When St. John was exiled to the island of Patmos by the Roman authorities, he could look back over many years of activity in the developing Christian congregations. For the first thirty years after Pentecost, St. Peter and St. Paul, and in Jerusalem St. James the brother of Jesus, had been the great visible sources of initiative and leadership. But since they had suffered a martyr's death and Jerusalem had been destroyed, it must have been evident that John was now the great link between Christian leaders growing up into responsibility and the events through which Christianity began. And though St. John's method of work may always have been rather a quiet and reticent one, nevertheless he had long borne a heavy and increasingly evident responsibility for the welfare of the whole Church. The time on Patmos gave an opportunity for profound reflection after many years of outward activity - as Paul had had in Arabia before he began his tireless journeys. John could not only look back and sift the experiences of the years; he could look forward with intensely questioning gaze at the development of Christendom and of the world through the centuries to come. The sun rose over the sea each day and sank into the sea westwards; and to east, south, west and north, St. John could feel around him the great scenes of the history of man.
On "the Lord's day" in particular, the first day of the week, he could recall what he had passed through on that day, which every Sunday was to commemorate for Christians; how Peter and himself had gone to the sepulchre at dawn and seen how the grave clothes lay within it. And he could look back on the evening of that day, when Christ Jesus came and stook among them in the room where the disciples had sheltered behind closed doors, and said to them "Peace be with you".
Already by the time of John's exile on Patmos, two opposite dangers showed themselves in the Church, a spirituality which would reject the material as evil on the one hand, and a materialism which would grow blind to the spiritual on the other. John had to contend with both; but if he lookded westwards into the region of the setting sun, it was the power of materialism which threatened the greatest dangers in the further future. The Romans had carried off in triumph the seven-branched candlestick from the shattered temple in Jerusalem; could the Christians, in a Romanised, externalised world, keep burning in the spiritual darkness their seven candlesticks? In a world obsessed by the material, would man preserve any knowledge of his spiritual being? It is in this situation that John hears in the spirit a mighty voice directing him to write what he sees to the seven Churches on the mainland, which were his immediate care. And when he turns "to see the voice" he sees, among seven golden candlesticks, one like "a Son of Man".
In all the Gospels "the Son of Man" is a name which Christ gives himself. It carries the specific meaning: "the Son of Man" is not man as he is today, but as he can become, when all the potentialities implanted in him by God are fulfilled. Christ Jesus is the only example of this fulfilment; but what he says about "the Son of Man" will in the future of the world become true about individual men who follow him, developing true manhood within them. Thus when he says to Nathaniel that in future times the disciples would see "Heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man", this is a promise both about how they will see Christ and how they will see man. And when John says at the beginning of his vision that he sees one like a Son of Man, both these possibilities are open. He sees one who in his bearing shows first of all the earnest greatness of genuine manhood. Then, step by step, particular qualities of this being are revealed; qualities in which the angels of God ascend and descend, manifestations through the human form of the working of the Hierarchies. In three groups of three, John's spiritual vision perceives and understands these qualities. And this is an ascent in vision from the contemplation of spiritualised manhood towards the contemplation of God.
The Being that John beholds is "clothed with a long robe and a golden girdle round his breast; his head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow". It is a sign of the turning from external things to a priestly activity through which the guidance of the ang
els can become present among men. John sees the Christ in the form of a man who is consecrated for a work in which his angel is present. And in thus showing himself like an angel, Christ is guide for all the angels in their tasks as companions of individual men. But he wears also a golden girdle about his breast. As the golden crown upon the head of a man is token of kingship, the responsibility for a nation, so the golden girdle is the token of an Archangel's responsibility to quicken courage in the breasts of men belonging to the nation he guides.
The hair of his head is white with the whiteness of wool of snow - of the sacrificial creature, the ram, and of the element of winter in which the years end. Christ appears as the priest, not only of individuals and of nations, but of the ages through which civilisation after civilisation sacrifice themselves for the sake of the future. He stands as representative of the Archai, as well as the Archangels and Angels; looking on him all the ranks of messenger spirits can see the meaning of their task in the education of the human soul.
