem locked 
 treasures to you ? Are you still outside, practi- 
 cally and really outside, however much security 
 you may have of being sometime possessors of 
 what is within ? Are you driven back from the 
 riches of Christ, as if they were not for this 
 world at all, and as if you must just be satisfied 
 to live by the motives, for the aims, on the 
 principles of other men who make no profes- 
 sion? Are there those who hint to you that, 
 in expecting any real help of a practical, ap- 
 preciable kind in this life from Christ, you 
 expect too much? When you have expected 
 too easy and rapid a conquest of sin, too great 
 liberty and strength in all duty, does some 
 tempter whisper that you should not, m reason, 
 expect any conquest of sin, nor any strength in 
 duty; and are you sometimes fairly brought 
 to a stand, like a man lost at night on a wild 
 and trackless moor, who finds himself on the 
 edge of an abyss, out of whose dark depths 
 there roars a river he cannot see-who cannot 
 go on, and has no strength or heart to go back ? 
 or, to adopt the powerful figure of this epistle, 
 do you ever stand helpless and heartless before 
 an impenetrable wall, that separates you from 
 
140 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 all living ? Are you miserable, and see nothing 
 beyond and through your misery, and have no 
 thought of any change of it, but just heartlessly 
 go through your daily work for joiw daily 
 bread, sighing coming before your meat, — 
 sighing that you have to live, instead of thanks- 
 giving that you do live ? — then to you comes 
 this same word of Christ : ' I have set before 
 you an open door.' Possession to the full is 
 not for this world ; but as little is despair or 
 heartless indifference for this world. Hope — 
 sure, confident, and bright-eyed hope, is for 
 this world, — a hope that will carry you forward 
 through the open door set before you. 
 
 This door set open to us is a door of escape 
 as well as of entrance. It is a door * before 
 you,' plain and manifest, so that, at whatever 
 point of our course we feel that there is some- 
 thing to be escaped from, or something more 
 to be entered on, the way is cleared for us. 
 Here for the feeble is provision made for their 
 safe and successful progress in all things. It 
 is a safe conduct, secured through 9^11 the 
 future. No sin can bar your progress ; there 
 is deliverance from that. No temptation can 
 altogether hem you in ; there is ' a way of 
 escape' with each temptation. To all duty, to 
 
PHILADELPHIA. 141 
 
 all privilege, to all lasting advantage, a door is 
 set open before you. Tbisy you will say, is a 
 great tbing : wbo can give it ? 'He tbat batb 
 tbe key of David, He tbat openetb, and no man 
 sbuttetb ; and sbuttetb, and no man openetb.' 
 Apart from Him, tbere is no key for tbe solid 
 door iibat keeps us out from God, and back 
 from all progress. Until He opens, tbere can 
 but fall across our darkness, tbrougb some 
 cbink tbat tbe resolute assaults of ages bave 
 made in tbe door, a single ray of ligbt from 
 tbe land of brigbtness witbin. It depends on 
 Cbrist (wbo bas tbe key of all real and lasting 
 blessedness, of all far-reacbing and sure bope), 
 wbo sball enter in, and wbo sball be excluded ; 
 wbo sball see tbe King's face, and wbo sball 
 not. None bas ever bad eternal bope, to wbom 
 Cbrist bas not given it. None bas ever en- 
 tered into bliss, to wbom Cbrist bas not set 
 open tbe door. He is tbe source of bappiness 
 to all tbe dead wbo are now blessed. And it is 
 Cbrist wbo is to sbape your future. However 
 little you may tbink of Him, bowever unwilling 
 you may be to bave any connection at all witb 
 Him, tbe fact is, tbat your wbole eternal 
 destiny bangs on His decision. He bas tbe 
 key ; and wbat more can you make of it ? You 
 
142 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 cannot get past Him ; it must come to this at 
 the last, that you receive from Him, if you are 
 to be rid of the evil. 
 
 He is holy, and He is true. He that keeps 
 the gate of the kingdom is One that will not 
 suffer to enter anything that will defile and mar 
 the pure and unshaded glory within. He will 
 not suffer to enter in that thing which has 
 made you weak, and has preyed on your weak- 
 ness. He is holy, so that His truth is truth 
 you may trust to the utmost. The word of His 
 calling is not the utterance of a sudden flood of 
 feeling; it is the true expression of His eter- 
 nally holy nature that seeks the highest good 
 of all that lives, and will make you like to 
 Himself, that His joy may be yours. He is 
 true. Search inwards to the root of the 
 motive of the offer He makes to 3'ou, and you 
 will only find out more and more how genuine 
 is the sincerity of His love. You will find 
 much that does not appear at first sight, much 
 that you do not expect, but all only more over- 
 whelmingly proving His truth. He is true in 
 the offer He makes, true in His word ; there- 
 fore go to Him openly and frankly. Do not go 
 with any false pretext, as if you had to do with 
 some one who does not know for whom it is 
 
PHILADELPHIA. 143 
 
 He provides salvation. Christ knows that 'the 
 whole need not a physician, but they that are 
 sick : ' it is not because there is a likeness be- 
 tween you and Himself that He invites you to 
 eternal communion, but because He is true, 
 and knows and acts upon the unlikeness be- 
 tween you and Himself, who is holy. Your 
 hope is in this, that Christ is true, and has 
 faced that truth, which you so fear to face, — 
 the truth of your sin, the fact of your hopeless 
 state. His is a truth you may depend upon, 
 not only because He has pledged His word — 
 His name as Saviour, but because truth lies 
 deep in His character. He is holy, and there- 
 fore to eternity is true, not only in word, but 
 in deed. He not only acts up to His own 
 word, but acts up to the requirements of every 
 case — acts according to the truth. Take His 
 character in detail, and truth will be found in 
 every part of it. His love is true. He suffered 
 and died for you, not for a mere show of love, 
 — not, forsooth, in order to persuade you of 
 His love, — but because His love prompted Him 
 to do this. He did not think He was doing too 
 much, because He was acting from true and 
 genuine love, — so true that it required Him to 
 do all, to leave nothing undone that could be 
 
144 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 done for those He loved. And because He is 
 lioly and true, that love continues the same 
 now. He is not less unselfish now that He is 
 in His reward. You may act now on that love, 
 as if He were yet upon the cross. 
 
 To the Philadelphians He revealed Himself 
 as the Holy and True, that they might not fear 
 those false Jews who said, either that He was 
 no true Messiah, or that, for Gentiles and un- 
 circumcised, there was nothing but sin, and 
 banishment from God and hope. But Gentiles 
 as well as Jews has'e need of a hope, — of some 
 person whose living energy and care can satisfy 
 that hope. Gentiles as well as Jews are per- 
 suaded that this life does not reveal all God's 
 power to bless. Gentiles as well as Jews find 
 that here they have to let many desires die un- 
 satisfied, and have often to sacrifice the good 
 to obtain the better; and must often wonder 
 how such things as happen can happen, and 
 God be ruler still ; and therefore, to Gentiles 
 as well as Jews, Christ is revealed as the true 
 Messiah, — satisfier of all hope, centre of all 
 truth, on whom hangs all reality; the one 
 last hold we have to keep us from disbelieving 
 God and murmuring at our lot, from all scepti- 
 cism of thought, and from all atheism of life. 
 
PHILADELPHIA. 145 
 
 What are you expecting as the result of all, 
 as the end of all you have known and been ? 
 Is it much ? Is your hope large ? Then, through 
 what door are you looking? If through that 
 which Christ opens by His word, accept as your 
 own his counsel here, 'Hold fast that which 
 thou hast ' until He comes. That is your proper 
 attitude — waiting for Christ ; looking patiently 
 forward ; not surprised if you get no more out 
 of this world than He got, but holding still the 
 word of His patience. Let all deny you, yet 
 hold the word of Him whose right it is to give 
 you entrance ; and well may you be confident. 
 Let all, as they look upon you, say, ' There is a 
 Christian, if any lives ! * and, if you have not 
 the word of Him who has the key of David, you 
 are undone as the most forgotten of the heathen. 
 If you have His word, and are following towards 
 His voice, then you will find that everything 
 which befalls you will fulfil this promise: 
 ' Behold, I come quickly.' Nearer and nearer 
 will you be brought to Christ by all duty, and 
 by all prohibition from active duty. And is it 
 not already, in this life, a great boon to receive, 
 from the holding of Christ's call in the gospel, 
 that all that comes to the Christian is, in one 
 form or another, Christ? Is it temptation? 
 
