The Unsealing of the Heart of Humanity
Revelation v. 9, 10
“And they sing a new song, saying, Worthy art thou to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and didst purchase unto God with thy blood men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation, and madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests; and they reign upon the earth.” The thing which first arrests us in this remarkable song is St. John’s view of the. natural condition of the heart of man. It is not what we should have expected. We expect him to say it is loveless; he says it needs emancipation. There are three possible states in which the heart of man may be contemplated — as warm, as cold, or as sealed. St. John takes the last view. He looks upon
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the impulses of human affection as being by nature neither vehement nor dead, but things under lock and key — imprisoned forces waiting to be released. He describes their condition under the simile of a sealed book. A more happy metaphor for the exhibition of his theory could not, I think, be found. The book is already there, and it is not blank parchment. It is full of handwriting. It contains the impression of characters. It keeps within it rich messages of greeting, deep expressions of sympathy, powerful pleadings of love. But then, it does keep all these things within it; they cannot get out; the book is sealed.
Before we go a step further, let me say that I agree with this diagnosis of the human heart. Put the question to yourself, “What do I consider the average state of man’s affections to be; are they warm, or are they cold?” You will find yourself constrained to answer, “They are neither; they are repressed.” No better answer could be given. The writer to the Hebrews describes the average man as “subject to bondage.” The bondage is that of the heart. The heart is repressed by the competing interests of life. Each man regards his brother with a certain amount of fear. He feels that between him and his brother there is a struggle for survival. He perceives that in this struggle one must rise and the other fall — that there is not room for two in the same place at the same time. If he thought there was room for two, the flood¬ gates of his heart would be opened. If perfect love casts out fear, it is equally true that peifect fear impedes love. Man is, in his natural state, capable of much more devotion than he actually manifests. He is retarded by the consciousness of clashing interests between his life and the life of his brother; and the impulse which was warm at its source is frozen at the surface. To keep the metaphor of the seer of Patmos, the book is written, but it is sealed.
Now, to the world of St. John’s day the problem of ours was more intensely present. There were more barriers to union in his days than in ours. The element which
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in the old world separated man from man was the difference of nationality — the “tribe,” the “tongue,” the “people,” the “nation” It is not too much to say that the idea of humanity does not belong to the old world; Paul calls it “the mystery which was kept hid.” The life of man was divided into a series of national types, each supposed to be the rival of the other. The Greek called outsiders barbarians. The Jew held that all the families of the earth must pass to the presence of God through his own gates. The Chinaman regarded himself as the elect child of Heaven. The Indian looked upon his caste as the family tree of the universe. Even the Roman was essentially provincial. He aimed to unite the world, but it was to make it a Roman world. He sought a union by absorption. The hope which he held out was the hope of becoming, not a free man, but a Roman citizen. Humanity meant the Latin race; the language of humanity was the Latin language. The spirit of the empire was not Pentecostal. It did not endue its apostles with the power to speak foreign tongues; it aimed to make the foreigners speak the tongue of its apostles. It sought unity, but it was a provincial unity; it was the unity of Rome.
Now, St. John perceived that this individualism, this provincialism, this separation of mankind into groups, was the seal upon the heart of humanity. He perceived that until this seal was broken there was no possibility of a human brotherhood. If that which unites me to my fellow-man is a bond merely national, it is no permanent bond. It is accidental, and therefore slender. I am not entitled to lean my heart upon it, to risk my devotion on it. St. John saw this. He saw that the barrier in the old world to the love of humanity was the fact that there was no idea of humanity. The sight of this idea was a very original discovery. It was quite in advance of the age. It was a novelty to his contemporaries — specially to the Roman and the Jew. They thought they had all along been strictly humanitarian — aiming for the union of the world. They did not see that
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geographical compression was just as provincial as geographical distribution. St. John did. He saw that so far as the old world was concerned the idea of man had yet to be revealed, and that the absence of this idea was the seal upon the heart. Therefore, instead of calling to men, “Love one another,” he cried, “Who shall break the seal?” He felt it was no use to bid men leave the prison when they were bound. He wanted first and foremost to see the impediment broken that restrained the heart. That impediment was nationality. It was not the geographical limits of a nation; it was the idea of a nation. It was the thought that a boundary to the feet ought to be a boundary to the soul, and that the sympathies of the human spirit should be commensurate only with the extent of the native soil.
