THE CEDARS AND CANDLESTICKS. 



253 



wilderness. He became a Man of Sorrows and ac- 

 quainted with grief. The triumphs of His grace were 

 accomplished through the sorrows and toils, of His 

 humanity. His very miracles themselves show most con- 

 spicuously the pains and sufferings through which they 

 were wrought. The trees of Eden in His case were con- 

 verted into the cross of Calvary ; and the glorious fiat 

 of the first creation, " Let there be light, and there was 

 light," into the awful cry of darkness and death the 

 birth pang of the new creation, " My God, my God, 

 why hast thou forsaken me?" And even after the 

 triumphs of resurrection and glorification in heaven, He 

 appeared ever and anon to favoured witnesses with the 

 old tokens of suffering and death. To Saul He revealed 

 Himself on the way to Damascus as " Jesus of Nazar- 

 eth whom thou persecutest." In the midst of the seven 

 golden candlesticks the beloved disciple heard Him say- 

 ing, " I am He that liveth and was dead." In the midst 

 of the throne, John, through his tears, saw "a Lamb as 

 it had been slain." And as the history of man's salva- 

 tion is thus a record of toil and pain and sacrifice, so the 

 Christian life in the individual and in the Church is de- 

 veloped only by laborious spiritual effort, by the sweat 

 of the soul. It grows no longer as a tree, but as a build- 

 ing, a city of toil and suffering. How expressive, when 

 viewed in this light, are the promises given to the seven 

 Churches of Asia in connection with the overcoming of 

 some easily besetting sin, some special evil. It is to 

 him that overcometh the hindrance in himself and in the 

 world, that God now gives to eat of the tree of life. It 