146 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 then hold the word ; believe that He is there 
 opening a door of escape for you, and you will 
 find Him really present. Is it death ? Still it 
 is the voice of your Lord, ' Behold, I come.' 
 Is it that last, trying, and sifting end of all 
 things ? then still it is, ' Behold, 1 come.' 
 Surely this is a grateful interchange, a blessed 
 transformation, whereby everything that natu- 
 rally hurts becomes saving, the poison of it 
 medicinal, which causes every threatening cloud 
 to burst, and reveal still the same loved and 
 assuring form of your Saviour and Lord. 
 
 But this being given now, what remains? 
 The promise is in this case no less appropriate 
 than we have found it to be in each of the 
 others. It is a promise to those who have 
 little strength, — who swing to and fro, tossed 
 on this world's roughness and tempest like a 
 light bark at anchor in a gale, — but who still 
 hold fast to the hope fixed within the veil. It 
 is a promise of stability, expressed in four 
 difierent and corroborative forms : it seems, 
 more than the other promises, to wish to take 
 a hold of the hearer and persuade of its truth. 
 By repeated blows it would drive in the shaft 
 past the barb. And here there is an appro- 
 priateness to the physical circumstances of the 
 
PHILADELPHIA. 147 
 
 Philadelphians, which was in singular harmony 
 with their spiritual position. An ancient geo- 
 grapher says of it : ' The city of Philadelphia 
 is full of earthquakes, and is daily shaken, now 
 one part, and now another suffering, so that 
 one wonders any should have been found to 
 build, or any to inhabit it.' To the Christians 
 who saw daily in their city the image of their 
 own precarious position, Christ says : I will 
 make the overcomer a pillar in the temple of 
 my God; he shall have a sure and stable 
 standing in the presence of God. Having 
 passed in through that open door which I have 
 set, and which he has always been passing 
 through, drawn by my word, he shall go no 
 more out : he shall know then that his right of 
 entrance is incontestable, because I have the 
 key; he shall have the name of the city written 
 upon him, so that he cannot be lost from it ; 
 he shall be identified with heaven. Here bowed 
 to the earth by a sense of his own unworthiness, 
 and hiding his face even from Christ's people, 
 and ashamed to say that he is of their number, 
 he shall there be at home, in that new city 
 filled with inhabitants that are also new through 
 the power of the Holy Spirit. The Jews alarm 
 you by claiming God as their own, and His 
 
148 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 temple as theirs, and the holy city where He 
 dwells as theirs, and my name they hlaspheme ; 
 but it is I who have the key of David, I who 
 can alone introduce to the true blessings of 
 David any true Israelite. God is my God ; all 
 that He is, He is to me ; for in me He is well 
 pleased ; His fulness and sufficiency are mine ; 
 I appropriate Him by all my obedience and 
 service ; and it is for you I appropriate Him. 
 He is my God, that He may be yours. The 
 temple of his worship is my body ; the whole 
 membership of my body, the whole number of 
 those who come to Him through me. He fills 
 with the presence of His glory. The city where 
 He dwells is not this ' sin- worn,' earthly city, 
 but that which is formed in heaven, — the new 
 Jerusalem, — where nothing grows old or is 
 worn done any more; where all the ill that you 
 have earned and here inhabit shall have passed 
 away, and all the good that Christ hath earned 
 surrounds you with everlasting gladness. 
 
VII. 
 
REV. III. 14-22. 
 
 And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write ; These 
 things saith the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the beginning 
 of the creation of God ; 
 
 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor Jwt : I would 
 thou wert cold or Jwt. 
 
 So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I 
 will spue thee out of my mouth. 
 
 Because thou snyest, I ain rich, and increased with goods, and 
 have need of nothing ; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and 
 miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked : 
 
 I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, tJuit thou 
 maycst be rich ; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, 
 that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear ; and anoint thine 
 eyes with eye-salve, thai, thou mayest see. 
 
 As many as I love, I rebuke and cliasten : be zealous therefore, 
 and repent. 
 
 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock : if any man hear my 
 voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with 
 him, and he with me. 
 
 To him tJmt overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, 
 even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his 
 throne. 
 
 He that hath an ear, let him hear wliat the Spirit saith unto the 
 churches. 
 
]^0 one, who gives any thought to the matter, 
 ■^^ will confound the condition of Laodicea 
 with that of any other of the seven churches. 
 Its characteristic is distinctly asserted — it is 
 lukewarm ; not profligate as Pergamos, nor 
 hypocritical and formal as Sardis, but resting 
 in a self-satisfied complacency, that would not 
 recognise any higher condition or calling than 
 that which had already been obtained. They 
 do not pretend to any high rank of saintship, 
 because they do not think that a position to be 
 coveted or admired. They profess religion, 
 but that is not what they pique themselves on. 
 A little piety they judge a useful ingredient of 
 their pursuits and interests; but it must not 
 be allowed to have the ascendancy or guiding 
 place. They would not like to take their 
 character from it ; to be known for their emi- 
 nence in Christian grace ; to be pointed to as 
 
152 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 the most penitent of sinners, or the most 
 humble and fearing of saints ; — that is by no 
 means their ambition. They treat religion 
 rather as a matter that may, in the course of 
 events, come to be useful, than as of any pre- 
 sent value ; they treat it as men treat a king 
 whose claim and seat seems somewhat insecure, 
 who may be dethroned, and is therefore not to 
 be served with the whole heart, life, and estate; 
 but who yet may reign, and who must there- 
 fore be propitiated, and whose favour must be 
 retained. They try to keep a middle course ; 
 they are * neither cold not hot.' They are not 
 hot ; that is, they have not towards Christ that 
 fervent love, which often causes them to break 
 forth in indignant defence of an earthly friend, 
 or finds vent in declarations of affection, or 
 useful gifts and services. They have not that 
 absorbing interest in the world of faith which 
 they have in the world seen ; and to display 
 half the diligence, the life, the devoted and 
 vehement energy in things heavenly which they 
 bestow upon things earthly, they would pro- 
 nounce unreasonable, and probably compas- 
 sionate as weak, or execrate as fanatical. They 
 do not make matters spiritual the chief object 
 of their care. They do not think it altogether 
 
LAODICEA. 
 
 153 
 
 decorous to live as Christ's redeemed, nor 
 would they quite like to be looked upon as 
 anxious to be where Christ is, and to live now 
 as He lived in the world. They do not like the 
 word 'zeal' in connection with religion; and 
 however desirable a quality it may be in worldly 
 af&irs, it must be banished from the church. 
 A zealot is but a fanatic. An ardent, decided 
 character is almost a necessary for success in 
 everything else; but it spoils all in religion. 
 And yet religion is acknowledged as a good 
 thing. These lukewarm Christians are not 
 cold, any more than they are hot. They are 
 what we ordinarily call cold or lifeless, but not 
 what Christ here calls cold. Here the two ex- 
 tremes are mentioned, and the lukewarm is 
 that which lies between. The one extreme is 
 fervent zeal in the cause of Christ ; the other 
 is the state of those who make no profession 
 whatever, — who openly belong to the world, 
 and have no part nor lot in the church. And 
 nothing could more pointedly mark the exceed- 
 ing disgrace and danger of a lukewarm condi- 
 tion, than the fact that our Lord here declares 
 that utter rejection of His name, and absolute 
 severance from His person, is preferable to 
 this half-and-half condition. * Would thou 
 
154; THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 wert cold or hot ! ' Would that thou wert one 
 thing or another, and not hanging hetween the 
 two, — drawn in one direction by your profes- 
 sion, and in a totally opposite direction by your 
 heart's desires. 
 
