LIBRARY OF THE University of California. Mrs. SARAH P. WALSWORTH. Received October, i8g4. ^Accessions No. S^X'^'^- Class No. LINDSAY & BLAKISTON'S PUBLICATIONS, t %m, Io[in Cumraing's ^orks. UNIFORM EDITION. Price 75 cents per Volume, and sent by mail, free of postage, upon receipt of tMs amount by tlie Publishers. CUMMING'S APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES ; OR, LECTURES ON THE BOOK OF REVELATION. One Volume, 12mo. Cloth. CUMMING'S APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. Second Series. One Volume, 12mo. Cloth. CTJMMING'S LECTURES ON THE SEVEN CHUECHES. One Volume, 12mo. Cloth. CTTMMING'S LECTURES ON OUR LORD'S MIRACLES. One Volume, 12mo. Cloth. CUMMING'S LECTURES ON THE PARABLES. One Volume. 12mo. Cloth. CUMMING'S PROPHETIC STUDIES; OR, LECTURES ON THE BOOK OF DANIEL. One Volume, 12mo. Cloth. CUMMING'S MINOR WORKS. First Series. One Volume, 12mo. Cloth. This Volume contains the following : THE FINGEU OP GOD, CHRIST OUR PASSOVER, THE COMFORTER. Which are all bound and sold separately. Price 38 cents. CUMMING'S MINOR WORKS. Second Series. One Volume, 12mo. Cloth. This Volume contains the following : A JIESSAGE FROM GOD, THE GREAT SACRIFICE, AND CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. Which are also bound and sold separately. Price 38 cents. CUMMING'S MINOR WORKS. Third Series. One Volume, 12mo. Cloth. This volume contains the following: INFANT SALVATION, THE BAPTISMAL FONT, AND THE COMMUNION TABLE. Which are all bound and sold separately. Price 38 cents. The Rev. John Cumming, D.D., is now the great pulpit orator of London, as Edward Irving was some twenty years since. His great work on the " Apocalypse," upon which his high reputation as a writer rests, has already reached its twentieth edition in England; while his "Lectures on the MiTaoIes," and those on " Daniel," have passed through many editions of 1000 copies each, and his " Lectures on tlie Parables" through four editions, all withia a comparatively short time. LINDSAY &, BLAKISTON'S PUBLICATIONS. UNIFOEM EDITION. PRICE 76 CENTS PER VOLUME. CUMMING^S FAMILY PMYERS, FOR EVERY MORNING AND EVENING IN THE YEAR. MitI] iefoanas ia mx^xmU Btxi^tmt "gmlkp, IN TWO VOLUMES. JANUARY TO JUNE -JULY TO DECEMBER. OR, THE PRESENT, PAST, AND FUTURE. " And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars, and upon the earth distress of nations." In one volume, 12mo. CUMMING'S MINOR WORKS. Price 88 cents per Volume. THE COMMUNICANT'S MANUAL, A Plain and Practical Exposition of the Lord's Supper. 1 toL, cloth. INFANT SALVATION, Or, All Saved that Die in Infancy. Specially addressed to mothers mourning the loss of infants and children. 1 vol., cloth. THE BAPTISMAL FONT, Or, the Nature and Obligations of Christian Baptism. 1 vol., cloth. CHRIST OUR PASSOVER, Or, Thoughts on the Atonement. 1 vol., cloth. A MESSAGE FROM' GOD, Or, Thoughts on Religion for Thinking Men. 1 vol., cloth. THE GREAT SACRIFICE, Or, the Gospel according to Leviticus. 1 vol., cloth. THE COMFORTER, Or, Thoughts on the Influence of the Iloly Spirit. 1 vol., cloth. CHRIST RECEIVING SINNERS. One vol., cloth. The FINGER of GOD, in Creation, The Spread of Christianity, &c. Ono vol., cloth. •0 %pnxl0u Mtk\t$. LECTUEES ON THE BOOK OF HEYELATION. BY THE EEY. JOKN" CUMMmG, D.D. OF THE SCOTCH NATIONAL CHURCH, AUTHOE OF LECTURES ON THE PARABLES, DANIEL, ETC. ETC. ■ And I saw a new heaven and a new earth : for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away." — Rev. xxi. 1. PHILADELPHIA: LI:N'DSAY Al^D BLAKISTOF. 1856. :5S i.?> B-y%^ / PEEFACE. . This volume is an attempt to expound Apocalyptic pro- phecies of scenes, events, and glory yet to come. The Author believes that these are about to emerge far sooner than many believe. He desires that more may be found with their lamps burning and their loins girt, and ready to meet the Lord. He longs to attract a greater number from the too ardent pursuit of this world, to great, per- manent, and all but instant things, by unfolding their greater beauty, glory, and magnificence ; and thus dis- placing the earthly preference by the appliance of heavenly hopes. It is his sincere prayer that the reader may enjoy a portion at least of the pleasure felt by the writer in study- ing and expounding these parts of the Apocalypse. His only regret has been that time was so short, and that the Apocalypse has an end. He trusts he has shown no pre- sumption in endeavouring to expound parts of this blessed Book, very little opened up, either in the pulpit or by the press. He is sure that the precious truths he has unfolded will, by the blessing of the Spirit of God, produce good fruit ; and that the hopes, drawn from the future and the 1* 5 6 PREFACE. heavenly, will refresh, as with the air and the aroma of Eden, those who are covered with the dust and weary of the din of this incessant and besetting world. We are plunging into a state, in which the lights of the Apoca- lypse will be pre-eminently useful. We shall soon see scenes, events, and changes which will make those stagger v whose minds have not been previously directed to this Book. "I come quickly. Even so, come, Lord Jesus." CONTENTS. LECTUEE I. FAGS Christ's Many Crowns i?et;.xix.l2 11 LECTUBE II. The CoNGREaATiosr or the Dead Eev.xxr.lZ 26 LECTURE in. The New Jerusalem Rev.xxi.1-3; 10-21 41 LECTURE IV. The Sorrowless State .Bet?, xxi. 3, 4 55 LECTURE V. All things New ^ev. xxi. 5 69 LECTURE VL The Conqueror ^cv. xxi.7 84 LECTURE VIL The Unbelieving i?ct>.xxi.8 99 LECTURE VIIL Endless Sufferers Rev.xsLS 117 LECTURE IX. The Bride ..H.S^iV. i?ev.xxi.9j xix.6 128 1 8 CONTENTS. LECTURE X. PACIB The Apocalyptic Temple Jiev.xxi.22 143 LECTURE XL MiLLENKiAL LiGHT JRev.xxi.2Z 157 LECTURE XIL Day without Night ^eu. xxi. 24-26 171 LECTURE XIIL The Franchise of the Nett Jerusalem Eev.xxi.27 185 LECTURE XrV. The River op Life «. ^cr.xxii. 1 201 LECTURE XV. The Tree of Life ^ev.xxii.2 209 LECTURE XVL No HORE Curse Rev.xxii.Z 213 LECTURE XVIL Recognition in the Age to come liev. xxii.5 229 LECTURE XVIIL Faithful and True Sayings ^er. xxii. 6 238 LECTURE XIX. Romish Worship JRev. xxii. 8, 9 246 LECTURE XX. Apocalyptic Sayings ^ev. xxii. 10 262 LECTURE XXL The Eternity op Spiritual Character Eev.xxii.ll 270 LECTURE XXIL The Judgment ^cr. xxii. 12 277 LECTURE XXIIL The Great White Throne i?ev,xxii.l2; xx. 11-15 285 CONTENTS. 9 LECTURE XXIV. PAGE The Divinity op Chbist ^ev. xxii.l3 302 LECTURE XXV. The Blessed Ones J?et;. xxii. 14 317 LECTURE XXVL The Invitation Iiev.xxu.lt 331 LECTURE XXVIL The Perfect Book iJev.xxii. 18 346 LECTURE XXVIIL The Advent i?et7. xxii. 20 368 LECTURE XXIX. Order op Advent Eev.xxu20 381 LECTURE XXX. The Fall of Jerusalem i^ev.xxii. 20 401 LECTURE XXXL The Man op Sin iJet;. xxii. 20 420 LECTURE XXXIL The Vicar op Christ i?er. xxii. 20 : 2 Tkes8.u.A 436 LECTURE XXXtEL 1848; or, Prophecy Fulfilled ifev. xxii. 20 ; xvi. 17 455 LECTURE XXXrV. The Consumption op Babylon Eev.xxn.20; xvi. 17 475 LECTURE XXXV. The MARRiAaB-SuppBB op the Lamb ^ev. xix. 1 494 LECTURE XXXVL The New Sono Eev.xiv.3 508 LECTURE XXXVIL Conclusion ^ev.xxii.20 521 iVJTOEJ ^1 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. LECTURE I. Christ's many crowns. " On his head were many crowns." — Revelation xix. 12. The crown and cross of Christ are inseparable in our minds : the crown has a retrospective reference to the cross ; the one is the consummation and flower of the other. Christ had many conflicts, and in each he triumphed, and therefore he is presented to our view on this occasion as the wearer of many crowns. Every struggle in which he took part was necessary : the cup was given him to drink, and he drank it. It is, therefore, with reference to his many past conflicts, that we now notice the many crowns which he wears. He endured all that the law denounced on us as sinners. It said, " The soul that sins shall die," and He died, infinitely died. Not one element was poured into that cup (and all bitterness was concen- trated there) which He did not drink and exhaust ; there was not one struggle into which he did not enter, and triumph most glo- riously for us in it ; nor was there one conflict which did not lead to a corresponding crown. He fulfilled all the law demanded. It said, '^ Do and live.*' He did it in our stead, and lived to give us life. He magnified the law and made it honourable. Its greatest exactions received, in his obedience, a glorious response; and a crown on his brow is the evidence of his victory, and that victory is our plea at the judgment- seat. He fulfilled all prophecies, and promises, and types relating to the Messiah ; each prediction was successively personated in him ; each promise found its echo, and each type 11 12 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. its counterpart in him. The accomplishment of these liabilities; in his state of humiliation, was his victory ; and each obstruction he surmounted, each step he made good, each position he gained, terminated in a crown. His cross was the path to his crown — his sufferings were the pioneers of his victories ; and his many crowns are therefore the expressive memorials of his many trials, and many triumphs. He undertook to represent Deity to man- kind, and to bring God within the horizon of mortality. He finished the portrait, he perfected the great enterprise. ^^We beheld his glory as the glory of the only begotten Son of God, full of grace and truth." ^' God was made manifest in the flesh.'^ *^ He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." In other words, he accomplished this glorious apocalypse. He personated in him- self all the splendours and attributes of God. He let God shine and glow through humanity, in undimmed glory, and manifested to mankind all that man or angel can reach or know of Deity ; and having finished the sacred sculpture, he received the cor- responding crown. But besides these evidences of crowns, as far as these are symbols of victory, he wears many diademsj which are also the evidences of sovereignty. He is a king as well as a conqueror. The crown of creation is his. " By him all things were made, and without him was not any thing made that was made." "But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever : a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. And thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth ; and the heavens are the works of thine hands. They shall perish ; but thou remainest ; and they shall wax old as doth a garment; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed : but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail." Heb. i. 8, 10-12. There is not a pebble on the shore, nor a planet in the sky, which he did not create; whatever defies in- spection by its minuteness, or exceeds our comprehension by its magnitude — whatever attracts by its beatlty, or is fragrant through its perfume — whatever is prized for its value, or venerated for its antiquity — all were made by Christ. He wears the crown and wields the sceptre of all. Not an earthquake rocks the globe, nor a wave rolls on the bosom of the sea — not a flash leaps from the CHRIST'S MANY CROWNS. |6 clouds, nor a bud peeps from tlie bough, wbicb he does not un- prison and charter for their respective missions. As all things were made by him, so all things reflect more or less his glory. So full and overflowing is the earth with the evidences of divinity, that the Pantheist says the word is God — thus praising undesignedly, by his blasphemy, as much as the Christian by his adoration. Pantheism is false, but Pan-Chris- tianism is true. Creation is Christ developed; and yet its grand- est scene is but a comma in the apocalypse of his glory. Every ob- ject speaks of Christ, and reflects his beauty, his excellence, and love ; the withered leaf driven by the whirlwind sparkles with his glory; the dew-drop trembling on the rose-leaf, and the snowy summit of the Alps, reflect alike the splendour of his majesty. A chord of love runs through all the sounds of creation, but the ear of love alone can distinguish it. His glory shines from every ray of light that reaches us from a thousand stars ; it sparkles from the mountain tops that reflect the first and retain the last rays of the rising and the setting sun ; it is spread over the expanse of the sea, and speaks in the mur- mur of its restless waves ; it girdles the earth with a zone of light, and flings over it an aureole of beauty. In the varied forms of animal tribes, in the relations of our world to other worlds, in the revolution of planets, in the springing of flowers, in the fall of waters, and in the flight of birds, in the sea, the rivers, and the air, in heights and depths, in wonders and mysteries, Christ wears the crown, sways the sceptre, and exacts from all a royal tribute to his sovereignty and glory. We can behold, but we cannot augment it ; we cannot add one ray of light to the faint- ness of a distant star, nor give wings to an apterous insect, nor change a white hair into black. We can unfold, but not create ; we can adore, but not increase ; we can recognise the footprints of Deity, but not add unto them. All things were created by him, and for him. Heaven was created by and for him — his glo- rious humanity its central object, its Lamb upon the throne, its illuminating sun. "Where he is," is heaven; angels are the executors of his sovereignty. He is the head of angels ; they re- ceive their embassy from him : they worship him ; he sends them forth as ministering spirits to the heirs of salvation j all the SECOND SERIES, 2 14 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. worlds througliout the infinitude of space were made by him to be mirrors of his glory : they roll and beam in their orbits under the impulse of his touch ; they glow in the reflected lustre of his cross, and silently hymn redeeming love, while they gather round our earth, and gaze and wonder at the mysterious scenes which have occurred upon it. "The earth is his, and he made it." There is not a multiplicity of gods, as the heathen dreamed, but many crowns are on the head of the one Creator and Governor of all. Our life on earth is subject to the sovereignty of Christ. He fixed the hour and place of our birth, and he will determine the place and hour of our death. Every pulsation in the heart is the rebound of his touch ; we grow old under his sovereignty, unable to arrest the rapid influences of decay, to restore the youthful colour to gray hairs, or to brush away the mists from the dim eyes of age. We feel we are carried along on an ebb-tide, the impulse and direction of which are derived from on high ; and that when our places on earth are vacant, others will be sum- moned, in the sovereignty of the King of kings, to fill them, and to follow out their responsibilities. Our souls, too, are equally subject to Him, on whose head "are many crowns." "All souls are mine." Whatever of hope lights it up with the foresight of immortality — whatever of joy, repose, progress, and perfection it attains — whatever of sorrow it feels — whatever of regret, remorse, repentance, it experiences — are all under his sway, and within the range of his control. He only is able to redeem, regenerate, and save it : it has sunk so deep in ruin, that divine sovereignty alone can raise it; yet in its very aphelion it is not beneath the notice nor beyond the reach of Christ. Christ is the sovereign of the universe, and atheism is a lie, a delusion, a folly. None are so truly objects of pity as those mo- rally and mentally diseased souls who are guilty of renouncing their belief in the existence of God. It is surely unutterable folly to sacrifice hope and joy to some cold metaphysical abstrac- tion, and to reject all that sustains the heart and supports the head of weary humanity, at the bidding of a syllogism. Earth sleeps under a paternal eye, and is safe within a sovereign arm. Let mankind know it is the fool who says in his heart, " No God." CHRIST'S MANY CROWNS. M How glorious a spot is earth ! Over it are spread the shadows of the cross and crown of Jesus. The sun and stars shine to let us see where Christ lay. This nook of the mighty universe is covered with a kingly lustre ; but kingly eyes alone can see it. The image and the superscription of Christ are traceable on all beauty and preciousness below. It is the glory of earth that he found a cradle and a grave in it ; it is the safety of earth that he reigns and rules it. How blessed will be that promised re- storation of all things for which humanity groans, when the re- . claimed earth shall emerge from the smoke of the last fire, fresh and fair as when first the morning stars sang together ; when the usurper shall be cast out, and all rebel elements shall be calmed and subdued, and sin shall be expunged, and death dead, and life alive for ever, and the wilderness be made glad, and the desert blossom like the rose — wEen every atom of it shall glow as with the glory of Deity — when the undulating hills, and the rooted rocks, and the majestic mountains — when the virgin beauty of the morn, and the matron dignity of evening, and the mystic pomp of the starry night, and all stars above, and all flowers be- low, and all spiritual beauty, and all moral excellence, shall com- bine to adorn that crown which is only one of many on the head of Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords ! Christ also wears the crown of providence, as well as the crown of creation. He rules what he has created. '^ My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." In fact, the very existence of earth is the consequence of the rule of Christ. It exists because he wears the crown. "When sin was introduced, all its springs were smit- ten with terrible paralysis, and its just and deserved doom was instant and entire disorganization and decay. Such would have been its lot if Christ had not stepped in between the polluted earth and its provoked doom, and arrested its ruin by interceding, " Spare it yet another week ! I will die a victim on one of its hills, and magnify a broken law, while I reclaim by forgiving a guilty people ; and I will take on my head the crown, and on my shoulder the government of earth thus respited." The existence of man is, therefore, evidence of what Christ has done. Earth, the home of generations of the living, and not the sepulchre of the dead, is proof of its rolling under restraining and forbearing 16 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. grace. Our seed-time and harvest is no less so. The grouna was cursed for man's sake, and the sky, if not brightened by the rays of that Sun, would have become as brass ; and the earth, if not restored by blood, would have been as iron to us. Those re- freshing showers, those ripening suns, that prolific soil, are all the purchase of atoning blood, and the product of the Redeemer's crown. Apart from the mediation of Christ, God can no more give a crumb of bread to an orphan than he can give a crown of glory to a fiend. All national and social vicissitudes, and revolutions, and changes, are equally under his crown. Men act on their own uninfluenced instincts, and subsequent ages discover they were giving aid and impulse to everlasting purposes. Minds work out their own designs, and they are subsequently seen to have been working out the great thoughts and sovereign plans of God. He touches not the freedom of their choice, and yet they work har- moniously to one end. Napoleon thought he was the statuary — he was only the chisel. In all his ways, and works, and sovereign arrangements, we see difficulties which to us are inexplicable ; but this arises from their excess of light, and their vast intricacy and complexity of movement. A child introduced to see complicated machinery, fails to comprehend it — he sees all antagonism and entanglement, and he wonders how it works at all. We are as unable to com- prehend the arrangements of God. They exceed the grasp of our intellect; we can just see enough to lead us reverently to adore. Some of the difficulties that seem to a few inexplicable, or inconsistent, if so be Christ wears the crown and wields the sceptre of Providence, are such as these. Might not the Divine Governor have prevented the admission of evil, rather than permit it, and then prescribe, as in the New Testament, for its removal ? This difficulty presses on the denier of revelation as truly as on its advocate. Sin is in the world; this is matter of fact — it needs no revelation to prove this. Did God originally make the world a sinful and a sorrowful world ? The skeptic will not say so, for this would make a holy being the author of sin, and a benevolent being the source of sorrow. Was it, then, originally created good, and beautiful, and CHRIST'S MANY CROWNS. It happy ? and did it plunge of itself into sin and misery ? and, if so, has God left it to the issues of its first aberration, and are we a forsaken family ? If this he so, the position of the Christian is surely a more rational one than that of the skeptic, for we hold and believe in the interposition of a Saviour. The skeptic leaves all to welter in their ruins. Nor will it fare better if we put the crown on the head of atheism; for, if all be chance, why are disease and death so uniform in their action ? If all be accident, surely there would occur, amid the tumbling centuries, some ex- ceptions to the prevailing law, and years of immortality would turn up in the evolution of events. The existence of sin all admit; its entrance, and its nature, and its removal, Christianity alone consistently explains. It tells us man was created under law ; this was the evidence of his crea- tureship. He broke that law, and now reaps its penalties by nature. Perhaps you say — Might not a benevolent being have passed no law at all in Eden ? This is impossible. Law is only the expression of the duty, allegiance, and love man owes to God ; and, expressed or unexpressed, it exists. But might he not have made a law without penalties ? A law without power in the ruler to enforce it, is not worthy of the name, as it pos- sesses nothing of the majesty of law. But are there not laws, and penalties, I ask, following on the violation of them, in our own experience? If I open an artery, will not death follow? If I leap from a precipice, shall I not be killed ? Does any one argue that it would have been better if all men had been allowed to violate these and analogous laws, and yet not suffer the penal- ties? We can only reply — We accept the wisdom of God as greater than all the wisdom of men ; and we feel that no objection can be urged against him who wears the crown in the Bible, which does not lie with tenfold force against every view of Provi- dence that is not based in the Bible. We see bad men frequently live long and grow rich. Does this seem to indicate that the Lord wears the crown beneath which this takes place ? The same spectacle perplexed David many hundred years ago. He received the solution of it in tho sanctuary, where we too must seek it. This world is not tho 2* 18 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. scene of retribution. A day is appointed in which God wih judge the world in righteousness. This long-suffering patience which follows the providences of God, is the irresistible proof that he has not pleasure in the death of the sinner, that he does not condemn till conversion is hope- less ; and thus the tree spared may be a more instructive lesson to the universe than the tree cut down. But we sometimes see good men, full of promise, and fitted for careers of increasing usefulness, cut off in their dawning or me- ridian course. Is this compatible with the fact of that good and benevolent government of things to which the text refers ? What seems to us a reason for such men to be spared on earth, may be the strongest for their being removed. Their very worth and force of character may be their fitness for a more elevated sphere. They did their work sooner than others, because more largely gifted than others. They were wanted in heaven. Our loss is their promotion. God will thus teach us how he can carry out his great designs in the world, with or without instrumentality, as to him may seem expedient. Do we not find, remarks another, genius, and intellectual and moral excellence, frequently wasting in obscurity, and thereby prevented from irradiating and blessing mankind ? This does apparently happen, but it may be our ignorance that conceals from us the reasons of the fact. The ends of infinite wisdom are not always visible to us. Great and precious fruits may grow for the use of future generations, on trees all but hidden from us. The sower may be unknown, and the fields he waters and tends unvisited by us ; but other days may reveal benefits and blessings for which whole nations may be thankful. Such occurrences in providence are also in harmony with cases in creation^ as is beautifully indicated by the poet : — " Full many a gem of purest ray serene, The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear : Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air." It is also objected to the equity or benevolence of this adminis- tration, that a very small part only of the human family knows CHRIST'S MANY CROWNS. 