"His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze refined as in a furnace and his voice was like the sound of many waters." John could look back, not only on the sepulchre in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea, but on that other grave which had helped him to have faith on Easter morning - the grave from which he himself had been called forth at Bethany. In the Gospel, he alone would describe this, referring to himself under the humble name Lazarus. And he would record that on the way to the tomb Christ Jesus had wept. It is the mystery of tears that they flow in order for the fire of the "I am" to burn more strongly in our eyes. This challenging and summoning fire John now sees once more in the eyes of the figure before him. It is the same spiritual fire which had blazed about the thorn bush in the desert when Moses drew near to the God who called himself I AM. The human form in its perfection is fashioned in every part as the vessel of this fire. It leaps out in the gaze of the eyes, but it also works in the form of the feet which continually overcome the heaviness of earthly substance. Not long after his re-awakening to life, John Lazarus has seen his sister anoint the feet of Jesus in gratitude, and a few days later, Jesus in turn washing the feet of his disciples. For the journeys which Christ and his disciples must take, feet which can grow weary are not enough. They must be like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace - having copper, the metal of loving Venus and tin, that of wise Jupiter, united in them.
Yet he who had so much fire in all his being has a voice "like the sound of many waters". John is always intensely aware of the waters of the world; indeed nearly every scene which is to be found only in his Gospel is concerned with water. He looks forward to the river of life which will flow through the street of the New Jerusalem and nourish the roots of the Tree of Life, with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; "and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations". Wherever the Word of Christ reaches, it is as a rivulet of this water, to be united at last in the one great stream, and he who hears the working of the Word through the world can recognise the voices of the many waters through it, which have their courses among many souls.
These three attributes of eyes and feet and voice are closely related with one another, and belong to a being who can no longer be seen simply as priest within a temple, but as creative power at work through a world. They may even seem to belong so much only to Christ that we cannot refer them to any other being. And yet it need take nothing from the grandeur of the vision, but rather show us the full depth of what John is doing when he describes it to us in this way, if we see once more in these attributes the manifestations of the Hierarchies. The fire of the "I am" is brought to man through the Elohim, the Spirits of Form. The untiring feet are to sustain the workings of the Spirits of Movement; in the voice is the serenity of the Spirits of Wisdom. These three ranks of spirits whom we have found in particular as the cosmic servants of the Logos show themselves in the picture of man grown beyond earthly limitations, become master of the sun-illumined processes of the elements.
"In his right hand he held seven stars. From his mouth issued a sharp two-edged sword and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. When I saw him I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand upon me saying: Fear not, I am the First and the Last and the living one; I died and behold I am alive for evermore and I have the keys of death and of hell!"
When at the Transfiguration the disciples heard a voice from the bright cloud which overshadowed them, they fell on their faces, and Jesus came and touched them and said, "Rise and have no fear". When the human being feels himself in the immediate presence of the Godhead, it is as if his earthly life had come to an end, which can be renewed only by the touch of Christ. John goes once more through this experience; for the qualities of the being whom he had seen at first as like a man, though a perfected and consecrated one, now become more and more the qualities of God. Into the splendour of the sun man's earthly eyes cannot bear to look for long; and thus it is with the splendour of God for the eyes of his soul. He comes to the source of all light and life and love and he can be nothing at all unless reborn out of this source. To draw near, he must be able to stand before the sword which once flamed at the gate of Paradise. He must be blessed by the hand which bears the seven stars in their courses.
Here we have come into that ultimate region of judgement and grace from which work the beings who are the immediate bearers of the will of the Father, the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. They too ascend and descend upon the Son of Man; for their work also, the being of Christ is as it were transparent. It is the ultimate overcoming of a one-sided materialism for men to discover the working of these beings in the depths of matter itself. Venturing into these depths without the reverence learned from the contemplation of Christ, they can only let loose the powers of hell. And in aspiring to intervene among the courses of the planets, they may only strengthen the hand of death. But Christ has the keys of hell and of death; for John's infinite comfort, he knows that no power can emerge into the future history of man, of which Christ has not the measure and the mastery.
