The Communion of Saints.
The communion of saints is (1) the restoration of fellowship between God and man; (2) the restoration of the fellowship of men with each other.
I. Let us learn from it that we can never be lonely or forsaken in this life. Our Lord has promised, "Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world." And in Him all His saints are with us too. No trial can isolate us; no sorrow can cut us off from the communion of saints. There is but one thing in which the sympathy of Christ has no share, and that is the guilt of wilful sin. The faith is the common consciousness and life of the elect, and they who stand for it, although they stand alone against all the world, are never alone, for all the companies of heaven and all the generations of the Church are at their side. Kneel down, and you are with them; lift your eyes, and the heavenly world, high above all perturbation, hangs serenely overhead. Only a thin veil, it may be, floats between.
II. Let us learn further, by the reality of this heavenly fellowship, to live less in this divided world. If we love the world, the love of the Father is not in us, and if no love of the Father, then no communion with His kingdom. Between these two we must make our choice. We are between two cities, the one visible, the other invisible; the one an object of sense, the other of faith; the one garish, splendid, and tumultuous, the other calm, glorious, and serene: on the one side, the world and this earthly life, with its fair show, luring gifts, bright promises, gilded ambition; on the other, the city of God, the fellowship of saints, the sympathy of Christ, the love of the Father, the beatific vision.
III. Let us learn from the communion of saints to live in hope. They who are now at rest were once like ourselves. Their life was once homely and commonplace. While on earth they were not arrayed in white raiment, but in apparel like that of other men, unmarked and plain, worn and stained by time and trial. Only one thing there is in which we are unlike them: they were common in all things except the uncommon measure of their inward sanctity. In all beside we are as they, only it is now our turn to strive for the crown of life.
H. E. Manning, Sermons,vol. iv., p. 303.
References: Revelation 14:1-3. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. iii., No. 110; Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 17. Revelation 14:2; Revelation 14:3. T. Burton, Christian Life and Truth,p. 425.Revelation 14:3. G. Calthrop, Words Spoken to My Friends,p. 207; Talmage, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 92.Revelation 14:4. R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons,4th series, p. 89.