19 the gospel at all. Wliy is the gospel, if it be so great a blessing, not extended to the ends of the earth ? The fact is true, but the fault may be in us, not in God. Our apathy, our want of energy and sympathy as Christians, may be the reason why the gospel is restricted to the few, and kept from the many. There may be ulterior ends likewise in an arrangement which is not peculiar to divine truth. Numbers of the human family are still unacquainted with the best blessings of civilization, and social refinement, and scientific discoveries. If the limited spread of Christianity be an objection to the divine government of Christ, the limited range of other blessings must be no less an objection to the government of a supreme governor at all. But the true reason lies not in the purposes of God, but in the apathy of his people. Men are not universally Christians, just because Christians are not universally missionary in their spirit, and character, and sacrifices. It is one remarkable proof of the sovereignty of Christ in providence, and well worthy of notice here, that each new dis- covery in science serves to show more palpably the truth and divine origin of Christianity. Sciences which were once quoted against the claims of the gospel, are now appealed to as its hand- maids. Astronomy was once pronounced to be the foe of the Bible. It is now felt to be one of its most impressive commenta- ries. The nebulous matter which, according to recent specula- tions, was the raw material of new worlds, into which it shaped itself without the aid of a Creator, has been discovered, by Lord Ross's telescope, to be clusters of worlds ; the evidences not only of a creative power, but of a controlling hand. There is not a speck in the sky, nor a ray from a distant star, nor a field of vision laid bare by the telescope in the depths of immensity, that does not cast new light on the sovereignty and crown of him who is Lord of all ; and Newton, and Herschel, and their ablest dis- ciples, are ready to attest it is so. Geology was once described as a mine of disproof of the his- toric accuracy of Genesis, and thereby of the divine origin of the Bible. Christ's control was over it, and his wisdom in tho hearts of its students ; and as it grew in accuracy, it grew in the force and fulness of its testimony to Christian truth. The eye 20 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. of the skeptic may now read in rocks, and fossils, and ruptured strata, the registry of the day on which God said, '^ Let there bo light, and there was light." The evidences, too, are there, of the windows of heaven having been opened, and the fountains of the great deep having been broken up ; and thus the best and ablest of the students of geology worship at the footstool, and are ready to place or recognise the crown on His head on which already are many crowns. Chronology has also had its turn as a forced opponent to the gospel. Infidel minds, whose hatred to Christianity outran their respect for themselves, professed to have discovered histories of men before Adam. In one of the Pyramids of Egypt there was found an astronomical chart, called the Zodiac of Dendara, which described the position of the heavenly bodies thousands of years before the creation. Folios of evidence were insufficient to per- suade these skeptics that Christianity was true, but an accidental, dateless, anonymous chart was held by them abundantly con- clusive against the truth of Christianity. Great, however, was their disappointment, when it was ascertained, and could not be concealed, that this chart was a toy — a thing done for amusement, and incapable of any grave use, except in the hands of men who regarded any thing as good which promised to aid them in their unholy enterprise. Physiology, too, has been arrayed against Him who wears many crowns. The difierence of races, and the diversity of colours, were referred to as evidence that the European and African were not sprung from the first pair. This has been long ago disposed of, and the maturest science has been demonstrated to be in harmony with the word of God? These consecrations of all facts and phenomena to a holy purpose ; these successive seizures of so many weapons of aggression, and the transformation of them all into elements of defence, and means of new lustre to the claims of the gospel — this worsting of skepticism on the fields it selects for its assaults, are all proofs of the providential government of Him who wears on his head this, and many other crowns. All the past is luminous with Christ's crown, and the future shall be yet more so. A decree goes forth from Caesar Augustus, that the whole land should be taxed. Each family goes to its own CHRIST'S MANY CROWNS. 2|^ city, and Joseph and IMary to theirs, and a prophecy is thus fulfilled: "Thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be Ruler in Israel/^ Caesar thought only of taxes : an unseen but directing hand made unconscious Caesar to fulfil prophecy. The crown was not on Caesar's head, but on Christ's. A highly educated Pharisee goes on a journey to Damascus, full of hatred to the name and people of Christ : a voice from Him who wears the crown pierces his heart, and the bitter Pharisee is transformed into the faithful preacher of the cross. Domitian gratified his vengeance by banishing John to Patmos 'j and Christ glorifies his own name by making that exile a chosen instrument of imperishable good to all generations. Cassar's prisoner is made Christ's prophet, and the wrath of man is diverted to add new force to the cause of Grod, and kings guided to promote the very ends for the extinction of which they com- bined their crowns. Luther is sent to a convent to do penance, and he finds the Bible. Printing was invented to do man's work, and it fulfils the purposes of God. America was discovered to add to man's empire, and it becomes more and more a province of Christ's. Steam was used on man's mission ; it is already out on God's errands. Thus infinite wisdom, love, and power, combined in Christ, wears this crown, and wields this sceptre, and makes all work together for good to the people of God, and toward the spread and permanency of the principles of the glorious gospel. Christ also wears the crown of grace and glory, as well as that of creation and providence. He is "Prince of life,'' "King of kings," " Lord of glory,'' the true Melchizedec — David and Solo- mon in one. Such he was acknowledged to be in the cradle and on the cross, and such he justly and truly assumed to be at every period of his suffering life. His words were king's words. Royalty was heard in his language and embodied in his life. This kingdom, the kingdom of grace, is a spiritual one — ^ita laws, its sceptre, its weapons, and its warfare, are all spiritual. It is "not meat nor drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost" — it is not an antithesis to any temporal government, but to spiritual corruption. Its subjects are regenerated men, and these only. The bap- 22 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. tized, as such, are members of the visible, but not therefore mem- bers of the spiritual church. In one sense, all creatures are under his sway, and those who will not give him glory as an offering, must surrender it as a reluctant sacrifice; but the subjects of this spiritual kingdom are willing subjects — their hearts throb with loyalty and love to their King. The ambassadors and ministers in the midst of it are purely spiritual men; they have no sovereign power; they may no more assume Christ's crown than may kings and statesmen — their office is pastoral, not royal — they are to feed, not to lord it over Christ's heritage. The tendency in the eighteenth century was to transfer Christ's crown to the state. As King of grace, Christ reclaims the aliens, and strangers, and slaves of sin and Satan to himself; he subdues a people to his glorious purpose — he makes them willing in the day of his power — attracting by his cross, inclining by his love, and com- pelling by his Spirit. He rules them by his word. It supersedes all the traditions and commandments of men. Our directory, as the subjects of Christ, is not the opinion of the wisest, or the tradition of the oldest, or the voice of the most, or the judgment of the best; it is the word of God alone. What it enjoins, is duty; what it for- bids, is sin : it is our Magna Charta. As wearing the crown of this kingdom, the Lord Jesus furnishes his church with ministers, and appoints the ordinances requisite for the church's progress. He has said, "Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature;" and, in the strength of this commission, the glorious gospel has been proclaimed from year to year, and from country to country. " This do in remembrance of me," is our sacramental warrant till he shall come. On the baptismal font, on the communion table, is the impress of royal authority. We meet together, we pray together, we communicate, in obedience to Christ the King. No voice in purely spiritual things has force but his. It is as a king also he sends down his Holy Spirit. The gift of the Spirit is the gift of the throne. The Spirit is his only vicar on earth. It is under his crown that his kingdom makes way. The stone cut out without hands shall fill the earth. " In those days the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom which shall break in pieces CHRIST'S MANY CROWNS. ^ and consume all other kingdoms, and stand for ever." All things are contributing toward this great result; a thousand Baptists prepare the way for his advent, and nations rush into revolutions, and kings, alarmed, abdicate their thrones, and mobs rise in vol- canic force against lawful powers, unconsciously to make way for his coming, and to lay down the rails along which the chariot of his glory shall move more rapidly to its goal. All progress in the past of pure and apostolical religion is the result of the royal influence of the Prince of life. A king must be with the church as truly as a priest in the church. His crown is as essential to the maintenance and expansion of truth, as his cross was and is to the salvation of souls. ^' Jesus died" is the life of the church. *' Jesus reigns" is her strength and her hope. Our footing is on his sacrifice; our hope is on his crown. The creation of life comes from the one, the continuance of life flows evermore from the other; we must accept both, in order to accept in all his offices the glorious Lord who carried the one and wears the other. Christ, as thus crowned, defends us. Sin has a footing within us; Satan rages without; the world, like an encompassing atmo- sphere, penetrates all the recesses of the heart : and these hostile forces are in action by night and by day, and, had we not a defender in Christ mightier than all that can be against us, we should perish from the earth. He tells us from his throne, ^' I give unto them eternal life, and none shall be able to pluck them out of my hand." Against the kingdom, crown, and sovereignty of Christ, every corrupt system of Christianity has ceaselessly warred. The Gnostic heresy, under the guise of rigid self-denial and frenzied superiority to the senses, introduced deadly poison into the visible church. The lofty speculations of the Platonists undermined the faith and puff"ed up the intellects of many ; and artfully combining both with other carnal and Satanic elements, the Papacy set itself up, really a kingdom, against the kingdom of Christ, though ostensibly its full and logical development. What skill is displayed in that wonderful structure ! what grasp of thought ! what cunning recognition of Christ as king, and yet practical dethronization of him ! How truly is Judas out-Judased in the pope ! How thoroughly combined the cunning of Satan 24 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. and the carnality of man ! It retains every doctrine of the gospel only to subvert it ; it keeps the name only to cover its hostility to the cause of Christ. ^* God is love ;'^ and under this glorious banner it has built inquisitions, evangelized with the sword, and deluged the earth with blood. "God is light;" and under the beams of this it has hallowed ignorance as the mother of devotion. " My kingdom is not of this world ;" and with these words sound- ing in her ears she has built up an ecclesiastical despotism — a pyramid of power and grandeur — a throne of pride, on which she • sits as a queen, and says, " I shall see no sorrow." So many and so ceaseless forces have conspired against the kingdom of Christ, that we are constrained to infer that the existence of a church on earth is the result of the sovereignty of Christ. The spiritual church survives, a spark on the sea, a flower amid frosts, an exotic in an alien soil. Had it been human, it had perished long ago. Its existence is its eloquent ascription, " Thou art the King of glory, Christ." From the experience of the past, as well as from the promises of Scripture, we gather the assurance of the safety of the people of God. Their palladium is not the shadow of a throne ; their shield is neither their own riches nor the state's endowments. Their shield is Christ on his throne, their girdle is the everlasting arms, their glory their Redeemer's crown. Dynasties change, and empires ebb, and races die, and kings oppose, and enslave, and protect the visible church ; but Christians live, and love, and flourish. The prosperity of the church is not what the world calls so — numbers, wealth, extension — but increase of spirituality and love, new and noble victories over sin, greater sacrifices for Christ's sake, yet more fearless recognition of his name and assertion of his truth. The church of God is often most prosperous when she has least in her cofiers, fewest in her temples, and nothing but hostility in the world. We are sure of the ultimate triumphs of the church of Christ, just because on his head are many crowns. Greater is he that is for us than all that can be against us ; the predictions of its suc- cess are as sure as if already turned to performances. All forces CHRIST'S MANY CROWNS. 25 shall aid his cause, all tongues shall praise him, every hill-top and every hidden valley shall shine in the lustre of his crown. To achieve this, the ministers of Christ need not call in the militia of Cassar, a bishop need not assume the command of a battalion of infantry, nor a cardinal charge at the head of a com- pany of dragoons. Christ repudiates as auxiliaries alike the bribe of the treasury, the bayonet of the army, and the craft and subtlety of the world. ^^ Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." Are you subjects of Christ ? Are you believers in him ? Are you Christ's ? Is he yours ? SECOND SERIES. ^ U^,,?J*,«^" 26 LECTURE II. THE CONGREGATION OF THE DEAD. "And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth : yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them." — Revelation xiv. 13. I HAVE already unfolded several features of the family of God I showed* you the state of the one hundred and forty-four thou sand — the sealed ones — true Christians in the sight of God ^Hhey are without fault before the throne of Godj" that is ^^ there is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus ;' they are "justified'' by him^ and have " peace with God." " Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect ? It is God that justifieth.'' They " have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'' Next, I described their prac- tical conduct upon earth ; or the mode in which they visibly de- velop, in their intercourse with the world, those great Christian principles which they had received through grace : they " follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." They follow him in the great aim and end of his life — in his appeal to the only standard of truth, the word of God — in his intercourse with the world, sympathizing with him in all his sorrows, and reflecting all his joys. You have thus, then, the state of Christians before God : " without fault before the throne ;" you have, next, the practical course before men : they " follow the Lamb." Having thus read their biography in life, let us read and com- ment upon the epitaph upon their tombstones. Their state is justification before God ; their practical character is following the Lamb; and the beautiful epitaph which may be inscribed upon * See Lecture IV. of the Exeter Hall series, where the above also was delivered. THE CONGREGATION OF THE DEAD. 27^^ their tomb, and pronounced as the noblest requiem over the ashes of the dead, is — " Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth : yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours j and their works do follow them.'^ I allow there is here a special reference to the first resurrection, and I believe the blessedness to be associated primarily with their rela- tion to this great event ; but its main truths are not affected by chronology — they are always true. Let us consider, first, those that are described as "the dead;" secondly, their peculiar and distinctive relationship — " the dead in Christ;" thirdly, the benediction pronounced upon them — *' blessed are the dead f fourthly, the special reason of that blessedness — "they rest from their labours;" and lastly, the evi- dence of their entrance into that blessedness — " their works do follow them." Let me endeavour, as fully as the time will per- mit, to lay before you some remarks upon each of these several divisions into which I have split the text, dwelling rather on its general than on its special prophetic bearing. " The dead." Where are they ? Where are they not ? My dear friends, has the thought ever struck you, in looking round the world, that its dead outnumber its living? A far greater amount of the population of the globe is beneath the soil, than there is at any moment treading and breathing above it. Our churches, our homes, our thrones, the theatres and play- houses of the world, are all built upon the dust and ashes of the dead. Our cornfields and vineyards wave above the soil that was once warm with life : " the toe of the dancer treads upon the ashes of the dead." " Where is the dust that hath not been alive ? The spade, the plough, disturb our ancestors : From human mould we reap our daily bread. The globe around earth's hollow surface shakes, And is the ceiling of her sons ; O'er devastation we blind revels keep : "Whole buried towns support the dancer's heel." This great globe on which we dwell seems to be as much a sar- cophagus of the dead as it is a home of the living. What are all its graves, but various compartments in this one great and 28 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. silent mausoleum ! The ashes of Abraham mingle somewhere with those of Martin Luther; and that of Martin Luther may mingle somewhere with those of Napoleon ; and the dust of Na- poleon may, in a few years, mingle with the dust of a far better man that has recently passed from the stage of life to the stage of glory — Thomas Chalmers. Thus the world is a vast sarcopha- gus ; its graves are its chambers, or compartments ; and those compartments are not able to prevent the dust of all from min- gling together. But not only the remains of those who never had a quarrel — who lived in friendship, and died in peace — but of those who were sworn and implacable foes, by a great law must mingle and blend most peacefully together. The ashes of Martin Luther and of Leo the Tenth, who hated him so heartily — the dust of Wickliflfe and that of those who cast his body into the stream which bore it to the silent sea- — the dust of John Knox and that of Queen Mary, must blend and lie right silently and peacefully together. Thus, not only the dust of friends, but of bitter foes, as if to cast reproach upon their feuds, must blend and mingle together in spite of all their repulsions. It is now dead — disintegrated — mingling with all streams — mixing with all elements — blown by all winds ; yet there is not a particle of that dust, incorporated with trees, mingled with the sea, or buried in the earth, that shall not hear the first tone of the resurrection trumpet, and become instinct with a life that can never end; for, when the trumpet shall sound, each one that died, whether he died in Christ or not, shall, each in his own order, come forth. Some shall rise from the depths of the fathomless sea, and come ; some shall cast off their only winding- sheet, the sands of the desert, and come. The Pharaohs shall leap forth, when they hear that peal, from their pyramidal cham- bers ; the Ptolemies shall start from beneath their marble monu- ments; Napoleon, and those who fought and fell beneath his banner at Jena, at Austerlitz, and at Waterloo, shall rise and gather in shivering crowds around him; the dust of Martin Luther shall be quickened at Wirtemberg, and put on the apparel suited to a citizen of the New Jerusalem ; Calvin shall rise from his grave, which is now unknown ; Oberlin and Felix Neff shall THE CONGREGATION OF THE DEAD. 20 start from their Alpine repose — some rejoicing in the hope that accompanies them to the realms of glory, others calling on the hills to cover them, and on the mountains to conceal them ; and all shall gaze as they gather together into that tremendous infinitude, the eternity that stretches before them. Brethren, you and I, if we never met in the congregation of the living before, must meet together in the congregation of the dead. Each atom of our dust "rests in hope again to rise/' "for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise." And when we stand upon that vast platform, amid that mighty surging multitude — a multitude more countless than the waves of the sea, or the leaves of the forest, or the sands upon the