The Adaptation of the City of God

Revelation xxi. 17

“And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of an angel.” The first thing which strikes us in this passage is the fact that the wall of God’s city is measured. From a Jewish writer, impressed beyond all things with the magnitude of God, we should have expected a different symbol. We should have looked for the statement that the height of the wall was immeasurable. The idea which arrests us is not the profusion, but the reserve, of Divine power. And it arrests us all the more be¬ cause, however unlikely to be contemplated by an Eastern mind, it is true. In all departments of this universe we are confronted by THE ADAPTATION OF

reserve. Everything has its measure, its limit, the bounds which it may not pass. Such trite maxims as “no rose without its thorn,” “no gold without alloy,” are expressive of human experience everywhere. The city of God, as we now see it — and we see it in the act of building — presents the appearance of something which, when it shall be completed, will be completed in a particular direction, adapted to a special set of circumstances. It will have finish, not to every eye, but to the eye of him who seeks that particular kind of beauty, and for whom that kind of beauty has been designed and fashioned.

Now, it is a most important question what the measure of a thing is. It is the preliminary question, the question antecedent to every other. If you are asked concerning any object, “Do you consider it a perfect invention?” you will have to inquire “For what?” You will have to ask “What is its measure? wrhat is its purpose?” Remember that if a thing has a purpose, it has a limit. To make an object for a special end is to render it unfit for all contrary ends; its power in one direction means its weakness in another. Accordingly, the very limits of nature — the incipient city of God — suggest that there is a purpose. The train may be made for goods, or it may be made for passengers. Either of these is a purpose, and either of these is a limit. Each of them is the measure of the train. If it falls beneath that measure, it is imperfect; if it rises above that measure, it is equally imperfect. It will reach its perfection in its exact adaptation to the end which its construction had in view.

Now, the universe may be compared to a train. It is a state of forces in movement. To what goal is it moving? What is its destination? Is it made for goods or for passengers? Is it designed to manifest mechanical skill, or is it intended to subserve the wants of the community? The answer to these questions is the determining of its measure.

The answer which St. John gives is very clear and very bold. He says in so many words that the measure of the universe is the

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measure of a man, that the ground of its construction is a human ground, that the secret of its mechanism is the adaptation to human needs, that the goal of its movement is the realisation of human aspirings. This is verystriking language — all the more striking because it is the statement of a view which is habitually laughed at by philosophy. That the universe is fashioned after the pattern of a human model has been a doctrine at which the ages of culture have ever sneered, and the apostles of culture ever scoffed. Theodore Parker says that a buffalo’s God would be one of its own species. Matthew Arnold ridicules the popular faith as the worship of “a non-natural and exaggerated man in the next street.” Benedict Spinosa empties God of all qualities, lest he should limit His being. The later Judaism itself was the adoration of an unknown God — unapproachable, inaccessible, in Himself unintelligible. “When I consider the heavens, what is man?” is a question which rises spontaneously to the cultured mind. We feel at such moments as if the city of God were something outside of us, unsympathetic with us. We feel disposed to resent any earthly measurement of it as an impious thing. We feel that to attribute a human purpose to this universe is like putting a blot upon a picture, marring the work of a sculptor. We persuade ourselves that this train ought to be bound for unknown regions, not only beyond the scope, but beyond the ken, of our intellectual faculties, and that it is the mark of an unscientific mind to give its lines the measure of a man.

Is it so? Is it an unscientific conception to suppose that the universe has a spiritual purpose? Is it an idea which is only tolerable in the primitive man, but which the man of science must reject? On the contrary, I do not hesitate to say that, so far as things have yet advanced, the peculiar support of this doctrine lies in science. I say “so far as things have yet advanced.” I cannot tell what ultimately may be at the end of the line. But I know that in the meantime the end of the line is man. The system of natural evolution, so far as we know it, has issued

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as the last result in the production of a human personality, a living spirit. It matters not here how it came. If it could be proved to have come by the energy of material nature, it would make this case all the stronger; it would show that spirit is the goal of matter. We do not know the nature of these energies which have conspired to make spirit; and we accept our ignorance. But we do know that up to this date, spirit is the latest product; it is the end of the line. It is subsequent to star-life, subsequent to mineral life, subsequent to plant-life, subsequent to animal life. Being so, is it at the present moment unscientific to say that this shall be our measure of the aim of nature? Life is a higher thing than deadness. Conscious life is higher than unconscious. Reflective life — life conscious of its own consciousness — is the highest of all. And this is at the end of the line — the last achievement of the creative or evolving energy. Is it not from this height that we ought to survey nature? Is it un¬ scientific to say that this height is to-day the measure of nature? Waiving the question of creation altogether, looking, not at the beginning, but at the end, are we not entitled to say provisionally that the latest in fact has been the first in view — that the city of God has been built “according to the measure of a man”?

