The Noble Army of Martyrs

And he said to me, These are they which come out of the great tribulation, and they washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.—Revelation 7:14.

The Revelation of St. John is a magnificent spectacular prophecy. It sets forth great principles in bold and brilliant pictures. It uses the bitter experiences which befell Christian hearts in dreadful persecutions, as the means of showing forth the Divine providence and purpose of deliverance. With the blood of present martyrdoms for a symbol, it depicts the struggle and woe of a world at strife. And with the white light shining in the Christian faith, it shows forth the blessed consummation of victory, the triumph of the Christ. It is one of the most stirring of writings. It moves the heart because it is so filled with the pathos and the tragedy of those days of bloody persecution in which it was written. “Without tears,” says Bengel, “it was not written; without tears it cannot be understood.” It is a set of dazzling pictures, “wherein,” says Herder, the great poettheologian, “are set forth the rise, the visible existence, and the general future of Christ’s Kingdom, in figures and similitudes of His first coming to terrify and to console.”

In the passage which stands as the text, we have one of our glimpses of the victory which in those days of tribulation and anguish must have seemed so very remote and hard to believe. The innumerable throng in white robes, with palms in their hands, wear and bear the symbols of triumph. They stand forth in the din and clash of the contending forces depicted in this book, the happy participants in the glory and the purity of the victorious Lamb. Their white robes mean holiness. Their waving palms mean victory. The two symbols standing together set forth the triumph of holiness. That is the burden of the whole book. It is the glorious message which shines down to us from all these stormy pictures. The victory of the good, the end of strife in the purification of the world—this is the great thought poured out of the heart of that mystic utterance of the beloved Apostle. Victory through struggle and tribulation—that is the outcome of the world and the creation, prophesied in this vision of the multitude in white robes.

But the form and suggestions of the vision bring to the mind not alone the victory, but the means as well. In the very thought of a victory, there is also the thought of a battle. Winning comes only of striving. The creation is to make its way to this victory through struggle. And the same thought which carries the mind to the consummation of toil and suffering carries it back also to the weariness and the pain and the conflict out of which that end has been wrought. “Lo, a great multitude, clothed in white robes, and with palms”—“These are they which come out of the great tribulation.” There is a long look ahead in these words. But there is also a long look backward, as they, in one sentence, not only forecast the future but sum up the past.1 [Note: J. C. Adams, The Leisure of God, 219.]

It is told of Robert Burns that he could never read the closing verses of this chapter without tears. It is no wonder. The poet is a man of larger heart, of broader and keener sympathy than other men, and with a corresponding power of expression. What all men feel he feels more, and can express better. All of us feel that in this and like words of the Holy Book, something in our hearts is met; a something which we may never have been able to define or utter—a faint vision of blessedness—a belief that at some time, we know not when, in some world or region we know not where, the brightest of those things which the soul can desire or conceive is possible to Man 1:2 [Note: J. Laidlaw, Studies in the Parables, 271.]

I

The Tribulation

1. Perhaps a more literal rendering of the original Greek would be “friction,” the rubbing which goes to make the fine polish, or the exquisite edge. And so we might render the text: “These are they which come out of the refining processes of great friction.” But the translator’s word “tribulation” is both apt and striking. Its original meaning is full of interest. It is derived from the tribula or tribulum which was used to crush the straw and separate the grain from the chaff. In its spiritual application it means chastening, the purification of the desires, the removal, through discipline of the soul, of what mars its progress, and the power of assimilating fresh influences of good. There are different kinds of tribulation. It may be the crushing on the wheel, or the stake of fire, or the slow, patient application of daily trials. It may be sheer savagery, or it may be the mere wear and tear of common life, some crushing burden, some hidden struggle against temptation, or grinding care, or sad bereavement, such as may possibly come, or it may be some slight misunderstanding, or misrepresentation, or the weariness and painfulness of commonest details.