 And it must be obvious to you why our Lord 
 thus expresses himself. For there are specially 
 two reasons for preferring a cold state to a 
 lukewarm one : there is less of self-deception 
 (and therefore more hope), and there is less 
 injury done to other men ; for few things, if 
 any, retard the progress of Christ's cause in 
 the world so seriously as the lukewarmness of 
 professing Christians. No one thinks of judg- 
 ing religion and taking his opinion of Chris- 
 tianity from the sayings or deeds of the ungodly 
 and profane and infidel ; but no one, unless 
 gifted with unusual caution, can avoid judging 
 of Christianity and Christ from those who pro- 
 fess to belong to his cause. These are the 
 living, teaching exponents of what the religion 
 of Christ is. If it is seen to be a mere matter 
 of indifierence — that only makes a man un- 
 decided, wavering, and dishonest — that keeps 
 him in constant suspense and oscillation be- 
 tween holiness and sin — that shakes the old 
 foundations of his life, and gives him no new 
 
LAODICEA. 155 
 
 foundation, — then, of course, men will be warned 
 off from Christianity. If that is Christianity, 
 then it is a useless encumbrance. This judg- 
 ment goes on continually ; every day men are 
 hardening thus. It is not the nature of one in 
 a thousand to judge of a matter by its origin, 
 principles, or abstract scheme, but by its prac- 
 tical exhibition, its fruit, its concrete form, and 
 effect in the individual. What a man wants 
 from religion, is help in his life and rest in his 
 soul. He wants something that will make him 
 very different from what he is — something 
 powerful ; and when he sees how little Chris- 
 tian truth does, he turns away. If it has done 
 so little for others, why will it do more for 
 him? If the faith of Christ can be held so 
 easily and profitlessly, what hope can he have 
 that in his case it will be influential ? He 
 wants something to make him a godly man : if 
 these are the men Christianity makes, then 
 Christianity is not for him. 
 
 Apart, then, from the ruin to a man's own 
 soul which a lukewarm condition works, he 
 disseminates, by his very existence, ruinous 
 views of Christianity. Christ, looking upon 
 his cause on earth, sees how it is hindered by 
 such, and says, ' Would thou wert cold or hot ! * 
 
156 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 And in sajdng this, his voice is strengthened 
 by the conscience of every one of us. It is our 
 constant sentiment, Let a man be decided and 
 honest one way or other ; anything rather than 
 a wavering, indifferent, suiDcrficial professor, 
 who will profess truths he does not act upon, 
 and acknowledge obligations he never dis- 
 charges ; whose feelings are no deeper than 
 his lips, and whose faith has never approached 
 his heart ! If he believes that Christ died for 
 him, in order that he might live to Christ, and 
 be an image of Christ in this world, doing no 
 longer his own will, then let him act so ; if he 
 do not believe this, then let him say so. 
 
 Now, it is very useful to observe, what is 
 further indicated in this epistle, that this luke- 
 warm and most dangerous state is not a hypo- 
 critical state, but a state of self-deception. It 
 is brought about, not by any intention or effort 
 on our part, but by want of effort ; it is a state 
 of defect. It is not the elaborate cleansing and 
 decoration of all that meets the eye of man, to 
 cover the impurity which lodges consciously in 
 the soul. It is a self-satisfied condition. It 
 makes no high pretension, and is quite unaware 
 that there is anything which needs to be either 
 hidden or corrected. It acts on the ignorant 
 
LAODICEA. 157 
 
 mistake, that a man may choose the level at 
 which he may stand, — may regulate how much 
 of the influence of religion he is to receive. A 
 man in this state, if charged with his deficiency, 
 confidently replies, ' But I make no profession; ' 
 not meaning thereby that he cuts himself ofl' 
 from all connection with Christ, but that he 
 makes no such profession as should lead people 
 to expect anything but lukewarmness from 
 him ; as if there were different grades of pro- 
 fession, any of which he might choose at 
 pleasure ; as if there were not ' one body and 
 one spirit, even as ye are called in one hope 
 of your calling : one Lord, one faith, one bap- 
 tism, one. God and Father of all, who is above 
 all, and through all, and in you all ; ' as if this 
 were not the very thing he is charged with, — 
 as the sin that, above all others, provokes our 
 Lord to anger, — that he does not recognise to 
 what he is called, and fancies he can profess 
 the name of Christ, without professing fervent 
 love to Christ, and fervent service in all things. 
 If not intentionally, then, but through igno- 
 rance, this condition be produced, what is it 
 that promotes and maintains this ignorance? 
 It is, first, that resting in things outward which 
 is here detailed : ' Thou sayest, I am rich, and 
 
158 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 increased with goods, and have need of nothing.' 
 It is true that these words are generally con- 
 sidered to apply to spiritual things ; but whether 
 you consider the real condition of Laodicea, or 
 the accompaniments of any similar condition, 
 or the connection of the verses of this epistle, 
 you will be convinced that the words refer, in 
 the first instance, to outward circumstances. 
 Laodicea icas a very wealthy city ; so wealthy, 
 that when, a few years before this epistle was 
 written, it was destroyed by an earthquake, 
 the citizens characteristically disdained to ask 
 help of the Roman senate, and at their own 
 cost raised anew their city. They had need of 
 nothing. Further, if you attend to the form of 
 this verse, you will find that what our Lord 
 charges them with is not falsehood, but igno- 
 rance Thou sayest so and so, and dost not 
 know this other truth. Thou sayest what is 
 quite true, for you are rich, as you understand 
 riches ; but you do not know that, with all your 
 riches, you are poor. You are not false, as 
 Sardis is ; but you let one little truth hide the 
 far more important. So near to your eye do 
 you hold that coin of earthly gold, that you 
 cannot see the brilliance of the sun in the 
 heavens. You dwell on what you are, and 
 
LAODICEA. 159 
 
 forget what you are not. It is true enough 
 you are rich ; but the very fact of your being 
 so, and of your dwelling on this, to the oblivion 
 of all else, is impoverishing and destroying you. 
 And, further, does not this precisely agree 
 with what we may daily observe of the birth 
 and growth of a lukewarm condition? Who 
 has not something to tell of the tendency of 
 prosperity to dull spiritual fervour ? Who, in 
 great things or in small, has not felt the power 
 of the world to win the soul from devotion to 
 Christ ? To be comfortably wrapped in the 
 world's goods, is a precarious position for a 
 Christian. ' Hardly will a rich man enter the 
 kingdom of heaven.' The gospel is at a dis- 
 advantage addressing such. The one thing the 
 gospel requires in man for its success is — felt 
 need. Anything that dulls the feeling of need, 
 proportionately dulls the welcome given to the 
 gospel offer. Salvation is for those who have 
 need of ^everything ; who stand as bare souls 
 before God, and feel their poverty and vileness, 
 their insecurity and helplessness. But go to a 
 Laodicean, go to a man who has enjoyed a long 
 course of prosperity, — who enjoys already all 
 that his heart desires, — tell him that the Son 
 of God became man in order that he might find 
 
160 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 supply for all liis wants, both now and here- 
 after, and he will he at a loss to understand 
 why this should have been done. He will not 
 reject the matter of fact; he will admit the his- 
 torical truth of the life and death of Christ ; 
 nay, he will acknowledge the love of God in 
 considering man's condition, and adapting to 
 it His own riches and power, but withal he does 
 not receive Christ as a sole and sufficient Foun- 
 tain of life. He does not know, or at least he 
 does not feel, any urgent needs ; and until a 
 man receives from Christ, he cannot but be 
 lukewarm. He is not infidel, he is not cold, he 
 has no objections to acknowledge Christ in 
 some acts of worship ; but so long as he is 
 getting nothing from Christ, — nothing that can 
 compete in reality and advantage with what he 
 is getting from the world, — it stands to reason 
 that he should be only lukewarm ; and in fact 
 he will be only lukewarm. He will give his 
 gratitude, and devote his pursuit and service to 
 what he knows the value of : he will love the 
 world warmly, because from it he has received 
 what persuades him he has need of nothing. 
 
 So evil is this condition, that it exhibits a 
 new feature in the character of our Lord ; pro- 
 vokes a sentiment scarcely elsewhere disi)layed, 
 
LAODICEA. 
 
