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There are two words in the original which are necessarily translated alike — "new" — in our Testaments. Of these two adjectives, one signifies new in relation to time, the other new in relation to quality — the first temporal novelty, the second novelty intellectual or spiritual. The Apocalypse is full of the Divine novelty implied by the latter of these two words. Up above we see "a new heaven." Down below the long "becoming" of the evolution of history and nature is complete, the "one far-off divine event" is reached; we have "a new earth." Out of the city that was in idea perfectly holy and beautiful, but which was marred by sin, and whose battlements were never steeped with the sunrise of the day for which we wait — out of it, as it were, grew "the holy city, new Jerusalem." Christ is the One Renovator. "He that sitteth upon the throne saith, Behold, I make all things new."

I. THE SOURCE OF THE NEW CREATION IS THE NEW HUMANITY, CHRIST THE SECOND ADAM. The Incarnation is the creation by God the Holy Ghost of a new member of the human family to be the head of "a people that shall be born." It was not merely the most consummate possible evolution of pre-existing moral and historical elements. The gardener sees a stem which his experience tells him is endowed with peculiar capacities. He enriches it by grafting into it a new scion, not of or from the tree, but from another which is of a higher and nobler kind. Nothing less than this is in the mystery of the Incarnation. This, I believe, was foretold by Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:22).

II. THE RESULT OF THIS IS THE CREATION IN CHRIST AND BY CHRIST OF A NEW HUMANITY. I say, by Christ. Christianity has a history, but is not a history. Christianity has a book, but is not a book. An idea may be great, a history may be great, but a person is greater. Luther's work, or Napoleon's work, is now linked to Luther's and Napoleon's ideas or history, and to nothing else. We have the ideas and the history of Christ in the Gospels and Epistles, the most efficacious of all ideas, the most true and living of all history. But Christ's work continues linked to Christ's life. Christ is not merely the central figure of the Galilean idyll, or a form nailed to a crucifix, or a pathetic memory. Our relation to Him is not merely one of idea, or of recollection, or of literary sympathy. It is a present union of life with life. He does not say — "because My words shall be gathered up and written down with absolute truth, My religion shall live." He does say — "because I live, ye shall live also." This new creation by Christ begins in the depths of the human heart and life. One of the world's greatest writers has illustrated the difference between true and false schemes of virtue by the difference between the work of the statuary and that of nature. The statuary deals with his marble piecemeal; he is occupied with the curve of a finger-nail, or the position of a lock of hair, and while so occupied can do no more. But nature is at work with a simultaneous omnipresence in root and leaf and flower. Christ's renovation is unexhausted and inexhaustible. He says Himself, "Behold, I make all things new."

III. We naturally — perhaps in these days uneasily — proceed to ask WHETHER THE WORDS OF THE TEXT ADMIT OF APPLICATION TO THE INTELLECTUAL AS WELL AS SOCIAL PROGRESS OF CHRISTENDOM. Those of US who have seriously tried to reconcile that in us which thinks with that which feels and prays may entertain some misgiving. As we look back to the point from which we. started many years ago we recognise the fact that, slowly it may be, but surely, we have advanced from our old position.

1. As we turn to nature, all of us at least who are over fifty will remember our youthful view of Genesis, with its rash anathemas and unhesitating dogmatism, with its crude schemes of premature conciliation. All things were flashed out of nothing, moment by moment, in six consecutive days of twenty-four hours. Reflection and knowledge have convinced us that the anticipation of exact science was not one of the purposes of the Bible. But there is a higher life than that of which science knows. There is a light in which it lives. The light for that life which is beyond science comes to us through the revelation of Moses. What, then, do we learn from the first pages of the Bible? We say, "I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth," not less truly than of old, but with a deeper and larger meaning. Christ says to us even as we repeat the beginning of our creed, "Behold, I make all things new."

2. As we turn to Scripture we meet with a similar renovation of our earlier view. Consider, for instance, the question of the origin of the Gospels. It may be looked upon as ascertained that the Gospels were all written within the first century, none earlier than about A.D. 60, none much later than about A.D. 80. This historical fact in itself seems strange to certain primary notions from which most of us started. Yet a little reflection dissipates our uneasiness. In the bridal days which succeeded Pentecost the young Church was filled with a heavenly enthusiasm. At first, then, there was not — and there needed not to be — any official memorial of the life of Jesus. The apostle's sermons were sometimes, perhaps generally, summaries of the characteristics of that life. In portions of the apostolic epistles particular incidents are touched upon briefly — e.g., the birth, the circumcision, the transfiguration, His poverty, the fact that He came of the tribe of Judah, His going without the camp bearing His Cross, the "Abba, Father," the "strong crying and tears" of Gethsemane. It seems to be certain that an unwritten life of Jesus, graven upon the living heart of the Church, preceded the written life. In this, indeed, there is no derogation from the real glory of the written word. No ark of the new covenant, overlaid round about with gold, kept in its side the book of the new law. Yet the Holy Spirit — without a separate miracle working in each syllable and letter — freely used the memory and intelligence of apostles and their disciples, that Christ's people in all ages might know the certainty of those things wherein they had been instructed; and that across the gulf of ages, through the mists of history, our eyes might see the authentic lineaments of the King in His beauty. Further, in the three first evangelists there is a certain common basis of similar, or identical, sentences and words. Critics may show that Matthew copied from Luke, or Luke from Matthew; may discuss whether Matthew is the "primitive" of Mark, or Mark of Matthew. Even without taking into account the promise of the Spirit to "bring all things to their remembrance whatsoever." He had said unto them, "such words from such a teacher could never perish from the earth. Thus, any change which criticism may make in our view of the origin and character of the Gospels tends to elevate our conception of their subject. We see in them a Saviour more exalted, if that were possible. We hear words yet deeper and more tender. Here, too, Christ saith, "Behold, I make all things new."

3. As we contemplate the process of religious thought, we may be sometimes tempted to fear that a period is approaching when religion will be so spiritualised as to dissolve away. The answer is afforded by simply considering the abiding, irreducible elements in man's nature — his intellect, his conscience, his affections.

(Abp. Wm. Alexander.)

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KJV: And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

WEB: He who sits on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new." He said, "Write, for these words of God are faithful and true."