sea-shore — and when we take a retrospective view of all we have passed through — how poor and paltry will many things look which we have fought, and struggled, and spent our health and strength for on earth I My dear friends, seen from the judgment-seat of Christ, the most brilliant crowns will grow pale, and the proudest coronets will appear denuded of all their attractions; and thousands shall feel that the gold which we worshipped, instead of being fit to be turned into shrines and gods for us to adore, was only worthy to be turned into a pavement on which our feet should tread, in our passage to another, a better, and more glo- rious repose. This leads me to the second point that I wish to consider — that there are not only " the dead," but, distinctively, " the dead in Christ." There are three expressions used to describe our relationship to Christ. There is, first, to be "without Christ," the state of na- ture. There is, secondly, to be "in Christ," the state of grace. And there is, lastly, to be " with Christ," the state of glory. To be "without Christ," is our state by nature; to be "in Christ," is our state by grace ; to be " with Christ," is our destiny, our happy destiny hereafter. It is here implied that there are but two distinctions upon earth that are real — "in Christ," or out of Christ; and there is not a tombstone in London, on which affection has written its varied eulogy over the ashes of the beloved dead, if it had the inscrip- ^on which God would write upon it, that would not record — 3«- 30 .APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. " Dead in Christ/' or, " Dead out of Christ.'' Hence, after all, what is the real value of many of those distinctions, which may be expedient or inievitable, but about which men dispute and quarrel ? How startled will the high-churchman be at the dis- covered emptiness of those peculiarities in which he gloried ! I mean high-churchmen in the popular sense, not in the true sense; for, in the right sense of the word, I hold that I am a higher churchman than Dr. Hook or Dr. Pusey. The high-churchman is not surely the man that measures the church by the height of the steeple, but he who belongs to the congregation of the re- deemed. In this view, those who call themselves Dissenters adopt a questionable name. If it apply to separation from the Establishment, it is, at most, of no eternal moment; but if it mean dissent from the true church, the church of the redeemed, the name is a reproach. How startled will the Dissenter be, to find his Shibboleth was a Shibboleth earth-sprung, and that it died on earth, and has no place, or part, or mention at the judg- ment-seat of Christ ! And there, amazed beyond expression, will the Puseyite be, (for I trust that there are some of them who, amid all the rubbish, hold the foundation,) when he discovers that his section gave the fewest members to the church of the re- deemed in glory ; and that his candelabras, and his genuflections,, and his crosses, and his crucifixes, and his altars, were just so much wood, hay, straw, stubble, which he piled upon the true foundation ! It will not be asked, when we stand at the judgment-seat of Christ, Whence are you? — but. What are you? It will be no recommendation that you are a churchman — it will be no dis- qualification that you are a Dissenter. These distinctions will have dropped away, and perished as unreal in that light in which reality only lives. You may have been baptized — you may have belonged to the visible church — you may have been one of its ministers — you may have been a communicant — you may have been a liberal supporter of the ordinances of Christ — and yet may not have been in Christ. I believe that what will be seen and witnessed in the hereafter, will startle and surprise many par- ticipants of it. You will miss many a bold professor, whose voice you thought you would hear loudest in the choir of the THE CONGREGATION OF THE DEAD. 81 redeemed; and you will find there many a suspected one, that you in your ignorance shut out, or in your uncharitableness anathematized, highest and brightest in the number of the saved. You may find there some poor tonsured monk, with his shaven crown and rope girdle, who looked in his cell beyond the crucifix which he held in his hand, and saw in all his glory the Son of Man nailed to the cross, the only atonement, and " washed his robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'' You may find there some poor Jew, who rejected Jesus of Nazareth, the Saviour, but who, in his deep humiliation, in his sorrow and sigh- ing, and crying to be emancipated from the curse and taint of his sins, and to be at peace with God, shall discover that he held the Saviour in substance, while he recollects with sorrow that he re- pudiated him in name. We shall find there many that we cast out, whom we had no business to cast out ; and we shall miss many whom we had no right to number among them at all. All minor distinctions will then be done away ; the trappings of rank, the disputes of party, the robes, the rules, and ceremonies, will all be left behind in the grave ; and the only distinction that will appear indelible for ever will be, the living in Christ, or the dead out of Christ. Then you may ask, (and surely, if you have any interest in your own safety, you must ask earnestly,) " What is it to be in Christ?'' The language, my dear friends, is most expressive. If I am to describe it generally, I would say it is to look for sal- vation through his blood alone : to feel that if Grod were to sink me to the depths of everlasting ruin, he would not pronounce upon me a sentence greater or more severe than I have deserved, and yet to feel that if, in the name and through the righteous- ness of Christ, he were to raise me to a glory too brilliant for mortal eye to look on, and too magnificent for the human mind to conceive, Grod would not bestow upon me a boon greater than Christ's merits entitle me to. To be in Christ, if I may para- phrase it, is to feel that Christ paid all we owed to God, and pur- chased for us far more than God owed to us — that he is our only way to know God, and the only way for God to receive us-^that he is the only channel for us to reach God, or for God to come down to us ; it is to feel that Christ's sacrifice is the only ex- fuiriTEESiT?; V^^oi 32 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. piatory sacrifice for sin, and that it is not only access to God, provided by infinite wisdom, but that it is the very expression and evidence of God's love to us. Our Saviour is precious, not simply as making it possible for God to forgive us, (just as it is made possible for the queen of England to forgive the sentence of a convict, and to remit it, but, inasmuch as he shows that God will not merely forgive us, and leave us to live the lives of for- given convicts, at a distance, but that he will take us to his bosom as justified, and redeemed, and converted, and adopted sons. The expression " in Christ'^ is a very peculiar one ; and I am quite sure that you may see, by the simple contrast which I will make, that it is not an ordinary expression, denoting merely, as some think, that we are to follow Christ. We do not say a pupil is in his teacher, a patient in his physician, a son in his father, or a servant in his master ; we say the pupil follows his teacher, the patient follows his physician, the son obeys his father, the servant serves his master. Then if this peculiar expression, *'in Christ," is constantly employed in Scripture, if the ordinary phraseology of life is designedly outraged by a strange and un- couth expression of relationship, are we not warranted in infer- ring that there is some great reason for this change — something more than the Sociniau means by following Christ ? The Scrip- tures generally employ plain language ; and, when strange ex- pressions are used, it is to describe a doctrine that is strange, or far above the routine of mere humanity. It is, in short, one of a series of phrases allusive, I believe, to known and expressive symbols. I find that all in the ark were saved, while all out of it were lost. What would have been the use of any antediluvian sinner, a strong swimmer, determining to follow, but not to enter the ark ? He might swim for a few hours, but it would not be long before he sank. Now, an antediluvian sinner following the ark by swimming, in order to escape drowning, is just like a So- cinian sinner trying to be saved from wrath by merely following Christ. The allusion may be to the city of refuge. The man- slayer, outside, might be smitten down and destroyed, but the moment he got inside he was safe ; while the criminal pursued by the avenger of blood, was rushing to the city of refuge, if he THE CONGREGATION OF THE DEAD. a^. was caught on his way to it, he would be slain ; but the instant he got into it, he would be safe. Thus following Christ is not enough : you must be in Christ, as the criminal was in the city of refuge, as Noah and his family were in the ark ; and then the winds may blow, and the waters may rise, or the avenger may pursue, but 'Uhere is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.'' My dear friends, are you in this state ? Are you not merely believers in Christ as a teacher, but ^' in Christ" as your glorious sacrifice, your eternal refuge, your priest, your altar, your all ? Are you connected with him as the branch is connected with the vine — united to him, incorporated with him, one with him, in life, in death, and in eternity ? Union with Christ is not a mere figure of speech — it is not a metaphor : it is a reality ; so much so, that whatever I do is done through Christ's life pervading me. If I lift my hand to the right or to the left, upward or downward, it is in virtue of that life which is in my body j and if I give a penny to the poor, or subscribe to a school, or do any other good work, it is in virtue of that life which is implanted in my soul by Christ, and which enables me to say with the apostle, " I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Do you believe that ? Can you feel this to be reality ? Can you peril your everlasting prospects upon it ? If so, blessed are you when living, and blessed shall you be when dead ; if you are not so, you may be Churchman or Dissenter — you may be what you like, or what you please to call yourselves — unhappy are you in life, and" unhappy will you be in death — ^you are out of Christ. This leads me, in the third place, to refer to the benediction that is pronounced upon those who are here said to be in Christ. Then, if the dead in Christ be blessed, they do not cease to be. Some Christians have taken up the idea (and I think it is a very absurd one) that there is a cessation of life at death till the re- surrection-day — that when we die we cease to be until the body is raised again from the dead. Certainly there is no warrant for this in Scripture. Can you say they are " blessed" that cease to be ? Passive repose, unconscious sleep, suspension of life, and unconsciousness, are not surely elements of bliss. If this were heaven, then I could not conceive the blessing pronounced to 34 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. apply to it. But I consider the idea of the future state to be a very different thing to that. I cannot conceive of happiness without conscious life. Annihilation is not blessedness. The elevation of mind, the expansion of intellect, the enlargement of all the powers, the removal of the shackles that confine them, the spread of the souFs unfettered wings, to soar and revel in un- ceasing life, and approach evermore to God without cessation — this is happiness. But we believe that " absent from the body'^ is '^present with the Lord." An apostle said this by the in- spiration of that Lord, and we must believe it. They are, then, " blessed" that thus " die in the Lord ;" and to be so they must live so. When a Christian dies, the eye of the mourner looks on the pale face of the dead, and weeps ; for there is nothing on earth so unnatural, and sorrowful too, as a dead face. Death is not natural : it is most unnatural — it was never meant to be — it is an infraction of the laws of God's universe -, and the dead pale face always seems to me to reflect the shadow of some great disaster, and to have revealed on it the lesson — " The wages of sin is death." The natural eye looks upon that face and weeps ; but the Christian looks beyond the ashes of the dead, follows the emancipated soul, as it rises on outspread and untiring pinion, and exclaims, "Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord." In the case of a Christian, the scythe of death cuts down nothing but what he would leave be- hind : it merely removes the restrictions and the limits that re- press its energies, that the disenthralled and emancipated spirit may soar and rise to God, as its eternal home. "Blessed," then, "are the dead which die in the Lord." Often have they been cursed when living; but now they are " blessed" when dead. They met with many a trial, and encoun- tered many an obstruction on earth. No man ever did any thing that was good without meeting with terrible obstructions. The price you must pay for every kindness you bestow is ingratitude ; and the enduring of vicarious sacrifice or suffering seems to be perpetuated still ; one generation suffering that its successor may have privilege, or happiness, or peace. It is when the noblest deeds are done^ and the holiest lessons taught, the greatest perse- THE CONGREGATION OF THE DEAD. 35 cution breaks forth. But the anathema of the world never yet put down or scathed the children of God. It has only made them rise with a greater energy, and given to their spirit a nobler elas- ticity, and nerved their high souls for more heroic enterprises. In fact, persecution never yet, in the history of humanity, put down a good cause, and it never built up a bad one. It is a law which Qod himself has made, that the arrow which is shot from the persecutor's bow shall rebound and pierce the persecutor's heart. And hence, if the sword and the fagot are ever to be employed in our warfare, let the one be unsheathed and the other kindled by the foes, not by the friends of Jesus. The cause of Christ disclaims them. " For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual, and mighty through God." Well, if these believers have been accursed of men, they have ^^died in the Lord," and are " blessed'^ of God. We may have lost them, and the^ rffay be lost to us ; but they are joined to God, to happiness, and to heaven. When I stand over the ashes of the dead, amid all the freezing doubts that the skeptic would cast, like cold sha- dows, upon their grave — amid the torn feelings that relationship is conscious of — amid the din and noise of the wheels of this world, I can yet hear piercing the firmament, and reverberating from the cold, dark chamber below, the " still small voice" — ^^ Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth : yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and theii works do follow them." They are "blessed," for none can effectually condemn them. Memory may remind, the law may pronounce, Satan may accuse, conscience may smite. But it is only for a moment, for ^' it is God that justifieth ; who is he that condemneth ?" "Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect ? It is Christ that ditid, yea, rather, that is risen again." They are " blessed," for they are removed to the distance of infinitude from all evil. They are in the realms of infinite purity. No corruption can stain them, no iniquity vex them, no foul pollu- tions defile them; they can neither be tempted, nor tried, nor suffer any more. The door that shuts the believer in, shuts out all sin and sorrow for ever. They are " blessed," for there will be there the restoration of 36 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. suspended intercourse with those they loved. Venerable fathers whom they bore to. the tomb, will meet them there — their gray heads literally " crowns of glory.''^ The babe that dropped from *hy bosom, .Christian mother, like a premature fruit from the le of life in spring, will meet thee in the realms of glory. The lerished friends you loved will gather around you, and the broken circles which you deplored will be completed ; and they will ap- pear no longer capable of misconstruction, or open to any of the imperfections common to humanity. Perfect happiness and per- fect purity shall reign there. There will not be a spot upon which you will be able to lay the finger and say — '^Here I suffered.'^ The names ''widow'^ and ''orphan" shall not be mooted in heaven, or recorded in the vocabulary of the blessed. Not a tear is shed there — not a sorrow felt ; all is happy, because all is holy 3 and over the fairest and most fragrant blossom hangs the superscription of ''eternal." They are "for ever with the Lord :" in Christ upon earth, and " with the Lord" in heaven. It is added as an explanation of this blessedness — " They rest from thair labours." This world is the scene of ceaseless labours ; its highest are weary and heavy laden. You recollect the passage — " There remaineth therefore a rest for the people of God." In the original the passage reads — " There remaineth therefore a Sahhatismos for the people of God;" literally translated, " a Sabbath-keeping." Though another word is used here, yet we may read it, " they Sahhatise from their labours, and their works do follow them." In other words, h(?aven is not the pagan elysium, or the Mohammedan paradise, but a glorious rest, an everlasting Sabbath, for the people of God. Yet, by a strange contradiction it is said — " And they rest not day and night." They "rest," and yet they "rest not." It is a place of endless repose, and yet a place of endless activity. Their energy is their enjoyment. Our Sabbaths upon earth ought to be, as they were meant to be, shadows cast upon the world as from above, foretastes of the great Sabbath of eternity. I look upon the Sabbath as a kind of bivouac preparatory to the battle of the week; an occasional and recurring respite from Caesar pre- liminary to the everlasting Sabbath that will be enjoyed by the people of God I look on it as a beautiful island cast into the THE CONGREGATION OF THE DEAD. 37' roaring and restless torrent of immortality ; and standing upon that island, we can look at the rush and listen to the din of the eddying world, and see leaping down from above in undimmed splendours the sunshine of heaven, and hear from afar the unspent chimes of an eternal harmony. The Sabbath is too precious to be given up } humanity will not surrender it, Christianity will not let it go. It will be revered by the Christian as long as the world shall last. The poor man would be the greatest sufferer, were there no Sabbath. What ! would you give up that blessed day of jubilee, on which the highest and lowest can assemble in the house of G-od, and say, "We are peers;'' when the rich and the poor can meet together, and feel the ennobling and kindling senti- ment of a common brotherhood — " The Lord is the maker of us all?'' Part with your beautiful cathedrals, but part not with your precious Sabbath. Man built the cathedral, God hallowed the Sabbath ; the one might be the injury of the beautiful — the other would be the loss of the essential. An irreparable catastro- phe, an awful judgment, a bitter bereavement; humanity and Christianity together would weep over the extinction of the Sab- bath, as the setting-in night of its brightest day. Architects can build new and better cathedrals — princes can no more make the Sabbaths than they can create the world. Make your Sabbaths on earth, as far as influence, example, and advice can extend, to be cherished by all that are dear to you, and your Sabbaths in glory will be a ^' rest from your labours." What, let me here ask, is the way to get the Sabbath best observed? I think the interference of legislation is a good method ; but it seems very strange to me, that the Christians of this country should be always bothering the House of Commons about these matters, when they hold the matter in their own hands. Let the nation make the Sabbath visible, and no post- office or parliament will touch its sacredness. Let us make our Sabbaths what they ought to be, and the Legislature must make them so too ; and I trust the day will soon dawn upon the world, when, in the reflection and repercussion of all that is around us. Sabbaths beautiful in your homes, and peaceful in your streets, and hallowed in your sanctuaries, will make Sabbaths felt and SKOOND SEBIES. ^ 38 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. hallowed in the House of Commons, and senators afraid to utter one word tending to their desecration. But it is added; ^^ that they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them." What a precious truth is this ! " Their works do follow them !'' If a Romanist had written this, it would have been, ^' Their works precede them 3" but God wrote it, and therefore ^' their works do follow them." In other words, our works do not go before us to heaven, because we enter there wholly through grace ] but " our works do follow us," as the retinue that speaks to the universe, that we have brought forth the fruits of the Holy Spirit of God. We are admitted into heaven because of Christ's righteousness ; we are seen to be fit for heaven by the fruits we have brought forth. His righteousness imputed is our title — the Spirit's right- eousness imparted is our qualification; Christ's work our right — the Spirit's work our fitness ; and the fruits we bring forth the evidence of both. We are justified by an imputed righteousness — we are sanctified by an imparted righteousness ; these two are inseparable. Our works, then, do not precede us — they follow us. The only thing that goes before us to heaven is the Lamb ; ''these are they ihfit follow the Lamb;" and the only things that come after us are our works. Thus you go to heaven between two — Christ, the king of glory precedes you, to open its gates for all believers — the good you have done follows after you, to give evidence, from the light that is reflected from behind, that you belong to the company of the redeemed, and are children of God ; and fit to take your place and part in the choirs of the redeemed around the throne. Take care, then, you do not let these interchange places. When you hear persons say, that we, evangelical ministers, are against good works, tell them it is either a misrepresentation or a com- plete misconstruction of our views. I insist upon good works and almsgiving to every Christian cause — clothing the naked — feed- ing the hungry — circulating the Bible — aiding missions, just as strongly as any human being can insist upon them ; but then I do not invert the pyramid, and try to make it stand upon its apex instead of its base — I put things in their right place, Christ before, and the works afterward. If you follow the works, you will bo THE CONGREGATION OF THE DEAD. 0* found among those to whom Christ shall say — " I know you not;" for the fairest of them all has more of evil in it than you know ; but if they follow you, they occupy their rightful place, and you will thus necessarily follow Him who gave the works all their life, their continuance and beauty, and you all your title to that rest that remains for the people of God. What a beautiful and blessed thing is the gospel of Jesus ! Precious is the Bible — more precious still the gospel it contains ; precious are our Sabbaths — more precious still the everlasting Sabbath. Love the gospel ; live under the influence of the gos- pel ; spread the gospel ; if needs be, die rather than part with the gospel. It teaches us purely to live — it teaches us peacefully to die. An aged Christian's death has no terror in it — very little cloud on it ; it is that beautiful evening twilight, that mingles so imperceptibly with the twilight of the eternal morn, that the night between is scarcely felt. ^^ Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth : yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours ; and their works do follow them." How thankful should we be that we have been delivered from the superstition and bondage of the Church of Rome ! Her best and most exemplary members, according to her theology, must enter at their death into a state of purgatorial torture, purifying according to its intensity of agony and its length of duration. Their best and holiest dead must enter into this middle state ; it is this prospect that lies inevitably before them. Hence no Romanist dies triumphant — no halo surrounds his head, no song of victory escapes from his lips. The blazing fires, not the glories of heavcL.