Heaven and Earth Made New

REVELATIO 21 COMME TARY
EDITED BY GLE PEASE
I TRODUCTIO
The essence of heaven is relationships-God and man, and man to man. People are primary.
We do not care all that much if the streets are gold or blacktop, or if the walls are jewelled, but
we care most about people. Charles Spurgeon had such a large congregation that he once said to
them, "There are so many of you members of this church, that I can hardly get to shake hands
with you once in a year, but I shall have plenty of time then in heaven. You will know your pastor
in heaven better than you do now." But God gave us this description of things to make it clear
that we would be enjoying our relationships in an environment that was free of anything to
hinder them, and one that would enhance them.
Hendricksen writes, "Scripture resembles a flower. We find the seed in Genesis, the growing
plant in the books which follow, the fully developed and beautiful flower in Revelation."
Ray C. Stedman wrote, "Many of you are too young to remember this, but years ago, before
World War II, there was a radio news broadcaster by the name of H.V. Kaltenborn. He always
began his news broadcast with the words, "Well, we've got good news today!" That is the way I
would like to start this last section of
Revelation. It is indeed good news! The judgments are past, the terrible
plagues upon the earth are ended. We begin with a view of heaven coming
down to earth; a time when the prayers of God's people for centuries, "Your
will be done on earth as it is in heaven," will be answered."
God is spirit but he is the Creator of the whole non-spirit world, and so matter is of God, who is
the greatest of all materialists, for he said it is good. Matter is good forever, for God will make
another heaven and earth and this whole picture of heaven is a focus on the beauty of matter for
ever for the saints to enjoy. People idolizing matter is no reason to reject the good of it and its
eternal value.
John Wesley wrote,
1. What a strange scene is here opened to our view! How remote from all our natural
apprehensions! ot a glimpse of what is here revealed was ever seen in the heathen world. ot
only the modern, barbarous, uncivilized Heathens have not the least conception of it; but it was
equally unknown to the refined, polished Heathens of ancient Greece and Rome. And it is almost
as little thought of or understood by the generality of Christians: I mean, not barely those that
are nominally such, that have the form of godliness without the power; but even those that in a
measure fear God, and study to work righteousness.
It must be allowed that after all the researches we can make, still our knowledge of the great
truth which is delivered to us in these words is exceedingly short and imperfect. As this is a point

of mere revelation, beyond the reach of all our natural faculties, we cannot penetrate far into it,
nor form any adequate conception of it. But it may be an encouragement to those who have in
any degree tasted of the powers of the world to come to go as far as we can go, interpreting
Scripture by Scripture, according to the analogy of faith.
1
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first
heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there
was no longer any sea.
BAR ES, “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth - Such a heaven and earth that they might
properly be called new; such transformations, and such changes in their appearance, that they seemed
to be just created. He does not say that they were created now, or anew; that the old heavens and earth
were annihilated; but all that he says is, that there were such changes that they seemed to be new. If
the earth is to be renovated by fire, such a renovation will give an appearance to the globe as if it were
created anew, and might be attended with such an apparent change in the heavens that they might be
said to be new. The description hereRev_21:1 relates to scenes after the general resurrection and the
judgment - for those events are detailed in the close of the previous chapter. In regard to the meaning
of the language here, see the notes on 2Pe_3:13. Compare, also, “The Religion of Geology and its
Connected Sciences,” by Edward Hitchcock, D. D., LL. D., pp. 370-408.
For the first heaven and the first earth were passed away - They had passed away by being
changed, and a renovated universe had taken their place. See the notes on2Pe_3:10.
And there was no more sea - This change struck John more forcibly, it would appear, than
anything else. Now, the seas and oceans occupy about three-fourths of the surface of the globe, and, of
course, to that extent prevent the world from being occupied by people - except by the comparatively
small number that are mariners. There, the idea of John seems to be, the whole world will be
inhabitable, and no part will be given up to the wastes of oceans. In the present state of things, these
vast oceans are necessary to render the world a fit abode for human beings, as well as to give life and
happiness to the numberless tribes of animals that find their homes in the waters. In the future state,
it would seem, the present arrangement will be unnecessary; and if man dwells upon the earth at all, or
if he visits it as a temporary abode (see the notes on 2Pe_3:13), these vast wastes of water will be
needless. It should be remembered that the earth, in its changes, according to the teachings of geology,
has undergone many revolutions quite as remarkable as it would be if all the lakes, and seas, and
oceans of the earth should disappear. Still, it is not certain that it was intended that this language
should be understood literally as applied to the material globe. The object is to describe the future
blessedness of the righteous; and the idea is, that that will be a world where there will be no such
wastes as those produced by oceans.
CLARKE, “A new heaven and a new earth - See the notes on 2Pe_3:13 : The ancient Jews
believed that God would renew the heavens and the earth at the end of seven thousand years. The
general supposition they founded onIsa_65:17.

There was no more sea - The sea no more appeared than did the first heaven and earth. All was
made new; and probably the new sea occupied a different position and was differently distributed,
from that of the old sea.
However, with respect to these subjects as they stand in this most figurative book, I must express
myself in the words of Calmet: Vouloir dire quels seront ce nouveau ciel, et cette nouvelle terre, quels
seront leurs ornamens et leur qualite, c’est a mon avis la plus grande de toutes les presomptions. En
general, ces manieres de parler marquent de tres grands changemens dans l’univers. “To pretend to
say what is meant by this new heaven and new earth, and what are their ornaments and qualities, is in
my opinion the greatest of all presumptions. In general these figures of speech point out great
alternations in the universe.”
GILL, “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth,.... This vision relates to a glorious state of the
church, not in the times of the apostles, or first dispensation of the Gospel; when the old Jewish
church state, with its ordinances, rites, and ceremonies, passed away, and a new church state, a new
dispensation, new ordinances, and a new people, took place; and when saints came not to Mount Sinai,
but to Mount Sion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem; and when God tabernacled and
dwelt with men in particular churches and congregations; and the curse of the law and the sting of
death were taken away by Christ, and there was no condemnation to them that were in him; which is
the sense of some: but death did not then cease, it has reigned over men in common ever since, in a
natural way, and immediately upon that dispensation arose persecution unto death, both by Jews and
Gentiles; and for the first three hundred years, instead death being no more, and sorrow and sighing
fleeing away, there was scarce anything else: nor can it be said that there was no temple, or places of
pubic worship, or that the church had no need of the sun and moon of the Gospel and Gospel
ordinances then, since these have continued ever since, and will to the end of the world; nor did the
kings of the earth bring their honour and glory into that church state in any sense, but set themselves
against it, and endeavoured to destroy it; nor were the churches even of that age so pure as here
described, Rev_21:27 many persons both of bad principles and bad practices crept into them; there
were tares among the wheat, goats among the sheep, and foolish virgins with the wise: nor does this
vision refer to the times of Constantine, when the old Pagan idolatry was removed out of the empire,
and the Christian religion was revived, and came to be in a flourishing condition, and a new face of
things appeared, and Christianity was embraced and honoured by the emperor, and the great men of
the earth; there was not that purity as in this state; the Christian doctrine and worship were soon
corrupted, being mixed with Judaism and Paganism; a flood of errors was brought in by Arius,
Eutychius, Nestorius, Macedonius, and Pelagius, and others; yea, doctrines of devils, and which at
length issued in a general apostasy, and in the revelation of the man of sin; nor was there that peace
and comfort, and freedom from evils, as from death, pain, and sorrow; witness the Arian persecution,
the incursions of the Goths and Vandals into the empire, and the inhuman butcheries and numerous
massacres and murders of the Popish party since. Nor has this vision anything to do with the
conversion and restoration of the Jews, when they will become a new people, quit their old principles
and modes of worship, and there will be no more among them the sea of corrupt doctrine, respecting
the Messiah, the works of the law, &c. for this will be over before this vision takes place, as appears
from the 19th chapter: nor does it belong to the spiritual reign of Christ, which will be in the present
earth, whereas this glorious state of the church will be in the new heavens and new earth; that will be
at the sounding of the seventh trumpet, and in the Philadelphian church state, this will not be till
prophetic time and antichristian times will be no more, when the mystery of God will be finished, and
after the Laodicean state is at an end; in that there will be public worship, the ministry of the word,
and administration of ordinances, but not in this; and though there will be then great spirituality and
holiness, yet not in perfection, nor will the churches be clear of hypocrites and nominal professors, and
will at last sink into a Laodicean state. Nor is this vision to be interpreted of the church triumphant in
heaven, or of the ultimate glory of the saints there; since the new Jerusalem here described descends

