A Devotion from Philip Brooks

And I saw what looked like a sea of glass mixed with fire and, standing beside the sea, those who had been victorious over the beast.  —Revelation 15:2

With all the mystery of the book of Revelation, one thing we are sure of: in it we have the summing up of the moral processes of all time.

I speak only of moral contest, of this struggle with suffering and wickedness, of trial, of the state that earnest people, conscious of their own inner lives, know full well. What will be the end of it all?

I do not know in full what is intended by this term “the beast.” I think it means in its largest sense the power of evil in all its earthly manifestations, all that is low and base and tries to drag down what is high and noble, all sin and temptation, so that “those who had been victorious over the beast” are those who have come out of sin holy and out of trial pure and, out of much tribulation, have entered the kingdom of heaven.

These will walk on “a sea of glass mixed with fire.” The sea of glass—calm, clear, placid—evidently that is the symbol of repose, of rest, of peace. And fire, testing all things, consuming what is evil, purifying what is good, never resting a moment, never sparing pain; fire, all through the Bible, is the symbol of active trial of every sort, of struggle. The “sea of glass mixed with fire” is repose mingled with struggle. It is peace and rest and achievement, with the power of trial and suffering yet alive and working within it.

This is our doctrine: the permanent value of trial—that when you conquer your adversaries and your difficulties, it is not as if you never had encountered them. Your victory is colored with the hard struggle that won it. Your sea of glass is always mixed with fire, just as this peaceful crust of earth on which we live, with its wheat fields, vineyards, orchards, and flower beds is full still of the power of the convulsion that wrought it into its present shape, of the floods and volcanoes and glaciers that have rent it or drowned it or tortured it. Just so, the life that has been overturned and overturned by the strong hand of God, filled with the deep, revolutionary forces of suffering, and purified by the strong fires of temptation keeps its long discipline forever. There roots in that discipline the deepest growths of the most sunny and luxuriant spiritual life that it is ever able to attain.