The conclusion may be accepted without the "hesitation." The colours
on the canvas may indeed at first appear too bright for any condition
of things on this side the grave. But they are not more bright than
those employed in the description of the new Jerusalem in chap. xxi.;
and, when we come to the exposition of that chapter, we shall find
positive proof in the language of the Seer that he looks upon that
city as one already come down from heaven and established among men.
Not a few of its most glowing traits are even precisely the same as
those that we meet in the corresponding vision of this chapter: "And I
heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle
of God is with men, and He shall tabernacle 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."[191] If words like these may
be justly applied, as we have yet to see that they may and must be, to
one aspect of the Church on earth, there is certainly nothing to
hinder their application to the same Church now. The truth is that in
both cases the description is ideal, and that not less so than the
description of the terrors of the worldly at the opening of the sixth
Seal. Nor indeed shall we understand any part of the Apocalypse unless
we recognise the fact that everything with which it is concerned is
raised to an ideal standard. Reward and punishment, righteousness and
sin, the martyrdoms of the Church and the fate of her oppressors, are
all set before us in an ideal light. The Seer moves in the midst of
conceptions which are fundamental, ultimate, and eternal. The "broken
lights" which partially illuminate our progress in this world are to
him absorbed in "the true Light." The clouds and darkness which
obscure our path gather themselves together to his eyes in "the
darkness" with which the light has to contend. Descriptions,
accordingly, applicable in their fulness to the Church only after the
glory of her Lord is manifested, apply also to her now, when she is
thought of as living the life that is hid with Christ in God, the life
of her exalted and glorified Redeemer. For this conception the colours
of the picture before us are not too bright.[192]