from heaven, that is, to earth, where the saints will reign with Christ; and since the church is
represented as a bride, prepared and adorned for her husband, but not as yet at the entrance of this
state, delivered up to him; and since the tabernacle of God is said to be with men, that is, on earth; and
this dwelling of God with them is as in a tabernacle, which is movable, and seems to be distinct from
the fixed state of the saints in the ultimate glory; to which may be added, that in this state, Christ, as
King of saints, will be peculiarly and distinctly glorified, whereas in the ultimate one, when the
kingdom is delivered to the Father, God will be all in all: this therefore is to be understood of the
glorious state of the church during the thousand years of Satan's binding, and the saints' living and
reigning with Christ; the holy city, and new Jerusalem, is the same with the beloved city inRev_20:9
what is there briefly hinted, is here largely described and insisted on; this will be the time and state
when the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven, will first meet together, and be
brought to Christ, and be presented by him to himself a glorious church, without spot or wrinkle, or
any such thing, and Christ will reign gloriously among them: the seat of this church state will be the
"new heaven" and "new earth" which John saw, and which are the same that Peter speaks of, in which
dwelleth righteousness, or in which righteous persons only dwell,2Pe_3:13 for as the first heaven and
earth both here and there are to be understood literally, so in like manner the new heaven and new
earth; which will be new, not with respect to the substance, but their qualities; they will be renewed, or
purged from everything that is disagreeable, and is the effect of the sin of man; the first heaven and
earth were made chiefly for men, but, on account of the sin of man, the earth was cursed, and brought
forth thorns and thistles, and both the earth and air, or the heaven, were attended with noxious
vapours, &c. and the whole creation was made subject to vanity and corruption; from all which they
will be cleared at the general conflagration, and a new earth and heaven will appear, fit for the
habitation of the second Adam, and his posterity, for the space of a thousand years. So the Jews speak
of new heavens, as ‫,מחודשים‬ "renewed" ones, which are the secrets of sublime wisdom (o): and they say (p),
that the holy blessed God will renew his world a thousand years, and that in the seventh millennium there will
be new heavens and a new earth (q):
for the first heaven and the first earth were passed awayfor the first heaven and the first earth were passed awayfor the first heaven and the first earth were passed awayfor the first heaven and the first earth were passed away ; not those in Rev_20:11 but the heaven and the
earth which were first made, which passed away, as Peter also says, adding, with a great noise; meaning not as to
their substance, but as to their form, fashion, and qualities:
and there was no more seaand there was no more seaand there was no more seaand there was no more sea ; which may be understood either as to the being of it; it was "exhausted", as the
Ethiopic version renders it, being dried up by the conflagration; see Amo_7:4 and if Mr. Burnet's hypothesis can
be supported, that the paradisiacal earth, or the earth fore the flood, was without a sea, that being made, with
the mountains and hills, by the falling of the surface of the earth into the waters under it, there is a surprising
agreement between that earth and this new one; but the Alexandrian copy reads, "and I saw the sea no more"; it
might be in being, though John saw it not and since, at the end of the thousand years, the sea will give up the
dead which are in it, it must be in being, unless it can be interpreted of the place where the sea was: wherefore it
seems best to understand it with respect to its use and qualities; and that as the heaven and earth will pass away,
not as to their substance, but quality, so in like manner the sea will be no more used for navigation, nor may it
be a tumultuous and raging one, or have its flux and reflux, or its waters be salt, as now; the schoolmen say it will
no more be a fluid, but will be consolidated into the globe as the sphere; and, in a mystical sense, there will be
no more wicked men; tumultuous and turbulent men are like the troubled sea, that cannot rest, Isa_57:20 for in

the new heavens and earth only righteous persons will dwell, 2Pe_3:13.
HE RY, “We have here a more general account of the happiness of the church of God in the future
state, by which it seems most safe to understand the heavenly state.
I. A new world now opens to our view (Rev_21:1): I saw a new heaven and a new earth; that is, a
new universe; for we suppose the world to be made up of heaven and earth. By the new earth we may
understand a new state for the bodies of men, as well as a heaven for their souls. This world is not now
newly created, but newly opened, and filled with all those who were the heirs of it. The new heaven and
the new earth will not then be distinct; the very earth of the saints, their glorified bodies, will now be
spiritual and heavenly, and suited to those pure and bright mansions. To make way for the
commencement of this new world, the old world, with all its troubles and commotions, passed away.
JAMISO , “Rev_21:1-27. The New Heaven and Earth: New Jerusalem out of Heaven.
The remaining two chapters describe the eternal and consummated kingdom of God and the saints
on the new earth. As the world of nations is to be pervaded by divine influence in the millennium, so
the world of nature shall be, not annihilated, but transfigured universally in the eternal state which
follows it. The earth was cursed for man’s sake; but is redeemed by the second Adam.Now is the
Church; in the millennium shall be the kingdom; and after that shall be the new world wherein God
shall be all in all. The “day of the Lord” and the conflagration of the earth are in2Pe_3:10, 2Pe_3:11
spoken of as if connected together, from which many argue against a millennial interval between His
coming and the general conflagration of the old earth, preparatory to the new; but “day” is used often
of a whole period comprising events intimately connected together, as are the Lord’s second advent,
the millennium, and the general conflagration and judgment. CompareGen_2:4 as to the wide use of
“day.” Man’s soul is redeemed by regeneration through the Holy Spirit now; man’sbody shall be
redeemed at the resurrection; man’s dwelling-place, His inheritance, the earth, shall be redeemed
perfectly at the creation of the new heaven and earth, which shall exceed in glory the first Paradise, as
much as the second Adam exceeds in glory the first Adam before the fall, and as man regenerated in
body and soul shall exceed man as he was at creation.
the first — that is the former.
passed away — Greek, in A and B is “were departed” (Greek, “apeelthon,” not as in English
Version, “pareelthe”).
was — Greek, “is,” which graphically sets the thing before our eyes as present.
no more sea — The sea is the type of perpetual unrest. Hence our Lord rebukes it as an unruly
hostile troubler of His people. It symbolized the political tumults out of which “the beast” arose,
Rev_13:1. As the physical corresponds to the spiritual and moral world, so the absence ofsea, after the
metamorphosis of the earth by fire, answers to the unruffled state of solid peace which shall then
prevail. The sea, though severing lands from one another, is now, by God’s eliciting of good from evil,
made the medium of communication between countries through navigation. Then man shall possess
inherent powers which shall make the sea no longer necessary, but an element which would detract
from a perfect state. A “river” and “water” are spoken of in Rev_22:1, Rev_22:2, probably literal (that
is, with such changes of the natural properties of water, as correspond analogically to man’s own
transfigured body), as well as symbolical. The sea was once the element of the world’s destruction, and
is still the source of death to thousands, whence after the millennium, at the general judgment, it is
specially said, “The sea gave up the dead ... in it.” Then it shall cease to destroy, or disturb, being
removed altogether on account of its past destructions.

PULPIT, “And I saw. The usual introduction to a new vision (cf. Revelation 20:11, etc.). Having described the
origin and progress of evil in the world, the final overthrow of Satan and his adherents, and the judgment when
every man is rewarded according to his works, the seer now COMPLETES the whole by portraying the eternal
bliss of the redeemed in heaven (cf. on Revelation 20:10). The description is based upon Isaiah 60:1-22.
and Ezekiel 40:1-49.,et seq.; especially the latter, which follows the ACCOUNT of God and Magog, as does
this. A new heaven and a new earth. The dispute as to whether a new creation is intended, or a revivified earth,
seems to BE FOUNDED on the false assumption that the dwellers in heaven must be localized in space
(cf. Isaiah 65:17, "I create new heavens and a new earth;" also Isaiah 66:22; 2 Peter 3:13). For the first heaven
and the first earth were passed away. The Revisers follow B and others in readingἀπῆλθον, and render it by
the English perfect tense. In ‫א‬, A, is readἀπῆλθαν , while other manuscripts give ἀπῆλθεν and παρῆλθε. The
first heaven and earth; that is, those now existing pass away as described inRevelation 20:11. And there was no
more sea; and the sea no longer exists. The threefold division of heaven, earth, and sea represents the whole of
this world (cf. Revelation 10:6). Some interpret the sea symbolically of the restless, unstable, wicked nations of the
earth, which now exist no longer; others understand the absence of sea to typify the absence of instability and
wickedness in the New Jerusalem.
BIBLICAL ILLUSTRATOR, “The new heavens and new earth
I. Scripture distinctly reveals the fact that this world is not destined to continue as it is. “The fashion of
this world changes” is the constant statement of the inspired writers. We seem to learn this from the
very fading qualities of everything that surrounds us. We have scarcely enjoyed the warmth of the
summer sun when the leaves of autumn fall fast and thick around us. These have scarcely disappeared
when we tread upon the snows of winter; and these have scarcely melted away before the budding of
spring again surrounds us, and Nature gives indications that she is about once more to revive. It is not
only from Scripture that we gain such lessons as this. We give it to you as a fact, which is proved to
demonstration by science, that there is constantly going on, in the mechanism of the universe a similar
decay to that which is going on in any other mechanism that you know. You are aware that the various
planets that surround our globe move through an atmosphere; and that this atmosphere acts as a
repelling and hindering force upon the planets which thus move; and that this hindering force, acting
constantly upon every planet that moves through space, must eventually so check the velocity of those
planets, and at length so act upon their movements, as to bring the whole of the planet-machinery to a
stand. And, in addition to this, you are to remember that science points out to us the fact that in the
very centre of our globe there exists a sufficient quantity of igniting matter to burst the crust of our
globe, and make it a ruin at our feet. And now for what object is this to be? Is there to be anything in
the place of this materialism when it thus falls into ruin? Or are we to reside in a place altogether
different from this our world—a place rather spiritual than material in the elements that compose it? “I
beheld a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth were passed away.” “We,
therefore, look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.” In the first place,
the incarnation of Christ would lead us to infer, I think, that we were destined to be material as well as
spiritual in our final and everlasting state. You are to remember, again, that Christ when He rose from
the dead did not fling away materialism for ever; on the contrary, His body came back to His spirit,
just as ours shall come back. And not only so, but He now bears that glorified body in the courts of
heaven. And we may conclude that if Christ has thus brought materialism up to the courts of God, if
He not only walked the earth in a material body, but now resides in heaven in glorified materialism,
materialism is destined to decay, only that it may be purified with the fires of the last day. But, again,
this is only a natural inference to be drawn from another doctrine of the Christian religion—I mean the
resurrection of the body. Thus we come to the conclusion that when St. John saw a new heaven and a
new earth he saw what literally should come out of the ruins of the old. And then who can describe the
beauty of such a residence as this? Scripture only gives us a glimpse into paradise. Methinks, perhaps,
we could not understand what paradise was; we could not realise the beauty of its sounds, the richness
of its sights, the glories of its landscape. And so Scripture only gives us a glimpse into the glories of our
future home. But in order to make this more evident we would ask you to remark that there is to be
not only a new earth, but a new heaven as well. We perhaps could understand that the earth required
renewing. It is inhabited by a sinful race. But you will naturally ask, Why does heaven require to be

