with reference to rest after their deep affliction that the promise is made "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." 1 Hence it is said, "He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my son," in which an especial allusion is made to martyrdom. Hence, the servants of God who inhabit it are described as "They which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." 2

Indeed, sweet and holy words, breathing rest and peace, stand forth everywhere in this Book in blissful contrast to the sharp and piercing sorrows of the Church on earth. "I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the Word of God, which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years." 3 "Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more1; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."

7. Neither should it be passed over that this heavenly city is prepared for the martyrs of the churches to which St. John wrote. There is, indeed, an allusion more or less plain to the glories of the New Jerusalem, in the promises made to the martyrs of each of the Seven Churches 5; but to the

1 Πένθος, κραυγή, πόνος, words expressive of the agonies of martyrdom. Rev. xxi. 4. 4 Compare 1 Cor. iv. 11.

2 Rev. vii. 14.

3 Rev. xx. 4.

5 Ephesus. "To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”

Rev. ii. 7.

"In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits.”

Rev. xxii. 6.

Church of Philadelphia, that church in which alone of all the seven no blame was found, there is a distinct and unequivocal declaration that this new and heavenly city was to be the consummation of their hopes and their exceeding great reward: -"Behold, I come quickly, hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown; him that overcometh wi! I make a pillar in the temple of my God; and he shall go no more out, and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven1 from my God; and I will write upon him my new name."

Smyrna. "He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death."Rev. ii. 11.

"Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection, on such the second death hath no power." - Rev. xx. 6.

Pergamos.

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"To him that overcometh will I give a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it." -Rev. ii. 17.

"They shall see his face, and his name shall be in their foreheads." Rev. xxii. 4.

Thyatira." He that overcometh, nations."-Rev. ii. 26.

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to him will I give power over the

"He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.". Rev. xxi. 7.

Sardis." He that overcometh the same shall be clothed in white raiment, and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life." — Rev. iii. 5.

"And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, . . . but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.” - Rev. xxi. 27.

Philadelphia. "Him that overcometh .. I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down from heaven from my God.”. Rev. iii. 12.

"And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God." Rev. xxi. 10.

Laodicea.. "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with my Father in his throne." Rev. iii. 21.

"The throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him, and they shall see his face; . . . and they shall reign for ever and ever." - Rev. xxii. 3.

This is only in conformity with the Jewish notion of the third heaven mentioned by St. Paul. The idea is, not that the New Jerusalem comes

Observe, here is no dreary interval of thousands of years between the hour of the martyrs' trial and the hour of their reward. Here is no break no pause of centuries of inperfect bliss between the agony and the triumph, between the overcoming victory and the resplendent crown. Neither is the promise made to martyrs of a distant era, or to confessors of a future time. "He that hath an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches." 1 "I, Jesus, have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the Churches." 2 "To the angel of the Church in Philadelphia

write

Him that overcometh

I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God." 3

The promises of the new and heavenly city shine out as brightly in the commencement as at the close of the Revelation. The first page utters the same note of promise and warning as the last, and the last the same as the first. The gates of the New Jerusalem are open to the martyrs of the Churches to which St. John wrote, and the martyrs of Philadelphia enter at once into "the city of my God." "When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers."

Away then with the popular fallacy, which would represent the Apocalypse as a chronological prophecy of events of which some have already taken place, and of which others are yet to come. Continuity of subject, identity of aim and object, and unity of execution is stereotyped in every page and line. It can refer but to one event, and one only. Nothing but the strength of a Milo can tear apart this knotted oak; and the rebound is invariably the entanglement and the discomfiture of those who would divide that word of

down to earth, but that it is established in heaven above, though perhaps not the "heaven of heavens," the highest heaven of all.

St. Hilary distinguishes between the " kingdom of the Lord" and the "kingdom of God," the eternal and blessed kingdom, into which they are to enter after the resurrection, advancing to the kingdom of God the Father, by the kingdom of the Son.

Rev. iii. 13.

2 Rev. xxii. 16.

3 Rev. iii. 7—12.

truth, which is without seam, and which, like the unity of God, cannot be rent asunder.

