The Pains and Penalties of Heavenly Rank

Revelation iii. 12

The heavenly state — the state of completed humanity — is always declared to be one of gradations; it is a condition which is to have its thrones and principalities and powers. These upper seats receive here their charter. It is a charter of pains and privileges; and as any man may one day become the subject of it, I quote it in full: “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, which cometh down out of heaven from My God: and I will write upon him My new name.”

The first thing which strikes us here is a

70 note of autobiography. We know from St. Paul’s epistles that St. John himself had been regarded as one of the pillars of the Church; probably the name had been directly applied to him. Very likely it was a pain to him that he was looked upon as enjoying a sense of pre-eminence. Doubtless he had long wished men to see that his position was not a monopoly — not a thing which others could not win. The spirit of inspiration expressed itself through the form of his own human consciousness; it always does. If St. Paul, instead of St. John, had been the man of Patmos, the vision would have been equally grand, the truth would have been exactly the same, but the expression would have been radically different. You may play the same tune through a lute and a violin; but, even in the act of playing, no one will mistake the lute for the violin; the music reveals, not only itself, but its environment. So is it with the music of the Divine Spirit. It takes the man as it finds him — breathes through him as it finds him. It clothes itself in the forms

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which he knows the best. Even if it tells him the secrets of the future, it does so in the language of the past — his past. It builds his heaven out of his special earth; it speaks through his yesterday, even though that yesterday be humble — through bad grammar, defective knowledge, perhaps imperfect reason¬ ing itself. The revelation to the man is also the revelation of the man.

We do not wonder, then, that St. John’s vision of heavenly dignity should have clothed itself in that garb wherein men had seen his own dignity — should have called the occupiers of the upper room, “Pillars of the Church.” But having done so, it proceeds to disabuse them of a wrong impression. Many had coveted, many had envied, the position of the pillar-apostles. St. John tells them that from their point of view they are in a delusion. He tells them that to be a pillar of the Church is, from the worldly side, not a privilege. He declares that it is the bearing of a weight so intense and so awful as to demand a special training. He says that no one can be qualified to be a pillar of the General Assembly of the firstborn who has not been tested by the weights of the present world: “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God.” The idea is clearly that of danger and responsibility. It is the peril of supporting a building upon beams which themselves need to be supported. It is not a question of getting to heaven. St. John would have admitted thousands into heaven whom he would not have allowed to be pillars. The pillars are the weight-bearers. They are those who, because they are the strongest, require to go below and support the building. It is essential that they should be the strongest; it is essential that their strength should be tested before they are bidden to bear. There can be no arbitrary selection, no capricious favouritism. Those beams alone can support the heavenly building which have served un¬ broken in the temple of earth.

This principle of selection is a very striking one, and none the less so because we see it

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constantly around us. What do we mean by the desire, so often expressed in the hour of sorrow, to lean upon some one who has overcome? We mean that the pillar of our temple must be tested, not by heavenly height, but by earthly weightedness. Why is it that, in a season of bereavement, we would rather seek comfort from the old than from the young? The common answer will be, “Because the old are nearer to the other world than the young.” In truth it is exactly the reverse. It is the young who are nearer the other world — or at least, farther away from this. We go to the old, not be¬ cause they know more of heaven, but because they know more of earth. Youth is always looking toward the stars. It sees not the common plain, it observes not the garish day; it is what Matthew Arnold would call “otherworldly.” But age has learned life’s reality. It has tasted of the earthly springs — their sweetness and their bitterness; it has known the best and the worst of it Therefore in the hour of trouble we go to lean there.

We select, not from the hills, but from the valleys. We choose the men and women who are farthest advanced on the earthly road — not because they are so near the goal, but because they have seen so. much of the journey. We pass the youthful by, not because we suppose them to be wedded to the fashions of the earth, but for precisely the opposite reason — because they have fixed their eyes upon a state too perfect to be realised below.

St. John transfers this thought to the upper sanctuary. He says that the principle of selection for the pillars of that house shall be the survival of the previously strong. There shall be no choice made on the ground of an arbitrary Divine Will. The idea uppermost is not privilege, but pain. The election to be a pillar of the house not made with hands is determined by preparation in the lower sphere. Is there here another note of autobiography? Is the vision appealing to St. John’s memory of a scene on the shores of Galilee — a scene in which he mistook the nature of heavenly rank? Does he remember the day when he asked to sit at the right hand in God’s kingdom — forgetting, what even the psalmist saw, that God’s right hand “instructs in terrible things”? Does he remember that the psalmist’s statement was the very answer he received: “You know not what you ask, can you drink of My cup?” Does he remember, above all, how the idea of arbitrary election is disclaimed: “To sit at My right hand is not Mine to give, except to those for whom it is

prepared of My Father”?

