Another step in the qualifications for reign that of having "the morning star.'' All the metaphors of the Bible are used with infallible precisiqn, and we can learn the mind of God by studying them. When Jesus is compared to a blazing sun, it always refers to His visible, personal appearance, the open manifestation of His Majesty, either in heaven to angels and glorified saints, or else to His incarnate history while on the earth, or else to His "parousia;" that is. His personal appearing in the clouds of heaven. But when Jesus is compared to a "star," it refers to the interior and spiritual manifestation of Himself by the Holy Spirit in the mind of a perfect believer. It will greatly aid us in understanding many prophecies of Scripture, and also in our experiences, to keep these metaphors clear in our thought.

Jesus as a "star" enters into our hearts, and unveils Himself to us privately and personally. Jesus as a "sun" comes to us outwardly and visibly, manifesting Himself to the world-at-large, the collective mass of His children. Hence when Jesus, as the divine Bridegroom, conies to collect the great body of His saints to Himself, He will come as a blazing Sun, eclipsing all other creatures in coming kingdom, is heaven and earth, and filling the spaces of the sky with His dazzling brightness. But before that glorious event, He reveals Himself to the eye of pure faith, as the individual Bridegroom of the heart, as a sweet, brilliant morning star, coming to us in the night of our present life, and by the Holy Spirit, unveiling Himself in a private, personal, and transcendent manner, as the one altogether lovely.

There is a logical connection in the promise between the gift of power and the gift of the morning star. The gift of power over the nations has a preliminary and spiritual fulfillment in the baptism of the Holy Ghost on the perfect believer, and it is by this baptism of the Spirit that Christ is revealed in the heart, in the glory of His divine and personal character. In the 14th chapter of John, where Christ promises to give the abiding Comforter, He adds to the promise, "In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and the Father in me," that is, that under the illumination of the indwelling Comforter there will be revealed to our inner consciousness the perfect divinity of our Lord Jesus, and of His unity with the Father. Hence in this promise, which we are now considering in this second chapter of Revelation, after promising to the overcoming saint power over the nations, He adds the other promise of giving to the overcomer the morning star.

In tracing out some further thoughts on this subject let us notice:

1. That the morning star is revealed in the night. Hence it refers to Christ being manifest during what has been appropriately called "the night of faith." It is in accord with this Scripture that the personal visible presence of Christ in the world is always denominated "the day." while His absence from the earth is called night. "When Jesus was on the earth He said: "Yet a little while is the light with you. While 3^e have the light walk in it, lest darkness come upon you.'' Again He said, "I am the light of the world." The apostle says, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand," meaning by ' 'night" the absence of Jesus from the earth, and meaning by ''the day is at hand" the near approach of our Lord's personal coming. Again He says. "Exhort one another daily, and so much the more as ye see the day approaching," meaning by the approaching day the return of Christ to fill this world with His glory and kingdom. The psalmist tells us that "the upright shall have dominion over the wicked in the morning," meaning by the word "morning" the beginning of Christ's reign on this earth. The words can have no other significance, for it cannot apply to the third heavens, as there are no wicked people there. It can not refer to hell, for there are no upright persons there, and it can not refer to the present order of things, for wicked men now rule this world, and there can be no period for the fulfillment of this prophecy, except in that bright morning of the millennial age. when Jesus and His saints shall possess the kingdom. Persons who speak in a lofty strain of the light of Christian civilization as being the noonday of Bible truth, while the world everywhere is mantled in spiritual darkness, and the muddy waters of worldiness are inundating the visible churches, and while sinners are multiplying ten times faster than the saints are, can have no real conception of what God means by the word ''day." They speak after the manner of men, and mistake the twilight of civilization for the glorious day of spiritual light.

While a small number of holy saints are being internally illuminated by the morning star revealed in their hearts, the world at large, even the most cultured of those who have not the baptism of the Spirit, are walking at best in the pale moonlight reflected from true believers, but still they are plodding along in the night, dreaming it is meridian day. When God uses the word day, He measures it by His own thought of what day is, and not by the groping conceptions of carnal minds. Hence the Word of God speaks over and over again of "the day of Christ," and "the day of God," and of "that day," as if all the light that men now have was midnight in comparison.

