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I. First let us understand THE ATTITUDE AND POSITION OF THE ANGELS. They are round about the throne of God, around the elders — that is, the Church — and around the living creatures. They are, therefore, the sentinels and the guardians of Divine and human things. So they stand equally around the emblem of eternal power, around the fourfold forms of life, around its drudgery as well as its ambition, and around the Church, distressed and broken and divided and betrayed. No thought of fear dims the lustre of their eyes, nor lessens the precision and the emphasis of their song. And it is worthy of notice that they secure ample leisure for worship. It is a lesson that ought not to be lost upon our hurrying age. Thank heaven, there are still secluded corners of our land where the shriek of steam-engines, the clamour of crowded streets, the driving of pulse and brain, is unknown; where the valleys laugh and sing with the standing corn, where the hilltops are silent as the seas, and where jaded brains may shape some thought of God. But heaven is busy too, and there is work enough to be accomplished. There are sinners lost in the wilds of the hill, and in loathsome dens of the city, who will need to be brought home. There are claims and needs and dangers of the Church the world over — energies to be cherished, works to be encouraged, impurities to be purged, sorrows and disappointments to be assuaged. And with all these interests in hand their eye is upon the throne, for here only do angels and men alike behold, and thence only receive the interpretation of life and the wisdom and guidance for work. And well were it, not only for its honesty, but even more for its progress, if the commerce of England and Scotland and Ireland were directed by the laws which abide in God. Only those who obey can worship, and only those who rightly worship can truly live. And so —

II. The central thought of the angels, like that of the Church, was THE WORTHINESS OF CHRIST. "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain." And as it was in the mind of the Church, so here again this worthiness is associated with sacrifice. For most men suffer only when they must, and they fail to perceive that sacrifice at once tests what we are, and makes us what we ought to be. In this way Christ's sacrifice proved His essential worth, and, beyond this, proves to-day His permanent worth to His people. It is not His power alone. That never elicits adoration. It is the goodness that reigns paramount within Him which men worship and love.

III. THE RESPONSE OF CREATION. The poet of Palestine had said, many a year before St. John lived, that there is neither speech nor language throughout the earth in which the voice of the firmament is not heard. "The songs of the spheres" was another method of expressing the same truth. The sky vibrates with praise as the great stars stand out in their places. "Earth, with its thousand voices," said Coleridge, "praises God." And while these call to man, whatever his tongue or his worship, man the world round feels that he must respond. He cannot help worshipping. Under the gaslight, and in the heated atmosphere of some remote meeting-place in the big town, he may lustily proclaim that God is nothing to him. But when the gas is out and the cheering companions are gone, when he is alone on the mountain-side, and the thunder booms out its terror above and the lightning flashes death around him, a voice within answers the voices without, and the infidel is compelled to pray. And as man must worship, so his worship adopts a more expansive form than that which angels take as yet (Revelation 7:12). His eyes, too, are indeed filled with the image of the Lamb. What mind can forget Calvary and Olivet? But away beyond the present fact he contemplates the continuous recognition, and age upon age he hears the same hymn. And further yet, and fuller, the worship of the Lamb broadens into the worship of the Godhead. It is offered to "Him that sitteth upon the throne." And it expresses the spiritual history of every saint. We see ourselves in this hymn. When first our life lay before us, and we took it up and placed it upon the altar of God's salvation, Jesus Christ was all, was everything to us. Then as faith deepened and threw up the greater and stronger life, we saw Jesus in all things. And then we beheld the love of the Father to be as great and tender as the love of the Son, and the strength of the Holy Ghost gathered round us and within us, and God in His blessed Trinity embraced all things.

(W. M. Johnston, M. A.)

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KJV: And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands;

WEB: I saw, and I heard something like a voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures, and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousands of ten thousands, and thousands of thousands;