I remember often, when a boy in my father’s barn, turning round by the handle of the fanners the big wooden fan inside, which by its motion created an artificial wind, blowing away, from the confused mixed stuff from the threshing-floor poured into its funnel, the chaff and broken bits of straw, and passing through the clean, assorted grain in a heap by itself. This instrument is very ancient in its form and use. It is a legacy from the Romans, and was called by them tribulum. It is from the Latin name of this instrument that our English word tribulation comes. The early Christians compared a trial or trouble to a passing through the tribulum or fanners, in order that by it their nature might be winnowed, that they might be sifted as wheat, and all their chaff blown away; and therefore they called it a tribulation when it had that effect. They said that “we must through many tribulations enter into the Kingdom of God”; and they were taught that this was not an evil but a good, that sanctified affliction to the believer was gain and not loss. It was a tribulation that separated the precious from the vile, that purified the nature of the believer, but preserved himself unhurt for the heavenly garner.1 [Note: H. Macmillan, The Touch of God, 150.]

2. But the text. speaks of the great tribulation. So it is not the general sorrow and perplexity of human life that is referred to here; we must not compare this text with such passages as that in which Eliphaz, the Temanite, tells us that “man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” It is the tribulation which Christ foretold as the immediate result of His coming, the prospect of which was before Him from the first, making Him speak of His mission as one not of peace but of a sword, and which, in almost His last discourse in Jerusalem, He declared would be wider and greater than the world had ever known before. To the early disciples it took the form of persecution; and to this the text immediately refers, with this a great part of the Book of the Revelation is concerned.

The writer had lived through a period, perhaps more than one period, of persecution and martyrdom. He had seen the powers of this world employing all their resources to quench the light of Christ, and exterminate the hated sect which bore His name. He had seen or heard of dear friends slaughtered, Paul beheaded, Peter crucified, all or nearly all his fellow-apostles done to death, and a host of less known believers sacrificed to Rome’s fury and Rome’s lust. He had lived through days which it is difficult for us to imagine, when every Christian, in a sense, died daily, and when nearly every Christian household, like Egypt of old, had at least one dead: and he had watched them calmly facing all these terrors, and holding fast the faith with courage and patience which never faltered, and dying with triumphant hope when their hour came. He had seen all this, and now he looks up, and for a moment the veil of the unseen is drawn aside, and he has a vision of these once suffering saints in their glory, wearing the white robes of spotless souls, and waving the palm branches of victory. They have conquered in the earthly fight and received their reward, and they now serve God day and night in the inner temple. St. John speaks of them as a multitude which no man can number, out of all nations, kindreds, peoples, and tongues, all of whom had come out of great tribulation and been perfected, like the Master Himself, by their sufferings.

Christ came not to send peace on earth but a sword; against the restless and resistless force of the new religion the gates of hell should not prevail. But polytheism could not be dethroned without a struggle; nor mankind regenerated without a baptism of blood. Persecution, in fact, is the other side of aggression, the inevitable outcome of a truly missionary spirit; the two are linked together as action and reaction. To the student of ancient history all this will appear intelligible, perhaps even axiomatic. “The birth-throes of the new religion must needs be agonizing. The religion of the civilized world was passing through Medea’s cauldron.” Out of the cauldron there would come a new world, but not without fire and blood. Persecution, in short, is no mere incident in the life of the Church which might possibly have been avoided. Not so do we read either history or Christianity. Persecution rather was the necessary antagonism of certain fundamental principles and policies in the Empire of Cæsar and the Kingdom of Christ.

By a sure instinct the Church discerned in the death of the martyr the repetition, not the less real because faint, of the central Sacrifice of Calvary. “As we behold the martyrs,” writes Origen, “coming forth from every Church to be brought before the tribunal, we see in each the Lord Himself condemned.” So Irenæus speaks of the martyrs as “endeavouring to follow in the footsteps of Christ,” and of St. Stephen, as “imitating in all things the Master of Martyrdom.” In the early Church the imitation of Christ, as a formal principle in ethics, played but a secondary part, so far, at any rate, as the average member was concerned. The martyrs and confessors alone were thought of as actually following and imitating Jesus; they alone were the “true disciples” of the Master. It was enough for the servant that he should be as his Lord.1 [Note: H. B. Workman, Persecution in the Early Church, 21, 51.]

