(An adaptation of a work by George MacDonald)
To he that overcomes, I will give a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knows except he who receives it. Revelation 2:17
In the giving of the white stone with the new name in it, God communicates to the recipient His intimate thought about him. It is a Divine judgment, a solemn “holy doom” of a righteous man. It is God’s call of “Come, blessed one” spoken to the individual.
In order to understand this, we must first understand the idea of a name, that is, what is the perfect notion of a name. Since the mystical energy of a saintly mind is telling the story of God giving the gift of a name, we must understand that the essence of the thing is intended, not a sub definition or imitation.
In this world a name of the ordinary kind describes nothing of the true essence of the person to whom it is attached. It is only a label by which one person and a scrap of their history may be differentiated from another person and their life history. The true name is one that expresses the character, the nature, the being, and the meaning of the person who bears it. It is each person’s own symbol, his soul’s picture. In a word, the true name is the sign which belongs to each individual and to no one else.
Who can give a man this, his own true name? It can be none other than God alone. No one but God fully sees what each man is. No one but God could fully express in a “name-word” the sum and harmony of what He sees. To whom is this name given? To “he that overcomes”. When is it given? When he has overcome. Does God not know what a man is going to become? Yes, He knows as surely as he sees the oak that he put in the heart of the acorn. Why then does He wait until the man has become his true self by overcoming before he settles on what the man’s name shall be? He does not wait; He knows the name from the start. However, just as repentance comes to a man through God’s pardon, - yet the man becomes aware of the pardon only after he repents. So it is only when a man has become his name that God gives him the stone with the name upon it. It is only then that he can understand what the name signifies. It is the blossom, the perfection, and the completion of the man that determines the name; and God foresees that from the start, because He made it so. However, the tree of the soul, before it blossoms, cannot understand what type of blossom it will bear, just as the man, if shown his true name too soon, could not know what the word meant because the word represents an unarrived at completeness of self. The True Name cannot be given until the man is the name.
God’s name for a man must then be the expression in a mystical word of his own idea of the man. It is the very idea God had in his thoughts when he began to make the child, and that He kept in His thoughts through the long process of creation that went into the realization of the idea. To tell the man his name is to seal the success- to say, “In thee also, I am well pleased.”
We must however look deeper still for the fullness of the meaning of all this. We shall not look long before we find that the True Name is a mystic symbol which has for it’s central significance the reality of the personal and individual relationship of every man with his God. To him who offers to the God of the living, his own self as a sacrifice, to him that overcomes, to him who brought his life back to it’s source, to him who knows that he is one of God’s children, to him that is a person of the Father’s making, to him the Lord gives the white stone. To him who climbs on the stair of all his God-born efforts and God-given victories, up to the height of his being- which is to look face to face upon the image of his ideal self held in the heart of the Father, realized in him through the Father’s love – to him God gives the New Name (written on the white stone).
We leave this line of thought for now, because the following section embraces and intensifies the idea of the individuality of our relationship with God in a fuller development of truth. The name is one “which no man knows except he who receives it.” Not only does each man have an individual relationship with God, but also each man has a very particular relationship to God. He is to God a particular being, made after his own fashion and that of no one else; for when he is perfected he shall receive the new name which no one else can understand. Therefore, he can worship God as no other person can worship Him, can understand God as no other man can understand Him. This or that person may understand God more, may understand God better, but no other person can understand God as he understands Him.
I pray, God give me the grace to be humble before you, my brother and sister, that I not drag a false image of you before the judgment seat of an unjust judge, but look up to you for what revelation of God you and no one else can give.
As the fir tree lifts itself up with a far different need than the palm tree, so each person stands before God and lifts up a different humanity to the common Father. For each person God has a different response. With every man He has a secret- the secret of the new name. In every person there is a loneliness, an inner chamber of particular life into which only God can enter. It is not the innermost chamber, but a chamber into which no brother or sister can come.
From this it follows that there is a chamber in God Himself, into which none can enter but the one, the individual, the particular person- out of which chamber that person is able to bring revelation and strength for his brethren. This is the purpose for which he was made – to reveal the secret things of the Father. By his creation then, each man is isolated with God. Each person, in respect of his particular identity, can say “my God” and can come to Him alone and speak with Him face to face, just like a man speaks with his friend. God does not lump men together. When He speaks of gathered men, it is as a spiritual body. For in a body every smallest portion is individual and therefore capable of forming a part of the body.
Each of us is a distinct flower or tree in the spiritual garden of God… precious, each for his own sake, in the eyes of He who is even now making us. Each of us is watered and shone upon and filled with life for the sake of his flower, His completed creation, which will blossom out of him at last, to the glory and pleasure of the great gardener. For each has within him a secret of the divinity; each is growing toward the revelation of that secret and so to the full reception, according to his measure, of the divine. Every moment that a person is dedicated to their true self, some new ray of light reflects off of the white stone and illuminates their (inward eye) mind, conscience and soul, some fresh channel is opened and made ready for the flowering of a soul, which is the conscious offering of the whole self, in all beauty, to the maker. In God’s sight each man has great worth. Human life and action, thought and intent are sacred. What a glorious end awaits us! To have an awareness of our True-self being flashed into us from the thought of God! Surely, to know what He thinks about us will dissolve any of our own opinions about ourselves. Thus, we should start holding our opinions loosely now, and be ready to let them go.
Some might say, “But is there not the worst of all dangers involved in such teaching – the danger of spiritual pride?” Are we to refuse the Holy Spirit for the fear of pride? Pride springs from supposed success when one has aimed high: with attainment itself comes humility. However, here there is no room for ambition. Ambition in the desire to be above ones neighbor: and here there is no possibility of compassion with one’s neighbor: no one knows what the white stone contains except the one who receives it. There is room for endless aspiration towards an unseen ideal: none for ambition. Ambition wants to be higher than others; aspiration just wants to be high. Relative worth is not only unknown, but to the children of the kingdom it is unknowable. Each mistakes others as being better than themselves. How can a summer rose compare itself to the snowdrop, who rises with hanging head from the snow? Both are God’s thoughts; both are dear to Him; both are needful to the completeness of His earth and his revelation of Himself. “God has cared to make me for himself” says the victor with the white stone, “And has called me. What does it matter whether I am called to be like the grass of the field, or an eagle of the air? A stone to build into His temple, or a great cloud to wield His thunder? I am His. His idea, His making; perfect in my kind, perfect in His sight; full of Him, revealing Him, alone with Him. Let Him call me what He will. The name shall be as precious as my life. I seek no more.”
All anxiety about what others think of us will be gone. It is enough that God thinks about us. To be something to God – is that not praise enough? To be a thing that God cares for and would like to have totally to himself because it is worth caring for – is that life not enough?
However, man will not be isolated from his fellow either. Each will feel the sacredness and awe of his neighbor’s dark and silent speech with his God. Each will regard the other as a prophet, and look to him for what the Lord has spoken. Each, as a high priest returning from his Holy of Holies, will bring from his communion some glad tidings, some gospel of truth, which, when spoken his neighbors shall receive and understand. Each will behold in the other a marvel of revelation, a present son or daughter of the most high, who has come forth to reveal him afresh. In God we each will come closer to each other.
* Lord help us. Make our being grow into your likeness. Despite times of strife and times of growth, let us at last see your face and receive the white stone from your hand. So we may grow, give us each day our daily bread. Fill us with the words that proceed out of your mouth. Help us to lay up treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust shall corrupt. Amen