Not for one moment does John lose himself in the splendour and the terror of this vision, but he can hear at once how the mystery which he has seen is to be interpreted in the practice of his own life on earth in his responsibility for the seven congregations with their diverse tasks and difficulties. If these congregations and their successors through the centuries can look up to the seven stars as their angels, and keep burning and shining the seven candlesticks, which they themselves are, the heavenly light will not vanish through all the ages to come.
Among the Evangelists, St. John is most concerned with heavenly understanding, as St. Luke is concerned with human love and sacrifice, St. Mark with courageous will, and St. Matthew with the harmony of all the powers bestowed on man. Thus for centuries St. John was represented in Christian art as inspired by the flying Eagle among the four Living Creatures about the Throne. This stands opposite to the Bull; it is the right, original description of what has long been called Scorpio. For the gifts of the Eagle to man have been devided and have fallend; man's understanding has been darkened, his power of reproduction debased. And John is concerned with their transformation and return to purity and greatness. The first deed of Jesus in the Gospel is at the Marriage in Cana; the last vision of the Apocalypse, the Marriage of the Lamb. The deed at Cana is accomplished without the understanding of those most concerned; at the end of the Apocalypse all is understood.
But though John fulfils so completely his task in the realm of the Eagle, he is deeply related as well to the constellation in which Leonardo seems to put him, Sagittarius. This is the source of the prophetic spirit; the fire that urges man on towards the future. At the beginning of the Apocalypse St. John beholds the Christ as Son of Man, having the harmony of all earthly and all heavenly powers; the fulfilment of the constellation Aquarius, the Man. And towards the end of the Apocalypse St. John gives another description of the Christ, in his Godhead, which is the fulfilment of Sagittarius.
But this is not a remote vision of a future world, unconcerned with the present. All leadership now, down to the most everyday and apparently trivial kinds, needs the warmth of such a hope. We cannot really ask or tell anyone else, even a small child, to do something, without some belief that his own insight will come to meet us. And yet the other is a deep mystery. We do not even know his true name; unless at least for a moment through love we leave ourselves, and become the other man.
On "the Lord's day" in particular, the first day of the week, he could recall what he had passed through on that day, which every Sunday was to commemorate for Christians; how Peter and himself had gone to the sepulchre at dawn and seen how the grave clothes lay within it. And he could look back on the evening of that day, when Christ Jesus came and stook among them in the room where the disciples had sheltered behind closed doors, and said to them "Peace be with you".
Already by the time of John's exile on Patmos, two opposite dangers showed themselves in the Church, a spirituality which would reject the material as evil on the one hand, and a materialism which would grow blind to the spiritual on the other. John had to contend with both; but if he lookded westwards into the region of the setting sun, it was the power of materialism which threatened the greatest dangers in the further future. The Romans had carried off in triumph the seven-branched candlestick from the shattered temple in Jerusalem; could the Christians, in a Romanised, externalised world, keep burning in the spiritual darkness their seven candlesticks? In a world obsessed by the material, would man preserve any knowledge of his spiritual being? It is in this situation that John hears in the spirit a mighty voice directing him to write what he sees to the seven Churches on the mainland, which were his immediate care. And when he turns "to see the voice" he sees, among seven golden candlesticks, one like "a Son of Man".
In all the Gospels "the Son of Man" is a name which Christ gives himself. It carries the specific meaning: "the Son of Man" is not man as he is today, but as he can become, when all the potentialities implanted in him by God are fulfilled. Christ Jesus is the only example of this fulfilment; but what he says about "the Son of Man" will in the future of the world become true about individual men who follow him, developing true manhood within them. Thus when he says to Nathaniel that in future times the disciples would see "Heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man", this is a promise both about how they will see Christ and how they will see man. And when John says at the beginning of his vision that he sees one like a Son of Man, both these possibilities are open. He sees one who in his bearing shows first of all the earnest greatness of genuine manhood. Then, step by step, particular qualities of this being are revealed; qualities in which the angels of God ascend and descend, manifestations through the human form of the working of the Hierarchies. In three groups of three, John's spiritual vision perceives and understands these qualities. And this is an ascent in vision from the contemplation of spiritualised manhood towards the contemplation of God.