3. It is impossible, however, to confine the application of the text to the martyrs of the first century. The Seer beheld “a great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation, and of all tribes and people and tongues”; and he may have viewed as one great tribulation all the distresses that afflict the Christian generations. Just as the ten thousand lamps in a huge city blend their upcast rays into the cloud of red mist which invests it at nightfall, so the sorrows of Christ’s servants in all ages gather themselves into one great lurid mass before the view of the Seer. It is from the world’s great storm-centre of violence and whirling wrath that the children of light emerge into victory. “The great tribulation.” Common causes give rise to it. The stress and pain of the individual disciple is not peculiar to his own lot, but is part of a whole.

Some epochs may be marked by violent forms of persecution and distress, but in every age hostile tempers work against the outward happiness and well-being of Christ’s followers. The hounded apostle of the first century and the uncompromising confessor of the last stand beneath the same eclipse. There is under every form of government the same prejudice against the plain, pure ethic of Jesus Christ, the same tendency to pitiless rancour, the same sensibility to pain in the victims, the same subjection to death. This hostile temper works in one age by the engine of physical torture, and in another by sneer, slander, and social ostracism. The hot, bitter springs from which tears come are the same in all ages, and never run quite dry. That which the Seer here describes is a specific, undivided, palpitating pain running through the frame of Christ’s mystical body, filling up in all ages that which is behind of His sufferings.

It is quite the usual thing in the world for saintly men to be persecuted. It has been, as it were, agreed between God and His servants on one part, and the devil and his own on the other part, that the latter should persecute the former; that the good should suffer and be tortured, that the wicked should exercise upon them their malice, and that as long as they live in the world these should triumph, the others weep, and that after a short time all things be reversed. Let the wicked now raise up false testimonies, crushing them with affronts; let them be cast into prisons, exiled, covered with miseries as by a mantle; let them be loaded with all the misfortunes that can be devised, until they end this life by a sad death; all, all will be in the end the fulfilment of the arrangement assented to very long ago between the ancient serpent and man: “She shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” There is no need to fill pages with examples. It suffices for my purpose to say that no one can meditate on the life of any saintly man without discovering something of this, and in many of them a great deal; indeed, this fact has come to be so widely acknowledged that we ourselves do not hold a saint to be so who does not pass through all this.1 [Note: F. J. de Siguenza, The Life of Saint Jerome (ed. 1907), 374.]

4. The imagery of this book seems to suggest that the stages of the tribulation are so ordered that it achieves the ends of a great spiritual discipline. The convulsions which rend the earth are one and all determined by movements before the throne of God in heaven. The saints are sealed ere the restless forces of destruction rush forth upon their errands, and the trials which are to prove high qualities take place under the eye of a watching God and amidst the ministries of His messengers. The distracted world is not a sheer anarchy of diabolism, as the sufferers might be tempted to think. The Sovereignty in heaven directs the path of the storms, and the storms do not break till the elect of God are made ready for their ordeals. The appointed cycles of tribulation test the faithful as they tested Job in the ancient days. Scenes of disquiet and calamity cannot work the spiritual havoc one might fear, making religious faith all but impossible. Innumerable hosts come forth out of the great tribulation. It is indeed the very discipline that prepares God’s people for their triumph. As needful is it that the children of light before the throne should be tried and perfected by their keen and manifold distresses, as that they should be washed from their sins in the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness. It is because their fidelity has been verified in the struggles of the past that they are before the throne, to the praise and glory of Him who redeemed them. They are welcomed with tenderness and fostered with exquisite care because of all that through which they have passed. The waving of the palm branches would have been mere pantomime, and the ringing jubilations an empty stage-chorus, apart from the stress, conflict, and vicissitude over which the Lord’s people have triumphed.