renewed—heaven, the residence of God. But we think you mistake in fancying that the heaven which is
here stated to be renewed is the heaven wherein God dwells. We think, rather, it alludes to the
firmamental space that surrounds this earth, and that what St. John means to assert is that not only
does the earth become renewed by the process of the last fiery trial, but that also the atmosphere itself,
the place wherein planets move, where the whole machinery of the stars is at work, that this place too
is purged by a similar process. If so, we ask you, Does not imagination at once falter when we strive to
conceive such a splendid spreading of materialism as this must throw open? Not only shall the earth,
then, be clad with beauty, but there shall come a clearing process upon the air; and this shall so throw
open the firmamental regions to man’s view, and so render the planetary system visible, as to make the
scene literally accord with the vision of St. John—a new heaven, as well as a new earth.
II. What shall be the pre-eminent mark and characteristic of the arrangements and inhabitants of this
glorious scene? St. Peter tells us, “We look for new heavens and a new earth, in which dwelleth
righteousness”; and we therefore infer that righteousness will be the characteristic of the future
heavens and earth. If there was anything permitted there that was not thoroughly righteous—if there
was anything like impurity infecting the region or sinfulness throwing its taint upon the scene, then in
vain should we hope for such a beautiful residence. And thus there comes the practical question to
ourselves, Are we or are we not fitted for such a scene as this? Fasten not your affections upon things
below. Take them as God gives them to you: enjoy them as far as God allows you; but, remember, there
is decay in everything you see. (J. P. Waldo, B. A.)
The new heaven and new earth
These words refer especially to the future. We all live in the future more or less; it is so full of
possibilities of improvement that we are strongly disposed to dwell upon it. God has not allowed the
future state to be wrapped entirely in mystery; enough has been revealed to inspire us to inquire into
its glorious realities.
I. That there is a great change to take place in the heaven and the earth.
1. The new heaven implies that the future state will be suited to the soul in the fullest possible
sense. There will be no night there—i.e., there will be no ignorance there. The “god of this world”
will not have any power in “the new heaven,” nor will any evil men or false teachers be found there
to blind or delude the minds of the inhabitants. The state will be perfectly adapted to the redeemed
soul. There will be no doubt there. Certitude will be the mental state of all in the future life; nor will
there be any fear in that state. The deep mysteries of the future will not create any fear in the
minds of the redeemed. There will be no falsehood in that state either; no one who loveth or doeth
a lie shall enter into it: truth will be the very atmosphere of the place. There will be no such thing as
a selfish emotion experienced by any soul in the “new heaven.” Righteous principle will be the
governing power in all. Neither will there be any hatred in the “new heaven.” All will be sweet and
harmonious reasonableness.
2. It will be suited to the body. It will be a state of established health and vigour. The “new earth”
will abound in all the elements of true and pure strength. So perfect will the body, which we shall
then possess, be in all its parts, that we shall never be conscious of any evil passions whatsoever.
There will be no want in the “new earth.” The “new earth” will be richly supplied with all that the
new body will require; the new earth and the resurrection body will be most thoroughly fitted the
one for the other.
3. The society of the future state will be of the purest and the best. The character of the inhabitants
will be such that defection will be impossible. There will be great progression to fuller knowledge,
larger views, and more comprehensive understanding of things spiritual and eternal. The very
thought of it is an inspiration; what must an experience of it be?
II. That the future state will be one of very intimate spiritual association between God and His people.

“The tabernacle of God will be with men.”
III. That the future state will be entirely free from all trial (D. Rhys Jenkins.)
The unending age of blessedness
I. It will be in a sense a new state.
1. It may be physically new.
2. It may be dispensationally new. Christ will deliver up the kingdom to God the Father.
3. It may be relatively new. New in the estimation and feeling of the occupants.
II. It will be a state widely differing from all preceding ones.
1. The difference will arise from the absence of some things which were identified with all the
preceding states.
(1) All the elements of mental agitation—pride, ambition, avarice, revenge, doubt, fear, envy,
guilt—will be excluded from heaven.
(2) Death-beds, funeral processions, cemeteries, are not known there.
(3) Suffering.
2. This difference will arise from the presence of some things which have not been in connection
with any preceding states.
(1) A full manifestation of God.
(2) A perfect fellowship with God.
(a) Direct.
(b) Permanent. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The new heaven and the new earth
1. Our future state of being will partake very largely of a material character. That is, we shall not
exist in an invisible, impalpable condition, floating in ether, as some have fancifully supposed, or
mysteriously suspended upon nothing. The soul and body are not two antagonistic beings, to be
severed and divorced for all eternity. They are separated by death to be re-united at the
resurrection.
2. Our occupation in a future state will be greatly influenced by material things. It would be
unreasonable to attribute to the future life an entire absence of all those warm and sensible
accompaniments which give expression and force to our present being. Christ did not come to take
sway all taste for the beautiful in nature, but to refine and elevate those powers by which we
apprehend and appreciate the lovely and the sublime. Our capacity for investigating the works of
God will not merely remain undestroyed, but be developed so as to meet the requirements of the
new state of being. When we have made the material world minister to our wants; when we have
gathered to our tables the produce of all lands, and when we have culled from the beauties of
nature for the adornment of our homes—nay, further, when we have made the steam-power print
for our use the ripest thoughts of the greatest minds, and when we have girdled the earth with an
electric band, so that words of hearty friendship may be flashed as in a moment to the uttermost
ends of the world—when we have done all this have we yet put the works of Omnipotence to their
highest use? Are there not fields yet to be entered, regions yet to be explored, treasures yet to be
discovered, harvests yet to be reaped?

3. We anticipate future opportunities to unravel the perplexities of a Divine providence.
4. The new earth, with its new and sinless life, will afford opportunity for the more perfect
comprehension of the mysteries of grace. (F. Wagstaff.)
The new heaven and the new earth
I. The sources whence the happiness of heaven is derived.
1. The happiness of heaven will be derived from increased and perfected knowledge. On earth our
residence is so short, our mental faculties are so limited, our hearts are so carnal, and our
opportunities of acquiring knowledge are, in many cases, so few, that the wisest and the holiest
know but little either of the character or the works of God. What sources of happiness will be
afforded by the moral government of God, when we are permitted to read the sealed book of
providence, and by the work of redemption, when, in the very presence of the Redeemer, we gaze
upon its height and depth and length and breadth.
2. The happiness of heaven will be derived from holiness of character. Sin and misery are so
connected that no mere change of place can sever them; and the mind of man is so much its own
place that, if unsanctified, it would make a hell of heaven.
3. The happiness of heaven will be derived from the society of angels and the redeemed.
4. This happiness will be derived from the presence and friendship of Jesus Christ.
5. This happiness will be derived from the employments of the inhabitants.
II. The peculiarities by which the happiness of heaven will be distinguished.
1. The happiness of heaven will be perfect in its nature. That is, it will be free from every
imperfection and alloy that mingles with our enjoyments here.
2. The happiness of heaven will be various in its degrees. There is a prophet’s reward, and a
righteous man’s reward.
3. The happiness of heaven will be progressive and eternal. (S. Alexander.)
The future abode of the saints
None can deny that after the resurrection and the final judgment the just made perfect will not be, as
angels, simply spiritual essences, but be endowed, as when on earth, with material bodies. Now
material beings naturally presuppose a material locality; material sight would be simply useless unless
there were material substances to see; material hearing, unless there were material sounds to hear.
This obviates one great objection to what I am saying, that the whole Apocalyptic description is only
the lowering of heavenly ideas to earthly minds. If a mere spiritual state were being described,
doubtless it would be so; but when, to say the least, much that is material must be mixed up with it, the
argument vanishes. Consider, again, the remarkable terms in which the abode of the elect is
mentioned, after the final doom: “A new heaven and a new earth.” And lest any one should think this is
a mere casual expression of St. John’s (granting that such things might be), St. Peter also and Isaiah
speak of “new heavens and a new earth.” If, now, there were no analogy between the old and the new,
between the first and the second earth, to what purpose this particular and thrice- repeated
expression? And most remarkably it is said, “There was no more sea.” There is, therefore, so strong a
resemblance between the two earths, that the absence of the sea in the second is thought a point
worthy of notice. Therefore, all the varieties of natural beauty, besides this, it may be presumed, still
will exist. If of one thing in a series it is recorded that it is abolished, the natural presumption about
the others is that they remain. And in the mystical descriptions of heaven with which Scripture

abound, we find frequent references to the other most remarkable components of earthly scenery. To
trees, for there is the tree of life; to mountains, for there is the utmost bound of the everlasting hills; to
lakes, for there the glorious Lord will be a place of broad streams; to rivers, for there is the river of the
water of life. Surely it is impossible to believe that these things are purely metaphorical; nor can it be
even said that the expressions are used in a sacramental sense. (J. M. Neale, D. D.)
There was no more sea.
Heaven without a sea
1. There shall be in heaven no more trackless wastes. Over three-fourths of this whole globe is
composed of a wild, cheerless, trackless waste of waters. The ship passes over it and leaves no trace
of its route. The sun woos it, the zephyrs waft it, the dews and rains descend upon it, yet it
produces no vegetation. How many human beings seem to spend useless lives, leaving the world no
better nor happier than when they came into it! There is no corner for such supernumeraries in the
New Jerusalem. Its inhabitants shall not spend eternity in doing little but to sing songs and wave
palm branches; but in service, glorious service, for the great King. Great energies will not be
expended, as too often in this life, in vain efforts.
2. There shall be in heaven no more devouring waves.
3. There shall be in heaven no buried secrets. The sea is full of concealment and mystery. The
scientific explorer dredges out wondrous revelations from the bosom of its gloomy depths. In
heaven all earthly secrets shall be revealed, and there shall be no more sea.
4. There shall be in heaven no restless existence. The changeful tides, the constant agitation of
surface, the winds and hurricanes, the ever-shifting scenery of old ocean are a picture of human
life, with its rises and falls, its joys and sorrows, its births and deaths, its successes and failures—
fickle, transitory, uncertain, unsatisfactory human life. What, is it possible that all this agitation of
time shall some day cease? Its unquiet of body, its tumult of mind, its yearning of soul all come to
an end? Yes, in heaven, where “there is a rest for the people of God,” a blessed calm, an eternal
peace of soul in the presence of God. (M. D. Kneeland, D. D.)
No more sea
We know not whether there will be a literal physical sea or not in the future world. To the Apostle
John, who doubtless, in common with all his countrymen, looked upon the sea with dread, the absence
of it in the heavenly vision may have been welcomed as a relief. All the allusions to the sea in the Bible
refer solely to its power or danger—never to its aesthetic aspects; and many, especially those to whom
the sea has proved cruel, may sympathise with this prejudice, and rejoice to accept the announcement
in all its literality, that in heaven there shall be no more sea. To others, again, whose earliest and
sweetest associations are connected with its shelly shores and its gleaming waters, a world without a
sea would seem a world without life or animation, without beauty or attraction—a blank, silent realm
of desolation and death.
I. The existence of the sea implies separation. The sea, along with its accompanying lakes and rivers, is
in this world the great divider. In the peculiar arrangements of land and water on the surface of the
earth we have a clear and unmistakable evidence of God’s intention from the very beginning of
separating mankind into distinct nationalities. For this separation a twofold necessity suggests itself. It
exercised a restraining and a constraining influence. Had mankind been permitted to remain for an
indefinite period in one narrow region of the earth, brought into close and constant communication
with each other, and speaking the same language, the consequences would have been most disastrous.
They would have inevitably corrupted one another. Family and individual interests would have come
into frequent and violent collision. Their proximity would have been the occasion of endless wars and