2. The morning star will bear some comparison with the other stars in the sky, though it outshines them all. But when the sun rises, there is no comparison between it and the other luminaries in the heavens, for all other celestial and terrestrial lights are pale behind its splendor. In like manner, during the night of faith, Jesus is revealed to the pure in heart, in His spotless humanity, as the brightest and most attractive of all beings in the universe. Even if we consider His blessed humanity apart from the divinity of the Eternal Word, still there is a beauty and lustre in that human nature surpassing ail the starry hosts of angels and saints, for the Holy Spirit not only reveals His absolute divinity, but also the incomparable beauty and loveliness of His humanity. Every saint of God is a real form of heavenly beauty, which far surpasses the most beautiful objects in material creation, and when we turn our thoughts upon that bright land of angelic and glorified spirits, could we see them in all their multiplied variety and their individual graces and charms, it would doubtless dazzle our understanding; but were we able to survey all those myriads of legions and comprehend their graces and beauties in one collective mass of glory, the whole scene of exquisite loveliness, multiplied millions of times, would not equal the ineffable beauty and glory of the crucified and glorified humanity of Jesus. It has pleased the Father that in that humanity all the fullness of God should abide.

This inward revelation of Jesus as the morning star is referred to by St. Peter in his second epistle, where he refers particularly to the second coming of Christ as typified by the transfiguration, and says that when he was with Christ in the Holy Mount he there ''saw the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ," and then goes on to say that "we are to take heed to that word of prophecy, which is like a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day shall dawn and the Day Star arises in our hearts." The "day dawn'' is the work of regeneration, and the ''Day Star arising in our hearts" is the work of the sanctifying Spirit cleansing away our natural darkness and revealing Jesus as a perfect Savior within us.

St. Paul, in the first chapter of Galatians, mentions three epochs in his life. First, his natural birth; second, his conversion; and third, the sanctifying baptism of the Spirit revealing Christ in his heart. He says: "It pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me." In this sentence the verbs "separate," and "call," and "reveal" are all in the aorist tense, which always indicates in the Greek language instantaneous events. Thus the revelation of Christ in the heart of St. Paul is what Peter means by the day star arising in our hearts, and the same thing that Jesus means by saying, "I will give him the morning star." Hence Christ, as the Day Star, is a peaceful, sweetly pining vision of faith, for the fullness of His glory. It is a love for Himself personally, a heart embracement of His adorable person, a being mentally charmed with the exquisite grace of His character, a gentle sinking down of our will along all lines into His will, a divine intuition of His lamblike and dovelike nature, a quick and loving surrender day by day of all our judgments, and prejudices, and labors, and sufferings, and circumstances to the inward sway of His gentle nature, and a glad placing of our souls and bodies, with every affection, hope, and want, under the gentle pressure of His loving foot, and a secret grief at seeing Him so little appreciated, and so unloved by His own creatures. It is a sweet longing to see Him reigning as absolute monarch over everybody and everything. It is an earnest love for His appearing, and a desire to nestle close up to Him when He comes in glory. It is an inexpressible Holy Ghost passion for the man Christ Jesus, the incarnate one of God.

When Jesus is spoken of as coming in the clouds of heaven, He is then compared to a blazing Sun. Malachi prophecies of that event by saying: "Unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise, with healing in his wings, and ye shall tread down the wicked as ashes under your feet." And John declares that "Jesus will come in the clouds of heaven, and every eye shall see Him, and all kindreds shall wail because of Him." Now we must remember that no one will be prepared to meet Jesus as a blazing Sun coming in the clouds of heaven unless he has previously been purified by His precious blood and had Christ revealed within him as the Morning Star. Thus as the morning star, on the brow of the approaching day, indicates the rising of the sun, so the revelation of Jesus, as a perfect personal Savior within the heart, gives us prophetic intimations of His coming as a glorious king, and prepares us for that transcendent event. Through all the Christian generations, when believers have reached the degree of grace which admits them into the number of the bridehood of the Lamb, they have had this gift of the Morning Star, this fascination for the face of Jesus, which is the Holy Ghost photograph of the divine Bridegroom, which He sends on ahead of His appearing, and hangs it up in the hearts of those who are to sit with Him at the marriage supper, and share His royal prerogatives in His coming empire.