The Rev. J. W. Dickson of St. Helens supplies the following among the obiter dicta dropped by Dr. Paton during his lectures at the Institute at Nottingham:—“When Richard Baxter was told that he would have a glorious reward because he had suffered so much in the cause of Christ, he replied that he didn’t want any reward other than a little more persecution. He was not weary, but willing to have more of it, if God willed it. He gloried in tribulation, like Paul, and panted for more of it, resolutely assured that no foe could work anything upon him other than the will of God desired and permitted.”1 [Note: John Brown Paton, by his Son (1914), 362.]

Presumably for most of us tribulation rather than ease constructs the safe road and the firm stepping-stone. Better to be taught with thorns of the wilderness and briars, than on no wise to be taught. Better great tribulation now than unexampled tribulation hereafter.

Good Lord, to-day

I scarce find breath to say:

Scourge, but receive me.

For stripes are hard to bear, but worse Thy intolerable curse;

So do not leave me.

Good Lord, lean down

In pity tho’ Thou frown;

Smite, but retrieve me:

For so Thou hold me up to stand

And kiss Thy smiting hand,

It less will grieve me.

“Tribulation,” that is, sifting: sifting reclaims and releases good from bad, while aught of good remains. “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.”1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, The Face of the Deep, 235.]

II

The Triumph

1. They all come out of the great tribulation. Now they celebrate their triumph. Every one of them carries the palm of victory. Some reminiscence of the Feast of Tabernacles perhaps lies in the background of the picture. The Jews were accustomed to observe that season of rejoicing by putting up triumphal arches, camping out upon the tops of their houses in arbours of evergreens and waving branches of trees, thus testifying to their joy at escaping from the hand of Pharaoh, and from the terrible plagues which had blasted the country of their sojourn. This vision assures the exiled Seer that the life beyond the veil is a festival of victory. He had perhaps been tempted to look upon himself and his companions in tribulation as defeated, crushed, fatally discredited, and overthrown. But the victims of a pagan persecuting Imperialism are now seen to be victors, and they ascribe their salvation to God and to the Lamb, who Himself conquered sublimely at the cross in His apparent overthrow. They have risen above those judgments of wrath which a retributive Providence let loose for a time upon the world to desolate the adversaries of Christ’s Kingdom. They have triumphed over unseen hosts, leagued together against God’s elect and the cause they had at heart. Through faith they have prevailed against the wrath of Antichrist, and the great pagan empires are led captive to adorn their triumph. They have proved stronger than their own frailties in all the distresses appointed for the testing of their fidelity. By their contemporaries they were counted as filth and offscouring. They left the world as defeated men, unpitied as they were thrown to the wild beasts, scoffed at as the sword fell upon them; but they reappear in the realms of light “more than conquerors.”

The palm, among many of the ancient nations, was an emblem of victory. Hence its branches were used to adorn triumphal processions. The general whose victories the triumph was intended to celebrate carried a small branch of it in his hand, and was thus recognized as a conqueror. Therefore when the redeemed are described as having “palms in their hands,” we are reminded that they were once soldiers who were not ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, but fought manfully under His banner, and by the strength of His arm completely conquered every enemy. The saints on earth indeed are warring the same warfare in which these glorified beings were engaged, and are continually obtaining victories in it; but then they must wait till all the days of their warfare are accomplished before they can have the triumphal chariot and the palm. The soldier never triumphs till the war is ended, and the enemy completely subdued. The saints in heaven have finished the painful conflict, and are now gone up for their reward to Jehovah’s temple.