The Being that John beholds is "clothed with a long robe and a golden girdle round his breast; his head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow". It is a sign of the turning from external things to a priestly activity through which the guidance of the ang
els can become present among men. John sees the Christ in the form of a man who is consecrated for a work in which his angel is present. And in thus showing himself like an angel, Christ is guide for all the angels in their tasks as companions of individual men. But he wears also a golden girdle about his breast. As the golden crown upon the head of a man is token of kingship, the responsibility for a nation, so the golden girdle is the token of an Archangel's responsibility to quicken courage in the breasts of men belonging to the nation he guides.The hair of his head is white with the whiteness of wool of snow - of the sacrificial creature, the ram, and of the element of winter in which the years end. Christ appears as the priest, not only of individuals and of nations, but of the ages through which civilisation after civilisation sacrifice themselves for the sake of the future. He stands as representative of the Archai, as well as the Archangels and Angels; looking on him all the ranks of messenger spirits can see the meaning of their task in the education of the human soul.
"His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze refined as in a furnace and his voice was like the sound of many waters." John could look back, not only on the sepulchre in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea, but on that other grave which had helped him to have faith on Easter morning - the grave from which he himself had been called forth at Bethany. In the Gospel, he alone would describe this, referring to himself under the humble name Lazarus. And he would record that on the way to the tomb Christ Jesus had wept. It is the mystery of tears that they flow in order for the fire of the "I am" to burn more strongly in our eyes. This challenging and summoning fire John now sees once more in the eyes of the figure before him. It is the same spiritual fire which had blazed about the thorn bush in the desert when Moses drew near to the God who called himself I AM. The human form in its perfection is fashioned in every part as the vessel of this fire. It leaps out in the gaze of the eyes, but it also works in the form of the feet which continually overcome the heaviness of earthly substance. Not long after his re-awakening to life, John Lazarus has seen his sister anoint the feet of Jesus in gratitude, and a few days later, Jesus in turn washing the feet of his disciples. For the journeys which Christ and his disciples must take, feet which can grow weary are not enough. They must be like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace - having copper, the metal of loving Venus and tin, that of wise Jupiter, united in them.
Yet he who had so much fire in all his being has a voice "like the sound of many waters". John is always intensely aware of the waters of the world; indeed nearly every scene which is to be found only in his Gospel is concerned with water. He looks forward to the river of life which will flow through the street of the New Jerusalem and nourish the roots of the Tree of Life, with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; "and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations". Wherever the Word of Christ reaches, it is as a rivulet of this water, to be united at last in the one great stream, and he who hears the working of the Word through the world can recognise the voices of the many waters through it, which have their courses among many souls.
These three attributes of eyes and feet and voice are closely related with one another, and belong to a being who can no longer be seen simply as priest within a temple, but as creative power at work through a world. They may even seem to belong so much only to Christ that we cannot refer them to any other being. And yet it need take nothing from the grandeur of the vision, but rather show us the full depth of what John is doing when he describes it to us in this way, if we see once more in these attributes the manifestations of the Hierarchies. The fire of the "I am" is brought to man through the Elohim, the Spirits of Form. The untiring feet are to sustain the workings of the Spirits of Movement; in the voice is the serenity of the Spirits of Wisdom. These three ranks of spirits whom we have found in particular as the cosmic servants of the Logos show themselves in the picture of man grown beyond earthly limitations, become master of the sun-illumined processes of the elements.
"In his right hand he held seven stars. From his mouth issued a sharp two-edged sword and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. When I saw him I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand upon me saying: Fear not, I am the First and the Last and the living one; I died and behold I am alive for evermore and I have the keys of death and of hell!"