deeds of violence and bloodshed. God, therefore, mercifully interfered; He separated mankind into
distinct nations, placed them in different scenes and circumstances, and effectually kept them apart by
means of seas and trackless oceans; and thus the maddening passions of man were rendered
comparatively innocuous, or circumscribed within the narrowest possible limits. Another reason for
this separation of the human race by means of the sea was that national character might thus be
formed and educated—that the one type of human nature might develop itself into every possible
modification by the force of different circumstances and experiences. If there were no individuality
among nations mankind could make no progress; all human societies would lose the mental activity,
the noble competition, the generous emulation which distinguish them; there would be no mutual
instruction, nothing to keep in check local evils, and by the better agencies of one region stimulate into
action similar agencies in another. And it is a remarkable circumstance that this barrier continued
insurmountable while the infant races were receiving the education and undergoing the discipline that
were to qualify them for enlarged intercourse with each other. When, however, the day appointed by
God to enlighten and emancipate the world approached, the sea became all at once, through the
improvement of navigation and ship-building, the great highway of nations, the great channel of
communication between the different and distant parts of the world. Christianity is rapidly melting the
separate nationalities into one; but the fusion of these discordant elements into one glorious harmony,
pure as sunlight, inspiring as a strain of perfect music, will never be accomplished in this world. “And
there was no more sea.” Methinks these words must have had a deep and peculiar significance to the
mind of the old fisherman when we think of the circumstances in which he was placed when he wrote
them. A touching tradition pictures the aged apostle going day after day to an elevated spot on the
ocean-rock, to which, Prometheus-like, he was chained, and casting a longing look over the wide waste
of waters, as if by thus gazing he could bring nearer to his heart, if not to his sight, the beloved land
and the cherished friends for whom he pined. The cause of his beloved Master needed the aid of every
faithful arm and heart, but he could do nothing. Oh! a feeling of despondency must have often seized
him when he thought of all from which the cruel sea divided him. And when the panorama of celestial
scenery was spread out before his prophetic eye, to compensate him for the trials of banishment, with
what joy, methinks, must he have seen that from horizon to horizon there was no sea there—nothing
to separate—nothing to prevent the union and communion of those whom the grace of Christ had
made free, and His power had transferred to that “large place”! “And there was no more sea.” Do not
these words come home to our own hearts with peculiar tenderness of meaning? For what home is
there whose circle of happy faces is complete, from which no wanderer has gone forth to the ends of
the earth? Heaven is the land of eternal reunion. The friends who bade reluctant farewell to each other
on earth, and dwelt apart with wide seas rolling between, shall meet on the eternal shore to separate
no more for ever.
II. “And there was no more sea.” These words imply that in heaven there shall be no more change. The
sea is the great emblem of change. There is nothing in the world more uncertain and unstable. Now it
lies calm and motionless as an inland lake—without a ripple on its bosom; and now it tosses its wild
billows mountains high, and riots in the fury of the storm. And not only is it the emblem of change: it
is itself the cause, directly or indirectly, of nearly all the physical changes that take place in the world.
We cannot name a single spot where the sea has not some time or other been. Every rock that now
constitutes the firm foundation of the earth was once dissolved in its waters, lay as mud at its bottom,
or as sand and gravel along its shore. The materials of our houses were once deposited in its depths,
and are built on the floor of an ancient ocean. What are now dry continents were once ocean-beds; and
what are now sea-beds will be future continents. Everywhere the sea is still at work—encroaching upon
the shore—undermining the boldest cliffs by its own direct agency. And where it cannot reach itself, it
sends its emissaries to the heart of deserts, and the summits of mountain ranges, and the innermost
recesses of continents—there to produce constant dilapidation and change. Viewed in this light there is
a striking appropriateness in there being no more sea in the eternal world. Heaven is the land of
stability and permanence. There will be progress, but not change; growth, but not decay. There will be
no ebb and flow—no waxing and waning—no rising and setting—no increasing and diminishing in the
life of heaven. There will be perfect fulness of rest in the changeless land where there is no more sea.

III. The existence of the sea implies the existence of storms. And is not this life, even to the most
favoured individuals, a dark and rainy sea, with only here and there a few sunlit isles of beauty and
peace, separated by long and troubled voyages? There are many outward storms that beat upon us in
this world—storms of adversity arising from personal, domestic, or business causes; as soon as one
blows past, another is ready to assail us. And there are inward storms—storms of religious doubt, of
conscience, of temptation, and, worse than any of these, the raging of our own corrupt affections and
unsubdued desires. Between these two seas many of us are scarcely ever allowed to know what a calm
means. But amid all these storms we are strengthened and consoled by the assurance that they are
necessary, and are appointed to work together for good. Yet still we long for their cessation, and look
forward with joyful hope to the region of everlasting peace. In heaven there will be no stormy winds or
raging waters. Through the shoals and the breakers, and the sunken rocks of those perilous worldly
seas, the Christian voyagers, some on boards and some on broken pieces of the ship, will escape all
safe to land—and there shall be no more sea. (H. Macmillan, D. D.)
No more sea
I. No more painful mystery. We look out upon the broad ocean, and far away it seems to blend with air
and sky. Mists come up over its surface. Suddenly there rises on the verge of the horizon a white sail
that was not there a moment ago; and we wonder, as we look out from our hills, what may be beyond
these mysterious waters. And to these ancient peoples there were mysteries which we do not feel.
Whither should they come, if they were to venture on its untried tides? And then, what lies in its
sunless caves that no eye has seen? It swallows up life and beauty and treasure of every sort, and
engulphs them all in its obstinate silence. What should we see if depth and distance were annihilated,
and we beheld what there is out yonder, and what there is down there? And is not our life ringed round
in like manner with mystery? Oh! to some hearts surely this ought to come as not the least noble and
precious of the thoughts of what that future life is—“there shall be no more sea”; and the mysteries
that come from God’s merciful limitation of our vision, and some of the mysteries that come from
God’s wise and providential interposition of obstacles to our sight shall have passed away.
II. No more rebellious power. God lets people work against His kingdom in this world. It is not to be
always so. The kingdom of God is in the earth, and the kingdom of God admits of opposition. Strange!
But the opposition, even here on earth, all comes to nothing. Men may work against God’s kingdom,
the waves may rave and rage; but beneath them there is a mighty tidal sweep, and God’s purposes are
wrought out, and God’s ark comes to “its desired haven,” and all opposition is nugatory at the last. But
there comes a time, too, when there shall be no more violence of rebellious wills lifting themselves
against God. The opposition that lies in all our hearts shall one day be subdued. The whole consent of
our whole being shall yield itself to the obedience of sons, to the service of love.
III. No more disquiet and unrest. Surely some of us are longing to find anchorage whilst the storm
lasts, and a haven at the end. There is one, if only you will believe it, and set yourselves towards it.
There is an end to all “the weary oar, the weary wandering fields of barren foam.” On the shore stands
the Christ; and there is rest there. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
No more sea
This fact can be read physically. It would be the easiest reading, but perhaps not the only one, nor the
most satisfying and helpful one. Rendered physically, it would neither satisfy curiosity nor offer
stimulus. It would add nothing practically to our knowledge of the future, because we know nothing of
the other physical conditions with which this fact of sealessness would stand in relation; and no fact
means anything when standing alone. Every man in conceiving the things which are eternal has to
think in terms of time; and in conceiving the things which are celestial has to think in terms of earth.
In our most spiritual moods we cannot get away from our common surroundings or from our every-

day vocabulary. We have only one language in which to phrase present experience and heavenly
anticipatings. The finest pictures which our thought paints of the things which are unseen and eternal
are done in tints gathered from off a pallet of earthly colour. If we are weary, then heaven means rest;
if we are sin-sick, then heaven means holiness; if we are lonely, then heaven means reunion with the
loved ones that have gone on before. If any kind of barrier invests us, we think that in heaven that
barrier will be erased. In the sailor-boy’s dream of home, no buffeting waves or tempestuous sea divide
longer between him and the old hearthstone. For the time being there is with him no more sea. Now
there are many phases of life, many limitations by which we are hedged in, upon which this sentiment
of our text falls with a singular power of stimulus and of comfort, and the more completely these
waters of separation sunder us, and exile us from our soul’s object, the more richly freighted with
fruition does the new and the sealess city become to us. There are in the first place our physical
limitations, by which we are so many of us so closely and painfully walled. Much of our severity and
acidity is only indigestion become a mental fact, and a good deal of our solicitude and distrust are no
more than an enfeebled condition of the blood telling upon the spirit: The body made to be the
helpmeet of the soul is become its adversary. Much of sin is the offspring of the body. Redemption and
immortality are as much of the body as of the mind. Then there are our mental limitations. Men want
to know, but they do not know how to know. Our philosophy is tentative. Thinking is trying
experiments mostly. We think different things at different times, and no two men think the same
thing, as no two eyes see the same rainbow. And then most of that which we do know is of things chat
are going to last but a little; as it were, a gathering of wilting flowers. All knowledge is transient, that is,
of things that are transient, as the splendour fades from off the hills as the sun passes under the west.
There are also our moral limitations. Holiness is yonder, and there is a great gulf fixed. We can abstain
from acts of sin, but do not succeed in becoming clean through and through. Our wishes outrun our
attainments. Our bodies hold us back; our past holds us back; our surroundings detain us. We want it
should become our nature to do right. Holiness lies in the future, but it is a sure fact of the future, and
our wall of moral separation shall be broken down, our exile repealed, the island made continuous
with the continent, and no more sea in the New City of God. (C. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)
No more sea
I. There will be no more mystery.
1. Our life is a mystery—birth, health, sickness, death.
2. Revelation is a mystery—prophecy, miracles, Calvary.
3. Providence is a mystery—prosperity of ungodly, adversity of the godly, death of children, war.
II. There will be no more trouble. The sea a picture of our life—restless, stormy.
1. Business troubles.
2. Domestic troubles—an erring son, bereavement.
3. Personal troubles—disease of body, perplexity of mind about religion, spiritual needs.
III. There will be no more impurity.
IV. There will be no more danger.
1. Danger from pernicious books.
2. Danger from evil companions.
3. Danger from Satanic influences.
V. There will be no more hidden life. Vi. There will be no more separation. (A. Gray Maitland.)