 161 
 
 —the sentiment of utter disgust, sickening 
 revulsion. Others He may more vehemently 
 upbraid, more terribly destroy ; but from none 
 does He turn with such loathing. Yet, surely 
 this is a very common condition. And this 
 epistle will have been very useful to us, if it 
 shall have taught us to feel with our Lord 
 regarding lukewarmness. The difficulty of de- 
 tecting our own lukewarmness lies, as we 
 have seen, in this, that it is accompanied with 
 self-satisfaction. First, then, are you self- 
 satisfied? Are you quite willing to live another 
 week, or another year, or to the end, just as 
 you are? Do you say, I have need of nothing? 
 The Philadelphians had little strength, and 
 found their course one of great difficulty ; and 
 this was their very salvation. They had to go 
 to Christ for strength ; they were constrained 
 to test his fulness. And just in proportion to 
 your reception from Him, will be your love to 
 Him. Therefore He counsels the Laodiceans, 
 as the cure of their lukewarm condition, to 
 buy of Him. We cannot make those priceless 
 purchases from Christ without rendering Him 
 our hearts. We may pretend to receive from 
 Him, and remain lukewarm; but go and get 
 from Him what is given freely and without 
 
162 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 price, — because no price, is at all commensurate 
 with its value, — and you will no longer be 
 lukewarm, but zealous and repentant. It 
 follows, as day follows the rising of the sun, 
 that zeal follows the acceptance of Christ and 
 his gifts. 
 
 But very probably you are quite aware of 
 this. Possibly it is for this very reason that 
 you will not ask Christ for much, because you 
 are sure that this would make you zealous. 
 You do not desire to be zealous — would much 
 rather be lukewarm; and therefore you will not 
 simply rely on Christ for daily holiness, — will 
 not accept the entire and eternal forgiveness 
 He can give and offers, — will not promise your- 
 self all that He promises in His w^ord. You 
 know there are some who do live on Him ; but 
 that is not your ideal of how a man should pass 
 this life. You rather side with those who, 
 when urged to something like fervour in Christ's 
 cause, say, ' Nonsense ! that is carrying matters 
 too far ; we are not going to make martyrs of 
 ourselves.' Well, if this be so, if you are thus 
 lukewarm, this epistle has this one unmistake- 
 able, plain-spoken lesson for you — that you had 
 far better have nothing at all to do with Christ. 
 You may, if you please, frame a religion for 
 
LAODICEA. 163 
 
 yourselves, and so live as you think fit ; but do 
 not call it the religion of Christ. Be, at the 
 least, honest. Do not sacrifice the very foun- 
 dations of your moral nature in order to become 
 religious. If you cannot be honest in religion, 
 then do not be religious. You gain nothing by 
 it, but lose a great deal. Understand what it 
 is you mean by your professed attachment to 
 Christ. If it be your only hope of salvation, if 
 all your hope is in Him, then all your love and 
 service is due to Him. If He be not your 
 Saviour, then He is nothing to you. The 
 religion whose centre is a dying Kedeemer, on 
 whose love the salvation of all depends, requires 
 that every professor of it be bound by fervent 
 devotion to Him. No other condition of things 
 is conceivable, as consistent either with com- 
 mon sense or any principle of our nature ; and 
 for a man to rest in any other, is the merest 
 thoughtlessness and shallowest self-deception. 
 In some matters a mean may be justifiable ; 
 but here it is all or nothing, — day or night, life 
 or death, Christ or sin and all its fruits. 
 
 In a word, do not pass this epistle without 
 setting this distinctly before you, that a luke- 
 warm condition is worse than a cold one. You 
 receive no advantage from it whatever. If 
 
164 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 once you made no profession, nor ever thought 
 of praying to Christ, and now do profess to be 
 His, but are not serving Him, nor loving Him 
 ■wholly, nor praying to Him as your one hope, 
 then your last state is worse than your first. 
 To be a Christian at all, you must be a fervent 
 Christian. To be the least of Christ's people, 
 you must in all your person and concerns be 
 His. To have the narrowest entrance into the 
 kingdom, you must use violence. If you are 
 not doing so, — if you cannot to your own 
 conscience say you are zealous, — then do not 
 deceive yourself; there is no profit in that. If 
 you see no reason for being zealous, — if you do 
 not feel much real gratitude to Christ, — then 
 do not pretend zeal and gratitude ; do not 
 suppose you can reach heaven, or be any the 
 nearer it, by anything but the sheerest honesty 
 and simplest truth. If the fervent love of a 
 grateful spirit be the absolute requisite of the 
 Christian, do not be content with less ; but do 
 not pretend to have it ; get from Christ what 
 will make you grateful. If you have no need 
 that you know of, which the world does not 
 readily and sufficiently supply, then do not ask 
 Christ for what (all the time) you are hoping to 
 receive from the world ; but ask Him, first of 
 
LAODICEA. 
 
 165 
 
 all, to shew you that you are what you are. 
 Begin at the heginmng. Be not afraid of the 
 sweeping away of false ideas of your state. It 
 is painful, but it is truth; and the truth is 
 lasting, and leads to life. Be not afraid of 
 repentance, for repentance belongs also to truth. 
 Be not afraid of zeal ; for however, in this cold 
 and unbelieving world, zeal may be scorned and 
 condemned, it is the only right state of one who 
 is truly Christ's. In doing these things, you 
 will follow the advice of one who never erred in 
 counsel, who never gave advice that was not 
 worth following, and who here shews you how 
 you may escape from a lukewarm state : * I 
 counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, 
 that thou mayest be rich ; and white raiment, 
 that thou mayest be clothed, and that the 
 shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and 
 anoint thine eyes with eye-salve, that thou 
 mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and 
 chasten : be zealous therefore, and repent.' 
 
 And in what character does our Lord utter 
 this solemn warning and these wholesome ad- 
 monitions to the lukewarm? To those who are 
 undecided (neither one thing nor another), who 
 have no idea of martyrdom, and who fear to 
 exchange the world's good for Christ, He also 
 
1G6 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 appears in a threefold character, — as the Amen, 
 the faithful and true Witness, and the hegin- 
 ning of the creation of God. The Amen, — the 
 one whose character this word hest expresses, 
 in its opposition to all wavering, fearing, 
 doubting, calculating indecision, — the assured, 
 decided One ; every one of whose actions crowned 
 what had gone before, and corroborated it ; 
 who had a single aim, and acted it out ; whose 
 profession and life were absolutely harmonious; 
 who professed nothing on which His mind was 
 not made up ; and who therefore was free from 
 all half-measures, and gave himself, with the 
 whole energy and life of His nature, to each act 
 His principles required ; whose path was one — 
 straightforward and consistent. No feature of 
 His character is more conspicuous in His life 
 than this, coming out even in His words, as He 
 so often confirms the deliverance of truth He is 
 persuaded of by that * Verily, verily,' from 
 which this title Amen (the same word) is taken. 
 The more we look upon Him, the more we 
 discover that One has dwelt safely amid all the 
 strange problems and darkness of this life, and 
 has still been j^ersuaded of the truth ; not one 
 shadow of suspicion flitting ever so hastily over 
 His soul from any clouds of human error, from 
 
LA.ODICEA. 167 
 
 any one-sided representation of truth, or from 
 any difficulties which truth led to. His was 
 not that decision which is loud and vehement, 
 which needs the sound of its own voice to 
 encourage it, and the noise of^its own hustle to 
 deafen it to all objections, all questions, and all 
 different opinion; but the quiet, unostentatious 
 decision, assured and steady, because resting on 
 the truth. Surely by this feature of His 
 character our Lord rebukes us ! Why not go 
 forward, as He went ? Are those things doubt- 
 ful in our case which were certain in His ? Is 
 it doubtful that God is to be served above all, 
 and loved above all ? Is it doubtful whether, 
 if we do commit ourselves to a zealous, con- 
 sistent course, we may not at the end repent ? 
 or has not Christ been the confirmer of all truth 
 to us, as well as assured of all in Himself; and 
 has not His end certified us of what ours will 
 be ; and does He not, in this very epistle, set 
 Himself before us, saying. Overcome, as I also 
 overcame ? 
 
 But what, in the first place, did this following 
 of the truth lead Christ to ? It led Him to a 
 martyr's death. It led Him to become, in all 
 his course, the faithful and true martyr (for this 
 is the word), who would not flinch from follow- 
 
168 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 ing the truth, whatever it led to, because it was 
 the truth — was the right thing to guide ; beside 
 which nothing else was to have a voice. What 
 He would have you to do, is just what He 
 Himself did — to act on the truth. Do you 
 believe that such and such a thing is right ? 
 then question no more, but do it. Especially, 
 do you believe that what the word of God 
 reveals is true — that Christ did die, and now 
 lives for you ? then act on this. Doing so, the 
 reproach of lukewarmness will be taken away. 
 But does fear still war with the truth, and tempt 
 you to be blind, or to forget it ? Is there ever 
 a warning voice that says. See what you lose, 
 think of the sacrifices you must make, if you 
 are to follow the dictates of a fervent spirit, — 
 think how poor you will yourself become, if you 
 are to be all for Christ ? Then look to Christ 
 in this third character — ' the beginning of the 
 creation of God.' Where did all these things 
 come from that you so fear to lose ? how do 
 they exist ? Simply from Christ. He is their 
 beginning, as He is the beginning of all creation. 
 And do you fear to lose by coming closer to the 
 Source of all? Does the light of the world 
 become less bright as you travel towards the 
 sun ? Surely, of all fears, this is the vainest — 
 
LAODICEA. 
 