What, then, are these “terrible things” at God’s right hand? Why is it that to be a pillar in His temple involves a pain? In answer, let us put to ourselves a supposition. Let us imagine that in the midst of a Sabbath service in one of our large cathedrals a single pillar were suddenly to awake into consciousness. what would its first impressions be? I think it would have two — a great sense of weight, and a still greater sense of responsibility. It wrould feel the actual pressure to be very heavy; but this, after all, would be the smaller part. The responsibility would be felt to exceed the actual weight The weight is shared by other pillars; strictly speaking, the responsibility is not. How could this single pillar tell where exactly the effect of its fall would terminate? Where could it fix the limit of its own catastrophe? How could it know precisely to what extent its own work was necessary to the work of another? By what means could it escape the fear that its own individual fall might drag the others down? Could this imaginary consciousness forget that, in the conception of the great apostle, the complete collapse of the largest cathedral on record came from the fall of a single pillar: “in Adam all died”?

I have dwelt upon this penalty of rank in the heavenly state because I think it a matter of great importance. I believe that the destruction of responsibility would be the destruction of morality; and an immortal life without morality is inferior to annihilation. By “responsibility” I mean exactly what St. John means by the pillar, what St. Paul means by the membership in Christ’s body.

It is the point which differentiates the heaven of the Bible from all previous heavens — particularly from the Greek. “Differentiate,” in¬ deed, is too weak a word. It would hardly be too much to say that the Christian heaven would be the Greek hell, and the Greek hell the Christian heaven. The Olympus of the Greek is free from care: that of St. John is an increase of care. The Olympus of the Greek is a life of individual licence: that of St. John is an augmentation of the claims of service. The Olympus of the Greek is a shadowless sky, prepared for the indulgence of all sensuous delights: that of St. John is a full awakening to the perception that no man liveth unto himself alone. The Greek’s idea of heaven is to be happy: that of St. John is to make happy.

Passing now from the penalties involved in the state of heavenly rank, I come to consider its privileges. St. John says that there are two respects in which the position of a pillar is desirable. The first is that the man who gets it is thenceforth attached to the building from the inside: “he shall go no more out.” I understand St. John to mean, not that he will never lapse — which nobody ever suspected him of — but that he will never again have any temptation to serve for external motives. What is attachment from the inside? We express it by one little word — love. There may, at the beginning, be an attachment from the outside. Wealth may attract one man into the companionship of another. But if, as a result of the companionship, there should spring up an inner joy of sympathy, the attraction of wealth will cease to be a motive; the man will no more go out. The joy of sympathy — the attachment from the inside — will not only surpass the old outward attraction of the money, but will render it non-existent. It is not simply that, when the inward sympathy appears, there is added a new motive for friendship; the new motive effectually and for ever destroys the old. We see this tested frequently in actual life. A marriage is celebrated on principles of convenience and on principles

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of aesthetics — worldly position on the one hand, and physical beauty on the other. Years pass away, and when next the curtain rises there has come a change in the outer environment; the worldly position has vanished, the physical beauty has faded. Yet, strange to say, the bond is much closer than it was at the first. The reason is that it is no longer the same bond. During these years of interval there has sprung up a reciprocity of feeling between the pair. The moment this reciprocity of feeling came, the man and the woman lived inside the house; they were independent of the outer motive. The shock to the external fabric did not really come with the loss of the wealth and the loss of the beauty; it came long before. It began with the birth of love. “When that which is perfect has come, that which is in part is done away. The old ties were not loosed by the accident which befell them; they were loosed by the forming of a new tie. The house of the outer tabernacle was dissolved when the building of God appeared.

