this delight is not originated there, it is begun here, in individual hearts; it is nursed and developed amid all the means of grace; and unless we have some consciousness of its presence within us now, and give some evidence of its intensity, and power, and increase, we do not possess that internal character which fits us for the enjoyments and exercises of the people of God, in the presence of the throne of God and of the Lamb. It is a prepared place for a prepared people; its citizens were made so here, their franchise is received only here, their fitness is generated here. We must be born before we can breathe the air, behold the light, or engage in the duties of this present life; and we must be "born again," before we can enter on the scenes, inhale the air, or join in the harmonies of the age to come. According to a principle that runs through all of the universe that we know, the inhabitant is fitted for his habitation, the bird for the air, the fish for the waters, the ox for the earth, man's body for the earth that now is, and so man's soul and body for the earth and age and scenes to come. To produce, hasten, and mature this grand moral and spiritual adaptation, is the great end of all our ecclesiastical scaffoldingour Lord's-days, our prayers, our Bibles, our sanctuaries. Do we possess it? Is the kingdom of God, which is "not meat, nor drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost," within us?

If these things be so, what a bright prospect is here unfolded. for the people of God! Those imperfections which cleave to all we think, feel, or do; those interruptions which break in on our most sequestered and solemn communings with God; those spectacles of sin and sorrow and death, which cry aloud with piercing eloquence, "All have sinned," and "The wages of sin is death;" those inner conflicts of St. Paul, repeated in every heart in which the Spirit of God dwells; those groanings, waiting to be delivered; those conceptions that fade as we try to realize them; those purposes, that perish in practical development-shall all cease on the very threshold of that state, in which the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple. In the words of Mr. Birks, one of the ablest and acutest of living interpreters of prophecy, "The kingdom of peace and righteousness must dawn at length on the earth: what though the worship of Mahuzzin shall long defile even the

Christian church with foul idolatries, and flatterers, who cleave to a faith which their hearts never welcome, may usurp the name of the Catholic church, to crush under holy titles the faithful witnesses of the Lord-it is but a little time, and the tyranny shall cease, and the delusion shall pass away. The sanctuary of God in these latter days must be cleansed from its many defilements; the flatterers of the outer court exiled from the assemblies of Christ; and a pure and virgin church be prepared to welcome the returning Bridegroom. What though the scoffers of the last days may exult in their vain boasts of a light which is not of heaven, and of a knowledge in which the only Saviour of sinners is forgotten and despised-what though the multitudes may gather under deceitful watchwords of Liberty, Light, and Progress, and the worship of man, self-regenerate by his own wisdom, for one last confederacy of Gentile unbelief; they shall still come to their end, and none shall help them, though statesmen may exclude the truth of God from their counsels, though philosophers may speculate on all the depths of history without once discovering their own need of a Saviour, and build up a new Babel in the last days of human liberty and equality, and imaginary triumphs of reason; though divines may invent a gospel without Christ-and metaphysicians, a world without the living God; this record, like a firmament of unalterable, ineffaceable truth, is above them and around them, to rebuke their folly, and confirm the faith of all the servants of the Lord. In the strife of modern parties, amid the fever of commerce and trade, it reminds us of a counsel which is ever advancing swiftly to its bourne, of angel ministries that are unceasingly around us, and of a solemn resurrection which draws nearer and nearer, and, like a thief in the night, may break in suddenly with a wild and strange surprise upon all the schemes and projects of worldly men. The prophecies that we now trace. dimly and painfully with the eyes of the flesh, and amid the thick mists of a fallen world, will then start out before us in their clear and unvailed beauty, and awaken perpetual songs of wonder and praise and adoration in the hour of the resurrection, and throughout everlasting ages in the kingdom of our God."