8. Of "That Great city,"-" That Holy city,"-" New Jerusalem,"" Holy Jerusalem,"- "The city of my God, which cometh down from heaven from my God,"" Prepared as a

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1 Contemporaneously with the vision of this holy city, St. John sees new heaven and a new earth." This is nothing more than the great and awful change from Judaism to Christianity. Our Lord said thrice, that "heaven and earth should pass away" ere the generation to whom he addressed those words had died. He elsewhere connected the period of the passing away of heaven and earth with the abrogation of the Jewish law: “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.". Matt. v. 18.

The same idea is expressed, in highly metaphorical terms, by St. Peter : "The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up."-2 Peter, iii. 10.

So St. Paul: "Yet once more (eri arat, once again in a little while), I shake not the earth only, but also heaven :" and that by this shaking of heaven and earth nothing more was intended than the removal of the Jewish economy, is most evident from the explanation given by the apostle himself: "And this word, yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, of things that are made; that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.". - Heb. xii. 26, 27.

Isaiah describes the glory of the Christian dispensation under a similar figure: "Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered nor come into mind " (Isaiah, lxv. 17.). He declares of this new creation, that the "new heaven and the new earth which I will make shall remain ;" and he connects all this abundantly, in almost every line, with the call of the Gentiles into the Church of Christ. Surely, a little attention to the subject, and a due regard to the analogy of Scripture, would "put a stop to all carnal Judaising conceits of an earthly Jerusalem yet to be rebuilt," would make us understand, that if we would comprehend Scripture, we must compare it with the analogy of Scripture, or else we must fall into mysticism and confusion.

It appears, moreover, that the opinions of several of the ancient fathers were adverse to millenarian views.

Eusebius states that the doctrine of an earthly Millennium prevailed in the Church, owing to the respect for the antiquity of Papias: Among which (things approaching to the fabulous) he said, that there would be a period of one thousand years after the resurrection from the dead, during which the kingdom of Christ should subsist in the body upon this earth which I think that he supposed, having misunderstood the apostolic relations, not comprehending what was by them mystically uttered in similitudes; for he appears to have been a person of very confined mind, to judge from his sayings ; nevertheless, he was the occasion that by far the greatest number of Church

bride adorned for her husband,"-"Having the glory of God, and her light like unto a stone most precious,"-"The city which had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof, -how shall I speak -how add one thought to the glowing and burning words before me - nay, how even enter into their deep and hidden meaning, exhausting as they do every idea of greatness and glory, of light and love, of joy and salvation, of eternity and of immortality. They only may fully tell the everlasting tale of its supreme felicity, with whom, former things having passed away, have left their most pure and subtle spirits free from stains and trammels of earth, to grasp with the immortal powers of a renewed nature, the infinite consideration of the glory of God. For us the subject is too high, too wonderful; we cannot attain unto it; and we are fain to sum up our imperfect conceptions of superhuman happiness in words expressive of our own infirmity:- "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of mau, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”

But whatever be the blest condition of that new and heavenly city, we may be sure that it is of no earthly kind. Images, indeed, borrowed from earth are used to depict its glory and its greatness, yet still its celestial character shines through all, and makes it evident that the Spirit of God spake of heavenly things with a human tongue.

But whilst we look for deeper joys and higher blessedness than can be known on earth, let us beware of straining the symbols of the Apocalypse and of giving a literal meaning to every word of this sublime, yet allegorical description. We

writers after him held the like doctrine, pleading the antiquity of the man.”Eus. Eccles. Hist. lib. iii 39.

Tertullian distinctly limits the joys of the Millennium to spiritual joys: "This (Jerusalem), we say, is provided by God for receiving the saints upon the resurrection, and refreshing them with the abundance of all (only spiritual) good things, in compensation for those which in the world we have either despised or lost." — Tertullian, adv. Marc. iii. 24.

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"In the divine promises we look for nothing earthly or transitory, marriage union, according to the frenzy of Cerinthus and Marcus, — nothing pertaining to meat and drink, as Irenæus, Tertullian, and Lactantius, assenting to Papias; -nor do we hope that for the thousand years after the resurrection the reign of Christ will be on the earth.” — Melito.