When at the Transfiguration the disciples heard a voice from the bright cloud which overshadowed them, they fell on their faces, and Jesus came and touched them and said, "Rise and have no fear". When the human being feels himself in the immediate presence of the Godhead, it is as if his earthly life had come to an end, which can be renewed only by the touch of Christ. John goes once more through this experience; for the qualities of the being whom he had seen at first as like a man, though a perfected and consecrated one, now become more and more the qualities of God. Into the splendour of the sun man's earthly eyes cannot bear to look for long; and thus it is with the splendour of God for the eyes of his soul. He comes to the source of all light and life and love and he can be nothing at all unless reborn out of this source. To draw near, he must be able to stand before the sword which once flamed at the gate of Paradise. He must be blessed by the hand which bears the seven stars in their courses.
Here we have come into that ultimate region of judgement and grace from which work the beings who are the immediate bearers of the will of the Father, the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. They too ascend and descend upon the Son of Man; for their work also, the being of Christ is as it were transparent. It is the ultimate overcoming of a one-sided materialism for men to discover the working of these beings in the depths of matter itself. Venturing into these depths without the reverence learned from the contemplation of Christ, they can only let loose the powers of hell. And in aspiring to intervene among the courses of the planets, they may only strengthen the hand of death. But Christ has the keys of hell and of death; for John's infinite comfort, he knows that no power can emerge into the future history of man, of which Christ has not the measure and the mastery.
Not for one moment does John lose himself in the splendour and the terror of this vision, but he can hear at once how the mystery which he has seen is to be interpreted in the practice of his own life on earth in his responsibility for the seven congregations with their diverse tasks and difficulties. If these congregations and their successors through the centuries can look up to the seven stars as their angels, and keep burning and shining the seven candlesticks, which they themselves are, the heavenly light will not vanish through all the ages to come.
Among the Evangelists, St. John is most concerned with heavenly understanding, as St. Luke is concerned with human love and sacrifice, St. Mark with courageous will, and St. Matthew with the harmony of all the powers bestowed on man. Thus for centuries St. John was represented in Christian art as inspired by the flying Eagle among the four Living Creatures about the Throne. This stands opposite to the Bull; it is the right, original description of what has long been called Scorpio. For the gifts of the Eagle to man have been devided and have fallend; man's understanding has been darkened, his power of reproduction debased. And John is concerned with their transformation and return to purity and greatness. The first deed of Jesus in the Gospel is at the Marriage in Cana; the last vision of the Apocalypse, the Marriage of the Lamb. The deed at Cana is accomplished without the understanding of those most concerned; at the end of the Apocalypse all is understood.
But though John fulfils so completely his task in the realm of the Eagle, he is deeply related as well to the constellation in which Leonardo seems to put him, Sagittarius. This is the source of the prophetic spirit; the fire that urges man on towards the future. At the beginning of the Apocalypse St. John beholds the Christ as Son of Man, having the harmony of all earthly and all heavenly powers; the fulfilment of the constellation Aquarius, the Man. And towards the end of the Apocalypse St. John gives another description of the Christ, in his Godhead, which is the fulfilment of Sagittarius.
In the vision, St. John receives a whole sequence of names for the Christ. And each name belongs to the part of the vision in which it comes. The last is written on the vesture and on the thigh of the Rider; the thigh is the part of man's physical body which is fashioned out of the powers of Sagittarius. It is a name which contains the essence of prophetic hope; the coming of that leadership which is exercised only in completest freedom, because all the subjects are themselves kings."And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in justice he discerns and gives battle. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many crowns; and he has a name written which no one knows but he himself.
He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name has been called the Word of God. And the armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, followed him on white horses.
From his mouth issues a sharp sword with which to smite the nations, and he will shepherd them with a staff of iron; and he treads the wine-press of the wine of the power of the wrath of God, the ruler of the universe.
On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords."
But this is not a remote vision of a future world, unconcerned with the present. All leadership now, down to the most everyday and apparently trivial kinds, needs the warmth of such a hope. We cannot really ask or tell anyone else, even a small child, to do something, without some belief that his own insight will come to meet us. And yet the other is a deep mystery. We do not even know his true name; unless at least for a moment through love we leave ourselves, and become the other man.
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