Come

And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And he that heareth, let him say, Come. And he that is athirst, let him come: he that will, let him take the water of life freely.—Revelation 22:17.

The last verses of this book of Scripture are like the final movement of some great concerto, in which we hear all the instruments of the orchestra swelling the flood of triumph. In them many voices are audible alternately. Sometimes it is the Seer who speaks, sometimes an angel, sometimes a deeper voice from the Throne, that of Christ Himself. It is often difficult, therefore, amidst these swift transitions, to tell who is the speaker; but this much is clear, that, just before the verse from which the text is taken, our Lord has been proclaiming from the Throne His royalty and His swift coming to render to every man according to his work, and to gather His own into the heavenly city. After that solemn utterance He is silent for a moment, and there is a great hush. Then our Lord’s declaration is met by a response from the Spirit and the Church. The Spirit and the Bride reply, “Come.” The call is also to be taken up by every hearer. Each one is to say, “Come.” Then, in answer to the cry of the spirit, of the Church, and of the Faithful, begging Him to come, our Lord speaks again, this time to all the yearning and weary souls among mankind: “He that is athirst, let him come: he that will [that desires to have Jesus], let him take the water of life freely.”

Thus there are two comings in this verse—the final coming of Christ to the world, and the invited coming of the world to Christ. Such a way of understanding the text, with its vivid interchange of speakers and subjects, gives a far richer meaning to it than the common interpretation which recognizes in all these “Comes” only a reference to one and the same subject—the approach of men to Jesus Christ through faith in Him.

The Book of the Revelation goes out on a kind of fugue on the word “Come.” “The Spirit and the Bride say, Come”; the Spirit, searching the deep things of man and interpreting the unwritten yearnings of the race, saith, “Come”; the Bride, the Church of Christ, weary yet willing to wait, willing to wait yet weary, saith, “Come.” And he “that heareth and understandeth” all that is meant by the coming, saith, “Come.” And all together, the Spirit, the Church, and the men who have heard, unite to plead with the man who has not found the water of life, and with tender urgency bid him “Come,” and take freely, in order that having drunk from the well of salvation he may add his voice to their prayer. And the answer falls: “Behold, I come quickly.” Blessed are they who, after reading “the words of the book of this prophecy,” can say, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”1 [Note: C. A. Scott, The Book of the Revelation, 336.]

We have in the text—

I.   An Invitation to Christ to come, presented by

(1)   The Spirit.

(2)   The Bride.

(3)   The Hearer.

II.   An Invitation to come to Christ, addressed to

(1)   The Thirsty.

(2)   The Willing.

I

The Invitation to Christ

The invitation is given (1) by the Spirit, (2) by the Bride, and (3) by the Hearer. The Spirit and the Bride are not identical, as if the Spirit simply spoke through the Bride, that is, the Church. And yet the writer of the Apocalypse does not mean that the Spirit, as the third person in the Trinity, gives the invitation directly to the second Person to hasten His coming. By the spirit, St. John means those who are especially endowed with the spirit of wisdom and of utterance. There was in the Early Church a distinct order or school of “prophets” to whom the word of the Lord came, as it came to the prophets of the old dispensation. But it did not come from without. The word was in their heart. It was the Spirit within them; it was the Spirit of God expressing itself by them. People, says Dr. W. M. Macgregor, had the wisdom and the courage in those days to believe that in their lowly gatherings the voice of God was sometimes heard. When plain men spoke above themselves, in words all depth and fire and essential insight, speaking so as to catch their fellows up to God, it was reverently confessed that the Spirit of God was speaking; and on the lips of these men, who for the moment had the inspired utterance, the recurring word was, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Then the Bride, the whole Church of Christ, joined in the invitation. And last of all the hearer, every hearer of this book; not only the Church in her ideal unity, but each individual member of every Christian congregation where the book shall be read is invited to demand the fulfilment of the Lord’s promise, “Behold, I come quickly.”