In the spiritual realm there is no such thing as absolute and conclusive victory. We must not imagine that Adèle Kamm spent her latter years in undisturbed tranquillity and peace. Like an Alpine climber, who before he can reach the topmost peak must make his toilsome way along the edge of a precipice, she had to strain every nerve in order to keep her footing. It is not surprising to learn that she had to fight many a hard and lonely conflict, and though she nearly always managed to meet her visitors with a smile, yet when night came, and she was alone, the almost intolerable suffering would sometimes wring from her bitter tears. Either from stoicism or pride she would hide this feeling from those whom she did not know well; and she never spoke of it to those who depended on her brave example for inspiration. On the 9th of November 1909 she wrote to Miss Schlumberger:

“If you only knew, Lily, how strange it seems to me to have to struggle to live, when all the time I feel an irresistible longing to be with Jesus Christ. From month to month He becomes more wonderfully attractive to me, His Light seems more radiant, His words more living and deeper in meaning, and I feel so trustful, so happy, so joyful, that it is with real difficulty that I make myself stay here when I want to fly away, to throw off the burden of this suffering body, and to penetrate into that mysterious Beyond, to enter fully into the wonder of that intense Divine Love! Still, I am a very ordinary mortal, and it has been my habit ever since I was a child to put duty before inclination, and this view of things helps me more than I can say at this critical moment. Duty first! Those are my orders! and I must stick to my post and not neglect anything for that; I believe that I can live for a good while longer if only I am brave.”1 [Note: A Living Witness: The Life of Adèle Kamm (1914), 165, 169.]

2. Those who came out of the great tribulation are arrayed in white robes. Their attire, as well as the palms they carry, proclaim their victory. White robes suggest that they are in the act of triumph, and occupied in a scene of rejoicing. And in this respect also their robes have been “washed and made white.” In their unredeemed condition they were captives, not conquerors; slaves, not kings; rebels, not priests; miserable victims, not rejoicing sons. But now all this is changed. Heaven rejoices over them as the lost found and the dead come to life, and they share in the joy. But it is all founded on the blood of the Redeemer. No doubt their rest after toil and their bliss after pain are augmented by the past of their own history, yet the ground of all their joy and triumph is the blood of Christ. They overcame by the blood of the Lamb and for the testimony of Jesus. It was given them even when they suffered for His sake, and they were made more than conquerors through Him that loved them.

Often when generals have returned from battle they and the warriors have been clothed in white, or have ridden upon white horses. True, the Romans adopted purple as their imperial colour, and well they might, for their victories and their rule were alike bloody and cruel; but the Christ of God sets forth His gentle and holy victories by white; it is on a “white cloud” that He shall come to judge the world, and His seat of judgment shall be “the great white throne.” Upon a “white horse” He shall ride, and all the armies of heaven shall follow Him on white horses. Lo, He is clothed with a “white” garment down to the feet. Thus has He chosen white as the symbolic colour of His victorious kingdom, and so the redeemed wear it, even the newly born, freshly escaped out of the great tribulation, because they are all of them more than conquerors. They wear the victor garb and bear the palm which is the victor symbol.1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]

(1) White suggests the immaculate purity of character of the redeemed. White signifies perfection; it is not so much a colour as the harmonious union and blending of all the hues, colours, and beauties of light. In the characters of just men made perfect we have the combination of all virtues, the balancing of all excellences, a display of all the beauties of grace. Are they not like their Lord, and is He not all beauties in one? Here a saint has an evident excess of the red of courage, or the blue of constancy, or the violet of tenderness, and we have to admire the varied excellences and lament the multiform defects of the children of God; but up yonder each saint will combine in his character all things that are lovely and of good report, and his garments will be always white to indicate completeness, as well as spotlessness of character.

What a miracle of grace! Yon clouds that walk in brightness beside the noonday sun transformed, transfigured by the marvellous processes of Nature from the briny sea, and the brimming river, and the standing pool, and the swampy meadow, and the foul marsh; but more marvellous the transformation when those who were sinners once walk in white beside the dazzling whiteness of the King of kings, and before the blaze of that great white throne on which He sits.2 [Note: J. Laidlaw, Studies in the Parables, 277.]

