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we know that, when CHRIST shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."* Oh! then, let us live with CHRIST in our warfare upon earth. Let us take up continually the blessed discipline of His Cross! Let us abide in continual thanksgiving for the joy of the hope of the redeemed! So shall we be found partakers with Him in the triumph of the resurrection. Though we are strangers and pilgrims here below, He is gone "to prepare a place for us," a home of neverending bliss in our FATHER's house, and He will come again and receive us "if we have continued faithful;" "He will receive us unto Himself that where He is, there we may be also."†

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SERMON XIII,

THE CONSUMMATION OF WORSHIP.

(Preached at All Saints, Margaret Street, on All Saints' Day.

1860.)

REV. xxi., 22.

"I saw no temple therein; for the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY and the Lamb are the Temple of it."

N the worship of heaven, we find the consum

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mation of the work of redeeming love, which has been gathering a chosen people from among men, by the creative merits of the Cross. our acts of worship lead us onward to the revelation of the city of GOD. It is the work of faith to lay hold of those Divine realities, which as yet are veiled from sight. Now must we thus grasp, with a loving consciousness, what hereafter shall be manifested. Two Apostles tell us of that holy city. S. John "saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from GOD out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband."* But S. Paul tells us that already are we "come unto the city of the Living GOD, the heavenly Jerusalem."†

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We must not, therefore, think of the descent witnessed in the Revelation, as the establishment on earth of a new city. That vision does not represent to us a yet unformed organization of mankind. It is only the consummation of what has long been fashioning below. It is descending, not from one local sphere to another, but "from GOD, out of heaven;" that is, from the hidden depths of the Divine consciousness. It is descending, not to an inferior world, not to any condition of earthly bondage. The glorious company which constitute that city, are not exiled from spiritual life by this descent, nor have they need of any outer instruments of their joy, nor of any earthly home."Not made with hands, but eternal in the heavens," is the home wherein they rejoice to dwell for evermore with CHRIST. By the descent of the city of GOD, we are to understand the manifestation in the world of sense, the manifestation as the only true and substantial glory,— of what, until then, had been known to GOD alone, and revealed to the perceptions of faith. So fully at last "shall be made known by the Church, the manifold wisdom of GOD."†

* 2 Cor. v., 1. · + Eph. iii., 10,

So then our acts of worship are not to be dissociated from that glory of revelation, as if they were merely preparatory to it. "We are

saved by hope,”* but an earnest of that hope is ours already. "CHRIST in us is the hope of glory." He is present within us, whose indwelling is the substance of the glory hoped for. Faith, which lays hold of CHRIST, is thus made to us "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Christian faith is not a mere reliance upon GOD to give us hereafter what He has promised us, but it is the knowledge of a higher sense-the perception by a Divinely communicated faculty, of a higher world than the outer sense takes cognizance of, of the present glory of the elect" who are "chosen out of the world" that they may "abide in CHRIST." Our acts of worship, as the expression and exercise of this faith, are consequently to be considered as steppings forth into the abyss of Godhead, efforts by which the soul embraces the privileges of our Divine adoption.

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How unspeakable would be our joy in the services of GOD's house, if we could but know

• Rom. viii., 24. + Col. i., 27.

+ Heb. xi., 1.

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the presence of the invisible! In what a marvellous rapture would our hearts be lifted up to GOD, if the intuitions of our Divine life were cleared from the mists without, the blindness within, which enfeeble our spiritual vision in this world of sin! Surely, my dear brethren, we have herein a sufficient reason for extreme watchfulness, for an utter deadness to the world, for the mortification of all which can give the world hold over us. The saints of GOD have triumphed not by antici

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a present heaven. They knew the Church of GOD to be what CHRIST Himself had called it, the kingdom of heaven. Into this heaven they fled from the world around them. Joy and suffering were alike unable to hold them back from claiming the privileges of their better home. The trials of earth, the repose of paradise, were in their consideration but different expressions of one substantial joy, the joy of union with CHRIST. "The SON of GOD was revealed within them."* They waited for that revelation to be consummated in a fellowship of glory, when they in Him should be manifested as the sons of GOD. But, oh! that future manifestation was not contemplated by * Gal. i., 16.

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