The world without a sea
I. There is no division there. How much there is in this world that divides men! There are:
1. Social caste.
2. National prejudices.
3. Religious sectarianism.
4. Selfish interests.
5. Mutual misunderstandings. None of these will exist in heaven.
II. There is no mutation there. The only change is that of progress.
1. Progress in higher intelligence.
2. In loftier services.
3. In nobler fellowship. No change in the way of loss. The crown, the kingdom, the inheritance—all
imperishable.
III. There is no agitation there. Human life here has many storms. In how many hearts does deep call
upon deep, and billows of sorrow roll over the soul! In heaven there are no spiritual storms.
(Homilist.)
The sea-less world
St. John saw that the sea, whilst a great and essential good on earth, might in some aspects be
regarded as an emblem of what was evil, and therefore undesirable.
I. The sea is emblematic of separation. Think of receiving a cablegram to-day telling that, say in
Australia, a loved mother or child was lying ,lying and calling for you. How keenly you would feel the
barrier set by the sea!
II. The sea is emblematic of peril. Some of the saddest wrecks on record have taken place on our
coasts. The sea, therefore, is a fit type of peril. Now “the sea is no more” in heaven, and so there is no
occasion of hurt, no cause of danger, no need for anxiety. We move amid perils now.
III. The sea is emblematic of commotion. The sea is never still. Even at its calmest there are ebbings
and flowings, and sometimes in storm the disturbance is very great, we have our calms, but also our
storms. A life of uninterrupted prosperity would be good for none of us. But the heavenly experience is
better than earth’s best. When we reach the land of light the need of testing shall be past, and the
reason for discipline shall have vanished away. And so “the sea shall be no more.” (G. Gladstone.)
Why there will bone more sea
St. John writes of the blessed life of the new creation, where holy souls are at rest, that there is “no
more sea.” What was the sea, then, to him—what is it everywhere—that he should choose it to
symbolise something that is unheavenly—something that is to be done away with when that which is
perfect is come?
I. The sea is that which sunders man from man. It divides nation from nation, as well as land from
land. Whatever the original unity of the race, it breaks that unity apart. That is the very epithet that a
Latin poet (Horace), who lived just before St. John’s time, applied to it—the “dissociable” ocean. So
long as the seas intervene, this is a divided world. The family of souls cannot be literally one; the
universal neighbourhood and brotherhood at which the gospel aims cannot be actually represented till
the first earth is passed away and there is no more sea. But if there is one thought that lies nearer the

heart of the gospel than any other, it is that of the perfect oneness, or flowing together, and living
together, of the nations and souls of men. The bond of that harmony began, in fact, to be woven when
Christ was born, and the angels predicted peace at His coming, at Bethlehem. We know well enough
how slowly the consummation has advanced against wars, crusades, caste, slavery, the complicated
injustices and wrongs of a selfish society! Hereafter it will not be so. Hatreds, suspicions, oppressions,
cruelties, quarrels, are all to be swept away. The spirit of Christ’s mediation shall be the reigning force.
So much for the society at large. Think, too, of the heavenly comfort it must bring to private hearts to
have all the sorrows of personal separations ended. There will be no empty rooms that feel empty, or
deserted hearts. Communion, fellowship, love, the presence of the loved, will be perpetual.
II. There is a second character of the sea which probably likewise suggested it to St. John, for
Christian comfort, as an image of what is of the earth earthy, and must therefore pass away before the
coming in of an everlasting satisfaction. The ocean is all a field of nothing but barrenness. Nobody
makes a home on that restless, fluctuating floor. The sailor is a ceaseless fugitive. Nothing settles or
abides on that restless breast. All the life it ever sees or supports is a transitional, passing life, moving
from one tarryingplace or coast to another. What an image it is of the fickle and transient elements of
this world that now is, compared with the fixedness and stability and blooming life of that which
Christ has opened! More than this: there is a key to this second part of the meaning of the text in the
closing passage of the chapter that goes just before. “The sea gave up the dead which were in it.” The
sea is a great graveyard. It is the home of the drowned and buried that it has swallowed up by
thousands. And it never allows affection to set up a sign where the dead go down. There is no harvest
from it, except the harvest of the resurrection. But then, following this scene of the judgment is the
new creation, and when the Evangelist comes just after to speak of that, his mind goes back to the
sepulchral sea. And lo! it is gone for ever. In other words, dropping the figure, that new world—the
Christian home—is all a dwelling-place of life—life everywhere; life without sleep; life for ever.
Deselations and destructions are come to a perpetual end. Everything there must be as useful as it is
beautiful, and as fruitful as it is fair. You may say there is s wild and wondrous beauty about the ocean;
and no doubt in this material world it has its uses; hat neither the gospel in this world nor the
evangelic descriptions of the next recognise any beauty that is not the source of peace, or life, or
benefaction. Heathen beauty, Greek beauty, cold, restless, faithless intellectual beauty, must be
baptized into the warm “spirit of life” in Christ Jesus, or there is no room for it in the heaven Christ
opens. (Bp. F. D. Huntington.)
The sea
I. Some of the many present uses of “the sea.” Among other special particulars, and mast material, one
of the most prominent that strikes us is, it causes under Providence—
1. The fertility of the earth.
2. The temperature of climates. How serviceable are its gales, and how refreshing are its breezes,
especially after the burthen and heat of the summer’s day!
3. Employment and sustenance to man. The first followers and chosen disciples of our Lord were
chiefly “fishermen.”
4. Intercourse with foreign and distant lands. Again, the sea—
5. Affords security and defence for weaker states, and enables them to withstand the
entrenchments of their more powerful neighbours.
6. It signally subserves the purposes of its Creator. “Fire and vapour, storm and tempest, all fulfil
the Almighty’s word.” Once the sea arose, “the deeps were broken up, and the foundations of the
earth were discovered,” in order to destroy the world.
II. Some emblems taken from “the sea.” In other words, the instructive lessons it particularly gives.

1. It reveals somewhat of the Divine perfections. Doth it not remind us continually of His power,
His mercy, and His judgments? How widely spread, how fathomless!
2. The sea represents the varied characters of men.
3. The vicissitudes of human life.
4. The state and circumstances of the world.
III. Some events either literally or figuratively represented as fulfilled—“there shall be no more sea.”
1. No more dangers! no more hazards, likened to “perils on the sea.”
2. No more trials, deceptions, errors, mistakes, and persecutions from the world!
3. No more concealment of, or the keeping from us what is agreeable, and of which we would
desire the possession.
4. No more straitened limits and bounded habitations.
5. No more estrangement from our brethren.
6. No more separation from our friends.
7. No longer any distance (any of our present intervening barriers) between the Christian and his
God. (W. Williams, M. A.)
No more sea
1. The sea, to St. John and the men of his day, was a great barrier of separation. We must
remember that the art of navigation was not then what it is to-day. Think of the ships of the
ancients as compared with ours; think of them probably without either chart or mariner’s
compass. All this is changed now. The sea, instead of being a barrier, has become the great highway
of the nations. But we have to remember what the sea was to St. John. It was a type, an emblem of
things that divided men. There was the sea of racial hatred, of selfish interests, of false religions, of
cruel prejudice, of bitter animosities. To the Jew every Gentile was a natural enemy, an outcast, a
dog of the uncircumcision. To the Greek the people of other nations were barbarians. To the
Romans all but their own countrymen were hostes, towards whom enmity was the approved
relation. And how much of this continues to this day! We see it in the grasping policy of chartered
companies and of statesmen, in the competitions of modern commerce, in the deadly warfare
between capital and labour, in the bitterness of sectarian life, in the jealousies and rivalries of
social life and the domestic circle.
2. The sea, to St. John, was doubtless a source of fear and terror. The Jews seem to have had no
love for the mighty deep. They invariably looked upon it with dread and awe. St. John appears to
have shared the sentiment of his countrymen. From his desolate island he had gazed upon the sea
in its many and ever-changing moods. His mind associated the most terrible objects with it. It was
out of the sea that he saw arise the wild beast having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his
heads the name of Blasphemy. It was on the many waters of the deep that he saw seated that
purple-clad woman who had upon her forehead written, “Mystery, Babylon the great, the mother
of harlots and abominations of the earth.” To him the sea was a type of the confederate forces of
evil that were sweeping over the world, spreading ruin and desolation; of the fearful storms that
were breaking in upon the infant Church. But it was only to last for a season. Gradually the wild
instincts of the human heart would be subdued. The fierce billows of opposition and wickedness
and unbelief would be hushed and stilled. They had their limits fixed: “Hitherto shalt thou come,
but no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.” There should be “no more sea.”
3. The sea was a type of the world’s unrest. That AEgean Sea, laving the rocky island of Patmos,
like the great ocean everywhere, was never still. Whenever he looked out upon it, its waters were