^ burn before his eyes; and instead of resting from labour at the h*ur of death, he feels that the keenest portion of his sufferings is yet to come. It is not so with the true Chris- tian, whose faith and hopes are drawn, not from the traditions of men, but from the inspired oracles of God. He regards the death-struggle as the last of his labours, and his exit from the body as his instant entrance into peace. Whether he is cut down in the midst of his days, or dies daily in long and lingering de- cay — whether he slips the coil of life at once, or sees and feels it gradually unwind, he cherishes the sure and imperishable hope of an abundant entrance into joy. He sees on the last margin 40 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. of time, the interlacing margin of eternity; hears, borne from afar, the sounds of his welcome, and tastes in the cup of death the sweets of immortality and life. Let us cleave to that blessed book which contains the gospel, and serves as a lamp to our path through the valley of the shadow of death. By its instrumentality, children now understand what the greatest ancient philosophers had no conception of. That blessed book rekindles in the heart extinguished love, and relights and trims the lamp of immortality — it guides the judgment — in- spires the affections — restores the Sabbath of the soul — it over- arches the dreariest caverns of despair with the bow of promise, and rings benedictions in the tombs of the dead. It alone opens to us an avenue from earth to heaven, and plants in its darkest and dreariest nook the radiant and imperishable inscription — " Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord." m ^ *jn^^w^WP-*"-- LECTURE III. THE NEW JERUSALEM. " And I saw a new heaven and a new earth : for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away ; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven say- ing, 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. . . . And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, havii^ the glory of God : and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper-stone, clear as crystal ; and had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel. On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates ; and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. And he that talked with me had a golden reed to measure the city, and the gates thereof, and the wall thereof. And the city lieth four-square, and the length is as large as the breadth : and he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand furlongs. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. And he measured the wall thereof, an hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the mea- sure of a man, that is, of the angel. And the building of the wall of it was of jasper : and the city was of pure gold like unto clear glass. And the founda- tions of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first foundation was jasper; the second, sapphire ; the third, a chalcedony; the fourth, an emerald; the fifth, sardonyx; the sixth, sardius; the seventh, chrysolite; the eighth, beryl; the ninth, a topaz; the tenth, a chrysoprasus ; the eleventh, a jacinth ; the twelfth, an amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls ; every several gate was of one pearl : and the street of the city was of pure gold, as it were transparent glass." — Revelation xxi. 1-3, 10-21. The scenes first recorded in this chapter plainly follow tl|^ advent of Christ, and as plainly precede the long expected Millennium. First of all, as it seems to me, the earth will he purified hy the last fire, as it is written in 2 Pet. iii. 10 : " The day of the Lord'' — that is, the day in which is fulfilled the promise of hia 4* 42 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. coming — " will come as a thief in the night ;'' or as it is else, where written, ^' Behold, I come as a thief/' What, then, takes place on this day, " in which 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 ?" The same startling event is also described in verse 12 : " Wherein the heavens being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat." When this overflowing fire shall have wrapped the world, and consumed all that is in it, and, having done its mission, has passed away, Christ and his risen saints shall descend from their aerial glory upon the purified earth, called in verse 13, ^' the new heavens and the new earth j" and this descended company is here described as " the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her hus- band." This glorious spectacle is just the fulfilmdfit of the pro- phecy of Isaiah Ixv. 17 : ^' For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth. I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people; and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying." The Apocalyptic description in this twenty-first chapter is also the fulfilment of a kindred promise made by the mouth of Ezekiel, (chap, xxxvii. 24 :) " And David my servant (i. e. beloved servant) shall be king over them, and they shall have one shepherd : they shall also walk in my judg- ments, and observe my statutes, and do them. ... I will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore. My tabernacle, also, shall be with them : yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people." This New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, is just the sealed ones out of every kindred, and tribe, and tongue ; that is, the one hundred and forty-four thousand — those who had '^ washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the iamb" — the sackcloth-wearing witnesses, once all but extirpated from the earth — " a woman," once concealed in the wilderness — now coming down in their resurrection and holy bodies, like a cloud of glory, to reign on that earth on which they suffered so much and so long. THE NEW JERUSALEM. 48 This scene is the realization of a vision thirsted for during eighteen centuries, Rom. viii. 19 : ^^ the manifestation of the sous of God/' ''the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body;" and als3 of John xvii. 21 : " That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee ; that they also may be one lu us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me;" anu also of Gral. iv. 26 : "Jerusalem, which is above, is free, and iB the mother of us all/' The old Jerusalem is thus forgotten in the richer glories of the new, and the first paradise lost in the lasting splendours of the second, and the ''vision of peace" is no longer prophecy, but performance and blessed fact y all this erec- tion of glory, magnificence, and beauty, shall rest and shine on that very earth which Satan has usurped, and sin has harassed, and clouds and darkness have hung over for so many thousand years of pilgrimage and evil. Grod's ancient city, the dim type, was called by expressive names: "the city of the great King;" "city of God;" "beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth." These expectations, it is plain, exceed the scene actual- ized, even in Solomon's reign, in which they had no adequate counterpart ; they were rays shot from the future ; they had their rest on the then present, but their light from the future. Ancient Jerusalem wrecked the divine idea of a cif?/, just as Adam wrecked God's great idea of a man ; but God's purpose is frustrated in neither — it moves over their respective ruins to its perfection, and they both find that perfection — the one in Christ, and the other in the New Jerusalem. In this chapter of the Apocalypse, therefore, we have dim ancient predictions fully realized, prelibations and foretastes of distant blessedness fully met, shadowy outlines filled up, and the deep yearnings of humanity, and the fervent prayers of saints, responded to in music, in beauty, and in glory. It is at this period that (Heb. xii. 22) " ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven; and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made per- fect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant." This city reveals its origin in our presenting its definition. It 44 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. is not an emanation from the earth, but something deposited on it. It does not grow like a tree out of the earth : it comes down like a divine thought, perfect in all its structure, radiant with glory, the creation of God, a thing of heaven to adorn the earth, a meeting place for Grod and them that are his. It is called a Holy City. This is the secret element of its perpetuity, and beauty, and excellence. Holiness is immortality. ^^ Nothing that defileth can enter/' and, therefore, nothing that can ori- ginate and feed decay can fasten it on. There is no weed, no brier, nor thorn, nor upas-tree, in that regenerated soil; and, therefore, there is no root of bitterness, nor bitter bud of wo. It is called, also, by St. Paul, " the city of the living God." Athens was the city of Minerva, and Rome of Mars, and were the cities of dead gods ; but this is the city of the living God, supported, sustained, and enriched by his presence, and pervaded throughout its universal structure by his living energy and love. It is also called in verse 10, ^^ that great city'' — great, not in its material, but moral grandeur — great in the glory that hovers over and around it, like a rainbow round a fountain \ having all the ele- ments of enduring greatness, because inhabited by the ^' Great King." It is described as Jerusalem^ or, as this word means, the vision of peace. The first vision perished in the storms and clouds of war, and even in its noonday splendour it was an im- perfect type of this new and glorious scene. Then the Sun of Righteousness had risen but a few degrees above the horizon, and Jerusalem, and all its towers, projected a long and cold shadow over the earth. But in the days of the New Jerusalem, that sun has ceased to be horizontal, and has become vertical, and all sha- dow is sunk beneath the glory that streams down, uninterrupted by passing cloud, and yet neither scorching the earth, nor weary- ing its inhabitants. It is also called the New Jerusalem, not only as a contrast to the old, but as ever continuing to be new. It is like the " new song" which hovers perpetually round it, as musical and sweet, after it has been heard a thousand years, as when it first sounded in the sky. Infinite things alone never pall upon the taste, in- iinite beauty never grows old, and infinite excellence never wearies. Our homes on earth have but alloyed delights, and the fairest of THE NEW JERUSALEM. 45 them all are not attractive enough to render change unnecessary ; but the scenes and beauties of the future city shall never lose their lustre, or diminish their attractions. At its commencement, and in all its after cycles, this song shall be sung : ^' We have a strong city. Salvation will God appoint for walls and for bulwarks.'' It is next described as having in it "the glory of God/' this is plainly the shechinah, or that bright glory that burned on the mercy-seat between the cherubim in the ancient temple, and was to th-e Jew the visible and standing evidence of the favour and presence of God. It shone on the pillar of fire in the wilderness, burned on Horeb in the bush, and was plainly a ray from Him who is the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person. There is, therefore, no doubt that the Lord Jesus will be manifested in the New Jerusalem, in some such glorious manner, so that every eye shall see him. This idea is still more fully brought out in verse 3 : " 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.'' This is plainly an allusive reference to Ex. xl. 34 : " Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle." This dwelling of God with us in glory in the New Jerusalem, is the fulfilment of a promise made 1490 years before the advent of Christ, in Leviticus xxvi. 11 : " And I will set my tabernacle among you ; and I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people ;" and also of another, pronounced 587 years before the advent of Christ, in Ezek. xxxvii. 22 : " Ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and ye shall be my people, and I will be your God." " He will dwell with them," is, literally, " He will be the she- chinah among them ;" the word meaning strictly to be a dwelling. Thus, the declaration in the commencement of the Gospel of St. John, for instance, is a clear allusion to the shechinah : " The Word was made flesh, and dwelt (or shechinaed) in the midst of us." ^^ Go up to the mount, and I will be the glory," (i. e. the 46 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. shechinah.) Haggai i. 8. " That the glory may dwell," i. e that the shechinah may be '^ in our land/' Psalm Ixxxv. 10. Just as the glory took up its residence in the tabernacle, so the Body, from which it was a reflected splendour, which is Christ, the unquenchable shechinah, will take up his residence in the New Jerusalem. This is " the glory to be revealed," to which the apostle alludes ; and " the King in his beauty," of whom the prophet speaks; and the fulfilment of the promise, or rather hope, "we shall see him as he is." We have Christ in the midst of us now in his special and gracious presence, and we see him " through a vail darkly," as he is enjoyed by " two or three met in his name ;" " whom, having not seen, we love, and whom, though now we see him not, yet believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." Some saw him as the " man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;" others saw him in his re- surrection body, all beauty and perfection. Stephen saw him '^ at the right hand of God," in his own essential glory. Some may be standing here who shall see him in his triumphant pro- cession from the skies. " He cometh with clouds." " To them that look for him he will come again the second time without sin unto salvation." In verse 11th it is said, " Her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal." The word used for light is not ^a>? nor Xu/vog, the ordinary ex- pressions, but ^5i4 g^^T'- ^■ LECTURE IV. THE SORROWLESS STATE. "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. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes ; and there shall be no more death, neither sor- row, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain ; for the former things are passed away." — Revelation xxi. 3, 4. We have seen the descent of the New Jerusalem, and endea- voured to describe that peculiarity of it — ^^ the tabernacle of God with men/' or the disclosure of the shechinah in the midst of it : I now proceed to consider the emphatic relationship which is to be enjoyed by its people in the midst of it — " they shall be his people, and he shall be their God." This promise has been re- peated since the world began. Patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, all have heard it. We are his by his own sovereign and everlasting choice : " I have chosen you, ye have not chosen me /' " chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world,'' thus we were the objects of distinguishing mercy before the world began; and eternity to come, our promised home, is only the response to the aboriginal purposes of eternity past, the epoch of actualizing of our predestination to "an inheritance incorruptible and unde- filed, reserved in heaven for us." I do not here make an attempt to explain this truth ; election lies far above the reach of humanity; it is a mystery, and I merely assert it as the unequivocal announcement of everlasting truth, reiterated and repeated, calmly and clearly in Scripture, as the expression of the mind and purpose ot God. Whether we can harmonize it with our responsibility — another great doctrine — or not, cannot affect its truth. God has said it, and it must be true. As such, and on such authority, let us receive it ; and " what we cannot see now, we shall clearly se^ and know here- after." Man's responsibility and God's sovereignty arc truths— 66 APOCALYPTIC gKETCHES. eternal truths ; their harmony is real, but not audible to us ; our ears are too deaf, our perceptions too blunt. The epoch of their contact — their focus — is not yet arrived : it will be ; wait pa- tiently. We are the Lord's by purchase; we are not our own, but bought with a price, the precious blood of a Lamb without spot. Nothing we have is freehold ; he has redeemed us and all we have to himself. We are property, but not man's. The brightest gem in the Redeemer's crown is the purchase of his precious death, an evidence of its virtue, a trophy of Calvary, and a mirror to an admiring universe of the majestic truth which placed it there. We are his by preoccupation ; he has sent his Holy Spirit to take possession of his purchase — to inlay each soul with holiness — to keep each body as a hallowed temple, and each heart as a shrine of '^whatsoever things are true, and beautiful, and just, and holy :" " If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.'^ Christ in heaven prepares a place for us, and his Spirit within us prepares us for that place. ^' This people have I formed for myself" is the inscription on every soul that shall dwell for ever in the New Jerusalem. We are his by likeness. If this be so now, it shall be more so then. Prejudices and imperfections stain the beauty and dim the lineaments of that glorious likeness now upon us ; so much so, that it is doubted, disputed, denied ; but then we know that we shall be visibly like him, for ^' we shall see him as he is." The sons of God are now hidden — 'Hhe world knoweth us not." But then shall be the era of the " manifestation of the sons of Grod" — that era for which creation groans; there shall then be no difficulty in distinguishing whose we are, for Christianity's grand autograph shall be legibly upon us. The great truths imprinted in our hearts shall then have their illuminated counterparts upon our faces, and our sonship shall be no more the conviction of faith, but the realization of sense and sight; all the jewels shall be seen — the living stones, the peculiar treasure ; the saints of God shall be beheld no longer through a glass darkly, but face to face. It is also added, "God shall be their God," or as it might be THE SORROWLESS STATE. ^ read, " God himself Immanuel, their God/' God shall be seen in that present Christ so clearly, so fully, so gloriously, as we have never seen him before. That love, that once wept, and suffered, and died — that poured out itself in tears, in groans, in agonies, in death — that sympathy, that wearied not in the sun- shine, and that faltered not in the storm, and exhausted itself in no circumstances; that mercy that absolved the guilty; that power that calmed the hurricane, healed the sick, and raised the dead — whatever in Deity is mighty, benevolent, gracious, good — shall be luminous in the Lamb of God upon his throne ; and all this shall be ours — -ours ever — unchangeably ours ! This is the height, and essence, and coronal of all the promises; it is the focal point in which they all meet; it is the fulfilment of our deepest desires. That crown, that inheritance in light, that city of God, shall be ours ! All this is good, but it is not all good unless God shall be ours ; and it will be so. This is better than all ; for it comprehends and exceeds all. If one say, " I will be your friend,' ' we expect he will lend us all which that word com- prehends; of the lawyer, the minister, the physician, who so pledge themselves, we expect the enjoyment of the excellences of each. Even so, if God say, ^' I will be to you a God," we expect that all his attributes will be the wall around us ; and so it will be : everlasting light and glory, and wisdom, and beauty shall ever flow into us like a sea ; each face shall be more glorious than the countenance of Moses. Nothing short of this would satisfy us ; nothing less than God can fill the vast capacities of an im- mortal soul. His gifts, and graces, and blessings cannot fill it — Deity alone can. It was so meant at the beginning. This in- heritance shall neither change nor fail. It is beyond the reach of the tides and transformations of time : ^^ I am the Lord, I change not :" the highest excellency of the creature may change — " all flesh is grass;" — " the world, and the fashion of it, passeth away." God remains an unchangeable, inexhaustible, and ever- lasting inheritance; overflowing with joy after the lapse of a thousand millenniums. Truly is it written, " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor heart conceived, what God is to his people ! Happy art thou, Israel ! Who is like unto thee, people, 68 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. saved by the Lord, the shield of thy strength, and the sword of thine excellency V Do we so hope ? Can we feel and say so ? Is this our re- lationship ? And this Grod, who shall be our 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/' Such is a prophecy of the happiness of those who are the citi- zens of the New Jerusalem. Whatever is expressive of human enjoyment — of immunity from whatever grieves and disquiets now — ^is here made tributary to this apocalypse of the future glory. The removal of tears is a blessed promise; but mere removal is not all that is here meant; the words are literally rendered, " Grod shall wipe out Q^aXe)(pei) all tears (literally every tear) from their eyes." This means that God will not comfort in sorrow, or dry up tears as they start into the eye, which is our experience here — life being alternately tears and transports, weep- ing and rejoicing — but that 1^ will extinguish the springs, or wipe out the very fountain of tears. Thus, tears cannot occur in the New Jerusalem ; there are no springs of tears in that city, no sources of weeping, no roots of bitterness, no elements of sorrow. In this dispensation tears have innumerable and inexhaustible springs. No countenance gazes on the sky, on which tears have not found a channel. " In the world ye shall have tribulation," is a prophecy about the fulfilment of which there is no dispute ; it has its fulfilment in all homes, and circumstances, and centuries, and all sorrowfully attest it. Look where you like in this age, and you will see springs of tears ; look where you like in the New Jerusalem, and you will not find one single spring of tears. Those losses and disappointments which are the occurrences of every day, will be impossible in the Millennium. We shall no more behold sunshine suddenly enveloped in clouds, and property the accumu- lation of years of industry suddenly swept away, and the heirs of plenty suddenly made orphans — beggars ! Here, an unexpected turn in the tide of ever-fluctuating feeling leaves you on the sands, an irretrievable wreck ; and props you thought permanent as the rocks, melt away under unexpected and mysterious influences. THE SORROWLESS STATE. 