You will observe in passing that man is not only, so far as we know, a terminus; he is a point of junction. To say that he is the goal of nature is not to give a limited measure¬ ment to nature. The measure of a man is the largest measure which we can at present conceive. He has been called the microcosm of the universe, to signify that he has in him a little bit of everything. In the symmetry of his body are combined the elements of matter. In the circulation of his blood is seen the play of the unconscious physical forces. In his spontaneous growth we see the life of the plant. In his instincts we behold on a higher plane the nature of the animal. In his mind we have a new product, which yet for the first time reads the old.

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Those who sneer at a human purpose of the universe should consider carefully what is implied in “human.” A man is not an individual; he is a universal. He is the only creature we know who gathers up the many into the one. Within the radius of his brain meet things which otherwise are uncom¬ bined. The forms of innumerable worlds are painted on the retina of his eye. Luminous points of space, whose intermediate distance would take centuries to traverse, are com¬ pressed into a single spot of his cerebral organism. The things of the present hour are found united to the objects of dead ages within the compass of that marvellous mechanism which he calls his head. What is the idea of evolution itself but a union within the brain of man between to-day and the remotest yesterday? There is no conception in the universe known to savage or sage which embraces so wide an area as the measure of a man.

I think, therefore, on the intellectual side there is nothing against the statement of St. John. There is, however, a moral objection which may be taken, and one which carries us still deeper into the passage itself. It may be said, it has been said, that when man makes himself the measure of the universe he is actuated by the principle of egotism. It is perhaps really this thought, more than any philosophical superiority, that makes us sneer at the primitive man’s belief. We say that when a man formulates such a creed the idea of his own want is already uppermost. He calls upon the universe to minister to him. The sight of nature has shown him simply a mirror of himself. He looks upon the sea, not for the sake of its beauty, but for the sake of what it will bring; it is a means of transport for his gold. He considers the fields, not as the home of the lilies, but as the scene of his coming harvest. He regards a starry night, not as a revelation of the infinite, but as a fortunate occurrence provided for his own nocturnal steps. This is egotism; this is selfism. Is this the frame of mind conducive to the spirit of Christ?

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But let us look at the passage again. Is not this the very thing against which St. John guards? There is a mysterious clause in the verse which has puzzled many readers. After stating that the wall of the city has been estimated according to the measure of a man, he adds, “that is, the measure of an angel.” How are we to understand this phrase? One thing is clear at the outset. St. John means to say that, though the city is measured by the wants of man, it is not measured by the wants of man as he ts. The measure which is taken is one of his highest self, of his coming self, of the Christ within him that is to be. It is not the man of to-day for whom the city is prepared. It is the man of to¬ morrow. It is the developed man, the ultimate man, the final outcome of the human years. If St. John would measure the city by the standard of a son of Adam, he would measure the son of Adam himself by a higher standard than he has ever actually attained. To him the measure of the human is the ideal of the human. Our ideal is our watermark. The test of us is not what we are, but what we should like to be. The city which is building presses towards the west — the completed day. Its foundations are laid in our deepest need, but not necessarily in our present need. Much of what we call comfort may seem to be ignored, passed by on the other side. Praise waits for God in the city of Zion. It waits because the city is in advance of us. We cannot appreciate its provision for us. We want as yet something different, something inferior. We shall find the song of praise when we find our highest selves.

The next question is, What, in St. John’s view, is our highest self to be? He answers, “It is the nature of an angel.” What led him to say that? Was it the memory of those words which he had heard from the very lips of the Master when He described the goal of the blessed dead: “In the resurrection they are as the angels”? It is quite possible. The saying was so peculiar and so unlike the Old Testament that it was likely to stick.

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The angel in the Old Testament was a greater being than man. To make man equal to the angel was a brave thing. I do not think the beloved disciple would have done it without authority — the authority of Him whose words he recognised as “the truth.” Doubtless there was in his ear a refrain of the Master’s voice when he declared the height of an angel to be the measure of a man.