(2) These white robes of victory and purity are also the uniform of service. A uniform usually signifies service; the soldier’s and the sailor’s uniform speaks of the particular service in which they are engaged. The nurse’s mantle, the scholar’s gown, the priest’s robes, all speak of special work. These are clothed after a special manner, and their distinctive clothing signifies honourable and responsible service. Their uniform is the sign of their responsibility, their clothes are symbols of their high calling. In the very beginning of this book, in its opening vision, which is a revelation of the Head of the Church, the risen Son of Man, even He, too, is revealed as specially clothed in the royal uniform of His Heavenly occupation. He is girt about the breasts with a girdle—that is to say, He is a Priest on active service. He is also a King, ruling from His throne in justice and in truth. He is the risen, glorious, acting Priest-King. His clothing symbolizes His office and His work. So, too, do those garments of the saints, those blood-washed garments of white. They mean honour, victory; yes, but also service. Therefore are they before the throne and serve Him. They are clothed for their Heavenly work. Thus, then, is it with the Church in Heaven, and that, too, is the calling of the Church below. We are called in Christ Jesus to co-operation in His vineyard, to understand His purpose, and to carry out His plans.

In “Sartor Resartus” Carlyle lays hold practically of this truth, and with his great imagination on bold wing, and with his wonderful humour coruscating and breaking out into lambent flame, he speaks of many things as clothes, and of the significance of clothes as seen in a great many things, and urges that however a man is clothed, such garments only mean responsibility and service. Rank, and honour, and titles, these are clothes in the thought of the great thinker. Social station, reputation, and privilege, these are a kind of clothing, or uniform, too. The judge’s office, the prophet’s calling, the king’s throne, what are they all but symbols and garments? And so we speak about men being clothed with honour, clothed with authority, or clothed with power. And going off on the eagle wing of his magnificent imagination and sweeping through great circles of truth, he speaks even of Nature herself—wonderful and glorious Nature—tripping forth in all the beauty of her summer raiment, or austere in her winter garments, as the time-vesture of God. But all such dress symbolizes something, and most of it calls to service and means responsibility. Apply this truth anywhere and you will find it true, but it is especially true in regard to the spiritual calling and honour conferred by Christ on Christian people. We are redeemed, honoured, crowned—for what? For enjoyment, for self-satisfaction, for indulgence, even refined and selfish indulgence in connection with religion? Never. We are redeemed, honoured, crowned, to serve.1 [Note: D. L. Ritchie, Peace the Umpire, 162.]

(3) White is also the colour of joy. Almost all nations have adopted it as most suitable for bridal array, and therefore these happy spirits have put on their bridal robes, and are ready for the marriage supper of the Lamb. Though they are waiting for the resurrection, yet are they waiting with their bridal garments on, waiting and rejoicing, waiting and chanting their Redeemer’s praises, for they feast with Him till He shall descend to consummate their bliss by bringing their bodies from the grave to share with them in the eternal joy.

One of Dr. Paton’s former students, who took notes of his lectures, gives examples of his teaching on the great themes of the ministry. Speaking of heaven, the doctor said: “Fellowship with God—that is heaven. The full consummation of what we know of heaven will be in heaven only; but heaven is not to be limited to the future life. Heaven is the perfect development and fulness of what we have the beginning of here. The fulness of joy and service and blessedness of what is in heaven, I know here and now in some measure. In part, but it is a part only. If we haven’t heaven here, we shall not have heaven yonder. Christ is now at the right hand of God, and I am walking in fellowship with Him here now. And He has called me, by faith, up into fellowship with Him yonder. I see only darkly, but then I shall see fully and unveiled. The veil gets thinner and thinner day by day. Heaven is simply the perfection and fulness of what I have here. Heaven can give me no more, and I don’t want heaven to give me more. It has been a great mistake of evangelical preaching to put all joy in the future world. It is not so. It is not ‘the sacrifice of this world to the next.’ It is the opposite. It is the great heaven—the eternal world—that has come down to us. Heaven has sacrificed itself for this world. Heaven was in Calvary, or it was nowhere. Suffer with Christ now, and you reign with Him now. The more I suffer, the more I reign with Him now. We are born here into life eternal—and thus into that promised heaven. But heaven is not our due because we suffer: it is a gracious gift of God.”1 [Note: John Brown Paton, by his Son (1914), 368.]