 169 
 
 that you will have less of things created by 
 having more of the favour of Him who is the 
 beginning and fountain of all creation ! Do 
 you believe that Christ is Creator, and can you 
 yet fear loss in following Him ? 
 
 This being the i^erson who exhorts you to 
 fervour, consider the attitude He assumes ; or, 
 to speak more truly, the attitude He maintains 
 still towards you. Behold, He stands, and has 
 long been standing, at the door knocking ; and, 
 as He knocks, His voice has told you who it is 
 that knocks. He has declared His desire for 
 nearer fellowship than you will give Him. His 
 love cannot be put off with such distant inter- 
 course as satisfies your lukewarmness. He 
 will come in and sup with you, and you with 
 Him. As the uninvited friend, welcome at all 
 hours, whose familiarity pleases, so He would 
 be with you, that in that close and eager com- 
 munion your heart may learn to burn. Listen, 
 then, to this ' Behold,' though all things else 
 tell you to sleep, and still to dream and sleep ; 
 think of Him who, in His infinite compassion 
 and most humbling forbearance, has stood so 
 long seeking, from age to age, reception in all 
 human hearts, and who now stands, held still 
 distant from you by your cold unwillingness, 
 
170 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 but still supplicating admission, unwilling to 
 depart and leave you ! Though you have driven 
 Him from warm love, banished Him from your 
 heart. He stands expectant at the door. When, 
 by sickness or affliction, you were taken aside 
 from the noise of this world, when all other 
 sounds were muffled to you, did you not hear 
 still this patient knock ? When in some pause 
 from the world's clamour and intoxication,* 
 when the calmness of some still scene of nature 
 surrounded you, and laid to sleep the tumult 
 within, did you not then hear this calm, cease- 
 less knocking '? did you not feel that there were 
 other calls than those of this world, yes, and 
 calls more worthy to be listened to ? Were it 
 not well to rise and give entrance to the di\ine 
 Suppliant, to suffer Him to enter among those 
 other guests within you, and check their revelry 
 by His presence '? Is His Father's house wdthin 
 you to be still a den of thieves ? Are the only 
 sounds to be heard there to be the sounds of 
 trade and business, — thoughts that keep God 
 out of His own just place ? Why is it that you 
 keep Him out ? Will Christ do you harm ? 
 Can He be too near, too well known, too much 
 confided in ? What occupies your heart with so 
 
 * See Taughan in loc. 
 
LAODICEA. 171 
 
 deadly an influence, that you cannot receive 
 Christ ? Ought not the very fact that there is 
 something within you that cannot co-exist with 
 strong love to Christ, to warn you against that 
 thing, whatever it be ? And think, too, what it 
 may bring you to; for you may keep Christ 
 for ever out. He will not force an entrance. 
 What will become of you when He departs, 
 never more to return, — His last knock given, 
 His last appeal heard, died away on the air, 
 and refused ? But let it never be so. The love 
 of Christ is within your reach. The highest, 
 most perfect portion that can be given or re- 
 ceived, presses at your gates. 
 
 To him who receives Christ, and by the 
 kindhng fervour of His love is saved from luke- 
 warmness, and overcomes, the promise is given 
 of sitting with Christ on His throne. This 
 seems to be appropriate as the seventh, com- 
 pleting, and final promise given to the con- 
 quering Christian. It is the sum of all that a 
 Christian looks for — victory with Christ. Up- 
 held here mainly by this, that he is on Christ's 
 side, and identified with Him, his reward is, 
 that he be triumphant with Him. He who is 
 'the beginning of the creation of God,' sits 
 with the Father on the throne,— has the ab- 
 
172 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 solute control and eternal government of all 
 persons and events ; and they who are not 
 blinded by the present and visible things 
 created, but through them see, and above them 
 trust in, the creating Word, shall, along with 
 Christ, have all creation at their disposal ; not, 
 certainly, for selfish gratification (that is not 
 your desire, nor would be your reward), but to 
 carry out the will of Christ everywhere, and to 
 shed abroad over all the blessings of His Spirit. 
 And observe to whom this i^romise is imme- 
 diately given. This, the greatest of the promises, 
 is given to those who are lowest among the 
 professors of Christ — who fill our Lord with a 
 holy disgust. It is these whose love He still 
 seeks to quicken and to win, and to these His 
 throne is promised. Take courage, then, if you 
 feel little love for Christ, and do not think it 
 must always be the same with you. He has 
 long borne with your indifference, not because 
 it is a state to be tolerated, but because He 
 knows it is destructive, and cannot leave you 
 in it. Have you not everything on your side 7 
 Will Christ be indifferent whether you remain 
 lukewarm or no? Is not this entreaty, 'Would 
 thou wert cold or hot ! ' a promise of all help to 
 you in seeking fervour ? Is He not waiting to 
 
LAODICEA. 173 
 
 be your intimate, that you may learn to love 
 Him ? He does not weary of you because He 
 finds you in fault ; nay, nor even when you are 
 slow in learning ; but He still sets before you 
 the throne, and eternal partnership with Him- 
 self. 
 
 These are the words which our Lord leaves 
 with us, to assure us of that constant presence 
 of His, which the world believes not, because it 
 does not see ; and of that constant fellowship 
 of His, which the world desires not, because it 
 has never known. Are these words true ? 
 Then surely the Lord is at hand. Ai-e you 
 distant and cold to Him? Do you feel little 
 joy at learning that He is so near and so 
 accessible ? Have you little love, and do you 
 think it must always be the same with you? 
 Then remember that Christ is not distant nor 
 cold towards you; that He is not indifferent 
 whether you remain lukewarm or no ; that in 
 this entreaty, ' Would thou wert cold or hot ! ' 
 there is a promise of all help to you in seeking 
 fervour ; and that in this promise of His you 
 have every security that you also shall learn to 
 love Him. 
 
VIII. 
 
 €andnixan. 
 
REV. XXI. 7. 
 He that overcometh slmll inherit all things. 
 
AUR consideration of the epistles of our Lord 
 ^^ to bis churches will have served an end 
 much inferior to that which is intended, if it 
 cause us to pass on to other parts of the word 
 of God, as if now we had exhausted this. The 
 miner who dug a few feet below the surface, 
 and ascertained that a rich bed of gold lay 
 beneath, and then passed on to seek new dis- 
 coveries, leaving the opened gold-pit to be filled 
 in and hidden by the wear of weather and of 
 time, would not be more foohsh and blind to 
 his own interests. For the things written are 
 not only to be understood, but to be used ; and 
 can, indeed, only be understood by being used. 
 Like a friend whose friendship, though ap- 
 preciated, is not known to the full till tried 
 severely, and found equal to the trial, the 
 Scriptures must be tested by the necessities of 
 your life, before you sufficiently understand or 
 
 M 
 
178 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 justly value them. You have not only to learn 
 what is in them for all ; you have to take what 
 is in them for you. And if there he one part of 
 Scripture more than another to which this 
 applies, it is that which declares promises. A 
 promise is nothing save to those who rest on it. 
 The descriptions of a hetter country are set 
 hefore you, not to please your fancy for an 
 hour, hut to induce 3'ou to set out for that 
 country, in the faith that it is what it has been 
 described, and in the hope that its riches will 
 be satisfying to you. If you are not thus using 
 the descriptions given and offers made, then 
 there might as well be no such country, so far 
 as you are concerned. It matters not how 
 useful these promises have been to others, nor 
 how many are now being disentangled from the 
 evil of this world by the power of them, if j^ou 
 yourselves have not made them your hope, and 
 be not living by them. And if the seven 
 promises of Christ, which were uttered to these 
 seven churches, do not contain in sum all that 
 you desire for your future, then there is some- 
 thing in your present that needs amendment. 
 