heaving and tossing to and fro. A picture of the disquietude of the human spirit apart from God. He
had felt it himself before he became a disciple of Jesus Christ: he had seen it in the life of his
countrymen, in the life of the philosophers he had met at Ephesus, in the life of that Roman world
with which, in various ways, he had been brought into contact. Unrest was the sign everywhere.
The world was full of a restless life, of longings and questionings and yearnings it could not still.
And the sea described that restlessness better than anything else. And John turned with relief from
the troubled scene which everywhere presented itself to the rest-giving work of the kingdom and
patience of Jesus Christ.
4. The sea was a symbol of mystery. It was specially so to the ancients with their limited
knowledge of its vast confines and of the wonders and glories of its fathomless depths. Think of the
mountains that lie beneath the surface of the deep; of the life with which it teems of the towns and
villages it has engulfed; of its myriads of nameless graves; of the secrets it keeps; of tales it has to
unfold. Oh, sea! thy name is mystery. And the mystery of which the sea speaks meets us
everywhere. Find a man who is not awed with a perception of life’s mysteriousness, and you have
found a man who has never seriously begun to think. No sooner do I ask, “What am I? Whence
came I? Why am I here? Whither am I going?” than I am conscious that I am in the presence of
profound and inscrutable mysteries. Why should there be disease and pain? Why do the innocent
suffer with the guilty? What was the origin of evil, and why was it permitted to enter the world?
Why does a good and wise Providence allow storm and tempest to overtake men? And here is our
comfort, that John foresaw a time when the mysteries of life shall be swallowed up in knowledge.
No longer will the great sea of doubt or mystery roll over us; we shall know as we are known, the
day shall break, and the shadows rice away, and the dark, impenetrable waters shall be no more.
(J. H. Burkitt.)
GTB. “A New Heaven and a New Earth
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away.—
Rev_21:1.
The Book of Revelation is the “Divina Commedia” of Scripture, alive with moral passion, alight with
noble imagination, a fitting climax to the Gospels, the Acts, and the Epistles, and doubly interesting to
our own time from the fact that it is the expression of a revolt against a worn-out world-order, a
civilization of custom, armament, and law alien to the genius of the new Faith, and of aspiration after a
Divine Environment, which shall be great enough to contain the “nations of them that are saved,” and
noble enough to be in harmony with “the life hid with Christ in God.”
In this chapter the writer is drawing to the close of his task. He has described fully the unseen enemies
which threatened the life of the Church in his own days, and which threaten it still, and he has traced
to their true source the evils which beset her. He has further shown how in the end Christ vindicates
His cause, and triumphs over the powers of evil, whose downfall and final doom have been disclosed.
But though he has thus set forth the victory of the Church, he has said but little of her future, or of the
character of her life. He has briefly alluded to these things, but that is all. He now therefore goes back,
and closes the series of visions with a description of the bliss which is laid up for the faithful.
1. The belief in a happier age, a peaceful earth, a gracious and bountiful heaven, and a strong race of
immortals, is as old and as common as man. The ancient Greeks knew it. Hesiod describes how the
gods who dwelt on Olympus made a golden race of speaking men. They lived in careless felicity, free
from the labours, sorrows, tribulations of men, fed by a bountiful earth which of its own sweet will
blossomed into plenty, ever delighting in festivals; and when death came it came to them as it comes to
those overtaken with sleep. But that golden age was in the past; the present, and, so far as they saw,
the future, was an iron age. The men who lived in it knew no joy, but had the “sorrow’s crown of
sorrow,” which is “remembering happier things.” They toiled, fretted; corrosive care claimed them for
its own; and they anticipated a miserable old age and a painful death. Neighbour robbed neighbour;
city sacked city; parents grew old and lost their honour; men who were evil were more respected than

men who were good; malice, envy, with its millionfold tongue of poison, exulted in ills, and turned on
all pitiful mortals its pitiless and baleful glance. The golden age was past; the iron age had come; the
men who lived in it lived far from those happinesses which speak of toil rewarded, hope realized, and
joy attained. That is the language of Nature, not of grace. Nature looks back, sees there the happiness,
a thing lost and irrecoverable. Grace looks before, sees there the joy, and anticipates by labour the
moment of its coming.
Every religious enthusiast and reformer from St. Paul to John Wesley has been fired with a devout
imagination. They were each and all filled with some vision of a new heaven and a new earth, and were
happy only so far as they were permitted to pursue it unmolested. And if there is one lesson more than
another which history has to teach, it is this, that without the vision there is no progress, and without
fidelity to unrealized ideals there can be no solid advancement in any department of life.… And so,
looking for a new heaven and a new earth simply means that we are for ever exchanging the rule of the
sensuous for the rule of the spiritual, and that we are seeking our motives for conduct and character in
the absolute gospel of Jesus Christ, and not in any of the commonplace maxims of self-indulgence or
earthly expediency.1 [Note: J. Cuckson, Faith and Fellowship, 54.]
2. It is well to remember the time at which the words were written down. The Revelation came to St.
John in a time of the utmost danger to the Church. Jew and heathen were at last united in hatred to
the name of Christ, and were putting forth all their power to destroy those who believed in Him. St.
James, St. Peter, St. Paul, had lately passed to their heavenly home through the gate of a glorious
death. The fall of the Holy City was close at hand. The old memorials of God’s presence were vanishing
from the earth. They whom from of old He had chosen to be His own people were being cast away and
scattered upon the face of the world. Death and hell were riding triumphant over everything that was
marked with God’s name. Change was come in its most terrible form, as sheer destruction, destruction
most of all of that which was best of all. Then it was, when God seemed to be deserting the earth, that a
great voice was heard out of the throne saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he
shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, and be their
God: and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there
be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more; the first things are passed away.” The first heaven and
the first earth were passed away; a new heaven and a new earth could already be seen by one whose
eyes God opened. But behind the new heaven and the new earth was He who made them; and what,
when He Himself spoke, He announced as His work was the work of making all things new.
The new heaven and the new earth are here already, for they mean only a new and different relation
between God and men—between heaven and earth—from that which existed before. Since Christ
ascended and sat at the right hand of God, the new heaven has begun. Since the Word became flesh
and dwelt among us, and the glory of the only-begotten Son of the Father appeared, the earth also has
become new.1 [Note: Schleiermacher.]
The magnificent hope and prediction of God’s final and decisive victory find expression in nearly every
part of the sacred volume. The Psalms and Prophecies, not less than the Gospels and Epistles,
recognize the conflict which is going on unceasingly between God and forces hostile to Him; between
God and the Satanic hosts, the powers of darkness and the obstinacy of depraved and misguided man.
But, one and all, they declare that the conflict is not to be perpetual. The underlying and final note of
all their predictions is keyed to a song of Divine victory, which will be complete and universal. There is
to be an end of iniquity, and the wicked are to cease from troubling. The enemies of the Lord, and all
that is opposed to Him, are in some way to perish, or be subdued under His feet. There are to be new
heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, and nothing but righteousness will be
known, and God is to be King over the whole earth, and by implication over every unimaginable place
beyond the earth.1 [Note: J. G. Greenhough, The Doctrine of the Last Things, 234.]
3. When we give the words the widest range, and understand them of God’s whole government of the
world, He is always making all things new. Even when the course of the world is very quiet and seems
to be at a standstill, He is but changing the manner of this His work, for some of His most wonderful
renewals are wrought in silence. He is Himself described as He that sitteth on the throne. He rules, but

rests as He rules. The Author of unceasing change, He knows no change within Himself. He is older
than the oldest things; His name is the Ancient of Days. The old and the new have thus alike their
perfect pattern in Him. His counsels partake of both; on the one hand, they stand fast from age to age;
on the other, they are ever advancing from step to step by new births of time.
The ends for which nature exists are not in itself, but in the spiritual sphere beyond. Nature always
points to something beyond itself, backward to a cause, above to a law, and forward to ends in the
spiritual system. God is always developing nature to a capacity to be receptive of higher powers. Under
the tension of the Divine energy in it, it always seems to be “striving its bounds to overpass.” This
discloses in nature a certain reality in Hegel’s conception, that nature is always aspiring to return to
the spiritual whence it came.2 [Note: S. Harris, The Self-Revelation of God.]
Some have interpreted this passage as applying to the millennium, but, as St. Augustine says, to do so
is “audacious,” because the previous chapters clearly show that the millennium, the resurrection and
the judgment have all preceded this, the final, act in the awe-inspiring drama shown to us in the
Revelation. That there are several “heavens” such references as the “seventh” and the “third” seem to
indicate; and if, as many think, our earth is only one of many worlds, peopled it may be by beings of
varied forms, powers and attainments, it may easily follow that after being caught into the clouds for
judgment, the saints will descend to a renovated “heaven and earth”—the “Holy City,” purified and
cleansed for a people beloved of the Lord. That His earth, thus changed, will be the final home of the
righteous is no new idea, but one which has been taught from the beginning by Justin Martyr,
Irenæus, Theodoret, Jerome, Augustine, Chrysostom, Luther, Adams, Wesley, Chalmers, and a host of
others.1 [Note: J. E. Watts-Ditchfield, Here and Hereafter, 238.]
4. God not only makes the new world, but gives the power to see and appreciate its beauty. God creates
the paradise and catches up a St. Paul to hear unspeakable words—unspeakable for grandeur and
infinite sweetness. We can soar into paradises of beauty only as we rise by means of the upbearing
wings of infinite power and love. When a man enters the spirit sphere, he sees a new heaven and a new
earth. When the earth child is born, the natural eye is dim, and the mind is sleeping. When the heaven
child is born, the spiritual eye is quickened to see, the mind is awake to appreciate loveliness. A man
like St. John, who had a clear eye for the great new conception that God is love, was the man to see a
new heaven of love and a new earth of sweetness. He that dwelleth in love will see new worlds of love.
Greatness is seen and appreciated by the great. New worlds of love must be seen and appreciated by
the loving. There must be not only the beautiful, but also an eye and a mind for the beautiful. The
apostle of love must see the vision of love. Pearls are trampled by swine. A new heaven and a new earth
are not seen by eyes which are earthbound.
It was of the essence of Blake’s sanity that he could always touch the sky with his finger. “To justify the
soul’s frequent joy in what cannot be defined to the intellectual part, or to calculation”: that, which is
Walt Whitman’s definition of his own aim, defines Blake’s. Where others doubted he knew; and he saw
where others looked vaguely into the darkness. He saw so much further than others into what we call
reality, that others doubted his report, not being able to check it for themselves; and when he saw
truth naked he did not turn aside his eyes. Nor had he the common notion of what truth is, or why it is
to be regarded. He said: “When I tell a truth it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know
it, but for the sake of defending those who do.” And his criterion of truth was the inward certainty of
instinct or intuition, not the outward certainty of fact. “God forbid,” he said, “that Truth should be
confined to mathematical demonstration. He who does not know Truth at sight is un worthy of her
notice.”1 [Note: Arthur Symons, William Blake, 243.]
5. St. John saw a beautiful world; but he looked beyond, and saw a new heaven and a new earth. What
a difference in the exiles of time! Napoleon on St. Helena, fretting and fuming with disappointment,
sees no bright visions. No heavens of beauty, no earths of glory pass before his enraptured gaze. St.
John in Patmos makes the island glow with celestial colours. He dwells no longer in a lonely and
forbidding island; he lives in a new earth adjacent to a new heaven. Columbus, after a long voyage,
rejoiced to see the land birds of beautiful plumage that told of a new world near at hand. St. John,
without moving from his island, saw not only the birds of beautiful plumage which sing of a new world,