59 There is no spot here sheltered from the storm at every point of the compass ; no pinnacle which, if raised above the floods of the earth, is not therefore more exposed to the scathing lightnings of the sky. In the New Jerusalem, the spring and sources of uncertainty, and injury, and decay, are utterly removed. Time does not waste, and eternity does not impair, the inheritance in light ; the bread of carefulness is no longer eaten, and thieves there do not break through and steal ; the crown of thorns is exchanged for the crown of glory, and the perishable tabernacle of this life for the " house not made with hands," and the dim tapers of this dispensation for the emerald glories of a better. Another spring of tears on earth are the bitter bereavements which checker the common lot. These are confined to no circle, and prevented by no circumstances ; they are the experience of humanity. Our relatives in eternity at this moment outnumber our relatives in time — the memory of the oldest is the picture- gallery of the greatest number of the dead. Widows and orphans are here the lasting evidences of tears. But " no tears" there, is the characteristic of the future. Sick- ness shall not waste, nor years wear down, nor sin taint, nor cares wrinkle, our immortal youth, nor Death find one victim for his realms, nor Disease any food to feed on, nor Sorrow a subject. No mourners shall be seen in the streets of the New Jerusalem ; no hatchments on its walls, no funeral procession amid the aisles of that cathedral whose size is all space, and no sound of weeping, or of wo, or funereal chant, amid the songs of saints and the anthems of seraphim. The deepest spring of tears shall not be there. Anxieties and vexations of innumerable kinds are our inherit- ance here. Broken hearts are in palaces, and sleepless nights are not unknown on beds of down, and bleeding hearts beat heavily beneath royal purple, and cold shadows fall at times on the brightest family. We are now too remote from the Sun of Righteousness to be exempt from these. His rising is yet too low. In the New Jerusalem these are all exiles for ever ; there is no footing for them ; no word for them j they exist in recoUec- 60 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. tion only, and are neither felt nor feared in that new and pure experience of the soul. Tears, too, are shed in this dispensation, under a sense of the presence of sin. There is felt here ^^ a godly sorrow :'^- — " the good I would I do not'' grieves many a heart. This mourning shall be audible till lost in the tones of that glorious jubilee; these tears shall sprinkle the threshold of the gates of entrance to the City of God, and then cease for ever ; the distance of infini- tude shall stretch between sin and saints in glory. Nothing that defileth can enter, or create fever in a single soul, or awaken sorrow in any breast. Want shall not tempt to do wrongly, nor passion to do rashly, nor prejudice to act blindly. There will be nothing to repent of, or to confess, and therefore no tears of peni- tence can start into light there. Tears are now shed from looking at the state of the world around us, " Rivers of tears run down my cheeks because men keep not thy law." " Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep for the slain of the daughter of my people !" Jesus even wept as he looked on Jerusalem, and Paul grieved as he beheld Athens wholly given to idolatry. The world, as it is, creates much sorrow in a Chris- tian's heart. Such tears are impossible in that happier state : there the wilderness shall rejoice, and every rock of earth shall be a part of Eden, and every inhabitant holy as happy. There are tears now at the limited spread of Christianity on earth. We grieve that eighteen centuries of its existence have left so faint an impress on the earth ; and we only lament the more when we see the reason of it in ourselves, our disputes, our selfishness, our sins. There are tears, too, at the injury done to the gospel by the inconsistencies of professing Christians. The loudest profession is found out to be the most dexterous deception — Christianity is used as a vehicle to power or wealth ; and skeptics blaspheme, and worldlings are hardened; demons triumph, and Christians weep. There are tears because we can do so little good. We see much to be done, and feel little able to do it ; our desires outrun THE SORROWLESS STATE. ^ our possibilities of good, and we feel as if we were but cumberera of the ground. The world itself, too, is a fountain of tears : '^ we who are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened/' ^^This is not our rest/' is written upon the earth that now is, by our tears; the whirlwind is not the eagle's eyrie, the ocean is not the sailor's home, nor the battle-field the soldier's rest, nor this world the Christian's. We feel desires which nothing here can gratify; capacities which created things cannot fill ; and longings aft er a purity, a permanence, a beauty, and a glory, never realized since the departing footsteps of Adam and Eve were heard at the gates of Paradise. Our souls enlarge with our possessions ; the horizon widens as we survey it, and we leave the earth just when our minds are ripest. A thousand voices cry aloud. This is not your rest ! — and responsive echoes within us repeat it. These tears shall all be wiped away — these springs of tears shall be anni- hilated. This removal is by the Lord himself; that hand that was pierced for us shall dry our tears ; he retrieved us from perdi- tion, he sustains us in our course, and crowns the tender mercy in which he first visited us, with the last act of loving-kindness — *' he shall wipe away all tears from all eyes." This removal is entire. Not one tear, or source of tear, shall be left; and, like the spring, the power and pain of weeping shall be put away. It is as certain as it is entire. As sure as you weep now, so sure ye shall be comforted. His love makes the promise; his power performs it. All his promises are ^^yea and amen;'' and such joys and consolations as you experience here — and these are not few — are prelibations, and earnests, and foretastes of that richer repast he is providing for you. A few more years of con- flict, of prayer, and patience, and hope, and ye that " sow in tears shall reap in joy" — and the glory of the result convince you how truly the apostle calculated — " I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed." In that blessed state there shall not be seen the tears of despair. Judas wept ; his tears fell like dew ; and no forgiveness carried SECOND SERIES. 6 62 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. consolation to his soul, and no hand of compassion wiped awaj tears from his eyes. Such tears are not known in the New Jeru- salem. There is there no Judas's guilt, and therefore no Judas's tears. Nor will there be there the tears of hypocrisy. We are apt to forget that a tear, as well as a kiss, can betray ; there may be as little sorrow in the one as affection in the other. Saul might be found among the prophets to-day, and among the peni- tents to-morrow, and a hypocrite in both. There shall be no tears at a sense of sin in our hearts, for it shall be put away utterly and for ever ; nor at the experience of plague and famine, its stern avengers, for these have no place in that glorious city ; nor even the feeling of an absent Lord, who seems often on earth to withdraw himself, for there we are for ever with the Lord ; nor at the wickedness of our own familiar friend, or the ingrati- tude of the largest recipient of our bounty, for such manifesta- tions are no part of that blessed apocalypse. The benediction that came down upon us so softly here, " Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted,'' is not heard in that state ; there we shall not ^' look on him we have pierced and weep,'' nor shall we ^^ weep when we remember Sion,'' nor " hang our harps on the willows," nor sing with sighs the Lord's song in a foreign land. Voices we have listened to with ecstasy shall never be struck dumb ; forms we have beheld with admiration amid the light of the Lamb shall never pass away. No sod shall hide from our sight the dead we love. It shall not be true then, " our days are like a shadow, and we are withered like grass.'' The transitory is lost in the eternal — the pains, the vexations, the tears of this humanity, in the pleasures, the joys, the glories of immortality. Years will heap themselves on years, and not one symptom of old age shall appear. Twice ten hundred years will roll round their millennial cycle, and there shall be no fear of dying — all the sources of fear, of sorrow, of disquiet, shall be dried up, and the grand temple of that scene where there is no temple, shall never echo a groan, or glisten with a tear. In this dispensation we are comforted in sorrow ; in the future we shall be comforted from sorrow. Perhaps your tears flow down upon the wrecks of what once was yours — precious and hard-earned. ** It is given you to suffer ;" '^ whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, THE SORROWLESS STATE. ^ and scourgeth every son whom lie receiveth/^ You are brouglit to sorrow now, that you may hereafter sorrow no more : the loss of your estate is perhaps the gain of your soul — the withering of your gourd your inducement to seek after the tree of life. Are your tears pressed out by a poignant sense of reproaches, heaped undeservedly upon you ? Do you say now, " For thy sake I have borne reproach ?" Are you therefore sad ? " If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye ; for the Spirit of glory and of Grod resteth upon you.'' A day comes when all reproach shall be rolled away like the clouds, and clear and beautiful as the stars beyond shall your spirits shine in the firmament of the new heaven. Those malevolent passions which have covered the wide earth with wrecks — pride, ambition, revenge, envy, deceit, and malice — shall be extinguished, and not one trace of the havoc they Created shall outlive the last flame. The Napoleons, and Caesars, and Alexanders of the earth are displaced, and the niches of re- nown they desecrated by their presence are filled up and made beautiful by the noble army of martyrs, the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the glorious company of the apostles. There shall exist among these not one malignant passion — across those calm brows shall not sweep the shadow of a malevolent feeling — ^in those happy hearts shall nestle no emotion but love. Reason shall be illumined with perfect truth ; affection shall be wide as love ; desire shall ever run parallel with duty, and the soul rise and soar perpetually toward infinite perfection j and this harmony of all things within with all things without shall leave no room for tears and sorrow. Names that are now memorials of glory shall be expunged from our recollection ; battle-fields, and victories, and slaughtered battalions shall be forgotten ; the discordant drum and the shrill fife shall be hushed eternally; the red eye of battle shall be closed, and the lightnings of war that have blazed over Europe, and made cities volcanoes, and nations ashes, shall be quenched for ever ; and mothers shall not weep over their slain sons, nor widows bewail the conflicts of humanity, nor refugees see from afar the ascending smoke of the flames of homestead and happy rooftree. The cause of truth shall be transferred from an appeal to the sword to peace and love. 64 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. Plague and pestilence shall not turn great capitals into tlie catacombs of the' dead, nor bleak winds and premature frosts dis- appoint the expectations of the husbandman. Hospitals for the sick, and asylums for the aged, and refuges for the destitute — these mingled memorials of the sufferings and the charities of humanity, shall live only in our reminiscences. There shall be no dread of death, nor any precursory disease. Life shall cease to be tragedy in any. To live and to be happy shall be one. Funeral chant, and grave, and cypress are gone ; a new genesis has overtaken the earth. Eden ends, as Eden began, its history. The Crescent, that has waved over so much crime and cruelty — so much guilt in power, and so sore suffering in innocence; that has treated conscience, and responsibility, and heart, and judg- ment, as if these were meant to be the passive instruments of tyranny, and neither to utter nor to feel the throbbings of indig- nant protest ', which has called ignorance religion, and fanaticism devotion, and cruelty the highest duty — shall be swept off the earth from which it has so long intercepted the pure light of heaven. That fell apostasy which grew out of the corruption of the gos- pel, and has rivalled Mohammedanism in some of its most iniqui- tous characteristics, and has made the Crucifix and the Breviary as significant of cruelty and wrong-doing as the Crescent and the Koran J which has substituted blind credulity for enlightened belief — substituted the decisions of synods for the truths of the Spirit of Grod, and relation to the church for personal union to the Lord j which has taught robbers to say the apostles' creed before they sally forth on their unholy mission, and to render thanks to the Virgin Mary over their plunder ; which stained the streets of Paris with tears and blood on St. Bartholomew's day, and the stones of Smithfield on earlier occasions ; which has made its places of power Aceldamas, and has furnished the materials of the saddest chronicles in the history of nations — shall be cast, like a millstone, into the depths of the sea, and thus cease to be the scourge of men, the persecutor of the saints, and the dis- honourer of Christ. The Granges shall no more bear to the sea the ashes of widows consumed on the funeral pyre of their husbands ; nor shall tho THfi SORROWLESS STATE. ^• car of Juggernaut crush its wretched devotees ; nor shall the gory cimiter, or the blazing torch, depopulate the hamlets of India. This wo-struck earth shall be emancipated from this thraldom, its groans shall cease, and its last pang be the birth-throe of a new and more glorious scene. The last shock that loosens all the kings of the earth from their thrones, shall serve only to clear the way for the approach of the Prince of the kings of the earth ; and the flame that wraps this earth in its fire-shroud, shall only light believers to their millennial rest ; and that holy hand which sweeps from the New Heaven and New Earth every defiling element, and whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie, shall wipe away all tears from all the eyes of them who are to gaze with unspeakable joy upon that restored and regenerated creation, in which this song shall be sung with an emphasis and fulness with which it has never been sung before : " Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth; make a loud noise and rejoice and sing praise. Let the sea roar the fulness thereof — the world and they that dwell therein. Let the floods clap their hands, let the hills be joyful together before the Lord; for he cometh to judge the earth : with righteousness shall he judge the world, and the peo- ple with equity.'' ^^ There shall be no more death.'' Here Death revels. The dead in our world outnumber our living — there are more graves than houses — the inhabitants below the soil are far more nu- merous than those who are above it. Death is in the palace, in the hall, in the hovel — the country and the city — in mountain and valley — in all seasons and in all soils — ^in ripeness and decay — ^in the withered grass, the blasted flower, the wasted rock, the tideless heart. None are beyond his reach, and none are beneath his notice. The brow that is smooth and beautiful to-day, shall in a few years be grooved out with wrinkles, like the brown sea- sand which the tide of life is leaving. Life, like water, finds its level in the grave ; and its fall is just enough to turn the wheel of life. But in that new and glorious state, flower and fruit shall bloom in amaranthine beauty ; its loveliest thing shall last the longest ; its streams shall flow in immortality, its people live for ever. Widowhood and orphanage, and disease and death, are 6* at APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. unknown. Life shall be the everlasting heritage of the saints of God — a life of joy, of holiness, of happiness, and peace to all. The cessation of tears is placed on this special ground, that ^' there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.^' Death in this dispensation seizes on all things seen ; it collects its spoils from youth and age, beauty and deformity. Its foot- prints are to be traced in every department of the creation. The geologist detects the proofs of his presence in the deepest excava- tions, in subterranean chambers, in mines, in fossils, in petrifac- tions, and in gigantic remains old as the history of the present collocation of the earth. The botanist hears annually his oft-proceeding footfall in the shrill winds, and the dropping leaves, and the fading flowers. Even the astronomer thinks he sees in the moon, not the beauty of an untainted orb and an unfallen population, but evidences of gigantic wreck and wide-spread ruin, as if the attendant of the earth had felt the shock and shares in the fallen grandeur of the superior planet. In our frame it needs not the eye of the physio- logist to detect the seeds of death, or the multiplying proofs of its approach. " All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass ; the grass withereth, and the flower thereof fadeth away, but the word of the Lord endureth for ever.'' ^^ It is appointed unto all men once to die." ''Man cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down ; he fleeth also as a shadow, and con- tinueth not." But these the findings of science, and these the assertions of Scripture, shall cease to be true of that new and glorious experi- ence into which the sons of Grod shall enter. The body shall de- posit in the grave all it contracted by sin, and earth shall sur- render to its last baptismal fires all it has inherited by sin, and tree-like it ^hall flourish by the waters of life, and we shall be ever happy under its shadow. Nor shall any thing occur in the shining cycles of millennial felicity to remind us of death. " It is a world where every loveliest thing Lasts longest ; where decay lifts never head Above the grossest forms, and matter here Is all transparent substance ; the flower fades not, THE SORROWLESS STATE. 67 But every eve gives forth a fragrant light, Till by degrees the spirit of each flower, Essentially consuming the fair frame, Refines itself to air; rejoining thus The archetypal stores where nature dwells In pre-existent immortality. The beautiful die never here — Here are no earthquakes, storms, nor plagues. The skies, like one wide rainbow, stand in gold— The clouds are light as rose-leaves, and the dew Is of the tears which stars weep, sweet with joy. The air is softer than a loved one's sigh ; The ground is glowing with all priceless ore, And glistening with gems like a bride's bosom." Nor shall there be any more sorrow — that secret and deep sorrow which cannot find tears. Sorrow is the heir-loom of humanity ; its records are found in the tapestry of royal halls, and in the chronicles of hamlets. There are aching hearts where no tears are seen, and sorrows too deep for sighs; there are martyrs without visible fagots and flames. This, too, shall be done away, for there shall be no more sorrow. What sorrow has been felt in the hearts of parents at the wayward and criminal conduct of children ! What sorrow has circled round and crusted the spirit of ardent philanthropy, as it received ingratitude for its recompense from those for whom it suffered and sacrificed ! Who has not been forced at times and under circumstances of singular misfortune to exclaim with the patriarch, "All these things are against me I" And even those voices of consolation that have cheered and sustained us, have been voices crying in the wilderness, and bearing on their wings the wilderness air. Under its most favourable aspects — in circumstances of wealth, of honour, of freedom ; under purple, ermine, and lawn, there are heavy hearts which sorrow penetrates as does the dew the soil, and each knows best its own bitterness. Many a hand holds a cup filled from that which overflowed in Gethsemane — hesitat- ing to lift it to the lips that pray, "0 my Father, if it be possi- ble, let this cup pass from rne.^' There are brows still, about which are crowns of thorns ; and Christianity still takes up its cross and follows Jesus. Many a Shunamite woman, when asked, " Is it well with thee ? is it well with thy husband ? is it well 68 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES; with thy child ?" answers, ^' It is well," while her heart is break- ing. The sorrows of men are as varied as their circumstances. But in this new age, as no tear will rush into the eye, no sorrow will vex the heart. Here joy enters into the heart; there the heart shall enter into joy. Our days, like the hours on the sun- dial, shall be measured by sunshine. "The ransomed of the Lord shall come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads ; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.'' The whole brood of sin shall be excluded. Whatever it brought into the world shall be swept out of it; whatever man forfeited shall be restored, and that restored estate more beautiful and more precious a thousandfold. And this shall add intensely to every element of joy, that there shall be no possibility of apostasy, nor temptation to it. Set your affections on this future apocalypse of joy, of beauty, and of happiness. It is revealed, not as a specimen of poetry, or for the gratification of mere human feelings of delight, but to draw up our hearts to its clear and unclouded sunshine ; to enable us to look with comparative indifference on the gilded toys and bright glare of the things of this life, and so pass as strangers and pilgrims, looking for a city that hath foundations. Sustained and inspired by so bright a hope, we may well bear patiently the afflictions of this present life. These will only render the future more welcome, and, if possible, more beautiful by contrast. The weary traveller enjoys best his home; the child sleeps sweetest after crying. The weary Christian, who ex- perienced no respite from his conflicts on earth, and descended to the grave exhausted and all but overcome ; who passed through much tribulation ; who bled, fainted, and failed by the way — will enjoy the refreshment of that rising morning, and feel it worthy of the name by which he had often anticipated it on earth, " the rest that remaineth for the people of God." Tell others of its prospects. Show them the way. If it be precious to us, let us not try to monopolize it. We shall enjoy it just in proportion as we labour to extend it to others ; it grows by diffusion ; it decreases by hoarding. 