Revelation 21:5-8 And he that sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said to me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.… There is no doctrine more universally accepted in these days than the doctrine of human progress. And it is observable that this idea of human progress is not alien from the general representation of Scripture. What is the first picture and the last of the race of Adam? The Bible opens with the picture of the single man and woman in the garden of Eden, standing in the midst of the profuse but undeveloped riches of creative goofiness, holding the Divine commission to subdue the earth, and appropriate its resources to their own use. It leaves the same race gathered within" the walls of the New Jerusalem, the city of God, built up and embellished with all the bright things and the glorious which the Lord hath made. The successive revelations of Himself to Adam, to Noah, to Moses, in Christ, the gradual straitening of the moral law, as men were able to bear it, which is the true explanation of the imperfections discernible in the worthies of the Old Testament, are all indications of the progressive character of human life — stages in its journey towards the golden city. But while this is so, very marked is the solemnity with which it declares that in the Person and work of Christ a point was touched beyond which there is nothing. "And He that sat upon the throne said unto me, It is done — I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end." From the commencement of our era, the words have been felt to form one of the sublimest descriptions of Him in whom we have believed. Let us see how and with what results they may be adopted as a true description of our blessed Lord. 1. Now there is a habit of mind common in our day with regard to religious truth, the habit of dwelling with a morbid particularity upon minute objections, and forgetting the broad evidence upon which the general structure of the faith is built. The description of our Lord in the text, as the Alpha and Omega, suggests one of these broader lines of evidence. If it be true that Christ Jesus is in His Person and in His doctrine the central figure in the world's history, that His life and ministry is the key which unlocks the mysteries of God's providence, then we have surely here a solid argument that we have not followed cunningly devised fables. We may begin by reminding you of the manifest preparation for Christ's appearance through the previous ages of the world. We will take up the Old Testament, not now as inspired, but simply as a most ancient history, and it is surely unparalleled how in the multiplicity of books which make up the Bible, through all the varied maze of narrative, poetry, philosophy, runs ever in deep undertone the idea of One who should be in His day the author of a new era of holiness and truth. The world's history, so marvellously is the thread of Jewish life woven into the web of the old world's life, the world's history before Christ points unto Christ. And not less remarkable is that which follows. There are two great facts, it has been said, which are standing witnesses to the truth of the Christian revelation, the Israelitish race and the Catholic Church. The former in their earlier career, in their disruption and dispersion within our Lord's generation, exhibits a destiny unmistakably mixed up with Him. The latter, notwithstanding the sullying of its first purity, the dissolution of its first unity, notwithstanding the slowness of its progress in some ages, Rs withdrawal from certain districts in others, is still the section of the human family in which all that is noble and great in man is developed. And when we contemplate the life of Christ, still more markedly does He vindicate to Himself the title of "the Alpha and Omega," with all the claims therein involved. The character of Christ is the fulfilment and embodiment of the conscience of humanity. A marvellous testimony it is, that unbelief ventures not to touch the ark of that immaculate purity; on the contrary, with but the single exception of a single infidel's after-thought (Vide Notes to Shelley's Poems), it recognises Him frankly as the pattern man. In Him, it is granted, and in Him alone, gentleness never degenerates into weakness, nor wisdom into craft, nor severity into harshness. And it adds to the force of these thoughts, that although, when the life of Christ in all the ineffable beauty of its Divine lineaments is presented to it, the heart of humanity throbs at once in sympathy; yet human philosophy never imagined beforehand the character. And not less observable is it that no man has ever reproduced that image. The saints have copied it in their measure since it was unveiled to mortal vision; but just as it was said of the heathen, that being unable to comprehend God as a whole, they broke up the Deity into fragments, and worshipped one or other of His attributes apart from the rest; so has it been with the followers of Christ. They have seized upon portions of His character, and imitated Him, some in meekness, some in boldness, some in patience, but not one of all the mighty assembly of the saints has individually presented again to the world the complete likeness of his Lord. Anal in this, the very imperfection of their discipleship, have they been witnesses to His divinity. "I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last." Is it indeed so that in Him is at once the source and limit of all our conceptions of the holy and the good, the measure of truth, and purity, and love? Then what an argument is here for rendering unto Him our worship, and building on Him our hopes. 2. And when we pass from the person of Christ to the system of Christianity, we find yet another illustration of the text. The sublime title there claimed belongs to Him upon this ground also, that is the Christian faith is to be found the alone instrument for purifying and consolidating society. There are two characteristics of our blessed Lord's teaching and example, which are well worthy of note under this head. The first is, that those precepts which are most startling, such as the unconditional forgiveness of injuries, non-resistance of evil, benefiting those from whom no return is possible, whilst like Christ's own character they were never anticipated by man, are yet the only precepts which we can conceive the Lord God to give His creatures. We recognise their Divinity by the light of what they have wrought. The second speciality of the character as proposed in the preaching and pattern of Christ, is its universal adaptability. It stands equally detached from, yet equally blended with, poverty and wealth, youth and age, learning and ignorance. The more you compare Christ as a teacher with any other teacher, the more conspicuously does He stand forth as the Alpha and Omega of all practical righteousness. And this view of our Lord's teaching, we may observe in passing, throws a fresh light upon His miracles. Those miracles were not marvels designed simply to arrest attention, they were indications of the character in which He came. That He is the Renewer of all that is broken and worn and corrupt in humanity; that alike for the moral diseases of the soul, as for the miseries of this earthly life, He is the one everliving Physician; that in His religion lies the only cure for our individual and social ills, the only sure principle of union and benevolence; this is the truth which underlies all those wonders of omnipotence — the healing of the sick and the raising of the dead. If of all truth He is the "Beginning and the End," superseding or concluding in His religion all other methods of educating man, then if miracles upon men's bodies are to be shadows of His work upon the heart, the stamp on the visible of His office towards the invisible, I should expect, that whilst in former ages miraculous cures might be worked occasionally by great renovators of society, herein types of Him, yet that in His life this miraculous agency would culminate, and that after Him (not perhaps suddenly and sharply, for God's providences ever shade off gradually into each other) miracles would cease. And this is just the Scripture account. The Bible recognises a miraculous gift in prophets and apostles, but in strict subordination, both in number and authority, to His wonder-working; leaving Him still distinctly witnessed unto as the Alpha and Omega of all moral healing. "I have seen the end of all perfection, but Thy commandment is exceeding broad." Who then will mot bow down his head and worship before Him — the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last? There is a double moral cowardice amongst us from which the cause of truth equally suffers, first, the moral cowardice of those who, not daring to proclaim their entire unbelief in Revelation, profess to receive the cardinal doctrines of Christ, and question and cavil at those which are offshoots therefrom; hiding the broader scepticism under the veil of a loss. The second exhibition of moral cowardice is that of the men who do believe firmly, but shrink from confessing their faith, and so love to speak of Christian doctrines and facts under a sort of vague philosophical terminology, thus undermining their own steadfastness and withholding their testimony from the truth. Against these two forms of evil let my last words warn, urging you to a manly confession, in your speech, and in your lives, of Christ Jesus before men, as the Alpha and the Omega of all that has been, and shall be. (Bp. Woodford.) Parallel Verses KJV: And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. |
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