To each of the seven churches Jesus makes a special promise if they will overcome. These special promises are doubtless given with an infinite fitness of wisdom, in connection with the several churches, and also in connection with the true, victorious believers, in the several stages of Christianity, set forth by the seven churches. But in all correct interpretations of Scripture we must remember that it always has more than one fulfillment. The same Scripture has one fulfillment in the individual, and another in the collective body of believers. It has one fulfillment in the inner, spiritual life, and another in the outward, visible, and providential history. It has one fulfillment in the present Age, and another in the coming Age of glorification. Hence to confine any one scripture to a single application will lead to much error and misunderstanding of many portions of God's word. This is what the apostle means, when he says "no scripture is of any private interpretation," that is, it must not be confined to one single application, as only to one person, or one place. Thus while these several promises, given to the seven churches, had a fitness to those churches as they then existed in Asia, the same promises have had a special fitness to the real overcoming believers in the various seven stages of the history of the church, and furthermore they have a beautiful and close fitting application to the various steps of the individual believer, as he progresses from the new birth through all the degrees of Christian life, till he reaches his place in the Millennial Kingdom with Jesus. We shall find a regular consecutive order in these promises, which resemble the steps up to a throne. The first of these promises involves the impartation of the divine life to the believer. To him that will hear what the Spirit saith, and overcome his sins, Jesus says, 4 'I will give him to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God." Various truths which grow out of this promise may be arranged as follows:

1. God cannot bless nothing. He must have some living being upon whom to confer His blessings. Hence, throughout all Scripture, the impartation of life is the fundamental work of God, both in creation and redemption. Before the Creator could bless Adam, or confer upon him the rights of dominion, He must "breathe into his nostrils the breath of life, and -make him a living soul." In the twelvefold blessing that Moses promised upon the tribes of Israel, the first one was the blessing of life. He said, "Let Reuben live," and from that fundamental blessing of life, all the other twelve blessings are arranged, in a consecutive order of ascending blessings, arising to a climax. The same thing is true of these seven overcomeths, which begins by eating the tree of life, and proceeds in a beautiful ascending climax of promise and blessing, until the victorious believer is glorified, and sits with his Lord in the Millennial Throne.

2. The life that Jesus imparts to the soul in regeneration is emphatically a divine life, and yet it is in some mysterious sense a different species of life from that which the angels and other holy and intelligent beings of other worlds may have. There is nothing more marvelous and bewildering in all the universe than life, and then the almost infinite variety of life. There are seven different types, or grades of life, cognizable to our thought. The lowest is mineral life, for the very rocks grow, and have a life which we cannot search out. Then comes infusorial life, which doubtless embraces numberless species, and covers that territory that lies between minerals and vegetables. Then comes vegetable life, which fills an enormous region' in nature, extending from microscopical plants, and mosses, up to the gigantic trees of California, hundreds of feet high, and thousands of years old. The different species of vegetable life have perhaps never yet been numbered. Next comes the great world of animal life, extending from insects so small that the natural vision can not see them, to the great elephant, and whale varieties. Next comes the mental, or what the Greeks would call, the soulish life. This takes in the natural feelings, passions, and affections of the human soul, apart from divine grace. And away above these is the life of grace, the divine life, through Jesus imparted to the immortal Spirit in the new birth, by which we become sons of God, being born from above, born of the Holy Spirit. And then, towering above this in altitude far out of sight, is the life of glorification, which is so powerful that it swallows up death in victory. Now we see that between each of these Kingdoms of life, there are great and impassable gulfs, across which no development, or evolution, or mingling of species, can possibly construct a bridge. The fiat of God holds true with regard to each Kingdom of life, namely, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit, This divine decree is an impassable wall between each Kingdom of life, which cannot be climbed over. That which is born of vegetable is vegetable, that which is born of animal is animal, that which is born of the Holy Spirit is spiritual, and that which is born into a glorified realm is glorified. Hence it is eternally impossible for the natural life of the soul, to develop into a spiritual life, without the intervention of a supernatural and Heavenly birth. Now as there are hundreds of different species of life in the same life kingdom, such as the varying species of vegetable and of animal life, so it is very evident there are many species of spiritual life, and when a sinner is pardoned and regenerated through the virtue of the death of Jesus, and by the Holy Ghost, it is certain he receives into his spirit a divine life, and yet it is not the exact form or variety of spiritual life that an unfallen angel possesses. It may be, and likely is, a higher species of divine life, than that of the angels, because it is transmitted through the incarnation and sacrifice of the second person in the Godhead. It is not only a divine life, but a divine life which comes through the incarnation of a divine person. Every type of life is a fathomless mystery, and can never be searched out by science. In making experiments upon vital protoplasm, through the finest microscopes, it is impossible to detect in the earliest stages of any living thing, the difference between one creature and another. The vital substance, or protoplasm, of a bird, or worm, or vegetable, or four-footed animal, or a human being, in the earliest inception of its existence, all look alike. And yet there is in each of these creatures, an invisible potency, which no human eye can discover, but which differentiates each life from the other, and as the life grows, it shows to what kingdom it belongs. When the Holy Ghost regenerates a penitent believer, he deposits divine truth and love and life into the immortal spirit of the man, and as that life grows, and takes on volume, and force, if the hindrances of that life are purged away, and it is properly nourished, it will infallibly show itself to be like the man Christ Jesus, with as much certainty as the life germ of an eagle, or a lamb, will come to the estate of the eagle or the lamb.