but also the new world itself; he rejoiced to see a sight which men had never before witnessed. St.
John’s vision is resplendent with material and moral beauty. The bright vision is not darkened by the
sad shades of sin, pain, sorrow, death. He saw a new world of marvellous creation, of inexhaustible
loveliness. The new world was to be one in which there would be day without night, land without sea,
summer without winter, pleasure without pain, smiles without tears, health without sickness, joy
without sorrow, life without death, love without any alloy, without any tendency to decay.
The real question everywhere is whether the world, distracted and confused as everybody sees that it
is, is going to be patched up and restored to what it used to be, or whether it is going forward into a
quite new and different kind of life, whose exact nature nobody can pretend to foretell, but which is to
be distinctly new, unlike the life of any age which the world has seen already.… It is impossible that the
old conditions, so shaken and broken, can ever be repaired and stand just as they stood before. The
time has come when something more than mere repair and restoration of the old is necessary. The old
must die and a new must come forth out of its tomb.2 [Note: Phillips Brooks.]
6. But if the earth as it left the hands of its Maker was “very good,” what need is there for a new earth?
There are some who tell us that the creation of the earth was a bad piece of bungling; that a wise
Creator would not have made “nature red in tooth and claw”; that He would never have allowed sin to
come in and leave its foul trail in the Garden of Eden, and in all the gardens of the earth. Such people
fail to understand that when God peopled the earth with men made in His own image, these men were
to be co-workers with Him in making the earth what it was in God’s dream of it. God sketched a
picture, but He intended man to fill in the details. There is nothing wrong with the sketch: God’s work
was “very good”; it is the details that man should fill in that are botches and blotches on the pictures of
God’s conception. Is not this the teaching of the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in
heaven”? The doing of God’s will is the co-working with God in the completion of His picture of an
earth that is “very good,” that is “as Eden the Garden of God.” St. John, in his Patmos vision, saw
prophetically an earth that was the earth God intended it should be when His design was completed.
Some day the botches and blotches will all be removed; all the stains of sin will be cleansed away; all
the disfigurements due to perverted human will shall give place to the beauty of God’s perfect plan,
and then indeed there will be “a new earth,” and yet not entirely a new earth, for it will be just the old
earth which God intended, but which has never yet been realized.
I find it written very distinctly that God loved the world, and that Christ is the light of it. What the
much-used words, therefore, mean, I cannot tell. But this, I believe, theyshould mean. That there is,
indeed, one world which is full of care, and desire, and hatred: a world of war, of which Christ is not
the light, which indeed is without light, and has never heard the great “Let there be.” Which is,
therefore, in truth, as yet no world; but chaos, on the face of which, moving, the Spirit of God yet
causes men to hope that a world will come. The better one, they call it: perhaps they might, more
wisely, call it the real one. Also, I hear them speak continually of going to it, rather than of its coming
to them; which, again, is strange, for in that prayer which they had straight from the lips of the Light of
the world, and which He apparently thought sufficient prayer for them, there is not anything about
going to another world; only something of another government coming into this; or rather, not
another, but the only government,—that government which will constitute it a world indeed. New
heavens and new earth. Earth, no more without form and void, but sown with fruit of righteousness.
Firmament, no more of passing cloud, but of cloud risen out of the crystal sea—cloud in which, as He
was once received up, so He shall again come with power.1 [Note: Ruskin, Modern Painters, pt. ix. ch. xii. § 18 (Works, vii. 458).]
7. St. John saw at once a new heaven and a new earth. The Scriptures are all against the unnatural
separation of heaven and earth, which has been too common in vulgar thought and talk. The vulgar
way of looking at it has been, earth here, heaven hereafter—which is quite unscriptural. Heaven is here
to the Christian, and is, or may be, as real to him as earth. And as heaven is here as well as earth, earth
will be hereafter as well as heaven. Listen to the Apostle: “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth.”
No Nirvana, no cloudland, no dreamland, no mere spirit country or cold expanse of mists for ghosts to
float in, but a veritable homeland is there before us.
It was round the thought of the Inner Mission that all his subsequent activities were built up. At a

second conference in Nottingham, at the Jubilee of the Institute, in the last paper he wrote, indeed in
all his addresses on modern church questions, he goes back to the Inner Mission as the corner-stone
on which to build. Among its main principles are:
The kingdom of heaven Christ came to establish is not in the clouds, but here on earth. It exists
wherever and whenever God’s will is done upon earth as it is done in heaven. We have thought of the
New Jerusalem as “stored up perhaps in heaven,” like Plato’s ideal city; but the apostle saw it “coming
down from God out of heaven.” There is to be a new earth, “wherein dwelleth righteousness,” as well as
a new heaven.
To establish this kingdom is the great business of the Church; needing, like all human business, only in
higher degree, “rigorous method, indomitable persistency, and wise application of means to ends.”
Silver and gold may be wanting, but heart-service, pity, willing personal help—these things, which the
Lord freely gives, men should freely give. And no redemptive impulse must be stifled, or allowed to
remain unused. Each varied gift, what-ever it be, must be trained and used and disciplined “under wise
and definite direction” in the work of the Church, which work is the establishing of the kingdom of
God on earth.2 [Note: John Brown Paton, by his Son (1914), 190.]
8. The vision of the new heaven and the new earth does not necessarily suppose the annihilation of the
old creation, but only its passing away as to its outward and recognizable form, and renewal to a fresh
and more glorious one. The idea of the term “new” used by the writer of the Apocalypse in this verse is
not that things present are blotted out of existence, and a new order of things quite strange, foreign,
and novel is brought into being, but that the things of old are made new, raised to a higher plane, given
a fresh start, free from all that has marred their beauty, and hindered their due development. While,
then, the continuity is not broken, the change is very great, so great that it can be said that “the first
heaven and the first earth were passed away.”
Two words in the New Testament are translated “new,” but there is a difference between them. The
one contemplates the object spoken of under the aspect of something that has been recently brought
into existence, the other under a fresh aspect given to what had previously existed, but been outworn.
The latter word is employed in the text, as it is also employed in the phrases a “new garment,” that is, a
garment not threadbare, like an old one; “new wine-skins,” that is, skins not shrivelled and dried; a
“new tomb,” that is, not one recently hewn out of the rock, but one which had never been used as the
last resting-place of the dead. The fact, therefore, that the heavens and the earth here spoken of are
“new,” does not imply that they are now first brought into being. They may be the old heavens and the
old earth; but they have a new aspect, a new character, adapted to a new end.
Life is always opening new and unexpected things to us. There is no monotony in living to him who
walks even the quietest and tamest paths with open and perceptive eyes. The monotony of life, if life is
monotonous to you, is in you, not in the world.… It is God, and the discovery of Him in life, and the
certainty that He has plans for our lives and is doing something with them, that gives us a true, deep
sense of movement, and lets us always feel the power and delight of unknown coming things.1 [Note: Phillips
Brooks.]
With brain o’erworn, with heart a summer clod,
With eye so practised in each form around,—
And all forms mean,—to glance above the ground
Irks it, each day of many days we plod,
Tongue-tied and deaf, along life’s common road.
But suddenly, we know not how, a sound
Of living streams, an odour, a flower crowned
With dew, a lark upspringing from the sod,

