The Good News of God

I tell you frankly, my friends, if you were to see through the microscope a few of the wonderful things which are going on round you now in every leaf, and every gnat which dances in the sunbeam; if you were to learn even the very little which is known about them, you would see wonders which would surpass your powers of reasoning, just as much as that far greater wonder of the ever-blessed Trinity; things which you would not believe, if your own eyes did not show them you.

And what if it be strange?  What is there to surprise us in that?  If the world be so wonderful, how much more wonderful must that great God be who made the world, and keeps it always living?  If the smallest blade of grass be past our understanding, how much more past our understanding must be the Absolute, Eternal, Almighty God?  Do you not see that common sense and reason lead us to expect that God should be the most wonderful of all beings and things; that there must be some mystery and wonder in him which is greater than all mysteries and wonders upon earth, just as much as he is greater than all heaven and earth?  Which must be most wonderful, the maker or the thing made?  Thou art man, made in the likeness of God.  Thou canst not understand thyself.  How much less canst thou understand God, in whose likeness thou art made!

For my part, instead of keeping people from learning, lest they should grow proud, and despise the mysteries of faith, I would make them learn, and entreat them to learn, and look seriously and patiently at all the wonderful things which are going on round them all day long; for I am sure that they would be so much astonished with what they saw on earth, that they would not be astonished, much less staggered, at anything they heard of in heaven; and least of all astonished at being told that the name of Almighty God was too deep for the little brain of mortal man; and that they would learn more and more to take humbly, like little children, every hint which the experience of wise and good men of old time gives us of the everlasting mystery of mysteries, the glory of the Triune God, which St. John saw in the spirit.

And what did St. John see?  Something beyond even an apostle’s understanding.  Something which he could only see himself dimly, and describe to us in figures and pictures, as it were, to help us to imagine that great wonder.

He was in the spirit, he says, when he saw it.  That is, he did not see it with his bodily eyes, but with his soul, his heart and mind.  Not with his bodily eyes (for no man hath seen God at any time), but with his mind’s eye, which God had enlightened by his Holy Spirit.

He sees a throne in heaven, and one sitting on it, bright and pure as richest precious stone; and round his throne a rainbow like an emerald, the sign to us of hope, and faithfulness, mercy and truth, which he himself appointed after the flood, to comfort the fearful hearts of men.  Around him are elders crowned; men like ourselves, but men who have fought the good fight, and conquered, and are now at rest; pure, as their white garments tell us; and victorious, as their golden crowns tell us.  And from the throne come thunderings, and lightnings, and voices, as they did when he spoke to the Jews of old—signs of his terrible power, as judge, and lawgiver, and avenger of all the wrong which is done on earth.  And there are there, too, seven burning lamps, the seven spirits of God, which give light and life to all created things, and most of all to righteous hearts.  And before the throne is a sea of glass; the same sea which St. John saw in another vision, with us human beings standing on it, and behold it was mingled with fire;—the sea of time, and space, and mortal life, on which we all have our little day; the brittle and dangerous sea of earthly life; for it may crack any moment beneath our feet, and drop us into eternity, and the nether fire, unless we have his hand holding us, who conquered time, and life, and death, and hell itself.

It seems to us to be a great thing now, time, and space, and the world; and yet it looked small enough to St. John, as it lies in heaven, before the throne of Christ; and he passes it by in a few words.  For what are all suns and stars, and what are all ages and generations, and millions and millions of years, compared with eternity; with God’s eternal heaven, and God whom not even heaven can contain?—One drop of water in comparison with all the rain clouds of the western sea.

But there is one comfort for us in St. John’s vision; that brittle, and uncertain, and dangerous as life may be, yet it is before the throne of God, and before the feet of Christ.  St. John saw it lying there in heaven, for a sign that in God we live, and move, and have our being.  Let us be content, and hope on, and trust on; for God is with us, and we with God.

But St. John saw another wonder.  Four beasts—one like a man, one like a calf, one like an eagle, one like a lion, with six wings each.

What those living creatures mean, I can hardly tell you.  Some wise and learned men say they mean the four Evangelists: but, though there is much to be said for it, I hardly think that; for St. John, who saw them, was one of the four Evangelists himself.  Others think they mean great and glorious archangels; and that may be so.  But certainly the Bible always speaks of angels as shaped like men, like human beings, only more beautiful and glorious.  The two angels, for instance, who appeared to the three men at our Lord’s tomb, are plainly called in one place, young men.  I think, rather, that these four living creatures mean the powers and talents which God has given to men, that they may replenish the earth, and subdue it.  For we read of these same living creatures in the book of the prophet Ezekiel; and we see them also on those ancient Assyrian sculptures which are now in the British Museum; and we have good reason to think that is what they mean there.  The creature with the man’s head means reason; the beast with the lion’s head, kingly power and government; with the eagle’s head, and his piercing eye, prudence and foresight; with the ox’s head, labour, and cultivation of the earth, and successful industry.  But whatsoever those living creatures mean, it is more important to see what they do.  They give glory, and honour, and thanks to him who sits upon the throne.  They confess that all power, all wisdom, all prudence, all success in men or angels, in earth or heaven, comes from God, and is God’s gift, of which he will require a strict account; for he is Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty; and all things are of him, and by him, and for him, for ever and ever.