3. How came they by their robes? “They washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Their robes were white, like the white and glistering raiment of Christ when He was transfigured. The robes express their condition, as a purple robe expresses royalty, or filthy garments a condition of sin and misery. But it was not in love, or in any moral quality or virtue, that those robes were made white; it was in the blood of the Lamb. The figure of a washing, even of garments, in blood, is indeed a very strong one. In some Eastern countries of old, men who were oppressed with a sense of sin actually plunged their bodies into a stream or bath of animal blood, that their souls might be cleansed. But from such gross literalness we turn away. But let us never turn away from the truth which underlies the figure of garments made white by being washed in precious blood. There is cleansing for the soul in the atoning death of the Lord Jesus.

Now this is a material image which is used in the text, but of course no little child among us needs to be told that it is in some spiritual sense it must be understood. It is not in the literal sense that we are to understand these words. The human blood of Christ sprinkled upon us would not make our raiment white; and though it did, that would not bring us to heaven. Probably the Roman soldier who pierced the Saviour’s side with his cruel spear, would be (in the literal sense) sprinkled with His precious blood: but that would not save him: he remained, spiritually, after that exactly what he had been before. To have our robes made white in the blood of the Lamb means two things. It means that our sins are pardoned for the sake of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. And it means that our souls are made holy by the blessed Spirit Christ sent after He left this world. And there are two reasons why only those thus washed in the blood of Christ can be always before the throne of God. One is, They alone have a right to be there. The other is, They alone are fit to be there, and to be happy there.

One night, during that terrible winter in the Crimean War, Duncan Matheson, the evangelist, was returning, weary and sad, from Sebastopol to his poor lodgings in the old stable at Balaklava. He had laboured all day with unflagging energy, and now his strength was gone. He was sickened with the sights he had seen, and was depressed with the thought that the siege was no nearer an end than ever. As he trudged along in the mud knee-deep, he happened to look up and noticed the stars shining calmly in the clear sky. Instinctively his weary heart mounted heaven-ward in sweet thoughts of the “rest that remaineth for the people of God,” and he began to sing aloud the well-known scriptural verses:

How bright these glorious spirits shine!

Whence all their white array?

How came they to the blissful seats

Of everlasting day?

Lo! these are they from suff’rings great,

Who came to realms of light,

And in the blood of Christ have wash’d

Those robes which shine so bright.

Next day was wet and stormy, and when he went out to see what course to take, he came upon a soldier standing for shelter below the verandah of an old house. The poor fellow was in rags, and all that remained of shoes upon his feet were utterly insufficient to keep his naked toes from the mud. Altogether he looked miserable enough. The kind-hearted missionary spoke words of encouragement to the soldier, and gave him at the same time half a sovereign with which to purchase shoes, suggesting that he might be supplied by those who were burying the dead. The soldier offered his warmest thanks, and then said: “I am not what I was yesterday. Last night, as I was thinking of our miserable condition, I grew tired of life, and said to myself, Here we are, not a bit nearer taking that place than when we sat down before it. I can bear this no longer, and may as well try and put an end to it. So I took my musket and went down yonder in a desperate state about eleven o’clock; but as I got round the point, I heard some person singing, ‘How bright these glorious spirits shine,’ and I remembered the old tune and the Sabbath School where we used to sing it. I felt ashamed of being so cowardly, and said, Here is some one as badly off as myself, and yet he is not giving in. I felt he had something to make him happy of which I was ignorant, and I began to hope I too might get the same happiness. I returned to my tent, and to-day I am resolved to seek the one thing.” “Do you know who the singer was?” asked the missionary. “No,” was the reply. “Well,” said the other, “It was I”; on which the tears rushed into the soldier’s eyes, and he requested the Scripture-reader to take back the half-sovereign, saying, “Never, sir, can I take it from you, after what you have been the means of doing for me.”1 [Note: J. Macpherson, Life and Labours of Duncan Matheson, 70.]