And we awake. O joy and deep amaze!
Beneath the everlasting hills we stand,
We hear the voices of the morning seas,
And earnest prophesyings in the land,
While from the open heaven leans forth at gaze
The encompassing great cloud of witnesses.1 [Note: Edward Dowden.]
9. We need not be staggered by this prophecy, for science delights to show that many heavens and
many earths have already passed away. As the geological world was the rough draft, or series of rough
drafts, of this more beautiful and finished world on which we now gaze, so this present world is a dim
foreshadowing of the ultimate spiritualized theatre of human life. There is much in nature to-day that
mars its loveliness, that spoils its music; it is full of sad facts which sorely puzzle and distress reflective
men; but we may confidently believe that in the ages to come these painful problems will be
eliminated. The process of perfecting is ever going on, and who shall say when or where it will stop?
Nature has emerged out of so many catastrophes with added glories that we are perfectly justified in
once more looking beyond fire and flood for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth
righteousness. The “new heavens” and the “new earth” shall be purified from every blot; the thing
becomes, with time, more reasonable; all the splendid possibilities of the universe shall be realized;
earth and sky shall cease to groan; the whole creation shall be adorned as a bride for her husband.
Brotherhood, peace, glory to God in the highest, good will towards men—all are coming, fast coming.
The world began with a paradise, and it shall end with one. The first was a corner of the planet; the
second shall stretch
From where the rising sun salutes the morn,
To where he lays his head of glory on the rocking deep.2 [Note: W. L. Watkinson, The Blind Spot, 197.]
It is the hope of a new heaven and a new earth that cheers the emigrant as he comes out for the first
time to Canada. “I shall find there,” he says, “ ‘a new heaven and a new earth.’ I am weary of these
sweating-dens in old London; I am siek to death of looking for work day after day and finding none. I
shall find a ‘new earth’ beyond the seas. I see pictures of men like myself who went out years ago, and
they are new men to-day. I will go to the granary of the world, and I shall surely find bread; I will go to
the wide prairie, and I shall find space to breathe; I will leave this old land where men tread on one
another’s heels, and I will find this new earth which covers one-third of the British Empire, and has
only as yet seven million people, and I shall surely find there ‘room to live.’ ” And with the new earth
something tells him that he may find a new heaven. It is hard to believe in God when the children cry
for bread in London; but when the earth becomes new the heaven becomes new. I have known many a
man in East London give his soul a fresh chance on going even to a new district outside London. In
breaking loose from the old associations and the bad habits of the past, many a man looks to Canada
for a “new heaven.” “Old things are passed away, all things are to become new”—he gives his soul
another chance. The very sound of church bells has an attraction connected with home which they did
not have in the old homeland, and, unconsciously to himself, he looks for a fresh glimpse of God and a
new view of eternal truth more glorious than the first sight of the Rocky Mountains.1 [Note: Bishop Winnington-
Ingram, in The Guardian, Sept. 23, 1910.]
10. It is objected that the new heaven and earth is only an idea. The vision is still only a vision. The
heaven looms in the distance. “All things continue as they were” (2Pe_3:4). Well, the ideal has been
powerful. Many a Patmos has been cheered. Many an exile has been filled with gladness. We cannot
afford to lose our ideals, though they may be only ideals. But they are something more. “Nevertheless
we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness”
(2Pe_3:13). Our faith is not shaken by seeming delays. The vision still cheers in cheerless times, and
strengthens in days of weakness, so that out of weakness men have been made sublimely strong. The
cheerful notes of St. John’s song have rung through the world with gladness to many hearts. The earth

without a heaven would be as the Arctic winter. Let the sun shine, and it will-fertilize and gladden.
Perpetual summer will reign, and all beauties and glories flourish.
Well might St. John who “saw,” look up and lift up his head; for however remote, his redemption, the
general redemption, was drawing nigh. Meanwhile the first heaven and the first earth make up our
own present lot. Of those others God giveth us not as yet so much as to set our foot on, although He
promises them to us for a possession. The temporary heaven and earth above, around, beneath us,
import us now, supply now things convenient for us. These we are bound to use, and by no means to
misuse or neglect. And though the things which are seen be but temporal, yet a work of the Great
Creator is and cannot but be so great, that I suppose neither the profoundest and most illuminated
saint, nor all saints summed up together, will have exhausted the teaching of things visible, even when
the hour comes for them to give place to things invisible.1 [Note: Christina G. Rossetti, The Face of the Deep, 477.]
We heard the other day of a Baptist working man, esteemed by all who knew him for the purity and
elevation of his character, who died of a painful disease. In his last moments his face became suddenly
irradiated. “What is it you see,” asked his wife. “It must be heaven,” he replied, “I see angels, the most
glorious, beautiful things.” And with that light on his face he passed away. “Purely subjective, of
course,” says the critic; “an affair of his theological prepossessions, an exhibition of his pre-existing
mental furniture.” Take it even at that lowest level, does it not suggest something? That a soul, in a
body dying of torturing pains, finds its last earthly moment a triumph scene of gladness, its vision fed
with a sense of glorious beauty; is there not here an unspoken argument for the life of faith deeper
than all our philosophy, more eloquent than all our eloquence?2 [Note: J. Brierley, Religion and To-Day, 45.]
William Hazlitt said: “In the days of Jacob there was a ladder between heaven and earth; but now the
heavens are gone farther off and are become astronomical.” That may be our first feeling; but no, in
spite of our thought of the heavens having become astronomical, even in spite of disenchanting errors,
the sensitive heart, bred in Christ’s school, has its own skies and mystic influences.
And still the soul a far-off glory sees,
Strange music hears.
A something, not of earth, still haunts the breeze,
The sun and spheres.
All things that be, all thought, all love, all joy
Spell-bind the man
As once the growing boy,
And point afar—
Point to some land of hope and crystal truth,
Of life and light,
Where souls renewed in an immortal youth
Shall know the infinite.
That ladder has ceased to be astronomical and has become flesh. The ascending and descending
blessings and communications linking heaven with our hearts are now “upon the Son of Man”; by Him
come down those white thoughts and forces of grace which prove God near, and by Him we climb to
God’s feet. You cannot throw off the leash of His Spirit.1 [Note: R. E. Welsh, Man to Man, 42.]

Revelation 21:1
No More Sea
And the sea is no more.—Rev_21:1.
1. We love the sea. A preacher who spent his holiday in Braemar, writes enthusiastically of its frowning
mountains, the silver streak of its beautiful river, the inspiration of its bracing air. But it lacked one
thing. There was no glimpse to be had of the sea.
There is a most charming passage in the Life of Gladstone where Mr. Morley is recalling the talks at
Biarritz during the very last years, in which he tells of the old man’s passionate delight in the buoyant
breakers thundering home on the reefs. He felt as if he could hardly bear to live without the sound of
the sea in his ears. He had, indeed, that within him which beat in response to that tumult of waters, to
that titanic pulse of the Atlantic. But he had in him a note of something deeper still. Not in tumultuous
buoyancy, not in passionate upheaval, lay the secret of his primal powers. Rather you felt in him,
behind and beyond this energy of elemental vitality, the spirit of the serious athlete, in possession of
his soul, disciplined in austerity, secure of a peace that passeth understanding, held fast, in hidden
calm, by the vision of a quiet land in which there is no more sea.1 [Note: H. S. Holland, Personal Studies, 45.]
I lie in my niche under the stunted hawthorn watching the to and fro of the sea, and Æolus
shepherding his white sheep across the blue. I love the sea with its impenetrable fathoms, its wash and
undertow, and rasp of shingle sucked anew. I love it for its secret dead in the Caverns of Peace, of
which account must be given when the books are opened and earth and heaven have fled away. Yet in
my love there is a paradox, for as I watch the restless, ineffective waves I think of the measureless,
reflective depths of the still and silent Sea of Glass, of the dead, small and great, rich or poor, with the
works which follow them, and of the Voice as the voice of many waters, when the multitude of one
mind rends heaven with alleluia: and I lie so still that I almost feel the kiss of White Peace on my
mouth.2 [Note: Michael Fairless, The Roadmender (ed. 1911), 9.]
A little girl friend of mine, whose home was by one of the great sea-lochs of the West Highlands, was
being taught about heaven by her mother, and was told that there would be no sea. “Then,” she said, “I
shall not like it.” All the child’s pleasures nearly were associated with the sea—bathing, fishing,
boating. On that changeful coast what is one hour mist and dulness and gloom, grey rock and wan
water, is the next a fairyland of lights and colours most strange and beautiful, on which to look is
enough delight. All island and peninsular nations are lovers of the sea. When Xenophon’s Greeks,
retreating after the battle of Cunaxa, came, after long desert marches and conflicts, in sight of the
Black Sea, they burst out into joyous cries—“Thalassa! Thalassa!” A modern poet has expressed the
strange fascination that the sea has for the men of these isles, in spite of all its fickleness and changes,
thus:
“Ye that bore us, O restore us!
She is kinder than ye;
For the call is on our heart-strings,”
Said the men of the sea.
“Ye that love us, can ye move us?
She is dearer than ye;
And your sleep will be the sweeter,”
“Oh, our fathers in the churchyard,
She is older than ye;

And our graves will be the greener,”
The sea is our life’s symbol, the port for which we sail, that heaven on which our hearts are set, and
“we are as near heaven by sea as by land.” Because we are a maritime people we symbolize the
ultimate, to which we go, as a royal port. It is a simple affair to us to consider all our aids for the
journey in terms of the voyage. Thus does Religion use the sea for its purpose, and it seems natural
that it should do so when we remember that, in the region of fact as well as in that of imagination,
Religion has used the sea. And it seems a natural use, for when a man’s mind is exercised by the
highest emotions at the same time that he is about to contend with the dangers of a natural element, it
is easy to believe that, from that moment, the association between emotion and element becomes for
ever established in his mind, and in the mind of his kind, and that so deep is the impression made by
the element that it becomes his symbol nearest at hand for the struggles in relation to which the
emotions are aroused. In such manner may old thinkers have written, their mind in both worlds. And
when we use a symbol such as this we do not draw a firm line between emotion and element. An
earthly voyage may also signify a heavenly.1 [Note: Frank Elias, Heaven and the Sea, 6.]
2. But the sea did not appeal to the Israelites. They never were sailors. In the only period of their
history in which they did much voyaging their ships were manned by Phœnicians—“shipmen that had
knowledge of the sea.” And St. John had special reasons for disliking it. We know that he took no
merely material interest in the future, and that when he says “the sea was no more,” he was drawing no
map of the geography of the new heaven and the new earth. But he had his reasons for choosing the
symbol of the sea, for using it as a figure of the things which were to be absent from the world of the
redeemed. We shall find his reasons if we consider what the sea stood for to the Apostle.
(1) Mystery.—It is largely a mystery still. It is largely unfathomed and unknown. It is our great
undiscovered continent.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear.
It is itself a mystery. Says Jefferies: “There is an infinite possibility about the sea; it may do what it is
not recorded to have done. It is not to be ordered. It may overleap the bounds human observation has
fixed for it. It has potency unfathomable. There is still something in it not quite grasped and
understood—something still to be discovered—a mystery.”
This aspect of the sea impressed itself upon the Israelites. “Thy way,” says the Psalmist, “was in the
sea, and thy paths in the great waters, and thy footsteps were not known.” And so Cowper:
God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.
The mystery of the sea is a figure of the mystery of life. It is an aspect of life that appeals to every one.
“This world,” said Charles Dickens, “is a world of sacred and solemn mystery; let no man despise it or
take it lightly.” Christina Rossetti sings:
The mystery of Life, the mystery
Of Death I see
Darkly, as in a glass;
Their shadows pass,
And talk with me.

Heaven and Earth Made New

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