1. The Spirit says, Come.—It is true that the spirit of this world and age does not speak thus. The more it strives after ease and comfort in this life, the further it is from wishing to have the present state of things ended by the coming of the Lord. But the Spirit of God and of Christ, which is meant here—the true spiritual life-throb of the children of God; the power of faith and salvation, of hope and patience, by which they fight their way victoriously through this world—this Spirit cries at all times, come, Lord Jesus; come to our aid in every difficulty; come and advance Thy Kingdom; even by the very obstacles raised by Thine enemies come, and by Thine advent make an end to all sorrow and suffering! This Spirit, emanating as it does from eternity, implants in our hearts a holy longing after this eternity, and is itself the innermost strength of this holy longing, of this love for the Lord and His appearing. It is this same Spirit that creates a deep yearning for freedom from all the bonds of sin and death, and for entire unity with the Lord; that creates the burning desire to see the Church of Christ healed of all schisms and corruption, and the honour of the glory of the Lord made manifest before the whole world, and incontestably established for all eternity. Thus does the Spirit continually incite to the prayer, “Come, Lord Jesus!”

In what respect the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, differ from the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, which are God’s forever, is seldom, as far as I have heard, intelligibly explained from the pulpit; and still less the irreconcilable hostility between the two royalties and realms asserted in its sternness of decision. Whether it be, indeed, Utopian to believe that the kingdom we are taught to pray for may come—verily come—for the asking, it is surely not for man to judge; but it is at least at his choice to resolve that he will no longer render obedience, nor ascribe glory and power, to the Devil. If he cannot find strength in himself to advance towards Heaven, he may at least say to the power of Hell, “Get thee behind me”; and staying himself on the testimony of Him who saith, “Surely I come quickly,” ratify his happy prayer with the faithful “Amen, even so, come, Lord Jesus.”1 [Note: Ruskin, The Lord’s Prayer and the Church (Works, xxxiv. 212).]

Lo as some venturer, from his stars receiving

Promise and presage of sublime emprise,

Wears evermore the seal of his believing

Deep in the dark of solitary eyes,

Yea to the end, in palace or in prison,

Fashions his fancies of the realm to be,

Fallen from the height or from the deeps arisen,

Ringed with the rocks and sundered of the sea;—

So even I, and with a pang more thrilling,

So even I, and with a hope more sweet,

Yearn for the sign, O Christ! of Thy fulfilling,

Faint for the flaming of Thine advent feet.2 [Note: F. W. H. Myers, Saint Paul.]

2. The Bride says, Come.—This is not indeed the heart cry of the whole visible Church; for in so far as she allows herself to be rocked to sleep by the spirit of this world, she becomes, with all her hopes and wishes, so completely a citizen of this world that she wishes the day of the Lord may long be delayed, until she herself has enjoyed life. Therefore she does not say, or at least does not say from her heart, “Come, Lord Jesus.” But the Bride who has given herself wholly to the Lord, who keeps the covenant of faith which she has made with Him, and as His betrothed keeps herself unspotted from the world, who knows full well that the good things of this world are fair but poor and perishable, who knows that by the appearing of her Beloved a time of unclouded, endless joy and glory will dawn for her, she it is who says and prays with earnest longing, “Come, Lord Jesus.”

The Bride is represented here on earth. The Bride is represented there in glory:

One family we dwell in Him,

One Church above, beneath;

Though now divided by the stream,

The narrow stream of death.

But whether it is here on earth or yonder in glory, still the Bride speaks one language. Wherever you meet with a soul in whom there is the spirit of the Bride, and who belongs in God’s eternal foreknowledge to that elect company, you will find one whose life is a continuous invitation; for, wherever the Bride is, she still seems to say, “Come.”1 [Note: W. H. M. H. Aitken, God’s Everlasting Yea, 242.]