But this is after all a verbal point. The real question is, What, in the view of the Scriptures, is the nature of an angel? And here there is a concurrence of sentiment between the Old Testament and the New. The angel is in both a messenger, a minister to human need. The idea of angelic ministration runs through the Jewish Scriptures like a thread of gold. It is the only thought which helps to mitigate the sense of the distance of God. In the great gulf fixed between earth and heaven, the ladder of Jacob was the only descending medium; and it was a ladder of angels. It was they who received the charge of man. It was they who were to encamp round about him in his trouble. It was they who were to bear him in their hands above the friction of the stony way. The angels were the hospital nurses of the Old Testament; they did for man what man would not do for his brother.

But with the dawn of the New Testament, where the idea of service becomes divine, the notes grow more pronounced and more pro¬ longed. I do not know a single passage of this later Bible in which the name of the angel is not associated with humility. The angels of little children are said to have the front view — to behold the face of God. The power of an angel is said to be like the power of a woman’s veil — self-concealing, selfrestraining. The work of an angel is said to be the service of a ministering spirit sent forth to succour the heirs of salvation. But the crowning testimony is that which is borne to the wants of an angel. It is here that St. John’s saying receives its deepest justification. We have spoken of the egotism involved in

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the belief that the universe is made for the wants of man. But St. John says the typical man is the angel. What are the wants of an angel? St. Peter, in his First Epistle, has ventured to answer that question. He professes to tell the things which “the angels desire to look into.” What are they? When we examine the passage, we find that, in the view of St. Peter, the angels are students of the hospital. Their desire is to penetrate the secret of ministration. They want to look into the nature of those things which were administered as remedies by the prophets to the coming age. They seek a lesson in the earthly modes of healing earthly pain. They are attracted by the spectacle of a little band of human souls who have reached their own altitude of love for man, and who, by reason of their humanity, have greater facilities for help than they. They ask a lesson. They desire to be led through the hospital. They crave a sight of the wards. They inquire the times for giving sustenance. They are eager to know the symptoms of relapse, the signs of convalescence. They seek, in short, to have imparted to them the secret of that healing power which lay in the remedies prescribed by the great physicians of the race of man.

And now perhaps we can understand for what, in St. John’s view, the city of God is building. It is being adapted for the desire of angels — the type of the resurrection man. That desire is not sensuous, it is not even individual; it is impersonal. The paradise of John is undoubtedly adapted for the supply of human want; but it is for a want which only the perfect man can feel — the thirst of love. It is a grand thing, a bold thing, that from this paradise of God the Christian seer should have refused to exclude this one sense of need. He has excluded physical hunger, physical thirst, all weariness. He has shut the door on every pain but one — the pain of an unreciprocated heart But he has drawn the line there. He has refused to debar from heaven that sense of want, that form of incompleteness, called love. The Buddhist held the source of human

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frailty to be the presence of desire; to St. John desire is a divine thing. He is not afraid to say that the condition of final blessedness is not a state of self-satisfaction.. He is not afraid to declare that the fountain of life itself is not self-sufficing, that at the heart of highest being there throbs the desire for communion with another being, that the nature of God is love.

And now perhaps we can understand how it is that, of all things in this world, the heart is the least satisfied — less than the sense of beauty, less than the sense of power. The least satisfied means the most exercised. Do we not say habitually in unsatisfied moments, “I am greatly exercised about it”? The heart of man, because it is the most unfilled, is the most exercised of all things here below. Why is it so? It is because the exercise of a power is its development, and the development of the heart is needed for the world to come. The heart is to be the organ of the future. It is that part of man which, in St. John’s view, is allied to the angel — that part of man for which the city of God is preparing. Its perfecting is precious, its development is destined, its evolution is expected. Therefore here and now is it deeply trained, exercised. It is given moments of perplexity, days of darkness, seasons of strong crying and tears. It is allowed to toss, to flutter, to palpitate with unrest. The eye has no such dissatisfaction with the things of earth; the ear has no such discontent with worldly music. Do we ask why? St. Paul will answer us. He tells us that the eye and the ear are not the things for which the city of God is specially preparing. Doubtless they will have their place in the beauty and the music of the future. But the organ for which the city of God is preparing is the spirit — the name we give to the power of love. Therefore to Paul, to John, to all apostles of love, tribulation is a thing to glory in, because it is the exercise of that power for which the city of God is being builded. The justification of the heart’s troubles is the existence of the heart’s promise — the fact that to it the words were specially spoken: “I go to prepare a place for you.”