duction, but coming down out of heaven, is taken by the Lord as a type of Himself: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Moses gave you not the bread from heaven, but my Father giveth you the true bread from heaven; for the bread of God is He who cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.... I am the bread of life. . . . This is the bread which came down from heaven; not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead; he that eateth of this bread shall live forever" (John vi. 32-58). Hence this promise to the conqueror is, that the Lord will give unto him Himself, the Word that was made flesh, in order that He may become the food of the soul unto eternal life, as represented in the sacrament of the Holy Supper. This heavenly manna is said to be 'hidden' in the sense in which Christ in the soul is called 'the hidden man of the heart' (1 Pet. iii. 4), and of the words, 'Your life is hid with Christ in God' (Col. iii. 3), i. e. as being altogether undiscernible by the faculties of the natural man. The white stone, which also shall be given, contains an allusion to the ancient custom of giving white stones to those who were acquitted and justified in judgment, and to those who conquered in the contests of the public games. Hence, and since white is the color of purity and victory (35), it is to be taken here as the symbol of the earnest or pledge of ultimate and complete victory over temptation, of personal salvation from the impurities of sin, and of acquittal and perfect justification from offences; all which proceed from the indwelling and manifestation of Christ in the soul. In fine, this new name graven on the stone to signify that it is ineffaceable, 'which no man knoweth but he that receiveth it,' symbolizes the new nature, which is constituted by the mystical union of the Lord with each member of His body, and of which the world, of course, can know nothing. The meaning of the whole symbol, therefore, is, that the conqueror in his earthly conflicts shall have Christ, as the Word of God, for the food of his spiritual nature, whereby the life of Christ shall become life eternal in him, and he shall enjoy full assurance of justification and salvation. 1. The instructions and admonitions of this Epistle seem to apply with special emphasis to the whole church at the present time; for her feebleness in discipline is a subject of general remark. How many scandalous immoralities are constantly occurring among her members! How frequent are the defalcations in banks and other fiduciary institutions; fraudulent abuse of trust funds, and other betrayals of trust; stealing from employers, and other thefts; breaches of the marriage vow by unscriptural divorce, and other forms of licentiousness in which the offenders are church members, church officers, superintendents of Sabbath-schools, and persons of high esteem in Christian communities! These are only examples of a numerous class represented by these Balaamites and Nicolaitans in the church of Pergamus; for such are all church members who have 'hearts exercised with covetous practices.' How many there may be whose offences have not yet come to light is known only to God ; but enough surely has been made public to convict the church at large of the grossest neglect of discipline, and to open her ears to this call of her Lord to repentance and reformation. 2. A great many influences have contributed to bring about this state of things. One is our rabid denominationalism, or sectarianism, in consequence of which, censure in one church has no recognized validity in another of a different sect; and in their competition with each other, especially in small communities, all are so anxious to secure members who may increase their pecuniary support. Another is the fear of alienating influential families; for censure of an unworthy member is almost sure to be resented by his whole family, and often by a large circle of friends and connections. Still another is the prevalent misunderstanding, which has just been alluded to, of our Lord's parable of the Wheat and the Tares (Mat. iii. 29). But more influential probably than all these, is that bondage to the world in which we now live, and which will be largely represented in subsequent visions. For this is such that we have no public opinion in the church independent of, or different from, that of the world, in dress, amusements, employments, expenditure, and hardly in mo rality. Under all these and other influences, church discipline has come to be little more than a name, or the memory of something which has long been obsolete. 3. Hence this call to repentance and reformation is addressed to us, no less than it was to the church in Pergamus : and it is a most urgent call; for we see here that this neglect of discipline is a sin and an evil of such magnitude in the eyes of our Lord that He sent this Epistle chiefly for the purpose of correcting it. This was the one sin of that church; no other is charged against her. As churches, therefore, and as individuals, we are here admonished to repent of our sin, and to return to our plain duty in this matter. For it is not one that concerns the pastor and governing officials alone, but every individual member; and where the officers are derelict, it is the duty of the members to turn them out, and put others in their places who will be more faithful. We cannot neglect this matter with impunity; for if we do, the Lord will come to us quickly, and execute His just judgment upon our unworthy members: "But who may abide the day of His coming? And who shall stand when He appeareth? For He is like a reûner's fire, and like fuller's soap; And He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, And He will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver; For discipline is an ordinance of God, not only for the maintenance of purity in the church, but also for the purifying of the subjects of it, to save them from the sharp judgments of the sword in the Lord's mouth. If, therefore, she neglects to guard her own purity by this holy ordinance, He will guard it for her by punishing her unworthy members. A mournful case of this kind lately fell under my own observation, in which a church member was long tolerated in gross and well-known immoralities, from kindly regard to his amiable and interesting family, until he was left to lay violent hands on himself, and so perished in his sins. Thus it is that the Lord makes war upon the Balaamites and Nicolaitans in the bosom of His church. Such neglect of whole some discipline, therefore, is cruel; for who can tell but that if this man had been subjected to it in time, he would have been saved? "He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches." 4. There may be church members, also, who have 'hearts exercised with covetous practices,' or who are living in other immoralities, but whose offences have not yet come to light, so that they cannot be disciplined: and, for aught we can tell, they may stand high in the esteem of their communities; for Balaam had the reputation of a great prophet, and there was a Judas Iscariot in the college of the apostles. Let all such be assured in their secret souls, that nothing but repentance and reformation can save them from the fate of these Balaamites and Nicolaitans in the church of Pergamus. Failing that, the Lord is certain to come quickly, and to make war upon them with the sharp sword of His mouth, for He will execute the judgments of His word against all Judases. And He will come in an hour when they look not for Him, and will cut them off suddenly without remedy, perhaps as in the case of that church member whose sad fate has just been mentioned. They have no time to lose; the present is all that they can count upon. To-day, therefore, whilst they hear His voice calling them to repentance, and while He waits to be gracious, let them not harden their hearts, as in the day of provocation, lest He lift His hand and swear that they shall not enter into His rest (Heb. iii. 7-11). VIII EPISTLE TO THE CHURCH IN THYATIRA THE CHURCH INFECTED WITH IDOLATRY AND IMPURITY II 18-29 The spiritual state of this church is similar to that of the last, only much worse; for she is so generally infected with idolatry and immorality, and with a doctrine in their justification, that only a remnant of her members remain uncorrupted, and she herself is not even admonished to repentance. 18 And unto the angel of the church in Thyatira write: These things saith the Son of God, who hath His eyes as a flame of fire, and His feet are like burnished brass. In these Epistles, St. John commences, as we have seen, with Ephesus, a great seaport, and proceeds northwards along the coast of Asia Minor to Smyrna, and next to Pergamus, where he now turns eastward and inland to Thyatira, which was situated about 20 miles from Pergamus, on the great Roman highway to Sardis, where we shall find the church of the next Epistle. For the Romans were the greatest road-builders of the ancient world, which greatly facilitated the early and rapid progress of the Christian religion. Thyatira was founded by Seleucus Nicator, still another of the generals and successors of Alexander, whose vast empire, of which the whole of this immensely populous country constituted but a single province, was partitioned at his death among his principal officers. At this time, it was included in the Proconsular province of the hardly less extensive empire of Rome. Originally it was a Macedonian colony, celebrated for various forms of industry, especially for the art of dyeing in purple; and among its ruins a Greek |