69 lA LECTURE V. ALL THINGS NEW. ** He that sat upon the throne said. Behold, I make all things new. And ho Baid unto me^ Write : for these words are true and faithful." — Revelation xxi. 5. These words indicate the vast material transformation of which our earth will be the subject during the millennial epoch — our resurrection bodies shall not undergo a greater change. The Creator of earth, who sits on the throne, is here declared to be its Regenerator ', and by referring to Rev. v. 6, we ascertain the permanent character in which he sits upon the throne : " And I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne stood a Lamb as it had been slain,'' (wq iGUiayixho^j^ as if just slain in sacrifice.) It is therefore the Lamb upon the throne who thus makes all things new. This throned one is the most august and wondrous spectacle in heaven or earth. It is the symbol of suffering continued amid the pageantry of royal rank. He who hung upon the tree reigns on the seat of empire ; the hand holds the sceptre that once clenched the nail ; the brow wears many crowns around which was a wreath of thorns ; he who could barely find a grave has found a throne ; he whom men execrated rules over all. The crucified is seen in the glorified; the man of sorrows is not hid in the majesty of the King of kings. Thus Jesus retains within the vail, and will retain for ever, the marks of suffering. These traces in Him who is on the throne are the memorials of the most solemn fact ever done in time; the epochal hour of time, the central act of Providence — the crucifixion. His last cry on Calvary is thus perpetuated in multiplied echoes ; the destroyer of death is ever associated with the death by which he destroyed it. His sacrifice is too stupen- dous a fact ever to be forgotten. It remains an eternal pheno- menon. This is honour. This shame is higher, holier, brighter 70 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. than all honour. These wounds were the weapons of his victory; this suffering was the battle that ended in our salvation. Heaven is not ashamed of it, should we ? We are thankful he is thus u- throned, as he was once a crucified, Christ. If he had never « *ed, no mercy would be possible; if he had never risen and ivigned, none could reach us. His death makes our salvation possible, his life renders it actual. He bestows from the throne what he purchased on the cross, so making good as a king what he merited as a priest. It is thus that every blessing we receive is a throne blessing as well as a crown blessing. The cypress and the palm, battle and victory, shame and glory, death and life, cross and crown, are the warp and woof of that robe of righteousness which is the only costume of the Millennium. Humanity in its tenderest aspect is thus in the closest presence of Deity. The Incarnate One is there. My flesh is there. I have not only relatives — parents and children — but my Elder Brother, yea., closer than a brother, preoccupying a seat, and preparing all things new for me. It is he who says, " I make all things new.'' " By Him all things were made," sin excepted, which is a blot, an interpolation. All things — rock, mountain, river, sea, star, moon, and sun — emmet, eagle, elephant — heathbell, oak, and forest — all were made by him, and still bear indelible traces of his power, benevolence, and Godhead. We still hear his voice in the thunder, and see his glory in the lightning, and feel the pulses of his life in all that lives. At first all things were made ^'very good.'' Sin, however, entered, and death by sin, and these have marred and mutilated the fair face of things. The bright mirror is broken, but its fragments show how beauti- ful it was. The glorious temple is unroofed, and the shechinah is quenched, and its altars are cold, and weeds luxuriate in it, and all venomous reptiles crawl and breed in it ; but its dilapi- dated walls, and its broken columns, and the live sparks that leap occasionally from the smouldering ruin, indicate in some degree what it was. It shall not be left so for ever. The Creator is to come forth again as its Regenerator. Deity will, as Deity alone can, remake all. He will harmonize all its discords — allay its fever — and ALL THINGS NEW. 71 (Bxpunge the foul blot of sin which was dropped upon Eden by Satan, and has radiated to its circumference. Then his autograph shall be written and made legible on all — the weakest thing shall express his power, and the most defective thing his excellency. The sea, ever gazing upward, shall mirror on its sleepless eye the immensity of God. The dew-drops on every acre of grass shall sparkle with his love, and earth itself shall be the bright jewel on which his Name shall be visibly engraven ; and tree, and plant, and flower — oak, and hyssop, and mountain daisy, shall show whatever beauty they wear is borrowed from his smile, and whatever fragrance they exhale is derived from his breath ; and they shall render to him their thanksgiving, by consecrating all they are to beautify the place of his feet ; and these new heavens and new earth shall be one grand Eolian harp, over whose strings the Spirit of God shall sweep, and draw out inexhaustible harmonies. Thus Creation shall become a meet supplement to Revelation, and Providence a commentary on both. The temple shall be open day and night, and animate and inanimate nature shall lift up ceaseless incense, and unite its thousand-voiced psalm of praise. Time shall be a perpetual Sabbath, and all things shall be worship. The sun shall have no spot, the sky no cloud, the year no autumn, earth no graves. " He said unto me. Write. '^ I showed you, in our exposition of the chapter that describes the Reformation, that "write'' means hear, attend, take special notice; and "write not," means disregard, despise the order. "Write," in this place, denotes the absolute certainty of the fulfilment of these promises : it teaches us that all obstruction shall be swept away — all opposi- tion dissolved, as an icicle in the sun. Man's word may be successfully resisted, but the word of the Lord endureth for ever. It is now written — it shall soon be actual. Hope still, despond- ing believer ! turn your weeping face eastward, and know that, notwithstanding clouds, and eclipses, and evil auguries, the Orb of day will rise in beauty, and reign for ever. " Earth shall be full of his glory ;" " all nations shall be blessed in him ;" " ho shall reign for ever." What is prophecy now shall soon be performance — words and deeds are alike to Deity. " It is done" — the prophecy is written ; the performance will soon overtake 72 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. it. The spectacle of the new heaven and the new earth shall soon emerge from the last fire. All that obstructs it shall give way. The name of Christ shall supersede every name. The first name, Christian, pronounced in scorn at Antioch — written frequently in blood — covered with reproaches, and mutilated by sects, shall be heard in music in the everlasting jubilee — it shall be inscribed on the throne, and in the light of the glory of the Lord shine with imperishable beauty. The kingdoms of this world are then the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ. As if to convince us of the ability of Him who sits upon the throne to accomplish all, he introduces himself under another name : '^ I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and ending." A shallow skepticism would seize on this as a contradiction. How can one be alpha and omega, first and last, "beginning and ending,'' at the same time ? So equally contradictory to us is the sublime description of Deity, "which is, and was, and which is to come." But are not all the ideas which relate to Deity seemingly contradictory to us? Infinity, Eternity, the Trinity, all overflow the earthen vessels that seek to contain them ; and in our pride we pronounce that a contradiction which we should only adore in humility and awe. Christ is the be- ginning and ending of all — the archetype, and the agent, and the issue of all. Whatever wisdom has been expressed by combining the letters of the alphabet — whatever truth has been told — whatever of true beauty poets have sung, or painters por- trayed, or statuaries sculptured — whatever of science and litera- ture sages have sought or universities have taught, — are all in the great alpha and omega of time and eternity. Christ is the beginning and the end of all, the harmony and perfection of all, the light and the life of all ; and even those disclosures which have been rashly quoted as inimical to his truth, and incompati- ble with his word, shall be seen to have been misapprehended by man, but never to have missed their course to his presence, or failed in their contribution to his glory. As Christ is the beginning and ending, all things shall praise him as such ; and all his people consecrated to be his priests in the New Jerusalem shall present all things to him as acceptable incense. Then shall bis command be universally obeyed— ALL THINGS NEW. 7^ "Give unto the Lord, ye kindreds of the earth, give unto the Lord glory and strength. Give unto the Lord glory due unto his name.'' " Christ will send us down the angels, And the whole earth and the skios Will be illumed by altar candles Lit for blessed mysteries ; And a priest's hand through creation Waveth calm and consecration." As all things are thus to be made new, I need scarcely repeat that all the inhabitants of that new city must be made new creatures too. " This great change begins on earth.'' It takes place now or never. It is written, " If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature ; all things are become new." If then we are the prepared denizens of the New Jerusalem, we must have passed through a great change. " We are born again." ^' We are the sons of God." Let us try ourselves in the sight of God, and by the light of his word. If in our experience all things have become new, we have found a new object of worship. Self became the centre of love and the object of worship at the fall. ^^ Ye shall be as gods !" was the successful temptation ; and ever since, the aggrandizement, and elevation, and supremacy of " I" has been the thirst of fallen nature. But now " I" gives place to ^'I am that I am," — the law of self to the love of God; and He who only is worthy fills the whole soul with his glory. A new object of pursuit also turns up, and shines before us ; it is no longer self-aggrandizement, but the glory of God. Man learns and lives the first question in the catechism — "Man's chief end is fo glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever." It is no longer the grand question. Will this profit me ? but. Is this accordant with the will, and conducive to the glory of God ? Whether he eats or drinks, he does all to the glory of God ; and thus his least and loftiest acts — his most public and most private — have each and all a sublime aim, a holy significancy. Each day grows into a Sabbath; each meal is covered with a sacramental glory; and all his thoughts and actions and intercourse with mankind become perpetual worship. He seeks first the king- dom of God and his righteousness, and walks with new and SECOND SEKIES, 7 74 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. beautiful feet the rugged paths of life, ever feeling, and ever praying — " Not my will but Thy will be done." This new creature, thus ripening for the New Jerusalem, among other things become new, has new views of God. Once God was present to his mind only as an enraged and avenging Deity, whose footprints on earth were the traces of his travelling to judgment. The waters of baptism to his eyes sparkled with wrath ; the communion-table was darkened with an awful and foreboding cloud; and every voice of God, in the sanctuary or in the world, sounded to his ear like Sinai's trumpet. The only happiness he felt was that which grew up in the chasm within him, out of which he had expelled all the impressions of God : to feel no God was his greatest peace — to run from him his ceaseless effort — and the prospect of eternity was terrible, be- cause it was the certainty of encountering God. Old things are now passed away — all has become new. He sees in God no longer the avenging God, but the reconciled Father; he hears his voice, sweet and beautiful as is the music of the spheres ; and round about his throne he sees the rainbow, and over him mercy and truth are met together, and righteousness and peace have kissed each other. He has now confidence in God ; perfect love casts out fear. God's law is felt to be perfect liberty ; his will, the happiness of His people ; and all he has revealed, the expression of his ever- lasting love. The presence of God, the new creature feels to be its chiefest joy. It is from the very* heart that he cries — *' Whom have I in heaven, but Thee ? And there is none upon the earth I desire besides Thee." In all his ways he acknow- ledges God; in all his experience he sees the shadow of the hand of God, and from all depths and heights he praises Him. In trouble he flees to God for comfort ; in prosperity he looks to Him for direction ; and at all times he walks with God as Enoch and Noah. He in whose experience all things are become new, has new views of the Lord Jesus Christ. Once he thought his name a very musical close to a prayer; a charm in trouble; an ''Open Sesame" at the doors of the kingdom of heaven, but no more. He had no spiritual and scriptural views of His character, and ALL THINGS NEW. J^ offices, and work; no right conception of what he had accom- plished, or what his atonement had done for us. Now he sees him and his work in a new light. He views him as the great medium of intercourse between heaven and earth ; as the ransom of our souls; the propitiation for our sins; the Lord our righteousness ; in whom all the promises are yea and amen, and all the attributes of Deity our defence, and all the law our friend. His name is felt to be above every name in value, and his work that precious result irrespective of which heaven had been removed far beyond the hope of sinners. Such a one has received new views of the person and work of the Holy Spirit. Once he supposed the Spirit to be a mere figure of speech — a name applied in common with many others to God. Now, a new light has broken in upon his mind; he feels he can neither think nor do what is good, or holy, or just, unless by the inspiration of the Spirit of God, and that he needs for salvation as truly the sanctifying energy of the Holy Spirit, as he needs the atoning blood and justifying righteousness of the Son of God. We soon learn that we have neither taste nor capacity of pure and spiritual religion till He create it ; nor life, nor saving light till He produce it ; and thus the work of the Holy Spirit becomes to him who is the subject of its power, a great, a living, and glorious truth ; his quickener, his comforter, his teacher. He receives new ideas of the word of God. To him the Bible was once a dull and uninteresting volume, in which he could find little to enlighten his mind, or interest his heart. He has discovered in it glorious truths; he has heard sounding in it celestial music — the very voice of God, the very accents of eternity. He sees it to be a storehouse of all his soul needs; a sea, whose floor is covered with precious gems and pearls, from which he that dives deepest and oftenest brings up the greatest number; a book that surpasses all in interest and importance. It is his study by day, his meditation by night. He regards it as the very vicegerent of God ; the oracle he has erected for us ; our Urim and Thummim ; our pillar of cloud in the wilderness by day, and our pillar of fire by night. He tests all religious opinions, sentiments, and theories by it. He listens to the most eloquent preachers with "Thus saith the Lord'' 76 APOCALtPTlC SKETCHES. sounding in the depths of his heart; and what is not in tho Bible he is convinced is not essential to our salvation, and what is there he reverences as if he saw God bow the heavens, and heard his words clearly and unequivocally from the sky. Nor are his views of the Sabbath less altered. He recollects when he felt it to be the most dreaded and the dullest day of the seven, no less on account of its dreary services, than its distaste- ful topics; and he rejoiced when the shadows closed upon its eve, and gave him the prospect of six days of congenial employ- ment. No change has passed upon the Sabbath ; it comes now as it came in Jerusalem, in Antioch, and wherever saints have met, and Jesus has manifested himself. But a change has passed on the man — the Christian is a new creature; and the Lord's day with other things has become new also : he hails it as a respite from the world — a silent hour amid its din, when all its wheels stand still — a foretaste of Eden — an acre of Paradise saved from the mildew of the fall, and still blooming in its primeval beauty, rendered yet more so by the consecrating touch of Him who defined it anew, and made it the special hour of the manifestation of himself to those whom he had chosen out of the world. Such a one has also new ideas of his own state. Once he thanked Grod he was " not as other men •/' he now prays — ''God be merciful to me a sinner \" Once he thought he had at least a good heart, notwithstanding many faults; now he feels his heart was then deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, and he prays still — " Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me." Once he said — '' All these things have I kept from my youth upward ;'' but now, '^I have sinned in thought, and word, and deed, and broken thy laws, and vexed thy Spirit, and am unworthy of the least of all thy mercies, and am the chiefest of sinners." It is when we see ourselves just as sin has left us, and in the light of eternal truth, that we form a right estimate of our real deserts. For pride and self-confidence we learned humility — a grace least appreciated by man, and yet most beautiful before God : — "The bird that soars on highest wing Builds on the ground her lowly nest ; ALL THINGS NEW. I^f And he that doth most sweetly sing, Sings in the shade when all things rest. In lark and nightingale we see What honour hath humility." Wherever beats the humble heart, there the Spirit of God has built a temple for his residence. Such a one has new and nobler views of others also. Once he regarded others with positive hostility or indifference ; his cha- rity, if it began anywhere at all, began where it ended, at home. " Am I my brother's keeper ?'^ is the real expression of what he felt ; and if at any time he spared a sympathy for others, it was during some severe pressure, when, for the sake of appearances, he was compelled to contribute to the necessity of others. Self has ceased to be the circumference of his charity ; he sees in the meanest a brother, and in the recipient of his beneficence the outstretched hand of the Son of Grod. His heart thrills with new sympathies, and glows with a divine love — a love that mi- nisters alike to the spiritual and temporal necessities of mankind, and feels how little is done while any thing remains to be done. To be a fellow-worker with Christ — to make the widow's heart sing for joy — to mitigate the ravages of sin even where he can- not see the extirpation of its venom — to kindle on the weary face of humanity the rays of hope and joy, and to light upon the world a shower of blessings wherever he can be felt, is the new and nobler desire that now actuates his soul. His joys are also new in their origin and their nature too. His former joys were either sensual, and expressed in " Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,'' or sinful, as derived from sinful causes ; or merely intellectual, and arising from the cultivation and exercise of intellect. Beyond such springs of joy he knew none. He has now tasted the joy of the Lord, — the joy that arises from the knowledge of Christ, and of the success of truth, and the triumphs of grace. The tidings of the word of God being translated into some new tongue — of the cross of Christ penetrating the hearts, and drawing forth the love of some semi- barbarous race — of the progress of pure religion — of disinterested benevolence — of devotedness — of self-sacrifice, delight his heart; it is thus he sympathizes with Christ in his joy, and proves him- 7* 78 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. self one training for citizenship in the New Jerusalem. His sor- rows, too, are not the world's sorrows. He grieves at its sujBFer- ings, but still more at its sins; he sees in human suffering a termination ; but to human sin none but the second death. The Redeemer's sorrow is his ; its springs are his also. His hopes, too, are new. ' ^' Christ in him the hope of glory," is his blessed possession. This hope maketh not ashamed ; it stretches beyond the stars, and clings to the throne of God when earthly things are swept away; and derives nutriment from the hidden manna when all sublunary sustenance is gone. It enter- eth within the vail, and ends only in having. It is described in 1 Peter i. 3-5, " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which, according to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God, through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.'' Such must be the citizens of the New Jerusalem. It is a new place for new men. None else are admitted: — "Except a man be born again, he cannot see it." Dear brethren, is it so with you ? Have all things become new in your experience ? Nothing short of this will do? Every faculty, affection, power, within us must be renewed; and none can thus trans- form us, but God. He who made us, alone can remake us. Revelation and creation are alike the prerogatives of Deity. The minister, like the prophet's servant, may lay the staff on the body of the dead, but the Master alone can quicken. "Paul may plant, and Apollos water, but God only can give the increase." Baptism may admit into the risible church, but grace alone can admit into the true church. "Without holiness no man can see the Lord." Have we "put on the new man?" Do we " walk in newness of life V do we " partake of the divine nature?" Have we experienced the washing of regene- ration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost ? Do we evidence this by likeness to Christ ? by hatred of sin ? by delight in the law of God? by victory over the world? by righteousness? by brotherly love ? ALL THINGS NEW. ' 79 I need scarcely state how possible and how common it is to be grievously mistaken in what constitutes the essential charac- teristic of the new birth — this moral transformation of character — this inner revolution of sympathy, and love, and light, and joy- Outward and virtuous conduct, even the most irreproachable, is not regeneration. Externally you may appear all that is truly beautiful, and just, and true, and yet within there may not beat one pulse of a new heart. The foolish virgins were not out- wardly distinguished from the wise. Saul the Pharisee, touch- ing the righteousness of the law, was apparently as blameless as Paul the apostle. The young ruler could boast that he had kept ail these things from his youth upward; and the Pharisee could thank God he was not as