3. And let him that heareth say, Come; that is, let him that heareth with the hearing of faith; let him who has made his own the glorious prospect opened up in the visions of this Book as to the Lord’s Second Coming add his individual cry to the cry of the universal Church. The call is to be taken up and repeated by every hearer of the Book; not only the Church in her ideal unity, but each individual member of every Christian congregation where the Book shall be read, is invited to demand the fulfilment of the Lord’s promise. “The power of the whole gospel,” says Bengel, “concentrates itself in this, that one should be able to respond to this Come, and repeat it from the heart.”

I do not know of a better evangelist than a fresh convert. When the love of God is first shed abroad in our hearts, and we receive the fulness of His first blessing, it is so natural that we should go and tell other people of what the Lord has done for us. About three weeks after a mission had been held in the north of England, the mission preacher paid another visit to the neighbourhood, and asked those who had received benefit to meet him in the school-room of the church. One of the very first to come forward was a little boy. He came forward like a man, and held out his little hand and grasped the mission preacher by his. His eyes were sparkling with joy. “Well, my dear boy, how are you getting on? Have you been doing the part of a mission preacher?” “Yes,” said the boy; “and now, sir, we are all of one mind in our house, mother and brothers and sisters, all except father, and we are bound to have him too.”1 [Note: W. H. M. H. Aitken, God’s Everlasting Yea, 245.]

All day the caravan had toiled over the hot sand without water. They had thought to find it twenty-four hours before; but when they reached the place where they expected it, the spring was dry. There had been only a few drops of water left in their skin bags then. Now there was none; and the little girl of the company lay sick in her mother’s arms, moaning for water.

“Water! Water! Water!” was her constant cry. Her father could not bear it. He stopped the caravan, and said, “We must find water, or the child will die. We will make a bed for her on the sand and leave her here with her mother, and we will go out and search far and wide until we have found water.”

Oh, how earnestly the boy Hafiz hunted! Every minute his dear little sister’s moans seemed to sound in his ears. He clambered over jagged rocks. He searched over barren wastes, and at last he found a spring that gushed up cool and clear behind a pile of concealing stones. He shouted to the rest and waved his arms, calling to them over the desert, “Come! Come! Here is water!”

With all possible speed they hastened to the blessed spring. Each one shouted to his neighbour, who passed the word on. “Come! Come! Come! Come!” The sound seemed to fill the desert. How they ran to the spot, bringing water skins, gourds, cooking vessels, everything that would hold water!

The little girl took a long, long draught and her moaning ceased. The perspiration came out in drops on her forehead. The flush went out of her face. She turned over and fell into a quiet sleep.

“I believe the water saved her life,” said the mother to Hafiz.2 [Note: From The Children’s Friend, Richmond, U.S.A.]

II

The Invitation to the Sinner

Here we have a remarkable change. We pass at once, and quite abruptly, from an invitation to Christ to hasten His coming to an invitation addressed to those who are thirsty, and those who are willing, to come to Christ. It is as if the writer had intended to ask the thirsty one, and every one that had any good will at all, to join in the welcome to the coming Christ, and then suddenly remembered that that could not be until they knew Christ. So he turns his sentence into an invitation to them to come to Christ, that they may taste and see how gracious the Lord is. Then will they be ready to welcome His coming.

Man was forbidden to come near to the tree after he had sinned in the Garden of Eden. There was a flaming sword to keep him from coming near that tree, but now here there are not only trees of life, but there is also a river of life, and this river of life has its source in the throne of glory, and as it flows along, the word of the Lord is this: “Is any man thirsty? Let him take of the water of life freely.” Oh, that grand word “let”! If God says, “Let him,” who then is going to deny it?1 [Note: A. G. Brown, God’s Full-Orbed Gospel, 79.]