3. The term Tree of Life is very significant. Any tree is a divine poem, a marvelous creation of wisdom, which no mind of man has yet fathomed. A fruit tree is an exquisite and intricate type of the Lord Jesus. There lie hid away in the bosom of the earth, inexhaustable resources of chemical juices, sufficient to feed millions of population. But how can we get that ocean of unseen juices out of the earth, converted into fruit for the sustenance of these hungry millions? A fruit tree is God's invention to mediate between earth's juices and the mouths of the hungry multitudes. The tree spreads its roots out, deep and broad, in the soil, and gathers up, with mysterious energy, the heat and light of the sun, the sugar, and starch, and other nourishing substances, and gases, from the earth, the rain, and the air, and through its trunk and by its sap, transmutes all these into blossom, and delicious fruit, and the multitudes are fed. The earth in this case represents the infinite and eternal substance of the three persons in the Godhead, and the incarnation of the eternal Son, in a human Body, and a human Soul, coming forth in our world, is like that tree. He draws up into His precious body the attributes and qualities of the infinite divinity, and transmutes them into a form of life, which by faith we can eat of, and be nourished thereby in our spirits, just as really as our bodies feed on the fruit, which the tree has brought to us out of the unseen ^storehouses of the earth. The humanity of Jesus is the trunk of the tree, through which we receive divine love, and perhaps we shall see in eternity, as we cannot now, that we get a higher measure and sweeter form of divine love, through the humanity of the Son of God, than could possibly have been transmitted to us in any other manner.

4. This promise will doubtless have its ultimate fulfillment in the glorified state. There may be literal trees of life in the Paradise of God, upon whose fruit glorified creatures live. There is nothing in the word of God, or the analogies of Christian reason, to contradict such a conclusion. And we will have occasion to revert to this again farther on in this book. But if such is the case, they will still be but blessed visible emblems of that divine nourishment, that eternal banquet, which will be furnished to our immortal spirits, through the glorified humanity of Jesus. What a joy it is for any created thing to live, and every living thing has a mysterious pleasure in its life. But the joy of living the Christ life, must surpass all others. To love with the same love that Jesus had, to think over His thoughts, to feel with His sympathies, to share the interior instincts of His heart, to pray out of the breath of His prayers, to grow with His growth, and to know in the light of His knowledge, this is the glorious calling that God offers to penitent sinners, this is to eat of the tree of life.