other men. The difference be- tween this mere outward morality, and the Christian indeed, is precisely that between a portrait in every respect perfect as a likeness, and the living child, of the original of which it is the copy. The aspect and features of the former are superinduced by a hand from without; those of the latter are the expression and efflorescence of vitality from within. In the mere moral man, we have the effects of social and conventional influence ; in the regenerated Christian, we have the results of the life of God. The one is man-made; the other, God-made. The first yields before the wear and tear of life, and ultima'tely disappears ; the other grows in stature, and strength, and beauty for ever. Great privileges are not the evidences of a new creature. The Jews awfully and fatally deceived themselves in this respect. They were "Israelites to whom pertained the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God, blessed for ever;" and yet they were those for whom the apostle had " great sorrow in his heart." Privileges do not commend us to God — they commend God to us. They do not necessarily increase our piety; they increase our responsibility. The tares received the rains and sunbeams as copiously as the corn, and they remained tares still. Outward seals are precious only as accompaniments of the written deeds or will : alone, they arc worthless pieces of wax. We may fol- m APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. low glorious pri\dleges as the Egyptians followed the pillar of fire by night, to their own destruction. Tyre and Sidon sank amid transcendent privileges. Privileges serve to augment the guilt of them that perish amid them. They may, through our sinful- ness, deceive us. We may rest in our privileges, instead of rest- ing in God. We may love the Sabbath, and not the Lord of the Sabbath. We may glory in the sect, and forget the Saviour; yea, die for the church, and yet crucify the Lord of glory. When the Jews were in danger, and that danger plainly the punishment of their sins — they shouted, ^^ Bring us the ark of the Lord V vainly supposing there was inherent in the out- ward symbol a saving virtue adequate to protect their nation in the conscious and palpable transgression of the laws of Grod. Too many, in the same spirit, though under a different dispensa- tion, on seeing the approach of death, and with no retrospect of a life of devotedness to God, say with the dying Constantine of the fourth century — '^Give me baptism!'' or with numbers in the nineteenth century — ''Give me the sacrament !'' ''Send for a priest!" This is the very essence of delusion; it is religion perverted into a bane — it is Christianity desecrated to a charm, and its glorious privileges turned into opiates which lull the soul in peace! peace! when truth attests and God sees "there is no peace at all.'' Nor are great gifts the evidences of a renewed and sanctified nature. These co-exist with the greatest depravity. It is quite possible to pray like a seraph, and preach like an angel, and yet lead a life of sin. One may use all the phraseology of the gospel, and have a memory stored with all its truths, and yet live and die a stranger to its transforming influences. Light is not always life, though life is always light. Judas was a preacher, and Balaam was a prophet ; and Satan is thoroughly aware of the falsity of every heresy, and as fully acquainted with the texts and truths by which it may be met and scattered. He has all knowledge, yet no grace, nor holiness, nor hope. He has the archangel's wisdom combined with the fiend's malignity, and the rush of many thousand years of experience over him leaves him only more cunning. Outward communion with the purest visible church on earth, ALL THINGS NEW. iA ^ is not a necessary or infallible proof of renewal of heart. It is desirable to seek this, but it is not salvation. Too much is said at the present day about the comparative merits of systems, and too little is felt of the power of real, living religion. We have too many ecclesiastics and too few ministers: churchmen and dissenters abound; Christians are still scarce. Pray do not teach your children Episcopacy, and Presbytery, and Free-churchism, or Relief-churchism, or if there be any other analogous ism. They will soon enough learn to wrangle and dispute about these. Teach them first of all Christianity, and to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. This is the root and pith of Christianity; all else lies around it; this is itself. Never mind if your children turn out defective Episcopalians, or indifferent Independents, if they grow up children of God, and patterns of Christian virtue. Would you not prefer dissenting saints to church sinners? Better, surely, pass to heaven through a Methodist meeting-house than plunge into hell by the way of a cathedral. Surely, surely, it is better to be uncanonically saved than to be canonically damned. Better, beyond controversy, enter heaven right through a rubric, than sink to ruin with ceremonial conformity to its minutest require- ments. The kingdom of God — that is, true Christianity — is not meat, or drink, or rubric, or rite, or ceremony, or church, or dissent, but "righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.'' Nor is the testimony of others to our character an infallible evidence that we are new creatures, ready for admision into the New Jerusalem. Paul thought Deraas was a Christian; the apostles deemed Judas an earnest and sincere fellow- worker with themselves. Satan can paint a Christian as perfectly to our eye as God can make one. Still less is our own persuasion evidence either of the depth or reality of grace. A whole church once thought of itself, "I am rich and increased with goods, and have need of nothing," while its real condition was thus delineated by the Searcher of hearts: "Thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." Some will so far delude themselves, that they will enter into the presence of the Judge, saying, "Lord, Lord, have we not 8^ APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. prophesied in thy name, and in thy name have we cast out devils, and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity/' Two builders are described in Scripture, each equally confident: the testing winds burst on their respective fabrics — and that built upon the sand fell. It is not the strength of our confidence, but the strength of the foundation, on which we must rely; and on that foundation which is laid of God, none but living stones can be reared, or any other than a holy super- structure rise from the earth to heaven. Christianity is not a religion of form, or circumstance, or cere- mony, or of baptism, or of circumcision. With and without -\ these it has flourished; for these are but its accidents — its tem- porary and evanescent robes, the signs of its present state, and not the inseparable accompaniments of its future glory. It is the religion of the inner man, the life of the heart, the peace of the conscience. Its dwelling-place, its sacred fane, its conse- crated shrine, is the heart that has been hallowed by the Holy Spirit of Grod. The gospel is not in tongue or in appearance, but in the inward parts; not in word, but in power; not a name to Jive by, but life; not a system without us, but a principle within us; not the expulsion of one theory in order to make room for another, nor a collection of dogmas, a vocabulary of shibboleth, but holiness, and happiness, and truth. To eat with unwashed hands, or to heal on the Sabbath-day, or to leave unwashed the outside of the cup, are not the sins it selects for reprehension. To he, not to seerrij is its requirement. ''To do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God," are its unpretending but fragrant fruits. " Uncircumcision is nothing, and circumcision is nothing, but a new creature.^' There is neither Jew, nor Gentile, nor Greek, nor barbarian, nor Roman, nor Hun, nor Englishman, nor Esquimaux, nor plebeian, nor noble, nor queen : Christ is all and in all to them that believe, as their title, and Christianity is all and in all as their qualifica- tion; all else is responsibility. What we require as a prepara- tion for this new state, the procession of which already appears above the horizon, emerging from the smoke of European ruins, \% that all within us should be made new; that Jesus should ALL THINGS NEW. 83 enter that desecrated temple, more precious in its wreck than Solomon's or Herod's — the temple of the soul — and command those brutal appetites — those wrangling passions — those crowds of lusts, to retire — that it may be made no longer a house of merchandise, a den of thieves, but our Father's house, a house of prayer. Then shall we see within, and fiijally without also, the evidence of the fulfilment of these words: "I will make all things new." 84 LECTUKE VI. THE CONQUEROR. "He that overcometh shall inherit all things." — Revelation xxi. War is the aspect of this dispensation ; earth is a battle-field ; Christians are soldiers ; the Bible is our armoury ; victory our hope. We are encompassed with a cloud of enemies as well as of wit- nesses; the whole fiield of our existence and action is covered with them ; every hill, and dale, and valley ; every height and depth; the past, the present, and the future, — all glisten with their hostile array. The stamp of Satan has conjured up these desperate squadrons, and they are prepared for victory or destruc- tion. Sin is not the least powerful nor the least present enemy. It has infected the air we breathe with hostile miasma ; it has left its sear blight on every acre of the earth; it has distilled its deadly poison into every heart, from royal height down to ple- beian level ; it waits and watches for impress and victory at every avenue, and even in a Christian's heart it is not utterly extirpat- ed ; its condemnation is put away through the blood of Jesus, and its power is broken by the Holy Spirit ; but it still vexes, assails, and sometimes prevails against the believer. It is, indeed, denuded of all its attractions in a Christian's eye, and arrayed in its own inherent and essential hues; so truly so, that it comes to him always as a foe, and is never welcome as a friend. Sin lives in the Christian, but the Christian does not live in sin ; it exists in him as an intruder, detested and extruded by every energy he has, not as a lodger, either welcome from character, or tolerated for profit. There is the same difference between sin in a con- verted man and sin in an unconverted man, as there is between poison as it exists in a rattlesnake, and poison found in the body of a human being. In the one it is congenial to its nature, and THE CONQUEROR. 85 cherished as its defence ; in the other it is felt as a foreign ele- ment, and the system has no repose till it is expelled. In the unbeliever sin overcomes the man ; in the believer the man over- comes the sin. In the heart of the former, sin luxuriates an in- digenous plant ; in that of the other it is cut down, and crushed, and stunted as a poisonous exotic. Sin overcomes the child of nature — sin is overcome in the child of grace. The next enemy we have to overcome is the world. It is now in all its phases and aspects the world — the enemy of the people of God. The friendship of the world is enmity to God, and whoever is the friend of the world is the enemy of God. " Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him : for all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but of the world." It is, however, a disheartened, because a discomfited foe ; it wars against the people of God, not as a confident and hopeful enemy, but because it is incapable, from its instincts, of doing otherwise. Its opposition is its necessity. It battles without hope, or rather in despair. It must, however, be remembered that this victory consists not in mechanical separation from the world, but in colli- sion with it — in resistance, in protest, in spiritual victory over it. The epicurean says, " Eat, drink, and be merry j for to-morrow we die.'^ The Romanist says, " Fast, and starve, and stint, and escape into a convent, for if you remain in the world it will con- quer you." The Christian says, " Remain in the world, but be not of it ; do not shrink from its responsibilities to avoid its perils. Stand where God in his providence has placed you — patient in sufi"ering, humble in prosperity. Christian in all things. Do the good that requires to be done — avoid the evil that menaces you — • treat the smile of the world as the passing sunbeam, and its frown as a momentary cloud." " Endure as seeing Him who is invisible." We are called upon to overcome the world^s allurements. A corrupt world crowds its temptations upon you ; places of sinful amusement, and others of yet deeper evil, open their doors, and light up their lamps, and display all their attractions. These are the splendours of corruption — the phosphorescence of decay. 8BC0ND SERIES. S 86 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. Ambition bids you sink the Christian in the candidate for office. Fame beckons you with her trumpet to lay aside simplicity of life ; and wealth spreads its shining heaps, and invites you to be- come its devotee. These are the world's basilisk eyes, its baits, its snares. Withstand them in their beginning. Hear sounding in your ears the Master's voice : " He that overcometh shall in- herit all things." We are called on to overcome the afflictions of the world. "In the world ye shall have tribulations,'' is the law of our life here. This tribulation has various manifestations. The loss of health, of property, of relatives ; these either cry aloud to you, " Curse God and die;" or whisper in the depths of the broken heart, ^' God hath forsaken you, and your God hath forgotten you." Can you say, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord ?" Does your Christianity shine forth as the sun, heightened in effulgence and glory by the con- trast? Do you pray in trouble, and praise in joy, and cling close to God in all things ? Then its glare does not dazzle you, and its scorn does not irritate you. You overcome. Still have faith in God as your God, and in Jesus as your righteousness — in holi- ness as perfect beauty — in love as true happiness. Do you overcome the world by endeavouring to bless the world ? This is the noblest victory. When you hear of whole lands lying in darkness and in the shadow of death, do you respond to their piercing appeal ? Does sympathy with souls loosen the attraction of wealth ? Do you resist the suggestions of avarice, and lay what you can on the altar of the gospel ? A religion that does not finally overcome the world, and rise superior to it, is not of God. " Who is he that overcometh the world ? It is he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ," — who is born of God. The next enemy we have to war with, and to overcome, is Sa- tan. He is no figure of speech — he is a fact, a great and active fact — a composite of a fiend and angel — cunning and craft, and power and energy, enlisted against us. In all "sins there is diabolical venom. Satan " filled the heart of Ananias." The " god of this world blinds the minds of them that believe not." Our salvation moves hell as much as heaven. Angels minister to it, and Satan labours to undermine it. He varnishes vice with virtue THE CONQUEROR. %^ — covetousness with the aspect of economy — pride with that of self-respect — revenge with righteous retribution, and rejection of the gospel with consideration. "We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers; against the rulers of darkness of this world; against spiritual wickedness in high places." There is a sympathy, too, between our hearts and Sa- tan : each corrupt desire puts on his uniform, and serves in his cause, and pleads with powerful eloquence for allegiance to the usurper. Satan, too, has vast powers. He is strong in might, and profound in cunning; he overcame even in innocence; he is the prince of this world. His malignity is equal to his might ; his only gleam of joy shoots from success in ruining, and hence all the energies and efforts of his fiendish nature are concentrated in efforts to contaminate. He vitiates in order to vanquish. None are too high to be beyond his reach, and none too holy to defy it : the more exalted you are in society, or in moral and intellectual eminence, the more you are open to his fiery darts. And his per- severance is equal to his power and enmity. He is never weary of his work. In all places — the sanctuary, the exchange, the sea, the garden, the bed — he tracks his victims as the wild beast his prey. Our only safety under God is resistance in the strength of the Spirit of God. Resist him, and he will flee from you. He is a coward — a vanquished enemy — desperate only in the agonies of certain defeat. Christ bruised his head, and he flees from any that withstand his assaults in the strength of him who overcame him at first. "Whosoever is born of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not" — that is, so as to overcome or destroy us. A stronger than Satan is on our side- Divine strength is made perfect in weakness. Hence ours is the victory of God. " Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory through Jesus Christ." We gain, and yet God gives the victory ; we fight, but not at our own charges; we overcome, but not in our own strength. By grace we stand. It is " through Jesus Christ." In him we are accepted, adopted, glorified. Through him our imploring look, our fainting heart, our failing strength, send their appeal to God; and, in return, we hear sounding in our hearts glorious promises — and ■ 'Am 88 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. invigorating our spirits, omnipotent strength — and cheering us, the crown of life suspended in the future. But we ought not to be discouraged because our victory is not instantaneous. It is not the act of a day, but the accomplishment of a lifetime. Grod ^^giveth us the victory." There may be failures in certain parts of the warfare. It may not be victory at every point, and every hour of the battle of life; but its close will assuredly be so. Thus Abraham overcame, and entered into that city for which he looked, ^' whose builder and maker is God." Thus Jacob ^^ gathered up his feet into his bed, and yielded up the ghost, and was gathered to his people." Caleb '' wholly followed the Lord," and said, " I am this day fourscore and five years, and yet I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me." Moses was transplanted, like a glorious tree, from the borders of the earthly to the sunshine of the heavenly Canaan. They too are there, having overcome, who '^ weep as though they wept not, and who possess the world as though they pos- sessed not, and use it as not abusing it." They too are vic- torious who can say, ^' Whom have I in heaven but Thee ? and in the earth there is none that I desire besides Thee." They too who run the race set before them, looking to Jesus. They, in short, who, by the might of weakness, fight the good fight, and lay hold on eternal life. In order thus to overcome the world, you must be a Christian indeed. Any thing short of this will fail in the hour of conflict. "Almost Christians" will be altogether lost. You must be a convert, not a merely sober, and honest, and industrious person. We, the ministers of the gospel, must be more anxious to see around the pulpit, not crowds of curious inquirers after some- thing new, but living, and thirsting, and praying converts, sub- dued by the Spirit of God, and overflowing in sympathy with all that is holy, beautiful, and true. You must abjure all that stands between you and the full reception of the truth. It matters not how dear, or old, or popular, or profitable, this obstruction may be. Is it the absorb- ing love of money — a love to which you sacrifice time, and THE CONQUEROR. |^ religion, and duty, and privilege ? " Covetousness is idolatry." "Ye cannot serve G-od and Mammon." Every true Christian has the spirit that in Paul expressed itself thus : " Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ?" — with money, as well as with influence, ability, reputation, rank and power. Here the hottest conflict is often waged; this is often the turning point to eternity. A victory here is a thorough one — it gives impulse and impetus to one's whole subsequent career ', the greatest surrender begins here, and others are less difficult. We must conquer, and turn every evil course to which years, and interests, and secular and intellectual sympathies, may unite us ; we must look at such a course, not in the light of the century, or climate, or country we are placed in by the providence of God, but in the light of the unerring oracles of Everlasting Truth. We must be honest be- hind the counter; truth-speaking in the witness-box; impartial on the tribunal of justice ; honest at home and abroad, in all the duties, and relations, and offices of life. We are to colour the circumstances of the world, not they us. We must move along the direct and unbending line of duty, through, or over, or against all opposition. Great battles are thus fought in individual persons — great, and severe, and exhausting conflicts in shops and closets, and where the ear of the world hears no din, and where the eye of the world sees no smoke, and where the shout of nations celebrates no illustrious victory. This conflict will involve your abandoning all companions who have no sympathy with the great and instant things of eternity. They may have highly cultivated tastes; may be descended from aristocratic families; may be great patrons of the drama, and capable of pronouncing the most eloquent panegyric on the into- nation of some Italian artiste, or on the notes of the Swedish Nightingale, or the graceful steps of some accomplished danseuse; but their title to be the selected companions of a Christian must be far higher than these ; there must be Christianity, spirituality, the impress of the character of Christ. We must sacrifice taste to Christian duty ; we must give up the elegant and interesting coterie for Christ's sake. These elegances may be ; but this Christian character must be. The former is the accidental — the agreeable; the latter is the essential — the indispensable. I 8* 90 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. speak of choice. We may be mixed up in public, social, muni- cipal, political, or domestic circles, which we may not and dare not renounce; this lot is given us, not elected by us; and so we must take our part, and fulfil it. But when we have our choice — be it of companion, or husband, or wife— we must make Christian character a vital point, and the absence of it a bar to all nearer and more intimate relationship. '^ If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.