 No doubt, it throws contempt upon this pre- 
 sent life to gather up into a future state all 
 that is perfect, aU that is supremely desirable ; 
 
CONCLUSION. 179 
 
 but is it not the truth that many of our very 
 deepest desires are not here satisfied, and are 
 only laid to sleep when the windows of heaven 
 open upon us, and some rays of its light fall 
 upon us, and enable us to believe that, though 
 this world and that are not one, yet they are 
 united ? And why be so jealous of this world 
 and its rights ? why so anxious to substantiate 
 its claim to glory and true value ? You are not 
 more deeply involved in this world than in that. 
 It is a very short-sighted selfishness indeed 
 that does not see that the future is its own as 
 well as the present. The future is laid before 
 you, not to shew you what belongs to others, 
 but to invite you to what is your own. You 
 must take your part there, not as here for a 
 short time, and in a narrow and restricted 
 manner, but in eternal and complete life. And 
 therefore does Jesus Christ, the one Prophet to 
 whom God delivers this revelation of things 
 that must shortly come to pass, appear in the 
 beginning of this book as a leader, on the eve 
 of hard and many-fortuned battle, animating 
 his followers carefully, each according to their 
 need, and setting before them such rewards as 
 they will think of in the heat of fight ; and 
 when sinking from fatigue, and outnumbered, 
 
180 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 and nigh overcome, shall yet be braced again 
 with fresh nerve, and conquer through hope. 
 In the middle of the book He unfolds some 
 striking incidents of this long-continued battle, 
 guides the eye to the figures of the leaders, and 
 teaches us to discern, under gay plumes and 
 behind glittering devices, the features and forms 
 of our deadliest enemies ; and far from leading 
 us to believe that the day is easily won, and 
 '^e battle of little importance, He leads us very 
 distinctly to expect emergencies of the most 
 critical nature, and incidents of the most appal- 
 ling circumstance and consequence ; and not 
 till the end does the smoke and dust roll away, 
 and let us see the acknowledged might of our 
 Leader, and the hosts of the redeemed return- 
 ing in peace and glory, with everlasting joy 
 upon their heads. 
 
 These promises, then, contain all that Christ 
 would have our hopes definitely to fix upon ; 
 and there are some things to be observed upon 
 them, as forming one whole, besides what may 
 be noticed of them individually. That they 
 are connected as a whole, would be noticed 
 were there no other mark than this, that the 
 first promise is of life as the necessary condi- 
 tion, substratum, or foundation of the others, 
 
CONCLUSION. 181 
 
 and that the last is of triumph, as the crown 
 and completion of what has gone before. 
 
 1. The first promise is : 'To him that over- 
 cometh will I give to eat of the tree of Hfe 
 which is in the midst of the paradise of God.' 
 Of this tree of life we have a short notice at 
 the beginning, and a short notice at the end of 
 the accomit of God's dealing with us. At the 
 beginning, when man sinned, he was driven 
 forth from paradise, and the flaming sword was 
 set, lest he should return, and put forth his 
 hand to the tree of life, and eat, and live for 
 ever. Whatever, then, this tree may have 
 been, this we know concerning it, that whoso 
 eats its fruit has immortal life, and that it is 
 beyond our power to reach this fruit. At the 
 end of the word of God, in the last chapter of 
 this book, we are re-introduced to this tree, and 
 are there taught that the fruit of it has again 
 become accessible and available to man. Of 
 the hfe which this tree affords, we gather these 
 particulars : that it is now a healing life ; that 
 it is eternal and never-failing (bearing its fruit 
 every month, from year's end to year's en^ ; 
 not waiting on the seasons of time, but exu- 
 berant in the abiding summer of eternity) ; 
 that it is various in its supply, bearing twelve 
 
182 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 manner of fruits ; and that it is enjoj-ed with 
 appetite, or as the satisfaction and gratification 
 of felt desire, which is denoted by putting forth 
 the hand, plucking the fruit, and eating. It 
 does not need to be pointed out that none of 
 these particulars attach to the life we naturally 
 live. Not immortality ; for as surely as every 
 one who lives has been born, so surely must he 
 die, and feels that there is behind death some- 
 thing more terrible than death, but which we 
 can only call death eternal — having no word 
 more full of terror and anxiety than this word 
 ' death.' Not healuuj ; for the longer a man 
 lives on the strength of a natural life, the 
 weaker and nearer destruction does he tend. 
 To progress in life, is to progress to death ; 
 the more of life you have the less you retain. 
 Not variety nor appetite ; for the surest way to 
 pall a man's appetite for natural life, and teach 
 him its sameness, is to shew him its every 
 form and variety, which being speedily run 
 through and tasted, he sits down nauseated 
 with what he has got, and wondering that there 
 is no more ; and almost always coming to the 
 conclusion of Job : ' I would not live alway,' — 
 believing that life may be endured as a neces- 
 sity, but cannot be rested in as full and satis- 
 
CONCLUSION. 183 
 
 fying, beyond which no desire can reach. Now, 
 the life that is promised is such that, after 
 looking on every other form of life, and com- 
 paring it with what the tree affords, — after 
 giving loose to his desires, and letting them 
 range to the furthest regions of fancy, — he 
 would still turn to the tree unweariedly, as at 
 the first, and, with the appetite of a first taste, 
 pluck its fruit in preference to all else ; nothing 
 so fitting, nothing so exactly corresponding to 
 my nature, so covering all my wants, and 
 gratifying the least of my desires, as this. 
 And surely, if anything is calculated to en- 
 courage us in cleaving, at the risk of much 
 pain and loss, to the right ; if anything can 
 help us stedfastly to restrain our desires now 
 to things commanded, and to live in what may 
 seem to us a very lifeless and limited way ; if 
 anything can enable us quietly to let go long- 
 cherished desires, and crush others in the bud, 
 because to satisfy them we should need to omit 
 duty to God, or forget love to our neighbour ; 
 if anything can reconcile us to a life that is 
 often comfortless, often painful only, sometimes 
 ghastly, and sometimes tormenting, and always 
 ending in death, it is this, — that there is shortly 
 to be given us entrance on a life, where all that 
 
184 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 hurts and offends is excluded ; where there is 
 healing and corrective for all that is here dis- 
 eased, disordered, and distressing; where all 
 that is in us — all hope and affection, all facult}^ 
 of heart and mind — shall be nourished to a 
 complete and here unthought of maturity ; 
 where the heart shall never he secretly gnawed 
 by hoi^eless and scarce-understood desires, but 
 with all its energy shall give itself to a life 
 that is all understood and all delighted in ; 
 where, in the all-comprehensive expression of 
 Scripture, ' there is no more curse ; ' where each 
 face shall reflect the joy and brightness of the 
 Father's; and where our lips, forgetting the 
 language of pain, lamentation, and sighing, 
 shall be filled with the utterances which hearts 
 overflowing with joy and love shall evermore 
 dictate. 
 
 2. And to this promise add the second ; for 
 this is a life that ' shall not be hurt of the 
 second death' (Eev. ii. 11). All that we can 
 say of a man in this world is, that he has been 
 healthy, has been invulnerable to all common 
 ailments ; bul, for all that, he will not escape 
 death. It becomes not a whit more likely that 
 he shall live for ever, though he live a century: 
 and quite as sure is this second death to all 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 185 
 
 who are not accepting Christ's promise and 
 deliverance. The certainty of the first, and 
 most of the peculiarities of the first,— all that 
 makes it a thing of dread,— only typifies the 
 second. It is the second death to which we are, 
 all of us, exposed by being born ; just as, by 
 being born, we are exposed to death natural. 
 So that, to receive a life which shall not be 
 hurt of the second death, is to receive a life 
 which shall be hurt of nothing. It is that 
 which has most claim to hurt us ; which every- 
 thing points to as our doom. All disease and 
 weakness, all remorse and foreboding, point to 
 death eternal as their end and consummation. 
 The second death is not an accident, which may 
 or may not befall you. It stands in the path of 
 every man born into this world; it is your due; 
 and unless there were some security against 
 this, a promise of life would be vain. The 
 difficulty of realising the blessedness of heavenly 
 life, arises from our condition here, as looking 
 forward to death. We are limited to so many 
 years ; bound by all the conditions of time ; 
 and however successful, hopeful, and happy, 
 have still, all of us, to pass through the one 
 common end of life. And we cannot, from this 
 side of death, understand rightly what it can 
 