i. The Invitation to the Thirsty

There is no animal craving so fierce or so intolerable as the craving of thirst. This may be due to the fact that the deprivation of liquid is a condition with which all the tissues sympathize. Every atom of the body joins in the cry, and the expression is concentrated in the parched mouth and the dry and feverish lips. This great craving of thirst is used in this book to symbolize the craving of the soul, and these plenteous waters are used to shadow forth the abundance of the satisfaction which is found in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We must go to the far East and the far South to understand the images which were called up in the mind of an old Jew at the very name of wells and water-springs; and why the Scriptures speak of them as special gifts of God, life-giving and Divine. We must have seen the treeless waste, the blazing sun, the sickening glare, the choking dust, the parched rocks, the distant mountains quivering as in the vapour of a furnace; we must have felt the lassitude of heat, the torment of thirst, ere we can welcome, as did those old Easterns, the well dug long ago by pious hands, whither the maidens come with their jars at eventide, when the stone is rolled away, to water the thirsty flocks; or the living fountain, under the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, with its grove of trees, where all the birds for many a mile flock in, and shake the copses with their song; its lawn of green, on which the long-dazzled eye rests with refreshment and delight; its brook, wandering away—perhaps to be lost soon in burning sand, but giving, as far as it flows, Life; a Water of Life to plant, to animal, and to Man 1:1 [Note: C. Kingsley, The Water of Life, 1.]

1. Will anything allay this thirst?

(1) Not sin. The wonderful thing is that we can ever persuade ourselves that it can. The devil can mix the most insidious potions and can make them sparkle like the water of life, but when we drink them it is as though a man consumes salt water to appease his thirst. Animal gratification can never quench a spiritual craving. It is the most pathetic of all tragedies when a man or woman flees to drink to quieten the soul. It shall be “as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite.”

Against the deceitfulness of sin he warned his friends in such terms as these: “Sin says, ‘I’m not sin at all.’ Then Sin says, ‘I’m pleasant.’ Yes, pleasant poison. Then Sin says, ‘Ah! do you call that sin? Well, it is but a little sin.’ Alas! alas! for us men there can be no little sin, unless there be a little God against whom to commit it. Then Sin says, ‘It is a common sin; good people do that.’ A good man has crooked legs; are crooked legs therefore no evil? He has stiff joints; are stiff joints therefore no evil? Ah! men don’t argue that way about the natural evil, but they do about the spiritual evil, because they love sin, and will take any excuse for it, and never readier than when they find it in a good man. Then Sin says, ‘If you sin there’s Christ to go to.’ ”2 [Note: A. Moody Stuart, Recollections of the late John Duncan, 109.]

(2) Not work. I will join any man, says Jowett, in singing a pæan of blessedness on work; but if hard work will lead to spiritual contentment, the great majority of my congregation will be in the enjoyment of spiritual rest. And yet after the hardest day’s work, often in the midst of it, there is a sigh, a weariness, a state of staleness, a certain out-of-jointness, which is abundant proof that the old craving is still there like a smoking volcano, and that its inner fires are not yet quenched. Thank God for work, but work can never take the place of God.

The opponents of legislation on the question of limiting the hours of labour induced the Lord Mayor to call a general meeting of London shopkeepers, expecting to carry a resolution against any such measure as he had proposed. Sir John attended and asked for a hearing. Having explained how matters stood, he moved an amendment in favour of his [Shop Hours Regulation] Bill and quoted, as illustrating the hard lives of shop assistants, and especially of women, the Norfolk epitaph:

Here lies a poor woman, who always was tired,

For she lived in a world where too much was required.

Weep not for me, friends, she said, for I’m going

Where there’ll neither be cooking nor washing nor sewing.

I go where the loud Hallelujahs are ringing,

But I shall not take any part in the singing.

Then weep not for me, friends, if death do us sever,

For I’m going to do nothing for ever and ever.

“This quotation,” he observes, “carried the meeting and the amendment.” Variant readings of this epitaph are extant, but the gist of it is the same in all.1 [Note: H. G. Hutchinson, Life of Sir John Lubbock, Lord Avebury (1914), i. 223.]

