The second symbol of my text is difficult of interpretation, like the first: I will give him the morning star.' Now, no doubt, throughout Scripture a star is a symbol of royal dominion; and many would propose *o to interpret it in the present case. But it seems to me that whilst that explanation--which makes the second part of our promise simply identical with the former, though under a different garb--does justice to one part of the symbol, it entirely omits the oilier. For the emphasis is here laid on morning' rather than on star.' It is the morning star,' not any star that blazes in the heavens, that is set forth here as a symbolical representation of the victor's condition. Then another false scent, as it were, on which interpretations have gone, seems to me to be that, taking into account the fact that in the last chapter of the Revelation our Lord is Himself described as the bright and morning star,' they bring this promise down simply to mean,' I will give him Myself.' Now though it is quite true that, in the deepest of all views, Jesus Christ Himself is the gift as well as the giver of all these sevenfold promises, yet the propriety of representation seems to me to forbid that He should here say, I will give them Myself!'
So I think we must fall back upon what any touch of poetic imagination would at once suggest to be the meaning of the promise, that it is the dawning splendour of that planet of hope and morning, the harbinger of day, which we are to lay hold of. Hebrew prophets, long before, had spoken of Lucifer, light-bringer,' the son of the morning.' Many a poet sang of it before Milton with his,
"Hesperus, that led the starry host, Rode brightest."
So that I think we are just to lay hold of the thought that the starry splendour, the beauty and the lustre that will be poured upon the victor is that which is expressed by this symbol here. What that lustre will consist in it becomes us not to say. That future keeps its secret well, but that it shall be the perfecting of human nature up to the most exquisite and consummate height of which it is capable, and the enlargement of it beyond all that human experience here can conceive, we may peaceably anticipate and quietly trust.
Only, note the advance here on the previous promises is as conspicuous as in the former part of this great promise. There the Christian man's influence and authority were set forth under the emblem of regal dominion. Here they are set forth under the emblem of lustrous splendour. It is the spectators that seethe glory of the beam that comes from the star. And this promise, like the former, implies that in that future there will be a sphere in which perfected spirits may ray out their light, and where they may gladden and draw some eyes by their beams. I have no word to say as to the sky in which the rays of that star may shine, but I do feel that the very essence of this great representation is that Christian souls in the future, as in the present, will stand forth as the visible embodiments of the glory and lustre of the unseen God.
Further, remember that this image, like the former, traces up the lustre, as that traced the royalty, to communion with Christ, and to impartation from Him. I will give him the morning star.' We shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars for ever,' as Daniel said--not by inherent but by reflected light. We are not suns, but planets, that move round the Sun of Righteousness, and flash with His beauty.