186 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 be to live in eternity, — death for ever passed, 
 and no termination possible. There is a hurry 
 and rapidity in this present state, which all 
 remark upon, and which is incongruous with 
 the peace and rest of heaven. But when time 
 shall be no longer, there will be room for every- 
 thing to occupy its due portion of our thought 
 and strength ; we shall be free always to enjoy 
 to the full the now. The present and the future 
 shall never compete for our attention. There 
 will be no hurrying on, no passing away, no 
 regrets for unfinished joys, and purposes broken 
 off before fulfilment. And what a complete 
 alteration this must bring about, it is simply 
 impossible to conceive. And when this pro- 
 mise of immunity from the second death is 
 received, it imparts something of repose to the 
 character even here. The creature of a day 
 begins to breathe more freely, not in gasps, but 
 in calm, deep respirations. The barriers con- 
 fining him disappear: the horizon is now made 
 only by his own weakness or power of vision. 
 There is room for all growth and attainment ; 
 encouragement and promise given to every 
 variety and magnitude of purpose and desire ; 
 and the soul perceives that a life without fear, 
 hurt, or interruption, without weariness or 
 
CONCLUSION. 187 
 
 decay, without change, seasons, or flight, is its 
 right, eternal condition, in which it can be all 
 it is capable of being, and is a life worthy of 
 Christ to give. 
 
 3. But though a new foundation and source 
 of life be thus opened up to us, and though the 
 future, which is the due of all, be reversed to 
 those who are in Christ, what is the daily sus- 
 tenance, and what the enjoyments of that life ? 
 The forbidden sustenance and enjoyments of 
 this world are palpable and attractive, and 
 seem to be very suitable to our nature. Suit- 
 able to some parts of our nature they are, else 
 they would have no power of appeal to us ; but 
 we are commanded to be temperate and self- 
 restrained, not to give ourselves up to everything 
 here that attracts, because our nature is at 
 present disordered, and does not act in all its 
 parts harmoniously, — passions and appetites 
 often drawing in a different direction from 
 judgment and conscience. And to encourage 
 us in this patient self-restraint, there is a 
 promise given of sustenance and enjoyment 
 proper to our nature, which shall be enjoyed 
 hereafter (Eev. ii. 17). Now, just in so far as 
 we cleave to this promise, and repress unlawful 
 desires, do we become ]prepared for the full 
 
188 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 enjoyment prepared for us ; and in so far as 
 we follow the bent of one part of our nature, — 
 of a desire of the flesh or of the mind, — do we 
 unfit ourselves for a full and perfect enjoyment 
 hereafter. In resisting temj^tation, we seem to 
 do ourselves a wrong, and to suffer loss ; but, 
 in crushing one part of our being, we develop 
 and strengthen the whole. You never obeyed 
 conscience, to the detriment of a carnal or 
 earthly desire, without becoming a stronger and 
 better soul, capable of doing and enduring more. 
 Each act of this kind, — every resistance of a 
 strong drawing to i->leasant evil, — makes you 
 fitter for, and draws you nearer to, true plea- 
 sure; carries on a main part of the work for 
 which your Eedeemer looks, — the recovery of 
 the ascendancy of conscience over every part of 
 your being. And a great help in this difficult, 
 constant, and painful work is, the promise that 
 sustenance and enjoyment of a perfect kind, 
 adapted in every way and particular to the 
 requirements of your nature, is already prepared 
 for you. Christ asks you to resist temptation ; 
 to keep yourself from much in which many find 
 their whole delight, — not that you may enjoy 
 less, but that you may enjoy infinitely more. 
 It is still his love that promises. It is quite 
 
CONCLUSION. 189 
 
 true Tve can scarcely see at once how such 
 natures as ours, so innately sentient and pas- 
 sionate, are to have full, free, unrestrained 
 enjoj^ment hereafter ; but it does not matter 
 that Tve should know. We have the word of 
 Christ for it, that a liveliness of life and a 
 fulness of joy shall be ours, such as is not here 
 conceived by the most ardent ; and this is 
 enough ; it is hidden manna that is promised 
 for our support. But this one thing it is most 
 important to observe, as indicated by the second 
 part of this third promise (Rev. ii. 17), that the 
 chief help in resisting worldly temptation, and 
 the chief training of conscience to its high 
 office of command, is communion wdth Jesus 
 Christ. In every particular Christ presents 
 Himself as the opposite of the world. All that 
 it promises, He gives of a better kind; and 
 here, in the stone with the name written upon 
 it, which no man knows save him that receives 
 it. He offers you His personal, individual love. 
 As a sworn intimate, He will kindly receive and 
 share all your secret burdens; your most secret 
 desires He will regard. He will be to you as 
 close as a secret known can draw two human 
 beings ; that is, as close and mingled as hearts 
 can be, — He knowing of you what none other 
 
190 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 knows, and you knowing of Him what none 
 other knows. This may well keep you from 
 the world. If you have this, you have what 
 you would give up for nothing at all else, and 
 what nothing can take from you. 
 
 4. As this promise indicates that there is 
 sufficient support and enjoyment, so the next 
 (Eev. ii. 26-28) promises sufficient employment 
 and honour in the life everlasting. The third 
 and fourth promises are closely connected ; for 
 the ruling power promised in the fourth is 
 already hinted at in the power of self-command 
 required hy the third. Every one who has 
 attended to the declarations of Scripture con- 
 cerning future employments and rewards, must 
 have ohserved how largely they are made up of 
 promise of authority and ruling power. And 
 perhaps not a few^ have rather shrunk from 
 this, as heing the last thing they would desire 
 as a reward. There are backward as well as 
 ambitious natures ; and to the backward it is 
 no object of hope to receive five or ten cities as 
 their care, or to rule the nations. And no doubt 
 there is a variety of reward, adapted to the 
 various character and diverse training of the 
 redeemed; so that some must continue to cling 
 much more to other features of the promised 
 
co^^CLUSION. 191 
 
 life than to this. Still, admitting this, there is 
 no one who may safely omit any of these pro- 
 mises, as no way concerning him; and if a man 
 be faithfully endeavouring to overcome, follow- 
 ing Christ's footsteps, he will both discover 
 his need of such a promise as this, and also 
 be imbued with the spirit of rule. For in 
 proportion as a Christian learns the excellence 
 and worthy supremacy of Christ, and becomes 
 habituated to viewing Him as indeed the Head 
 over all things, does he wonder how the world 
 continues as it is, and desire that the rule, 
 spirit, and influence of Christ may become 
 universal. The more profit and deeper peace a 
 man finds from being himself ruled by Chris- 
 tianity, the more truly does he desire to extend 
 and establish this rule. And he does so extend 
 it, often unconsciously to himself, by all that 
 he does in a Christian spirit; and you could 
 offer to such a man no more attractive employ- 
 ment than to represent Christ, and promote 
 His blessed will and influence. 
 
 Moreover, the training of our spirits to 
 obedience fits us for command,— according to 
 the well-ascertained maxim, that none can rule 
 well who cannot obey well,— a maxim founded 
 on the truth, that all government must begin 
 
192 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 with self-government. With equal truth Christ 
 could say : ' I am come not to be ministered 
 unto, but to minister ; ' and, ' I am a King.' 
 In Him these meet; and necessarily, according 
 to the make of human nature, there meet the 
 lowliest obedience that ever was rendered, and 
 the supremest kingliness of spirit that ever 
 blessed this earth. Letting Himself down to 
 the deepest degradation, He remained superior 
 to any possible diminishing of the true glory of 
 His nature.* Submitting at all times to be 
 questioned and tempted, never once did He 
 lose composed self-command, which gave Him 
 the victory, and made all men feel that He was 
 above them, and spoke with authority. And 
 this because He was at one in His own spirit ; 
 all His nature working in one direction, not 
 interrupted or distracted by turbulent passions. 
 And here is our training as rulers to begin : in 
 learning, first of all, that there is always one 
 thing that ought to be done, and done with our 
 might; in learning what 'duty' means; in 
 learning authoritatively to command ourselves 
 with a voice speaking within ourselves, yet 
 higher than ourselves — the voice of eternal 
 truth, as much spoken to us now as if God's 
 
 * Compare Ulbnann's Sinlessness of Jesus, Sec. iv. 
 
