But who is he who sits upon the throne? Who but the Lord Jesus Christ? Who but the Babe of Bethlehem? Who but the Friend of publicans and sinners? Who but he who went about doing good to suffering mortal man? Who but he who died on the cross? Who but he on whose bosom St. John leaned at supper, and now saw him highly exalted, having a name above every name?
Oh, blest St. John, to see that sight! To see his dear Master in his glory, after having seen him in his humiliation! God grant us so to follow in St. John’s steps, that we may see the same sight, unworthy though we are, in God’s good time.
And where is God the Father? Yes, where? The heaven, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain him, whom no man hath seen, or can see; who dwells in the light, whom no man can approach unto. Only the only begotten Son, who dwells in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him, and shown to men in his own perfect loveliness and goodness, what their heavenly Father is. That was enough for St. John; let it be enough for us. He who has seen Christ has seen the Father, as far as any created being can see him. The Son Christ is merciful: therefore the Father is merciful. The Son is just: therefore the Father is just. The Son is faithful and true: therefore the Father is faithful and true. The Son is almighty to save: therefore the Father is almighty to save. Let that be enough for you and me.
But where is the Holy Spirit? There is no where for spirits. All that we can say is, that the Holy Spirit is proceeding for ever from the Father and the Son; going forth for ever, to bring light and life, righteousness and love, to all worlds, and to all hearts who will receive him. The lamps of fire which St. John saw, the dove which came down at Christ’s baptism, the cloven tongues of fire which sat on the Apostles—these were signs and tokens of the Spirit; but they were not the Spirit itself. Of him it is written, ‘He bloweth where he listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence he cometh or whither he goeth.’
It is enough for us that he is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Holy Father, and of the Holy Son; like them eternal, like them incomprehensible, like them almighty, like them all-wise, all-just, all-loving, merciful, faithful, and true for ever.
This is what St. John saw—Christ the crucified, Christ the Babe of Bethlehem, in the glory which he had before all worlds, and shall have for ever; with all the powers of this wondrous world crying to him for ever, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come; and the souls of just men made perfect answering those mystic animals, and joining their hymns of praise to the hymn which goes up for ever from sun and stars, from earth and sea,—when they find out the deepest of all wisdom—the lesson which all the wonders of this earth, and all which ever has happened, or will happen, in space and time, is meant to teach us:—
‘Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power; for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.’
This is all that I can tell you. It may be a very little: but is it not enough? What says Solomon the wise? ‘Knowest thou how the bones grow in the womb?’ Not thou. How, then, wilt thou know God, who made all things? Thou art fearfully and wonderfully made, though thou art but a poor mortal man. And is not God more fearfully and wonderfully made than thou art? It is a strange thing, and a mystery, how we ever got into this world: a stranger thing still to me, how we shall ever get out of this world again. Yet they are common things enough—birth and death. ‘Every moment dies a man, every moment one is born:’ and yet you do not know what is the meaning of birth or death either: and I do not know; and no man knows. How, then, can we know the mystery of God, in whose hand are the issues of life and death?—God to whom all live for ever, living and dead, born and unborn, in heaven and in hell?
So it is in small things as well as great, in great as well as small; and so it ever will be. ‘All things begin in some wonder, and in some wonder all things end,’ said Saint Augustine, wisest in his day of all mortal men; and all that great scholars have discovered since prove more and more that Saint Augustine’s words were true, and that the wisest are only, as a great philosopher once said, and one, too, who discovered more of God’s works than any man for many a hundred years, even Sir Isaac Newton himself: ‘The wisest of us is but like a child picking up a few shells and pebbles on the shore of a boundless sea.’
The shells and pebbles are the little scraps of knowledge which God vouchsafes to us, his sinful children; knowledge, of which at best St. Paul says, that we know only in part, and prophesy in part, and think as children; and that knowledge shall vanish away, and tongues shall cease, and prophecies shall fail.