PRIVATE MEDITATIONS AFTER COMMUNION
When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. He
laid His right hand on me, and said, "Don't be afraid! I am the First and
the Last, and the Living One. I was dead, but look--I am alive forever and
ever!" (Revelation 1:17-18)
The Apostle John, left alone in Patmos, away from all
congenial fellowship with loving human hearts, had doubtless often longed in
his rocky solitude, for some token or manifestation of his Redeemer's
personal Presence. When he called to mind the former privileged bliss of
near and endearing communion with the Lord he loved, but which in a visible
form he enjoyed no more—the prayer of his lonely heart and lonely spirit
must frequently have been—
"Oh for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!—
That sigh—that prayer was not in vain. The vanished hand and the stilled
voice were again felt and heard—He laid His right hand on me, and said,
"Don't be afraid! I am the First and the Last, and the Living One. I was
dead, but look--I am alive forever and ever!" The tears of his banishment
were dried. He was made to forget the absence of a beloved brotherhood of
disciples and saints, in the presence of "One who sticks closer than a
brother!"
"I was dead!"—This solemn, mysterious truth I have
been permitted significantly to recall through the symbols of His own
appointment. But now, as the Table is left, He seems, in this still hour of
reflection and retrospect, to bequeath for meditation the glorious
counterpart assurance—a glad watchword surely in renewing the beaten paths
of life—"but look--I am alive forever and ever!"—or, as that might be
better rendered, "I am THE LIVING ONE,"—He who was dead "dies no more—death
has no more dominion over Him!"
How blessed to be able to look up to the right hand of
God, and behold, seated there, as my Advocate and Intercessor, not a
stranger, but an ever-living, never-dying Friend—with a heart beating
responsive to human sympathy. Not only, as God, able to save, but, as Man,
able to compassionate—feeling what is done to His people, as sensitively as
if it were done to Himself. When I think that into the hands of this God-man
Mediator has been committed universal rule and sovereignty—that He directs
all that befalls me—that it is He who sends prosperity—who gives the gourd
and the sunshine—that it is He who appoints the blight and the shadow—that
every trial is ordered by Him, and every tear permitted by Him—I may feel
sweetly assured that all is well. He has renewed to me, today, at His
Sacramental Feast, the pledges of His love and tenderness—so that this may
well be a balm-word and a heart-cheerer alike in all time of blessing and in
all time of tribulation—a support and solace in every vicissitude of this
mortal scene; hallowing joy, consecrating sorrow, dispelling my fears,
lightening my darkness, and at last smoothing my death-pillow—"I know that
my Redeemer LIVES!"
The words of a Brother Apostle seem like a comment on the
above divine vision and voice of Patmos—"When Christ who is our LIFE shall
appear, then shall you also appear with Him in glory." "The glorious
appearing" of THE LIFE—in other words, the second coming of his Lord, was
the special theme and revelation of the Apocalypse. That mystic Book has
well been called "the Book of the Coming One." It begins, in its
opening chapter, with "Behold, He comes with clouds!" It ends in its closing
chapter, with a thrice repeated blast of the same silver trumpet—"Behold, I
come quickly!"
The Sacrament of Communion may, with equal propriety and
emphasis, be called—"The Feast of the Coming One." I have just been
commemorating Him, in His first Advent, as the Dying One; when He
came in humiliation—the Man of sorrows, despised and rejected—and bowed His
head on Calvary's Cross. But while a Feast of remembrance, it is
equally a Feast of anticipation. Every returning celebration is
giving augmented power and reality to the divine words—"Until the day
breaks, and the shadows flee away!"
Even His own people are prone at times, through wavering
faith, to ask—"Where is the promise of His Coming?" There is no sound of His
footstep. The wheels of His chariot are tarrying—and outer nature, in her
majestic unvarying sequences, seems to countersign the doubting thought,
"All things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." From
this Mount of Ordinances the chimes of the Advent Bell break on the
listening ear. "Ever since, has this blessed Institution lain, as the golden
morning light, far out even in the Church's darkest night, not only the seal
of His presence and its pledge, but also the promise of the bright day of
His coming."
I have recently been privileged to stand, so to speak, on
a divinely-built watch-tower, looking for that day-dawn—"the blessed hope,
even the glorious appearing of the Great God our Savior."
"Yet a little while, and He who shall come will come, and
will not tarry." That Advent season has its date in a yet unrevealed future.
Meanwhile, be it mine to be so living and acting, that the cry can never be
heard too soon or too suddenly—"Behold, the Bridegroom comes!"—Ever ready to
hail Him with exulting welcome; and so at last, to sit down with Abraham and
Isaac and Jacob, and the festal throng of the glorified, in my Father's
Kingdom.