(3) Not money. The most awful weariness in the world today will be found where money abounds. The fact of the matter is, spiritual satisfaction is to be obtained at a counter where money is not accepted as a means of exchange. “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.”

We have seen what money can do. Every moment we feel its power. But the things it cannot do! You can get out of it all life’s bottom things, but you can get none of life’s top things. It can feed all the flesh appetites. It will supply you with luxury, with ease. It can buy bows, and reverences, and salutations in the market-place. It is a purveyor to all the devilries—to avarice, to covetousness, to selfishness, to envy, to hatred, to lust, to murder. Not, certainly, that it always produces these things. But it can produce them; it is the soil where they grow; where they have grown in every age and every country of the world. But from all the gold bags in the Bank of England you could not distil one drop of mother love. You can extract from them nothing of the world’s highest thought or best feeling. You cannot write a spiritual book on money; no, nor a spiritual chapter. We are trying here, but are failing egregiously. The real soul of humanity gets no rise from this source. Under its power the heart chills; it never expands. Ask whence has come the great literature, the noble music, the fine heroisms? They do not hail from Mammon. Gold is a separator, never a uniter.1 [Note: J. Brierley, The Secret of Living, 41.]

(4) Not culture. Satisfaction cannot be found even in the higher and finer cultures of the mind—in music and art and literature. These ministries can soothe, they can excite, they can gratify, but they cannot satisfy; and when the volume is closed, when the harmonious strains have died away, when the creations of art have been laid aside, the secret yearning asserts itself, and the unsatisfied soul cries out, “I thirst!”

Man, individually, cannot be satisfied with the material, the intellectual, the æsthetic. There is still a part of his nature which rises above these, and demands more. It shows itself in his religions, his philosophies, and in the inordinate graspings of lower natures after the material. This is one answer to the Goethe view of man’s chief end—present enjoyment, wisely moderated, and long drawn out. It never has satisfied, and cannot; it is the resource of moral defect or of despair. It is the positivism of Comte gilded, which sometimes affects a high Stoicism and worship of humanity,—as if that could be in the mass which is not in the man,—sometimes falls back by a natural reaction to Epicureanism, and sometimes hovers round the scepticism depicted by the “Preacher.”2 [Note: John Ker, Thoughts for Heart and Life, 215.]

2. “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.” The Lord Jesus claims to satisfy the soul; yes, to satisfy the soul as a babe is satisfied to find its mother’s breast. “The water that I shall give shall be in him a well.” The Lord creates a new well of peace and fruitful satisfaction. For, look you, solid satisfaction. lies in the possession of a certain quality of spirit. What is that spirit? What sort of gif t would send this congregation away in radiant triumph? If God were now to give me the choice as to what every member of this congregation should receive before we leave the building, what would I choose? I think I would choose three things. First of all, pardon: forgiveness for all our ill doings and all our wasted treasure. Secondly, purity: the washing away of all stains, the searching out of hidden germs and defilement. And thirdly, peace: the sense of the glorious at-one-ness with the glorious God. And if we obtained those three gifts we should all go away with feet like hinds’ feet. And these are just the gifts to be found in Christ. “Let him come unto me and drink.” We should find pardon; “in whom we have the forgiveness of sins.” We should find purity; “He hath washed us from our sins in his own blood.” We should find peace; “My peace I give unto you.” He is the fountain of these secrets of blessedness. “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.”1 [Note: J. H. Jowett.]