(1) Mere tribulation will not necessarily make the robes white. Tribulation, or affliction, or oppression—call it which you will—is overruled by a miracle of Divine grace so as to benefit the believer, but in and of itself it is not the cleanser but the defiler of the soul. Affliction of itself does not sanctify anybody, but the reverse. Afflictions of themselves arouse to an unwonted energy the evil which is in us, and place us in positions where the rebellious heart is incited to forsake the Lord. This will be seen if we consider the matter closely. The great tribulation is, under some aspects of it, a sin-creating thing, and if the victorious ones had not perpetually gone to the blood they would never have had their garments white. It was that alone that made and kept them white; they were familiar with the atonement and knew its cleansing power.

(2) It is the blood of the Lamb that washes out the stains and makes the garments white. How often did the martyrs have their garments stained and soiled when enduring a violent death in the arena; but in the very act of shedding their blood they became identified with Christ and so entered into the fruits of His victory. Robes that are washed in the blood would be expected to come out red; why should the result be so unlike the process? Because the process of sacrifice which makes me pure must leave no trace of itself. The blood which washes out my stains would, if perpetuated, be itself a stain. There can be no cross in my completed life. There is a shadow in its dawn, but not in its day. There is a struggle in faith; there is a struggle in hope; but there is no struggle in love. There are some cures which leave a scar; the disease is gone, but the red mark is left which tells of pain. Not all blood washes white. There are struggles in which I conquer, but from which I yet come down with the shrunk sinew; the battle is over, but, even in the daybreak, the wound remains. I have won the fight, but I have lost youth’s elastic spring; I halt upon my thigh. But the cross of Christ leaves on me no print of the nails. It heals its own scar. It dries its own blood. It wipes its own tears. It not only redeems, it restores my soul. It has no after-effects—no lameness, no sight of men like trees walking. There is no sense of langour, no feeling of soreness, no memory of pain. The cross of yesterday becomes the crown of to-day; the thorn of my winter is made the flower of my spring. The heart’s bleeding is staunched when law is one with love.

(3) Each individual in the triumphal throng had to perform his part in cleansing his robes. They washed their own robes and made them white. Faith is a fact embedded deep in their history, for it links their present blessedness with their past experience. All-important and blessed record! We are not told where they were born, where they died, or in what style they lived, whether in royal palace or smoky hovel; whether in their natural characters they were brilliant or humble, wise or foolish. This only is recorded, and this of them all—they believed on Jesus; they trusted to His cross; they came guilty to the fountain which was opened there, and out of it they went, washed and white, to heaven. If anything in the experience of the redeemed on earth be meant beyond this, it is their renewed and continual application to His blood for the pardon and cleansing of every day. Washed once for all and in one sense clean every whit, they need yet daily to wash the feet from the soil of sin that cleaves to them through time. And it is characteristic of Christ’s redeemed ones that the nearer they get to heaven the more completely they depend on the atoning death of Christ; in all the world none but Christ, and in Christ nothing that absorbs them so much as “him crucified.”

While to those who are without, the necessary, the meritorious death of Christ remains the stumbling-block and stone of offence, the chosen point of attack, ever openly assaulted, ever secretly undermined, to those who are within, the Stone thus set at nought and rejected is still the head of the corner; it is still the tried stone, the sure foundation, the Rock whereof Faith speaks, “Set me upon it for it is higher than I,” Love’s sure, abiding Pillar of remembrance, whereon Love’s secret is written and graven with a pen of iron for ever. To them who believe Christ is precious.… The death of Christ is that which most powerfully attracts the heart of man to God, and this because it is the strongest proof of love. Love kindles and calls forth love; “We count that,” says John of Wessel, “to be the most lovable which we know to be the most loving.” The love of Christ has achieved the greatest things, and hence must produce the most powerful effects; it has displayed the greatest devotedness, and consequently must possess the strongest attractive power.1 [Note: Dora Greenwell, The Covenant of Life (ed. 1898), 47.]

The Noble Army of Martyrs

Literature

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