And to the eyes of the seer of Patmos there appeared a power whose mission was to lift the seal; it was Christianity, or rather Christ. In answer to the question, “Who shall open the seal?” there stood forth to John’s gaze the form of a man. The walls of the nations went down before him — not only the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile, but the barrier between Greek and barbarian, Roman and Teuton, Celt and Semite. A new song is heard in the distance — the song of the coming city of God. Its peculiarity lies in those who sing it. For the first time in history it is a united voice — a voice out of “every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation,” It is not that there has ceased to be a separate tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation. “Out of” here means “in.” It is from out the diversities that the song is heard. It is not the voice of a brotherhood which has been purchased by the elimination of distinctions; it is a harmony pulsating through these. It is a declaration of the fact that humanity is deeper than all its varieties. It is a protest against the belief that any difference of environment can ever counterbalance the points of agree¬ ment between man and man. It is emphatically a new song — quite foreign to the spirit
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of Paganism, not native even to the spirit of Judaism. It is the emergence into the world of a fresh thought — the idea of an equal human nature lying below the accidents of time and space — the brotherhood of soul with soul.
Before going further, let us mark that the direction here indicated has been the one taken by the city of God. Viewed from a purely secular standpoint, the progress of the world has been a progress toward the sinking of nationality. Christian culture has been the foe of the ancient patriotism. Every advance of the centuries has tended towards the growth of a common interest, a sense of humanity in man. Nowhere so much as in our century has Christian culture thus asserted itself. Men are speculating about a common language and a common standard of money; and the speculation is itself the vital symptom. There is a growing demand for federation, for arbitration in the place of war, for international exhibitions of industry, for a united action in the cause of righteousness. So far back as the days of St. Paul Christianity was declared to involve the spoiling of principalities and powers. At the present moment it is more pronouncedly true. The landmarks of each nation are still preserved for the eye, but they are no longer observed by the heart. A famine in India or China evokes as much benevolence from Britain as would be excited by a scarcity within her own borders. The old world regarded men; the new looks at man. The old world contemplated individual advantages; the new is engrossed with universal needs. The old world considered how to promote the survival of the fittest; the new is eager to find a method by which the unfittest also will survive.
There has, then, been an unsealing of the heart of humanity, and one which owes its origin to the agency of the Christian faith. This is not a matter of dogma; it must be the verdict of historical observation, whatever the personal convictions of the observer be. The question now is, What have been the Christian influences which have brought about this
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result? Something in Christianity has tended to equalise men in the sight of one another. What is it; or rather — for we are here expounding, not theorising — what is the explanation of this problem given by St. John? Is there anything in the passage before us which points to the view entertained by the seer of Patmos himself? I think there is. I think it will be found that St. John assigns two reasons for the equalising influence of Christianity; the one is a levelling up, the other a levelling down. Let us glance at each of these.
And first. He declares that the Christian faith has had the effect of raising men to a common level, “Thou didst purchase unto God with thy blood, men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation.” The simile is, of course, the buying of a slave. But the point is that the slaves are all bought with an equal price, and the highest price possible — the life of the purchaser. The mere fact of a general emancipation would not, in John’s view, have achieved the result. If a different price had been paid for each man, the inequality would have remained after enfranchisement. But when the same value is put on every man, and that the highest value, the effect is not only levelling, but levelling up; it enables us to say, “We are all honourable men.”
This is a very rare association of the redemptive work of Christ. It is commonly connected with man’s humiliation. Dr. Watts, in his famous hymn, makes its effect the depression of self-consciousness: —
“When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.”
