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Music For the Soul
Devotional: January 22nd

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THE SEA OF GLASS

And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal. - Revelation 4:6

The sea of glass cannot be any part of the material creation, for the symbolism has provided for that otherwise. There seems to be but one explanation of it. 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! " That great ocean of the judgment of God is crystalline - clear, though it be 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 rising from their obscurity is often almost torture, and sometimes leads us into Atheism, or something like it. And yet here is the assurance that that sea is crystal clear; and 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 be 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, is 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.

Just as we fit round a central light sparkling prisms, each of which catches the glow at its own angle, and flashes it back of its own color, while the sovereign completeness of the perfect white radiance comes from the blending of all their separate rays; so they who stand round about the starry throne receive each the light in his own measure and manner, and give forth each a true and perfect, and altogether a complete, image of Him who enlightens them all, and is above them all. Like the serene choirs of angels in the old pictures, each one with the same tongue of fire on his brow, with the same robe flowing in the same folds to the feet, with the same golden hair, yet each a separate self, with his own gladness, and a different instrument for praise in his hand, and his own part in that "undisturbed song of pure concert." we shall all be changed into the same image, and yet each heart grow great with its own blessedness and each spirit bright with its own proper luster of individual and characteristic perfection.

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