But who is he who sits upon the throne?  Who but the Lord Jesus Christ?  Who but the Babe of Bethlehem?  Who but the Friend of publicans and sinners?  Who but he who went about doing good to suffering mortal man?  Who but he who died on the cross?  Who but he on whose bosom St. John leaned at supper, and now saw him highly exalted, having a name above every name?

Oh, blest St. John, to see that sight!  To see his dear Master in his glory, after having seen him in his humiliation!  God grant us so to follow in St. John’s steps, that we may see the same sight, unworthy though we are, in God’s good time.

And where is God the Father?  Yes, where?  The heaven, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain him, whom no man hath seen, or can see; who dwells in the light, whom no man can approach unto.  Only the only begotten Son, who dwells in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him, and shown to men in his own perfect loveliness and goodness, what their heavenly Father is.  That was enough for St. John; let it be enough for us.  He who has seen Christ has seen the Father, as far as any created being can see him.  The Son Christ is merciful: therefore the Father is merciful.  The Son is just: therefore the Father is just.  The Son is faithful and true: therefore the Father is faithful and true.  The Son is almighty to save: therefore the Father is almighty to save.  Let that be enough for you and me.

But where is the Holy Spirit?  There is no where for spirits.  All that we can say is, that the Holy Spirit is proceeding for ever from the Father and the Son; going forth for ever, to bring light and life, righteousness and love, to all worlds, and to all hearts who will receive him.  The lamps of fire which St. John saw, the dove which came down at Christ’s baptism, the cloven tongues of fire which sat on the Apostles—these were signs and tokens of the Spirit; but they were not the Spirit itself.  Of him it is written, ‘He bloweth where he listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence he cometh or whither he goeth.’

It is enough for us that he is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Holy Father, and of the Holy Son; like them eternal, like them incomprehensible, like them almighty, like them all-wise, all-just, all-loving, merciful, faithful, and true for ever.

This is what St. John saw—Christ the crucified, Christ the Babe of Bethlehem, in the glory which he had before all worlds, and shall have for ever; with all the powers of this wondrous world crying to him for ever, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come; and the souls of just men made perfect answering those mystic animals, and joining their hymns of praise to the hymn which goes up for ever from sun and stars, from earth and sea,—when they find out the deepest of all wisdom—the lesson which all the wonders of this earth, and all which ever has happened, or will happen, in space and time, is meant to teach us:—

‘Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power; for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.’

This is all that I can tell you.  It may be a very little: but is it not enough?  What says Solomon the wise?  ‘Knowest thou how the bones grow in the womb?’  Not thou.  How, then, wilt thou know God, who made all things?  Thou art fearfully and wonderfully made, though thou art but a poor mortal man.  And is not God more fearfully and wonderfully made than thou art?  It is a strange thing, and a mystery, how we ever got into this world: a stranger thing still to me, how we shall ever get out of this world again.  Yet they are common things enough—birth and death.  ‘Every moment dies a man, every moment one is born:’ and yet you do not know what is the meaning of birth or death either: and I do not know; and no man knows.  How, then, can we know the mystery of God, in whose hand are the issues of life and death?—God to whom all live for ever, living and dead, born and unborn, in heaven and in hell?

So it is in small things as well as great, in great as well as small; and so it ever will be.  ‘All things begin in some wonder, and in some wonder all things end,’ said Saint Augustine, wisest in his day of all mortal men; and all that great scholars have discovered since prove more and more that Saint Augustine’s words were true, and that the wisest are only, as a great philosopher once said, and one, too, who discovered more of God’s works than any man for many a hundred years, even Sir Isaac Newton himself: ‘The wisest of us is but like a child picking up a few shells and pebbles on the shore of a boundless sea.’

The shells and pebbles are the little scraps of knowledge which God vouchsafes to us, his sinful children; knowledge, of which at best St. Paul says, that we know only in part, and prophesy in part, and think as children; and that knowledge shall vanish away, and tongues shall cease, and prophecies shall fail.

And the boundless sea is the great ocean of time—of God’s created universe, above which his Spirit broods over, perfect in love, and wisdom, and almighty power, as at the beginning, moving above the face of the waters of time, giving life to all things, for ever blessing, and for ever blest.

God grant us all to see the day when we shall have passed safely across that sea of time, up to the sure land of eternity; and shall no more think as children, or know in part; but shall see God face to face, and know him even as we are known; and find him, the nearer we draw to him, more wonderful, and more glorious, and more good than ever;—‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.’  And meanwhile, take comfort, and recollect however little you and I may know, God knows: he knows himself, and you, and me, and all things; and his mercy is over all his works.