I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire; and they stand on the sea of glass.' Of course the propriety of the image, as well as the force of the original language, suggests at once that by on the sea of glass' here, we must understand, on the firm bank by its side. As Moses and the ransomed hosts stood on the shore of the Red Sea, so these conquerors are represented as standing on the safe beach, and looking out upon this sea of glass mingled with fire, which, calm, crystal, clear, stable, and yet shot through and through with the red lines of retributive judgment, sleeps above the buried oppressors.
Observe that besides its picturesque appropriateness and its historical allusion, this sea of glass has a distinct symbolical meaning. We find it appearing also in the great vision in the fourth chapter, where the Seer beholds the normal and ideal order of the universe, which is--the central throne, the' Lamb that was slain' in the interspace between the Throne and the creatures as mediator; and round about, the four living beings, who represent the fulness of creation, and the four-and-twenty elders, who represent the Church in the Old and the New Covenants as one whole. Then follows, before the Throne was a sea of glass,' which cannot be any part of the material creation, and seems to have but one explanation, and that is that it means the aggregate of the Divine dealings. Thy judgments are a mighty deep.' Oh! the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God; how unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out.' Such a signification fits precisely our present passage, for the sea here represents that beneath which the tyrant lies buried for evermore.
That great ocean of the judgment of God is crystal-line--clear though deep. Does it seem so to us? Ah! we stand before the mystery of God's dealings, often bewildered, and not seldom reluctant to submit. The perplexity arising from their obscurity is often almost torture, and sometimes leads men into Atheism, or something like it. And yet here is the assurance that that sea is crystal clear, and that if we cannot look to its lowest depths, that is not because there is any mud or foulness there, but partly because the light from above fails before it reaches the abysses, and partly because our eyes are uneducated to search its depths. In itself it is transparent, and it rises and falls without mire or dirt,' like the blue Mediterranean on the marble cliffs of the Italian coast. If it is clear as far as the eye can see, let us trust that beyond the reach of the eye the clearness is the same.
And it is a crystal ocean as being calm. They who stand there have gotten the victory and bear the image of the Master. By reason of their conquest, and by reason of their sympathy with Him they see that what to us, tossing upon its surface, appears such a troubled and tempestuous ocean, as calm and still. As from some height, looked down upon, the ocean seems a watery plain, and all the agitation of the billows has subsided into a gentle ripple on the surface, so to them looking down upon the sea that brought them thither, it is quiet--and their vision, not ours, is the true one.
It is a sea of glass mingled with fire.' Divine acts of retribution as it were flash through it, if I may so say, like those streaks of red that are seen in Venice glass, or like some ocean smitten upon the one side of every wave by a fiery sunlight, while the other side of each is dark. So through that great depth of God's dealings there flashes the fire of retribution. They who have conquered the animal, the godless self, see into the meaning and the mercifulness of God's dealings with the world; and we here, in the measure in which we have become victors over the rude animalism and the more subtle selfishness that tend to rule us all, and in the measure in which we bear the image of Jesus Christ, and therefore have come into sympathy with Him, may come to discern with some clearer understanding, and to trust with more unfaltering faith, the righteousness and the mercy of all that God shall do.
