The connection between the first and the last of these texts is as
plain and close as between the first and the second. For John in his
closing vision gives emphasis to the priestly idea as designating in
its deepest relations the redeemed and perfected Christian Church.
Therefore he says, as I have already explained, 'His servants shall do
Him _priestly_ service, and His name shall be in their foreheads.' The
old official dress of the high priest comes into his mind, and he
paints the future, just as Zechariah did, under the forms of the past,
and sees before the throne the perfected saints, each man of them with
that inscription clear and conspicuous.
But there is an advance in his words which I think it is not fanciful
to note. It is only the _name_ that is written in the perfected saint's
forehead. Not the 'Holiness unto the Lord,' but just the bare name.
What does that mean? Well, it means the same as your writing your name
in one of your books does, or as when a man puts his initials on the
back of his oxen, or as the old practice of branding the master's mark
upon the slave did. It means absolute ownership.
But it means something more. The name is the manifested personality,
the revealed God, or, as we say in an abstract way, the character of
God. That Name is to be in the foreheads of His perfected people. How
does it come to be there? Read also the clause before the text--'His
servants shall see His face, and His name shall be in their foreheads.'
That is to say, the perfected condition is not reached by surrender
only, but by assimilation; and that assimilation comes by
contemplation. The faces that are turned to Him, and behold Him, are
smitten with the light and shine, and those that look upon them see 'as
it had been the face of an angel,' as the Sanhedrim saw that of
Stephen, when he beheld
the Son of Man 'standing at the right hand of God.'
My last text is but a picturesque way of saying what the writer of it
says in plain words when he declares, 'We shall be like Him, for we
shall see Him as He is.' The name is to be 'in their foreheads,' where
every eye can see it. Alas! alas! it is so hard for us to live out our
best selves, and to show to the world what is in us. Cowardice,
sheepishness, and a hundred other reasons prevent it. In this poor
imperfect state no emotion ever takes shape and visibility without
losing more or less of its beauty. But yonder the obstructions to
self-manifestation will be done away; and 'when He shall be manifested,
we also shall be manifested with Him in glory.'
'Then shall the righteous blaze forth like the sun in My heavenly
Father's Kingdom.' But the beginning of it all is 'Holiness to the
Lord' written on our hearts; and the end of that is the vision which is
impossible without holiness, and which leads on to the beholder's
perfect likeness to his Lord.