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In the same manner, in the Church of Rome, when we speak severely of the system we never mean to imply that there are no Christians there-God forbid! Just as that solitary flower in the desert would there show a God amidst the burning sands, so a Fénelon, a Massillon, a Martin Boos, and others, show that God's grace is to be found even in and in spite of the Church of Rome. I fear we forget very often how long grace may consist with and struggle against great error; and how much piety may survive notwithstanding repressing and restricting circumstances around. I would not undervalue truth or praise error; I would not undervalue our own privileges, or praise the position of the Church of Rome; but it may be-whilst I believe and can demonstrate that that system is the apostacy; whilst I believe and can prove that the head of that system is the Antichrist-that poor Pio Nono, old, weak, shivering, and descending rapidly to the grave, may have some ideas of true Christianity; he may in his heart have a little love, in his conscience some light, in his intellect scintillations of the truth; and the victim of grave and painful circumstances, he may-I dare not say more-in spite of all and in the midst of all find access to the kingdom of God.

Now if I pass down to still later ages we shall find other citizens of the same city no less illustrious. There is the great Nonconformist Baxter. His picture of the Saints' Everlasting Rest has been the study of the peasant and the admiration of the scholar. With a pen dipped in the very love of heaven, and radiant with apocalyptic splendour, he has portrayed the beauty and blessedness of that rest that remaineth for the people of God. And after him, who can omit to mention the name of Bunyan, the prisoner of Bedford gaol, the writer of a work that ranks with Homer in genius, with Milton's Paradise Lost in epic grandeur; the study of England's firesides; written in the homeliest and the tersest words, pregnant with the fire of heaven, and burning with celestial and undying light-his Pilgrim's Progress? How beautifully does he describe the close

of time when he says: "By this time the pilgrims were got over the enchanted ground, and entering into the country of Beulah; whose air was very sweet and pleasant, the way lying directly through it, they solaced themselves there for a season. Yea, here they heard continually the singing of birds, and saw every day the flowers appear in the earth, and heard the voice of the turtle in the land. In this country the sun shineth night and day; wherefore this was beyond the valley of the shadow of death, and also out of the reach of Giant Despair, neither could they from this place so much as see Doubting Castle." How suggestive is that, how beautiful! neither could they from this happy place so much as see what is now the coldest shadow that lies upon our spirits, the shadow of Doubting Castle. "Here they were within sight of the city they were going to, also here met them some of the inhabitants thereof; for in this land the shining ones commonly walked, because it was upon the borders of heaven. Now as they walked in this land they had more rejoicing than in parts more remote from the kingdom to which they were bound; and drawing near to the city they had yet a more perfect view thereof. It was builded of pearls and precious stones, also the street thereof was paved with gold; so that by reason of the natural glory of the city, and the reflection of the sunbeams upon it, Christian with desire fell sick; Hopeful also had a fit or two of the same disease." Such then was Bunyan, the writer of that epic which shall never be forgotten where the English language is understood.

Another citizen was the celebrated Archbishop Leighton, who fled to one party to avoid the bitterness of the other, and learned that in no party or section of the visible church could that peace be realized which was to be tasted only in the city that cometh down from heaven. After him let me mention Andrew Fuller, the illustrious Baptist, one of the most able and vigorous, though now very much forgotten writers of a former epoch; and Robert Hall, the most exquisite writer of the English tongue that ever lived; for the

style of Addison, and of Johnson, and even the vigorous style of modern days, is surpassed by the classic beauty, the unrivalled rhythm, the rich thought, the poetic splendour of Robert Hall; charged and enriched, as all he writes is, with the evangelical and vital truths of the Gospel of Christ. Then after him was the illustrious Elliot, the apostle of the Indians, and Oberlin and Felix Neff, the evangelists of the Alps; Wesley, the founder of a body that has done enormous good amidst the lowest strata of city population; and Whitfield, whose eloquence shook the age in which he lived. I might come down to more recent names, such as those of Chalmers and others, who have passed away and entered into rest, and have joined the general company of the first born, the innumerable company of saints, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God, and have gone to Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect. And to these we would add infants who have passed into heaven, forgiven the martyrdom of the passage; flowers laid upon their breasts as they are committed to the dust, and spared the thorns that would otherwise have penetrated their hearts had they been left amid the living here; infants taken from our cold laps, and dropped into the lap of God, and made happy and blessed for ever; the most favoured, the least forgotten of human kind. And sainted men, whose names are sounded by no trumpet, but whose deeds have been approved of God; and happy ones who have entered into rest, whose works do follow them, citizens of no mean city. What a glorious group will be there! what a bright assemblage will that be! Oh may God grant that we too may be numbered with those saints in glory everlasting!

But however distinguished these citizens may be, they have certain points in common. First, they have washed their robes in the same precious blood; all are clothed with the same perfect righteousness; all have entered into heaven, and are the heirs of the kingdom of God, not because of anything in them, nor

anything done by them, nor anything deserved by them; but wholly and solely because of Christ's righteousness imputed to them, and received by faith and by faith alone. All of them have been renewed, regenerated, and sanctified by the same Holy and Blessed Spirit; all of them were sinners. What an evidence does the apostle give of this when he says that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven; neither idolaters, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God! But what does he add? "Such were some of you." You see who are admitted into heaven; they were once extortioners, covetous, drunkards, revilers, thieves: "such were some of you.” Then why is it otherwise with them now? "But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified.” And these citizens, in the next place, were not only sinners, but they were great sufferers; they came out of great tribulation, therefore they were in it.

If Paul has reached an entrance to that city; if David is an heir of that kingdom; if these two shall be raised at the sound of the last trump, and shall shine in eternal beauty and unfading splendour as the citizens of that new Jerusalem, that city that hath foundations, why should you be excluded? You have not sinned

like David, you have not been guilty of murder like Paul, you have not fallen into open sin like the Magdalene; then I ask, why should you be excluded? Your sin does not exclude you; it is your unwillingness to be saved, and that alone, that excludes you. I repeat what I have often said, that this very hour the gates of heaven are open; all God asks you is to submit to let him save you in his way, and to lay aside your own notions of being saved in your own way; and if you will submit to let him save you, and cast yourselves upon his care, and lay your heart's last throb, and your soul's best hope, and your spirit's only trust upon God the Father's love in Christ, the Son's sacrifice, then the Bible is a lie if you are not saved with an everlasting salvation.

LECTURE XVII.

THE SHECHINAH.

EACH element in the condition of this city deepens in beauty and glory. That can be no common city to adorn which heaven and earth contribute their beauty and their resources.

"And I heard a great voice out of heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God." -REVELATION xxi. 3.

THE first question we should try to answer here is, what is the tabernacle of God? What construction are we to put upon the prophecy that the tabernacle of God shall be with men? I think the best way to ascertain its meaning is to inquire what the tabernacle was, and in what sense that word was used.

It was created whilst Israel was in the desert; a moveable and transitory tent made of goats' skins and rams' skins, and curtains of goats' hair, with purple ornaments and veils, 100 cubits, or 150 feet long, and 50 cubits, or 75 feet in breadth. This tabernacle was a purely transitory and migratory, not a permanent creation upon earth; it was set up at Gilgal, at Shiloh; it was consecrated by atoning blood, and sanctified by the glory that dwelt between the cherubim descending and settling upon it; around it were pitched the tents of the Levites, who ministered continually within it; and inside of it there was what the apostle enumerates in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where he is speaking of the good things, that is the typical things, that had passed away. He tells us of the sanctuary that God pitched, in Hebrews ix. 2:

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