Our clearest conception of that templeless, because all-temple state, are dim, faint, and unworthy. We see it through a glass,

darkly. This glass shall be cast away on the confines of the age to come; the eye shall be purged of its weakness and its film; the air shall be light-that light the glory of Deity; and the future vision realized by John in Patmos from the bosom of the Egean sea, shall be seen by us, stretching out before us a glorious panorama a present fact-the completement of the past-the commencement of an ever-brightening future-the fulfilment of all prophecy-the realization of all promise.

Let us love and be thankful for Christian temples upon earth. They are its chiefest beauty, the springs of its peace, the nuclei around which the forlorn hopes of humanity may cluster and find support. Let their hallowed exercises be dear to us; let us accustom ourselves to their air and associations; let us prefer the "swallow's nest" in the rafters of the humblest, to the sheen of palaces or the pageantry of courts. They have been the nurseries of past generations-the springs in the valley of Baca, dug by our forefathers, and filled from the fountains of heaven, from which weary pilgrims have drunk and gone on refreshed, as from strength to strength, till they appeared before God in Zion.

May God, when he takes from us many precious things, in just judgment for our iniquities, spare to us our sanctuaries; and when these fail, may heavenly and better buildings receive us into everlasting habitations!

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LECTURE XI.

MILLENNIAL LIGHT.

"And the city 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."— Revelation xxi. 23.

THERE are some portions of Scripture which are surrounded by great acknowledged difficulties; and yet there is a solution of them which it is our duty to attempt, by concentrating on them all the light we can command. Difficulties must not discourage us.

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The Spirit of God, in all he has written, designs our instruction; and our text and other passages, although admittedly beset with difficulties, are revealed by him, and not to be avoided by us. We ought rather, in a spirit of humility, teachableness, and prayer, to seek the guidance and direction of that Spirit who is promised to teach us things to come," that he would enable me to unfold, and you to understand them. I desire, first, to show you that our text relates to the future in time, not in eternity. I believe there is scarcely a promise contained in the Apocalypse that shall not be actualized on earth. I believe it is, from first to last, mainly a description of the church triumphant belownot the church triumphant in heaven. I believe that every portion of it relates to believers in that glorious resurrection state in which they shall appear when Christ shall come and call them to himself, and that this New Jerusalem is the descent of Christ's people from the air into which they had been caught, and that this their settling upon earth will be the great picture and portrait of what grace can gather from the wrecks and ruin of the fall. He says, "I saw a new heaven and a new earth," (that is, a new outward visible economy,) "for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away." And he then says, "And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem," (which we are now de

scribing,) "coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." And then he adds, "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 shall be their God." The term Shechinah, the visible glory between the cherubim on the mercy-seat, is derived from a word which means "to dwell." Thus, then, where it is written, "the Word dwelt among us," may be read, "the Word, the Shechinah of glory, was in the midst of us." I believe that that glory which blazed in the bush on Horeb, which shone on Mount Sinai, glowed in the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night, which guided the Israelites across the desert-the glory which finally rested on the mercy-seat, and between the cherubim, and shone in unearthly lustre from the precious stones on the breastplate of the high-priest, revealing things past, present, and to come, was nothing else than the manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is "the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person." We know not now what may be the appearance of Christ; we know not what will be the nature of his future personal appearance among us: he will probably come in some bright manifestation like that which shone between the cherubim, and with an effulgence full of glory, which our eyes shall then be prepared to gaze on, of which we can form but a dim and inadequate conception, amid the clouds and shadows of this dispensation. I have called your attention to the character of those who shall dwell in that city. I then endeavoured to assign reasons for its having gates at the east, west, north, and south, corresponding with that beautiful promise, "Many shall come from the east and the west, from the north and from the south, and sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven." I noticed the character of the city-"it lieth four-square;" and showed, by reference to classic writers, that the Greek word translated "four-square," was used to denote strength and solidity; in classic phraseology, "a man to be trusted, a man of stability, permanence, and strength," is literally a four-square man; and the city so described, to indicate its permanence and strength. I then referred to