LECTURE IV.

REVELATION ii. 17.

TO HIM THAT OVERCOMETH WILL I GIVE TO EAT OF THE HIDDEN MANNA, AND WILL GIVE HIM A WHITE STONE, AND IN THE STONE A NEW NAME WRITTEN, WHICH NO MAN KNOWETH, SAVING HE THAT RECEIVETH IT.

In the last discourse we contemplated the Church of Christ during one of the most interesting periods that it has ever known, viz. during those peculiarly trying centuries when its members were poor in this world's advantages, but rich unto God; "I know thy poverty, but thou art rich; when they were called to endure the ten

a Revelation ii. 9.

"a

days of tribulation under the Pagan persecutors, but were "found faithful unto death," and so put on the crown of life.

This state of apparent depression, but of real prosperity, continued until the three first centuries had passed away, and the religion of the Redeemer began to emerge from its obscurity; to be patronized by the great and noble; to reckon princes among its proselytes, and Constantine, the Emperor of the Roman world, as its acknowledged head.

The

As it too often is with individuals, so it is with the Church at large. warm and sunny day draws out the adder. Christians who in a preceding age had been able to rejoice in their poverty and tribulation, and even to be thankful that to them it was given not only to believe on him, but also to suffer, for the sake of Christ, now became anxious only for this world's wealth and its advantages; so that, instead of the holy, self-denying lives of b See Philippians i. 29.

the earlier converts, were to be seen the compromising, sensual habits of the mere worldling, in the garb and under the title of the followers of the Crucified.

It is of this church-state that we believe the Church of Pergamos to have been the type; at least we may assert that the instructions and reproofs addressed in the first instance to her, were peculiarly appropriate to the great body of the Christian Church, from the days of Constantine, until the period when the Popes first began to assume temporal power, and by their usurpations, enormities, and tyranny, to give, as we shall see in the next epistle, an entirely new character to the Christian world.

In our last discourse, we remarked how peculiarly appropriate the preface was to the nature of the instructions and warnings which were to follow.

Observe the same beauty of propriety in the epistle which comes before us this day.

"To the angel of the Church in Pergamos write; these things saith he which hath the sharp sword with two edges." When our Lord was about to use only the language of commendation and encouragement, He referred only to those of His attributes from which encouragement and comfort could be deduced, His eternity and all-sufficiency. In the present epistle, so full of reprehension, He describes Himself in His judicial character, as bearing not the sword in vain, equally ready to punish, as to defend; to destroy, as to

save.

The epistle thus continues, "I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan's seat is."d No sooner had imperial Rome become Christian, than from its great temporal power and wealth, which although upon the wane, were still considerable, it became at once the head of the Christian world; and therefore might be termed pre

c Revelation ii. 12.

d Ibid. ii. 13.