In reading the biography of holy persons we are struck with the fact that when they have reached a certain degree in grace they have had this inward spiritual vision of Jesus and wonderful premonitions of His second coming. As a sample of what thousands of saints have felt in days past, I will quote a beautiful instance from the writings of the saintly Faber: "Before the dawn of day a huge rolling mass of unwieldly cloud came up from the western horizon. With incredible swiftness, and the loud roaring of sudden wind, it covered like a pall the brilliant moonlit heavens and deluged the earth with slanting columns of whirling rain. It passed on. A star came out, and then another, and at last the moon, and then the storm drove onward to the east, towards the sea; and all at once a lunar rainbow spanned the black arch of heaven, and it seemed as if Jesus should have come beneath that bow and through that purple cloud that was barring the gates of the sunrise. And what is all this but a figure of our lives, of which we might make so much?"

There is a class of religionists who make a specialty of the second advent, but whose teachings are largely materialistic, denying the immortality of the soul and the divine personality and sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit and other Scriptural truths. If Christ should appear, such persons would be utterly unprepared to meet Him. Unless we have within us the Morning Star we are in do condition to meet the blazing Sun. The Scriptures nowhere teach that the moment of Christ's appearing will be a moment for the purifying of our nature, or for the filling of us with the Spirit, but it will be a moment for catching away those who are already made pure in heart and filled with the oil, and who have in them Christ abiding as the Morning Star.

This is definitely referred to in the language of the elect woman, in the Song of Solomon, where she says, "My beloved is mine and I am His. He feedeth among the lilies until the day break and the shadows flee away. Turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the Mountains of Bether," or, as it should be rendered, "Upon the Mountains of Separation.'' In this passage there is indicated a blessed, deep union between Christ and His elect, and the invisible Jesus is represented as coming down in the Spirit, in the humble valleys of earth, and feeding Himself upon the love of His own saints, who are compared to lilies, and this communion will go on until the daybreak of His second coming and the shadows of this present age have flown away before that rising Sun. And the loving believer is pleading for the Bridegroom to hasten His coming over the mountains that separate between this wicked age and the golden age of His millennial reign.

There are doubtless many prophetic events and acts in the life of our Savior when on this earth, which we have never jet discovered or appreciated. The smallest things in the incarnation and life of Jesus have a trancendent and far-reaching meaning which surpasses all our thought. Among them we may notice that for several months the Eternal Son of God enshrouded Himself with His earthly mother before coming forth in visible manifestation to reveal the Father to the human race, and to make an atonement for the sins of men. During those mysterious months of the incarnate Word of God no one can tell the thoughts and feelings of the humble Mary, how her thoughts turned almost every moment to her incarnate Lord, and how she lovingly and wistfully pined for the hour to come when she might look upon that most lovely face in all the creation of God, that face which should show" forth more of the glory of the three persons of the Godhead than all the faces of angels or men combined, and how she yearned to kiss those lips that should speak the doom of all mankind. Even as an unborn Infant, He had power to sanctify John the Baptist, and to fill him with the Holy Ghost before his birth, and to fill his mother, Elizabeth, with the Holy Spirit. (Luke, 1st chapter, 39,45). Is not all this a divine parable of what is now taking place? Christ is to be now formed within our hearts, the hope of glory, to live within us in His personal, forgiving, cleansing, and comforting presence, just as really as His humanity lived in His earthly mother, and, like Mary, the more we comprehend this blessed indwelling of Christ in our hearts, the more we are filled with premonitory leapings of soul in anticipation of the hour, when we, too, shall see that face that she longed to see. As the hour of His coming draws near, His true, anointed ones in all the earth will feel more intensely growing within them this prophetic feeling of seeing Him in glory.