A greater than Dr. Watts says that by the cross of Christ the world is crucified to him and he to the world. And, from the spiritual side, the representation is strictly correct. But St. John has had the boldness to look at another side of the subject — the political side. He says that, viewed in this aspect, the effect of the Cross is not depressing to man’s self-consciousness. Let us say,- 1 am a barbarian
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and you are a Greek. Naturally you look down upon me. But suppose, now, it were revealed to you and me that, unknown to both of us, we had both been under the dominion of an invisible master, by whom our every action was dictated and our every will restrained. Suppose it were revealed to us that yesterday this unseen chain had been broken, and that we were both free. What would be the effect of this? Clearly to abolish the first distinction between the Greek and the barbarian. This is precisely the case put by the seer of Patmos. The barbarian and the Greek are to receive a common citizenship in the new republic, on the ground that both have been slaves to a higher power than either, and that both are now free. He is not speaking theologically; he is speaking politically; he is investigating the causes of the decline of nationality. Admit the fact on which he bases it, and, whatever your theory of the Atonement may be, the logic of the passage is irresistible, unavoidable. The common redemption has raised man to a common level.
But there is a second reason given by St. John for the abolition of national distinction, and it is of the opposite nature. If, on one side, the effect of Christianity has been a levelling up, on another it has been a levelling down. If men in Christ are made one by their common height, they are also united by their common humility. This view appears in the clause, “Madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests” — i.e.> a priestly or sacrificial kingdom. The idea clearly is that, in the kingdom of Christ, service becomes incumbent on a man in proportion as he rises. In the kingdoms of the old world it was the contrary. Service was proportionate to degradation in the social scale. National distinctions were regulated by the relative amount of burden-bearing; those who had fewest stood at the top. But in the new regime it was to be all the reverse. In the kingdom which the Messiah was to usher into the world, the responsibility of service was to rest with the highest; the greatest was to be the minister to all. The so-called privilege of immunity from work was to be kept for
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the dependent classes. Even so far back as the days of the Captivity, the great unknown poet had sung that the Messiah would carry the lambs in His bosom. It was a grand declaration of the fact that in the culture of the new age the lowliest would not be the servants, that the weight would lie upon the wisest, that the men in place and power would be the men in waiting, that the burdens of Church and State would be borne by the dignitaries of each. The first was to be last in the new order of things. The king was to be the servant of his people; the king of many nations was to be the servant of many peoples; the ruler of all nations was to be the servant of all.
So markedly does this thought pervade the New Testament that in the writings of Paul kinghood gets a new name; it is called head¬ ship. Instead of styling Christ the King of kings, Paul terms Him “the head of all principalities and powers.” Why? Because the head only reigns by reason of its suffering. Why does the head rule the body? Because it bears the burdens of the body. Every pain of every member is really the head’s pain. If it directs the actions of the physical members, it is because it has first received their telegram. The head is king because it is priest, and in proportion as it is priest. Its power is commensurate with its sacrifice. It rules because it bears; the sceptre it wields is the weight it carries. The kingdom of Christ is the meeting of two currents that used to run contrary — the kingdom and the priesthood; the one sought the mountains, and the other the valleys. But now they move together in unity — inseparable, undistinguishable. The king is priest, and the priest is king. It is not two offices, but one; for the cross has become the crown, and the privilege of universal sacrifice is the prerogative of the highest empire.
And remember, this is no longer a mere ideal. It has become, it is becoming every day more and more, a fact of modern life. There is nothing in secular polity which Christ has so affected as the government of nations. He has made monarchies increasingly constitutional — increasingly like the relation of the head to the members. St. John was uttering no dreamy aspiration for a world beyond the grave. He was in search, nay, in sight, of something which would do for all worlds — the equality of man as man. What he valued in the vision was its effect upon the present system of things — the scene in which we dwell. He looks down the future as a clairvoyant; he sees the priest made king. He beholds the sacrificial lives exalted. They were once disqualified by reason of their burden; it is now their burden that lifts them. Their defects of body, their weak¬ ness of health, their struggles with poverty, used to make them objects of no interest; these are now the source of their interest, the cause of their elevation in the scale of human sympathy. “They reign on the earth” is the astonished cry of the gazing seer. No wonder he was astonished! Had it been only a home for the weary in the skies, we should have little marvelled. But that this earth should be one of the mansions prepared for the comfortless, that the burden-bearers should be cheered in the very scene of their former obloquy — it seemed to John, it seems to us, an astounding thing. The unsealing of the heart between man and man has been no easy problem; no power but One was strong enough to open this book. Yet the book has been opened; its leaves are being daily cut; one day we shall read it through. Shall we not join the seer of Patmos in his new song of wonder, and in recognising the unique¬ ness of that influence which has put life in the Valley of Death?