Revelation 21:1

We could scarcely rejoice at the thought of losing the glorious old ocean: the new heavens and the new earth are no fairer to our imagination if, indeed, literally there is to be no great and wide sea, with its gleaming waves and shelly shores. Is not the text to be read as a metaphor, tinged with the prejudice with which the Eastern mind universally regarded the sea in the olden times?

It is mournful to imagine a real physical world without a sea; it would be an iron ring without the sapphire that made it precious. There must be a spiritual meaning here. In the new dispensation, there will be no division—the sea separates nations and sunders peoples from each other.

To John in Patmos, the deep waters were like prison walls, shutting him out from his brethren and his work: there shall be no such barriers in the world to come. Leagues of rolling billows lie between us and many a kinsman whom tonight we prayerfully remember, but in the bright world to which we go, there shall be unbroken fellowship for all the redeemed family.

In this sense, there shall be no more sea. The sea is the emblem of change; with its ebbs and flows, its glassy smoothness and its mountainous billows, its gentle murmurs and its tumultuous roarings, it is never the same for long. Slave of the fickle winds and the changeful moon, its instability is proverbial.

In this mortal state, we have too much of this; earth is constant only in her inconstancy, but in the heavenly state, all mournful change shall be unknown, and with it all fear of storm to wreck our hopes and drown our joys. The sea of glass glows with a glory unbroken by a wave. No tempest howls along the peaceful shores of paradise.

Soon shall we reach that happy land where partings, and changes, and storms shall be ended! Jesus will waft us there. Are we in him or not? This is the grand question.