The words “Water of Life” have a spiritual and mystic meaning. The East—and indeed the West likewise—was haunted by dreams of a Water of Life, a Fount of Perpetual Youth, a Cup of Immortality. How could that in man which ought not to die be kept alive? how strengthened and refreshed into perpetual youth? And water—with its life-giving and refreshing powers, often with medicinal properties seemingly miraculous—what better symbol could be found for that which would keep off death? Perhaps there was some reality which answered the symbol, some actual Cup of Immortality, some actual Fount of Youth. But who could attain to them? Surely the gods hid their own special treasure from the grasp of man. Surely that Water of Life was to be sought for far away, amid trackless mountain-peaks, guarded by dragons and demons. For the old legends and dreams, in whatsoever they differed, agreed at least in this, that the Water of Life was far away; infinitely difficult to reach; the prize only of some extraordinary favourite of fortune, or of some being of superhuman energy and endurance. The gods grudged life to mortals, as they grudged them joy and all good things. That God should say Come; that the Water of Life could be a gift, a grace, a boon of free generosity and perfect condescension, never entered into their minds. That the God of gods, the Maker of the universe, should say, “Come, and drink freely “; that He should stoop from heaven to bring life and immortality to light—to tell men what the Water of Life was, and where it was, and how to attain it; much more, that that God should stoop to become incarnate, and suffer and die on the cross, that He might purchase the Water of Life, not for a favoured few, but for all mankind; that He should offer it to all, without condition, stint, or drawback;—this, this, never entered into their wildest dreams.2 [Note: C. Kingsley, The Water of Life, 6.]

ii. The Invitation to the Willing

1. Behind the thirsty there is yet this other class who are invited to come—those who are willing. Willingness to receive the truth may exist where as yet there is no thirst for it, and such willingness is of God, and a first step towards eternal life.

However little chance we may seem to have of doing anything, we can at least determine to be something; not to let our life be filled, like some base vessel, with the offscourings and rinsings of other spirits, but to remember that the water of life is given freely to all who come. That is the worst of our dull view of the great Gospel of Christ. We think—I do not say this profanely but seriously—of that water of life as a series of propositions like the Athanasian Creed!

Christ meant something very different by the water of life. He meant that the soul that was athirst could receive a draught of a spring of cool refreshment and living joy. He did not mean a set of doctrines; doctrines are to life what parchments and title-deeds are to an estate with woods and waters, fields and gardens, houses and cottages, and live people moving to and fro. It is of no use to possess the title-deed if one does not visit one’s estate. Doctrines are an attempt to State, in bare and precise language, ideas and thoughts dear and fresh to the heart. It is in qualities, hopes and affections that we live; and if our eyes are opened, we can see, as my friend dreamed he saw, the surface of the hard rock full of moving points, and shimmering with threads of swift life, when the sun has fallen from the height, and the wind comes cool across the moor from the open gates of the evening.1 [Note: A. C. Benson, Joyous Gard, 134.]

2. This seems to include everyone. But it does not. It excludes a great many persons. “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” The Bible invitation turns on the human will. It invites every man that chooses, but there it stops. The Bible rests on the assumption that every man, if he enters into life, must enter into it by his own free choice.

God pays His child no finer compliment than when He trusts him with his destiny. There must be something inexpressibly great in man to merit this surpassing confidence. True, God was held by the alternative of making a race of automatons or a race endowed with choice; and He made the latter. It was counted that such a creature was worth all the cost of pain and woe, of evil and despair; worth the cost of Calvary. But God leaves us not alone: a highway of truth is blazed by revelation, sweet voices counsel us to walk thereon, an inner Spirit offers holy motive, and a Saviour takes the thrust of an avenging sword. Above, below, around, within us tender help is proffered; but no power may touch with lightest hand the sceptre of the soul. There in the throne-room man is master. A thousand ministries from heaven wait his nod; a thousand demons from the pit attend his will.1 [Note: C. G. Doney, The Throne-Room of the Soul, 11.]

If you ask me why the King is upon the throne, I reply in the words he insists should be on all his coins, “Dei Gratia”—by the grace of God. But, on the other hand, if you ask me why yonder criminal is in the cell, I dare not reply, By the will of God; but I say, Because he has done wrong; and I insist that he is morally responsible, else you must not shut him up as a criminal. You may confine him as a lunatic, as one who is dangerous to society; but do not punish him as a criminal for what he had no power to avoid. No, these two things are quite compatible—the Divine sovereignty and the free agency of man; and herein consists the glory of God. He performs His purposes not by mere machines, but by living moral agents, who have this power of will. We all acknowledge that the power of the statesman, who moulds the will of the people, is of a higher order than the power of a blacksmith, who moulds a dead, resistless piece of iron to his purpose. So God carries out His own will, though liable to be crossed at every turn by the will of Man 1:2 [Note: E. A. Stuart, Children of God, 162.]

