The reason for it is that we have not seen Him through the eyes of love. We have not loved enough. It was love that first unlocked the fact of the resurrection. It was love which was the only qualification of the first preacher. It was love which was the force that spurred her on and was her commission.

Surely this is a glorious and a comforting doctrine. We are not gifted, we have no great talents. Birth and circumstances have shut us out from great scholarship. We are at once cut off from any hope to approach God along certain lines. And we

are not good, not even by our weak standards, to say nothing of the higher standards of God. But we can love-every one of us. God has made us to let our hearts go out. We know that we can love. Since this is the prime requisite, God grant that we may love; that in His time coming to the vision He has for all of us, we may see the Lord and preach Him for love; that the love which has opened our eyes to see Him may send us with swift feet to those who need to know, declaring to them, "I have seen the Lord."

a very interesting fact that man's every physical activity is an effort to express in some tangible way in the world without as much as possible of that which is going on in the world within. The architecture, the art, the music, the poetry, the science, the philosophy, the invention, of every age have been the material transcript of the moods and tenses, the emotions and visions of man's inner self. Great passions have swept the invisible strings of human emotion and the canvas, or poem, or musical score, have told the story. Great visions have passed in panorama before the inner sight, and the sciences have declared the revelation. But the truest and noblest expression of this inner life is found in man's religion. Religion is the transcript of the soul's emotion or vision when standing alone before its Maker.

Such a transcript is contained in our text. John the Beloved has seen something in the unseen world and he desires to acquaint the world without of what he has seen. The book of the Revelation is the result of his effort. In this particular chapter John is describing his vision of the Christ. The record is minute in every detail. It tells of Christ's countenance, of His eyes, of His hair, of His head, of His feet, of His garment, of His girdle, and of His voice. But, that which impresses me more than anything else is the effect which the vision of Christ has upon John himself,"And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as

dead." These words furnish the theme for our meditation.

I shall cluster my remarks about three propositions which I regard to be axiomatic. Let me state them in the logical order in which they lie in my own mind.

1. THE MEASURE OF EVERY MAN IS THE MEASURE OF HIS VISION. John was a man of large vision, therefore John was a large man. The world has always delighted to honor her prophets and poets and seers. We recognize that the greatest man is he whose vision

penetrates the furthest into things of nature, human experience or events of history. Man is by nature a seer. It is this Godlike quality that differentiates him from the brute creation. The brute creation can look out upon the moon, but their gaze is one of stolid indifference. They see the light and can bark at it, but no intelligent idea comes to them of form or relation or origin or orbit.

And that which differentiates the one order of creature from the other is the same as distinguishes one man from another man. The less the measure of vision, the nearer man resembles the beast. The wider the measure of vision, the nearer man approaches Him in Whose image he was created.

Now this is my proposition; the proposition contained in the text. Does it hold good? Well, let us examine it in its application to one or two of the various fields of human endeavor. Are men measured in this world by their vision? Is it true that the wider the vision the greater is the man? Most certainly so.

The measure of the scientist is the measure of his vision. Who have been the world's great scientists? The Darwins, the Keplers, the Faradays, and the Newtonsmen whose vision penetrated beneath the surface of natural phenomena. They saw more than their contemporaries saw, and that vision made them great.

The measure of the poet is the measure of his vision. Who have been the world's great poets? The Shakespeares, the Miltons, the Dantes, and the Longfellows men who could see forms of life in the

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mountains, the changing foliage, and the dissolving clouds. In the same sense the measure of a Christian is the measure of his vision of Christ. Who have been the world's great Christians? Men like Saul of Tarsus, and John the Beloved, and Stephen, and Hugh Latimer, and John Huss, the martyrs, and Fannie Crosby, the aged queen of Christian song, who, although denied the blessing of physical sight, continually stands in the presence of the invisible, and looks with ever widening vision upon the divine Christ. John saw Christ. He had a vision of the real Christ. It was the vision of the Christ behind the Christ, and the Christ within the Christ. This was not a vision of His humanity. It was a vision of Christ in His divinity. So many are studying, in these days, the humanity of Christ. Such a study is fascinating, but it requires no power of vision. The vision power is no more necessary in the study of the human life of our Lord than is the vision power necessary to read the life of Cromwell or Cæsar. Historical study is a matter of intellectual apprehension. Visions are soul studies. You read the story of Christ's earthly life, and with the intellect it becomes an intelligent conception. But you have not yet seen the real Christ-the Christ in His divinity and glory as John saw Him in the text. Nor will you ever see Him thus, until with the soul's vision you penetrate behind the facts of history and see Him as your God and Saviour. This is not mysticism. I am not talking in the clouds. I am speaking practically. What I have been stating is not

hard to be understood if you bring it down to everyday application. Let us, for example, apply its principle to the hearing of sermons. To one a sermon is a dry rehearsal of old-fashioned and uninteresting facts or dogma; to another the same sermon is a revelation. As he listens he says, "I see something that I never saw before." That is a vision as truly as John's, and the hearer has been enlarged thereby.

