Revelation 21:25

THE NIGHT PASSED

‘There shall be no night there.’

Revelation 21:25

What does darkness stand for? Of what is it often spoken of as a type?

I. Darkness is the equivalent of uncertainty.—Only when we see no more ‘through a glass darkly,’ but ‘face to face,’ only when the great enigma has been solved, shall we know even as we are known. And that is what St. John meant as he gazed upon the heavenly city, New Jerusalem, into which the kings of the earth had brought their honour and glory. There was no more uncertainty, no more of those trials of doubt and perplexity which beset us here. All was bright and radiant in the light which was no more attended by any shadow, because the shadows had every one been dispelled. ‘There was no night there.’

II. Darkness is suggestive of isolation.—In the night the faces of our fellow-creatures are withdrawn for a while, and all familiar objects are hidden.

III. Darkness is suggestive of weariness.—It is to recruit our weariness that gentle Night steals down and covers us with her mantle of forgetfulness and soothes all our powers to rest. But there will be no scope for this loving office of the night in that blessed home where weariness will be impossible, where work will be pure joy, because the glorified body, in which we hope to serve our God in ways which He will unfold to us there, will have left all weariness behind.

—Rev. W. H. Savile.