With the call to come, give us the will to come, most Bountiful Lord Jesus. Thou who turnedst water into wine; who saidst, “Give me to drink”; who criest, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink”; who saidst, “With desire I have desired”; who declarest, “My blood is drink indeed”; who saidst in extremity, “I thirst”; suffer us not to make ourselves as Dives, but join us to Thyself and quench our thirst.3 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, The Face of the Deep, 542.]

A visitor to Dr. Horatius Bonar’s church (about 1876) says: “His address was founded on the words ‘The Spirit and the bride say, Come’—‘the last invitation in the Bible.’ It was marked by the absence of all attempt at originality. It was simply an invitation—warm, loving, urgent. With one of the most winning faces I ever saw, he closed: ‘Whosoever—that includes you: whosoever will—does that include you?’ ”

Long since that aged saint hath reached the fair celestial shore,

And gained the martyr’s crown, for he the martyr’s suffering bore;

Long since his happy feet have stood within his Father’s home,

Yet still the mighty voice he heard, with ceaseless cry, saith, “Come!”

And life’s bright fountain springeth yet, as free, and fresh, and fair,

As when in Patmos’ dreary Isle it cheered the exile there!

And hark! the Spirit and the Bride repeat in mercy still,

That he who is athirst may drink—yea, whosoever will!

O blessed voices! be it ours your loving call to hear

And so obey that when, at last, from yonder radiant sphere

The Heavenly Bridegroom shall descend to claim His own again,

We may lift up our heads and say, “Lord, even so, Amen!”1 [Note: Elizabeth Surr.]

Come

Literature

Aitken (W. H. M. H.), God’s Everlasting Yea, 235.

Bannerman (J.), Sermons, 382.

Brewin (R.), Gospel Sermons, 85.

Brown (A. G.), God’s Full-Orbed Gospel, 66.

Christlieb (T.), Memoir and Sermons, 105.

Davies (T.), Sermons and Expositions, i. 568.

Davison (W. T.), The Indwelling Spirit, 195.

Dods (M.), Footsteps in the Path of Life, 127.

Doney (C. G.), The Throne-Room of the Soul, 11.

Goodwin (H.), Parish Sermons, ii. 132.

Hackett (B.), Memorials of a Ministry, 116.

Hall (C. R.), Advent to Whitsun-Day, 69.

Jeffrey (G.), The Believer’s Privilege, 269.

Jerdan (C.), For the Lord’s Table, 386.

Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year: Miscellaneous, 209.

Kingsley (C.), The Water of Life, 1.

Macgregor (W. M.), Jesus Christ the Son of God, 264.

Maclaren (A.), Expositions: Epistles of John to Revelation, 391.

McNeill (J.), Regent Square Pulpit, iii. 81.

Price (A. C.),Fifty Sermons, viii. 1.

Scott (C. A.), The Book of the Revelation, 336.

Stuart (E. A.), Children of God, 159.

Talmage (T. de W.), Fifty Sermons, ii. 113.

Wilberforce (B.), Steps in Spiritual Growth, 178.

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Christian World Pulpit, xxi. 328 (S. A. Tipple); xlv. 38 (B. Wilberforce).

Church of England Pulpit, xxxvii. 101 (B. Wilberforce).

Church Pulpit Year Book, 1909, p. 34.

Expository Times, xxi. 490.

Homiletic Review, xlv. 136 (J. H. Taylor).

Literary Churchman, xxvii. (1881) 231 (J. E. Vernon).

Record of Christian Work, xxxii. (1913) 666 (G. C. Morgan).