Now, I am quite convinced that this is what St John meant by the phrase “he shall go no more out.” He meant to say, “He will be no more influenced by outward rewards; he will cease to be guided by utilitarian motives; he will work no longer for hire.” That this is St. John’s meaning is clear to me from a parallel passage of his own Gospel: “The servant abideth not in the house for ever, but the son abideth ever.” The difference between being inside and outside the house is with St John the difference, not between a good man and a bad, but between a servant and a son. The servant does outdoor work. He has no connection with the innermost shrine where the family gather. If he enters that shrine, it is not to abide there, but to carry a message, or take an order, or sweep a room; he does not come to stay. He is paid for his connection with the inner shrine — paid in material coin — and he has more pleasure in going out than in coming in. But if this servant were adopted into the family, you would see a great change. You

6 would cease to find him loitering about the outer courts, skulking in the pantry, chaffing in the yard. You would cease to see him taking a material reward for mending a carriage wheel. If you offered it, he would be insulted. It would be like suggesting that the carriage was not his own property. He would desire to feel that the carriage is his own property, that in mending it he is helping himself. This will be his reward for the time to come — the actual beautifying of that which belongs to him. He will not take payment for it; he will pay to have it done. To him, as to the child in the Sabbath school, the task of yesterday has become the prize of to-day.

This, then, is the first privilege of the man who has become a pillar in the temple of God; his service is remunerated from the inside. I come now to the second of the great privileges involved in such a rank. St. John says that the pillar gets an expanding power of service. There are written on him three successive inscriptions; in other words, he passes one by one through the three great circles — the temple, the city, humanity: “I will write upon him the name of My God, and the name of the city of My God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from My God; and I will write upon him My new name.”

He begins by being a religious man so called — a devotee: “I will write upon him the name of My God.” By-and-by he makes a discovery. He finds that there is a larger church than the temple — the city. He finds that to be a citizen is a more sacred thing than to be a devotee. But where shall he behold this city? On the earth? No; in the air. What is that New Jerusalem which he sees coming down from heaven? It is any city you like, pictured, not as it is, but as it ought to be. Jerusalem in the air is Jerusalem idealised — seen as God meant it to be. If St. John had been an Englishman, he would have said that his city was London coming down from heaven — London in the air, London as it appeared to the hope of God in the days of the Roman camp when

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its future was all before it, London without its masses of misery and its scenes of corruption. The pillar of God’s Church must come to realise that he is a pillar of God’s State too. Nor must he think that in proceeding from the one to the other he is going outbecoming secular. If he thinks so, he is losing the lesson of his own development. The city is not outside the temple; it is a wing of the place of worship. In our Father’s house are many mansions; the temple is one, the city is another. In both I have my table of communion; in each I have my altar of sacrifice. *1 he one, as much as the other, has its ideal in heaven — is seen coming down from God. I have gone deeper in, instead of farther out, when God writes on me this second name.

Has the pillar now reached the goal? No; one stage remains; a third inscription has still to be graven on him. There is a wider church than either the temple or the city; it is the spirit of humanity: “I will write upon him My new name.” What is that?

St. John himself tells us elsewhere; it is the gift of the Spirit, “another Comforter whom the Father will send in My name.” It is the Spirit of Pentecost, the Spirit that speaks foreign languages, the Spirit that goes down to those who as yet do not understand.

Let us enter within this third compartment of the great cathedral. As I have said, it is wider than either of the others. It is the church of the churchless, the church of the unchurched. It comprehends those who have been put out and those who have never got in. It might almost be called the subterranean crypt of the building; to reach it we must go down. There is a vast mass of human souls beyond the pale of the temple, beyond the walls of the city. The temple has refused to let them in; the city has numbered them not in the census of its population. They are the lepers of ’ society, the pariahs of the body-politic. They are those whom the land of Egypt casts into the Nile River, as things arresting to her development, those whom evolution has sent to the wall as things unworthy to survive. The Roman never included this compartment in his cathedral. He had no place for those who were in¬ capable of being blended either with the city or with the temple. He had no place for the inarticulate; that a Divine Spirit should teach them was to him a new thing. The temple of Janus and the gates of the Seven Hills alike were closed against the broken limbs of the social fabric.

But this ignored department has been made the widest space in the cathedral of God; the stone which the original builders rejected has become the head of the corner. The final inscription of the pillar is also the finest. It is something to support the temple; it is more to support the city; but to bear up the highways and the hedges — it is a glorious thing. No wonder it is called Christ’s new name. It is the latest development of Christian charity. It is the opposite of what Milton called the light; it is the “offspring of heaven lastborn.” Only now in these later days is its presence becoming clearly visible. We saw long through a glass darkly; knowledge, prophecies, tongues, had the empire over love. But now love begins to sit down at the right hand of the Father, and man goes forth to seek his dead brother. Nor does it seem to him that, in leaving the temple and the city behind, he is going out from the presence of the sanctuary; for the essence of all religion is the golden wish called prayer, and the fruit of the golden wish is the service of man.