CONCLUSION. 193 
 
 voice were heard at our side ; in learning that we 
 are servants, and in imbibing the spirit of true 
 service. 
 
 5. Such being the life, the sustenance and 
 enjoyments, the employment and honour of it, 
 how shall they be gifted who inherit it ? The 
 fifth and sixth promises (Kev. iii. 5 and 12) 
 shew us not only the general condition into 
 which the society of the redeemed are ushered, 
 but the personal changes which pass upon the 
 condition of each one of them. There shall be 
 first, according to the fifth promise, a declara- 
 tion of their real connection with Christ, and a 
 manifestation of their acceptance with God. 
 Clothed in white raiment, they shall be con- 
 fessed by name before the King and inhabitants 
 of heaven. A Christian here believes he is 
 forgiven ; there he shall know it with an assur- 
 ance that, let belief be what it may, it cannot 
 equal. The reality of Christ's substitution, 
 the union of the believer with Christ, the 
 substantial results of faith, and especially the 
 sufficiency of the satisfaction made for sin, 
 shall be understood hereafter as they are not 
 now. All men and angels shall see the efficacy 
 of Christ's work in finished result; a world 
 redeemed shall appear as his work. The 
 
194 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 inquiry of all shall be turned towards those who 
 walk in white ; and to the question, * Who are 
 these?' the reply, 'These are they who have 
 washed their robes in the blood of Christ,' shall 
 open up the infinite merit of Christ's atonement, 
 and shew Him as the centre of all purity — the 
 one Physician of all spiritual disease, and 
 cleanser from all defilement. So clean and 
 utter a purification, — so spotless even to the 
 eye of God, — shall there be possessed by each 
 Christian, that to asperse any one of that 
 multitude, would be to cast a stain upon the 
 Kedeemer. In this manifestation to the eye 
 and ear of the great glory and effect of Christ's 
 righteousness, there will be attained an assur- 
 ance of personal salvation such as cannot be 
 now possessed. However assured you may 
 now be, will there be nothing added to your 
 certainty when the voice of Christ has acknow- 
 ledged you, and confessed you before the Father 
 as one for whom He died ? However your 
 bitter remorse and shame have passed away, 
 however you have overcome the weakening 
 effects of guilt, will not some deeper peace 
 possess 3'our soul, some opener boldness shew 
 itself in your face and actions, when you your- 
 self, and all who know you, are assured of your 
 
CONCLUSION. 195 
 
 connection with Christ, your favour in the eye 
 of God, and your complete forgiveness and 
 regeneration ? Do what we will, shame hangs 
 about us here, our constant companion. Whose 
 heart has not more or less to condemn him of, 
 and undermine the full boldness of his confi- 
 dence ? Shame cannot dwell where there is no 
 sin, and therefore our first parents, though 
 naked, were not ashamed; and the clothing 
 they sought, after their sin, is but one fragment 
 of the countless devices to put a decent covering 
 and colour on our true character. But there is 
 only one eternal covering of sin, and that is the 
 robe here spoken of; to be acknowledged as 
 Christ's, for whom He died, this is the only 
 cure of our shame. To enter eternal life on 
 any false plea, with sin unaccounted for, or 
 slightly covered over, is impossible; and, if 
 possible, were to lay a ruinous foundation for 
 eternal happiness. We must be truly at peace 
 with God, truly forgiven, truly accepted by Him; 
 and this being so, our eternal life receives an 
 unshaken foundation. There must be nothing 
 left to a perhaps, nothing intentionally held 
 out of mind, which may afterwards come up 
 and mar all. Our whole past must be taken 
 account of; and with this past in view, in 
 
196 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 God's view, and in our own, we must enter 
 eternity. 
 
 6. And thus only is it possible that the sixth 
 promise can be fulfilled, and that we can be 
 enduringly and stably set as pillars in the 
 temple of God. The sins that have brought 
 us again and again to shame and doubt of our 
 connection with Christ, will there be finally 
 overcome, and we shall go no more out. The 
 name of God and of the heavenly city will be 
 written upon us, and we shall, in all our 
 interests, be identified with Christ and His 
 redeemed. All that the fifth promise declares 
 the Christian's right to through Christ, the 
 sixth declares the confirmation of. He is not 
 only introduced as pure and acceptable, but he 
 receives assurance that he will never more turn 
 to his sin, and fall from the state to which 
 Christ has brought him. The endurance pro- 
 mised here is not the same as that which is 
 implied in the second promise. It is an endur- 
 ance not only in life, useful and enjoyable, but 
 an endurance in a position so near to God, and 
 so involved with the honour of God's name, 
 that it implies an endurance in the highest 
 holiness and favour of God. It is an endurance 
 certified not only against outward calamity, 
 
CONCLUSION. 197 
 
 accident, or assault, but (which is more) against 
 inward weakness, change, or unfaithfulness. 
 To be able to depend upon what is henceforth 
 eternally inseparable from ourselves, and to 
 calculate on having strength equal to any 
 emergency, this is beyond our present experi- 
 ence. To look upon sin as a thing past for 
 ever ; to be able to promise ourselves a future 
 freed from all interference and blight of our 
 own or others' sin — this is reserved for the life 
 above. There is a new city, — men gathered 
 together in such societies and relations as fit 
 their new dispositions, and accord with the will 
 of God, whose city it is. One great cause of 
 backsliding shall there no longer exist — the 
 doubt whether we be indeed among the number 
 of Christ's people. The name of the city, writ- 
 ten upon every citizen, shall give him final and 
 constant assurance that he is on Christ's side. 
 In the last promise (Eev. iii. 21) the sub- 
 stance of all victory is given : ' To him that 
 overcometh will I grant to sit with me on my 
 throne ;' i.e., every Christian will triumph with 
 Christ. Throughout the promises there is 
 indication that from Christ proceeds all good, 
 and that to be with Him is the sum of all good. 
 All that He promises He has Himself, by his 
 
198 THE SEVEN CHURCHES OF ASIA. 
 
 own obedient suffering, earned ; and to His 
 own reward He invites all who in themselves 
 have no hope, and who do not see how they 
 can earn the least approach to any one of the 
 blessings He gives. As little as we can undo 
 what the first Adam has brought upon us, so 
 ^little can we accomplish what the second Adam 
 has achieved for us. In these promises is the 
 sum of the restoration to our first estate ; the 
 reversal of every evil that has come upon us 
 through sin ; the re -union of our persons to 
 God, and bringing back of our entire condition 
 to the love of God. And of these seven pro- 
 mises, the seventh is the sum. Having this 
 symbol of ' victor}^ with Christ,' let each man 
 who finds his condition here unsatisf3^ing fill 
 up the general form here given with his own 
 specially desired victory; and for all the variety 
 of evil which the world exhibits, this victory 
 will prove sufficient. But it is by overcoming 
 we reach ^dctory, and not by idly standing as 
 spectators of what Christ has done, and waiting 
 till we be transferred from a state full of evil, 
 to a state where evil has ceased to be known. 
 In temptation you must overcome. In affliction 
 you must overcome by hearty submission ; in 
 sickness by patient waiting. Upon every form 
 
CONCLUSION. 199 
 
 of evil you are bound to make war, not to run 
 from it, as if it would die out of itself. You 
 must do what you can to hasten the victory, 
 and strive against sin as if you had none but 
 yourself to depend on. If you look for a life 
 where there is no death, conquer the fear of 
 death now. If you look for a life of full enjoy- 
 ment, conquer the craving for all kinds of 
 enjoyment here. If you expect to be shame- 
 less, learn to found your confidence securely on 
 Christ, and beware of doing what shames you 
 even before men. If you expect to be employed 
 in representing Christ as a ruler, learn now to 
 represent Him in the world, and shew now the 
 spirit of His rule. If you expect to see the 
 entire efficacy of His work for our redemption, 
 and be thereby confirmed in all hope and right- 
 eousness, then do not neglect to ponder the life 
 and death and person of Christ. 
 
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 Edinburgh : Printed hy John Greig cC- Son. 
 
JBY THE SAME AXJTSOK. 
 
 Lately Published, in Cronm Svo., Cloth, price 28. Gd., 
 
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