Let me give one or two concrete examples of the importance of this inner vision in the apprehension of religious concepts. Christ had been talking to His disciples and telling them of the Father's house of many mansions. When He had finished "Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him: Have I been so long a time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Evidently Philip had been looking upon the humanity of Christ, and had not caught the vision of His divinity, of the Christ behind the Christ.

It was after the crucifixion of our Lord. Two disciples were on their way from Jerusalem to a village called Emmaus. They were disconsolate. They were talking together of the things which had happened. Jesus drew near and journeyed with them. They told Him of what had taken place, as though He had not been the chief actor in the drama. Christ reproved them for their ur.belief, and began to unfold the Scriptures to these blinded disciples, who looked

upon Him, but who did not know Him. When they reached their destination you remember Christ accepted their invitation and went in to sup with them. "And it came to pass as he sat with them at meat he took bread and blessed it, and their eyes were opened, and they knew him." They had seen His humanity, but now they had the vision of His divinity.

John had just such a vision of Christ. Behind the mere facts of history John saw the divine King of his life. Have you had this vision? Have you recognized something more than an historical personage? Have you seen Christ in some song that you have heard, some affliction through which you have passed, some sermon to which you have listened? I ask this question because the measure of your Christian life and attainment is the measure of this inner vision which you have had of the spirit and of the meaning of the services of this sanctuary, the Scripture which you hear read, and the sermons to which you listen.

2. THE MEASURE OF THE VISION DEPENDS UPON THE SPIRIT OF THE MAN. John describes his condition of mind when he saw this vision. He says, "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day." What are we to understand by that statement? We are told by some that John refers to some special anointing of the Holy Spirit. Possibly so. But the simplest interpretation is perhaps the best for our present use. "I was in the Spirit" certainly means that John had gotten himself into the spirit of the occasion.

This implies that he was in sympathy with the occasion, that he had prepared himself to be carried away by what he saw and heard. He was in sympathy with the divine. He was in the conscious presence of the Almighty. Patmos was a holy place because the only worshiper on that Sabbath was in a holy frame of mind. Had John been otherwise he would have had no vision. The vision was not around him. It was within him. The vision consisted of a frame of mind, and a condition of soul that responded to the touch of God. When

ever a man is in the spirit of the occasion he is sure to receive some benefit. John had the right spirit. He was on fire with a holy passion, and he saw. So I argue that the measure of our vision will depend upon the spirit of ourselves. Is this a principle of common application? Let us see. Yonder is a mountain. There is a man who is approaching the mountain with the spirit of a builder. What does he see? Nothing but building stones. proaching the same spirit of a scientist.

Another man is apmountain with the What does he see?

Secrets-wonderful secrets, visions of the subtle working of God's invisible fingers. And there is still another man who is approaching the mountain in the spirit of an artist. What does he see? He sees perspective, coloring, forms, a picture. You notice that the spirit of the man determines not only the measure but the kind of his vision.

Precisely the same law holds good in the religious realm. One man approaches the pulpit and the Church and the Bible with the spirit of a willful sinner. What sort of a vision would you expect such a man to have? The very vision that he does have. All such a man can see is a church full of hypocrites and a Bible that describes sins of such enormity that he would not have the book read in the presence of his children. Another man approaches the Church and the Bible with the spirit of a scientist. What does he see? Just what you would expect. Scientific inaccuracies and blindly credulous devotees. Another man approaches the Bible in the spirit of doubt. Naturally he sees nothing in the book but that which feeds his doubt, and justifies him in saying, "I don't believe." But thank God there are those who approach both the Bible and the Church in the spirit of faith, and with a spiritual sight. Such men always have a vision. They are in the spirit of the occasion. They are in the spirit of the institution. They are in the spirit of the Book, and their vision depends upon the spirit of themselves.

The sense of Christ is not intellectual. It is moral. It is like the sense of right and wrong. The man who tries to understand a sermon or the spirit of worship

with his intellect is the man who will never understand it at all. Only visionists can understand visionists. "There are some men who ought never to try to read poetry or to listen to music, because they kill it. They do not realize that they are killing it, but they are doing so nevertheless." They are not in the spirit of either poetry or music. They do not understand the first essence of either one.

This fact which I have been setting forth accounts for the difference in the hearing of a sermon. No two hear the same sermon. Every man hears a new gospel. The sermon is the same, but the men are different. I am even able to forecast in what frame of mind some of you will go from the service this morning. You will go in exactly the same frame of mind in which you entered, modified it may be, but the same. If you came to this house of prayer from the marketplace, or from an unhappy quarrel at home, or from the depths of the Sunday newspaper, or from a confusion of books, you can hardly expect to receive a vision from anything that the minister may have to say. Indeed, I should have to perform a miracle, unless God did it for me, to really help you to see more clearly spiritual things. Your vision power has been contracted by the spirit in which you came here. On the other hand, if you entered this house of God in the spirit of prayer, of reverence, if you came from a family altar, or from a few moments' meditation, or from a closet of prayer, I am sure that you will go from this sanctuary with as true a vision of your Saviour as John had. Therefore I assert that the measure of the vision will be determined by the