^' "He that loveth father and mother more than me, is not worthy of me.'' Be sure that so awful and solemn a sacrifice as this is required of you, and you must not hesitate to make it. Home and country, and houses and lands, are all as dust in the balance, when weighed against clear duty. On this point the word of God is most explicit, and here the Christian overcomes. His address to the people of God must be substantially, "Where thou goest I will go ; where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God." This was the choice of him who counted all but loss for Christ; and it must be the deliberate choice of all that overcome, and inherit all things, as he overcame, and is now a participator of the glory to be revealed. We shall have to experience this conflict, if we are destined to overcome, in the obligation we feel to renounce trade, or traffic, or employment of the most lucrative nature, which is plainly incompatible with Christian principle. Saul of Tarsus renounced the most brilliant prospects in the world to become a preacher of Christ ; the Ephesians burned their books of magic on receiving Christianity; Luther left a university career, full of promise, in order to lift up his protest against error ; and John Newton ceased to be a slaveholder as soon as he began to be a Christian. At this turning point there will be conflict, and, in the case of every true Christian, victory. Is extra time required for some of the avocations of Caesar, avocations just and useful in themselves? Do not subtract it from the Sabbath, or from the hours devoted to religious study, and reflection, and prayer. Do the times require you to curtail THE CONQUEROR. ft your expenditure ? Do not lop off your contributions to works of beneficence, and piety, and love; rather lay aside the splendid carriage, lessen the great establishment a little, or diminish the needlessly splendid retinue ; deny your taste its lawful gratifi- cations, not your Christian sympathy the efflux of its tide in expressive beneficence. You are called on to enter into conflict with inner selfishness in all its retreats and developments. It will resist your efforts to do good, to spread the gospel, to aid the poor and the needy. This enemy is more powerful than Satan ; he is ever within you — in league with all that is depraved without, and evil within. It will weave a thousand plausible excuses in its defence, ostensibly in yours ; it will gild its doings with dazzling splendour ', invent new names for old sins ; and, in the name of Jesus, advocate and spread every evil and abominable work. Conflict, resistance, prayer, are the means of its expulsion; an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, is the reward of victory ; the close of struggle is the pro- mise of Him who overcame, and is set down at the right hand of God, and is King of kings and Lord of lords, the wearer of many crowns. " He that thus overcometh shall inherit all things. '' Scholz reads, radza, these things — and not ridvra, all things. No doubt the allusion is to those beautiful promises made to the Seven Churches — on which it is my intention, if spared, to address you, contained in the earlier parts of this book. * Thus, the Redeemer's promise to the Church of Ephesus is : " To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.'' To the Church of Smyrna it is promised : ^' Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." To the Church of Pergamos : " To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone ; and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it." To the Church of Thyatira it is said : " He that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations ; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron : as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers, even as I received of my Father ; and I will give him the morning star." To the 92 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. Church of Sardis it is promised : " He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment 3 and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life ; but I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels." To the Church of Philadelphia the beautiful promise is made: "Him that over- cometh will 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 Jeru- salem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God : and I will write upon him my new name." To the Laodicean Church, the last of the seven, it is promised : "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me on my throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with my Father on his throne." These glorious promises are the component parts of the inherit- ance promised in the text. More minute descriptions of their excellence, and beauty, and glory, are presented in other parts of the Apocalypse; such as, "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, 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 water ; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.^' Whatever is contained in the promises made to the conquerors of the Seven Churches; whatever is promised to the redeemed in the subsequent parts of the Apocalyptic drama ; whatever is promised in the previous part of this chapter — all are pre-intima- tions of that inheritance of all things which is the reward of him that overcomes. Now you have a foretaste of the inheritance ; hereafter you shall have the full enjoyment of it. Even now " all things are yours, death, or life, or Paul, or Apollos, or Ce- phas ; things present, and things to come, all are yours ; for ye are Christ's and Christ is God's." A day comes when right shall become possession ; when the most brilliant promises shall become performances; and our glad hearts own that, glorious and ani- mating as the former were,, they are exceeded inconceivably by the weight, and splendour, and magnificence of the latter. " Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor heart conceived," the grandeur of that state into which the Apocalypse flows — a perpetual stream, standing in which we shall see all prophecy become history, and THE CONQUEROR. 93 that history a dim and inadequate portraiture of what is experi- enced. If such be the scenes that lie beyond the horizon, reserved for those that overcome; let us draw from the prospect present con- solation and instruction. Be content with such things as you have. Your real estate is not here; this world can neither con- tain nor comprehend it ; it lies far beyond it. You have enough to pay your passage-money : let this satisfy you who are moving to a glorious estate. You are rich indeed; we estimate a man's riches not by the amount of change in his pocket, or goods in his house, but by his estates — his funded property. You have little of sensible wealth in possession, but an inheritance of all things in reversion. Draw from this fact compensatory joy amid the privations of the world ; turn your future certainty into present joy : present happiness is the interest legitimately accruing from this funded wealth — these heavenly riches. Draw on the future in order to enhance the beauty, and augment the weight and wealth of the present. David said in faith, '^Grilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine,'^ though he had not yet conquered them. It is this that defines itself in the experience of the heart, and shows the apostle's word to be an axiom needing no proof: "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." By this faith we eat of the hidden manna, and drink of the fountain of living waters, and taste the fruit and have the service of the leaves of the tree of life, and walk the streets and dwell amid the glory of the New Jerusalem, before we arrive at the other side : " whom having not seen we love, and in whom, though now we see him not, yet believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory." This promise ought, as it is designed, to animate and strengthen us in this heroic conflict. " Put on the whole armour of God ; fight the good fight." — " Be steadfast, immovable, always abound- ing in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your la- bour is not in vain in tlio Lord." The eye of the Great Captain of the faith is on us ; he is deeply interested in our efforts ; he will guide us with his eye ; he will strengthen and uphold us. If we fight, we are sure of victory ; it is a conflict that ends in conquest — a battle whose laurels are 94 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. certain. From this let our hearts draw new and glorious energy, and our hopes their buoyancy, and our courage its inspiration and its life. Nothing can be surer than this inheritance to them that over- come. God's promises are true as history — his prophecies real as performances; there is no precariousness or contingency in the words of God ; what he has said is " yea and amen." We may therefore act upon the promise of God, regarding it just as good as if the day it is due were past. The kingdoms of this world rise and fall like the ever-ebbing and ever-flowing tides of the I sea; but the testimony of God remains as the rock — unseen to- day amid the froth and foam of the waters ; but visible to-mor- row, strong in its foundations, and unscathed and undiminished from the collision. In the presence of all created things, God rises above them in majesty and glory, and in their decay he re- mains. This inheritance which is promised to the victor is possessed of transcendent excellences and beauty. The "all things" in- clude " the tree of life," and " river of life," and "crown of life;" it is uncorruptible and undefiled, and fadeth not away. There is no worm in any of its cedars ; no rust or tarnish upon its gold ; no moth in its garments ; no pain, or disease, or death amid its inheritors ; nor any monuments left of sorrow, of suffering, or of death. Every joy that blooms in it is everlasting — it "fadeth not." A little pleasure that endures long, is preferable to much that is evanescent; on the least and greatest of the joys of hea- ven is the stamp of eternity. It is an " everlasting rest," " eter- nal in the heavens." It is beyOnd the breath of sin, the mildew of mortality, the wear of age, the influence of decay. It lies beyond and above the tide-mark of time, and is not wasted by the waves of eternity. The certainty and clearness of this revelation is no ordinary element of victory. A perfect state was as much the pursuit of heathenism as a perfect man. We have no need now to visit the Nile, and the Pyramids, and the Ganges, in quest of some lin- gering ray from the future yet unquenched. All immortality is clearly brought to light in one clear Apocalypse. It is now partly let down from heaven. THE CONQUEROR. 95 Let us be encouraged also by the shining roll of those who have overcome and inherited the promises. How radiant with these conquerors is the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews ! ^'- By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he w^ent out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Through faith also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, be- cause she judged him faithful who had promised. Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea-shore innumerable. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims of the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned : but now they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly : wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he hath prepared for them a city. By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac : and he that had received the promises offered up his only- begotten son, of whom it was said. That in Isaac shall thy seed be called : accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead ; from whence also he received him in a figure. By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come. By faith Jacob, when he was a-dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff. By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning hia bones. By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three §^ APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. months of his parents^ because they saw he was a proper child ; and they were not afraid of the king's commandment. By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season ; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible.* Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed the first-born should touch them. By faith they passed through the Red Sea, as by dry land : which the Egyptians essaying to do were drowned. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days. By faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace. And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gedeon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jepthae, of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets : who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained pro- mises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Women received their dead raised to life again : and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection. And others had trial of cruel mockings, and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword : they wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (of whom the world was not worthy :) they wandered in deserts and in moun- tains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise : for God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." In each of these, faith was the victory that overcame the world; and the fruition of the inheritance, and the fulfilment of the promise was the corresponding reward. Nor did the THE CONQUEROR. 97 overcoming ones cease from the earth when these disappeared. The bequests they made have served successive generations, and the glorious succession continues. Polycarp, immediately after the apostles, when summoned to renounce his Saviour, beauti- fully said, '^ Eighty and six years have I served him, and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my king who has saved me?'^ When tied to the fagots, and enduring the slow torture of the kindling fire, he thus victoriously prayed: ^'0 Father of thy beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, through whom I have received the knowledge of thee, God of angels and powers, and of the whole creation, and of the whole family of the just who live before Thee, I bless Thee that thou hast thought me worthy of this day and this hour, to obtain a por- tion among the martyrs in the cup of Christ, for ths resurrection of both soul and body to eternal life in the incorruptibleness of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, and for all things, I praise Thee, I bless Thee, I glorify Thee, through the eternal High-priest, Jesus Christ, thy beloved Son, through whom be glory to Thee, along with him in the Holy Spirit, both now and ever. Amen." The Paulicians protested faithfully in the east; and the Wal- denses, amid the fastnesses and caves of the Cottian Alps, with- stood the influx of superstition and error for centuries, and pre- served their faith, like their own Alpine snows, in its virgin purity and beauty. Wicklifi"e and Huss fought manfully, and fell before the sword of the enemy on earth, to rise and reign amid the white-robed throne in glory. Luther overcame where few had long stood; the church and the world rose against Luther, and he boldly grappled with both; burning the pope's bull; despising the threats of princes; and claiming for man- kind the privilege given them from on high, of reading an open Bible, and worshipping God in spirit and in truth. Latimer, too, overcame, lighting in England a candle not yet put out. Oberlin overcame cold, and distance, and weariness, and spread among ignorant and uncultivated tribes the blessings of pure religion. In what Christian language are not the names of Knox, and Bunyan, and Felix NefF, and Henry Martyn, and Eliot the apostle of the Indians, now heard? They were not a few of them ^'in perils by the heathen, in perils of the city, in perils in 98 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. the wildernes3, in perils in the sea; in perils among false bre- thren, in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in^ hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness;" but they overcame and entered into glory. '^Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame; and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." 99 LECTURE Vn. THE UNBELIEVING. " But the fearful, and unbelieving, and tlie abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone : which is the second death." — Revelation xxi. 8. I SELECT unbelief as the root and fountain to whicli all other sins are traced in Scripture. Unbelief prevented the entrance of the Israelites into Canaan. Paul, as one who was taught its heinousness by the Holy Spirit of God, addresses his Hebrew, converts thus : — " Take heed lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.^' It is a heart disease. Disease in the finger, the eye, the ear, is not fatal ; but disease at the heart is not only fatal itself, but morally it is the prolific parent of the dark progeny enumerated in this verse. It has been made matter of complaint by persons of a skeptical mind, that heaven and hell should be made contingent on belief or unbelief; as if mere belief were the highest virtue, and the want of it the greatest sin. Faith in Scripture, however, is not mere intellectual evidence : it is, properly, confidence in God, or accepting his truth and promises, and all he is, as real, and placing implicit and unwavering confidence in his word, more than in the works of men. Is it no injury to human institutions to be denuded of all confidence ? What becomes of a bank or insurance office, if confidence in their stability and substance be removed ? Ruin lights on all. Destroy confidence between hus- band and wife, patient and physician, client and lawyer, and you paralyze every possibility of good. Exhaust from our social and commercial world all confidence, and you will soon find the whole system a rope of sand, destitute of cohesive power, and ready to fall to pieces. • 100 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. This unbelief, or, as I liave called it, want of confidence, while it is so mischievous, is at the same time the most subtle, evasive, and secret. It lurks under the affections like a caterpillar amid leaves, or a worm in a rosebud, and gnaws and wastes them. Other sins are easily seen : it is not so ; but its existence can be detected by its effects — it always develops itself; the sins, in fact, in this very verse exude from it, and appear upon the surface. It shows itself in the least subtle, and therefore most easily de- tected shape — viz. in positive rejection of Christianity; this is vulgar infidelity, according to which the Bible is a fable, and Christ crucified folly. It gazes on the Christian firmament, and sees no sun or stars ; or on the earth, the ocean, and the forest, and the landscape, and sees in none of these the footprints of Deity as upon the sands of time ; or in its more recent and perhaps perilous formula — American and Grerman Pantheism — it rushes to the opposite pole, and sees every thing so overflowing with Deity, that it calls the proof of God's existence God, and every thing part and parcel of God. It is thus that the Pantheist in his blas- phemy undesignedly praises God, by acknowledging every thing a vessel full of divinity. But in all its shapes, extravagances, and pretensions, its air is that of the dungeon, its dogmas icicles, its element the night, and its doom dissolution before that warm tide of light and life which shall overflow the earth. This unbelief develops itself also in practical unbelief, combined with theoretical acceptance of every truth. Such persons profess to believe every truth of Christianity ; they assail nothing, they dispute nothing; they are married, and their children are bap- tized according to the rites of Christianity ; they enter the sanc- tuary full of apathy, and they retire having lost none of it These are the most unmanageable of all persons ; they are not to be laid hold of, there is no handle about them ; they present per- fectly smooth surfaces, and all appeals glide off, like water off the wing of a waterfowl. One longs to hear them contradict, or dis- pute, or deny, but they are incapable of this ; and yet if you say they are unbelievers, they will repeat the apostle's creed and the ten commandments without a single omission. But the gospel has no hold of their hearts, no control over their affections, no echo in their conscience ; its great voice has no music for their THE UNBELIEVING. 10] ear, and its sublime liopes no attraction ; they remain just what they would be if Christianity never had been proclaimed in the world. On them it has left no evidence of its presence. Dis- guise it as they like, they are unbelievers. There is another class, who like much in the Bible, and are mightily pleased with a great deal of its theology, and so far think it inspired. But there are certain parts they do not like — great exceptions, they think ; and they insist on it that their ac- ceptance of the Gospel of St. John does not imply their belief in the Pentateuch, or their reception of the Apocalypse. They want, as they say, to weed the Bible ; that is, really and truly, to make their taste, or convenience, or conscience, the Procrustes- bed to which the Bible is to be fitted. These seem to forget, that if this be admitted, every transgressor will fit the Bible to his case ; and when each has cut off from the Bible what he dislikes, or what rebukes his sin, there will be found a very small residue of influential or useful matter. This cannot be. We must re- ceive the whole Bible or none of it. It is God's truth or Satan's lie — it is nothing between. It all rests on one basis ; it assumes for all the same original ; it is the highest truth, or the greatest blasphemy ; it must remain unmutilated and unaltered. Our life must be brought up to its pitch ; in short, we must be evangelical Christians or cold skeptics. They, too, evince this spirit of unbelief, who reject particular truths of Christianity because they cannot comprehend them. Some reject the Trinity, because they cannot comprehend it ; and for the same reason, the atonement and incarnation also, forgetting that they receive as facts and truths a thousand things in this world which they cannot comprehend. Every man acts, for in- stance, upon the principle, that by the volition of the will he can move his arm up or down, right or left, just as he pleases. Can you, for instance, explain this wonderful mystery — that thought — a thing which cannot be detected, which the chemist cannot analyze, which the anatomist cannot hold on his scalpel, which you cannot touch, weigh, or measure — that this imponderable, and intangible, and mysterious thing — thought — can make all the nerves and muscles of the hand cross and intertwine without delay in any direction it may prescribe ; or how it can move all 9* 102 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. the fingers of the hand upon the keys of a piano-forte, cr on the strings of a violin, with such amazing precision, that it is the nearest possible approach to a miracle ? Can you comprehend this mystery? And will you tell me you cannot receive the truths of the Bible because you cannot comprehend them, while you receive many equally as incomprehensible things in every-day life? It will be quite time enough to reject Grod's word or its doctrines because they are incomprehensible when you have re- jected every thing in creation, and every day's experience, be- cause it is no less so. Another form of this unbelief is, the dislike of a simple, spi- ritual worship. I do not wonder that so many people become Roman Catholics, nor is it any matter of surprise to me that so many clergymen have become priests. My only surprise is, that every unregenerate and unconverted man does not become a Roman Catholic; and I declare, if I were not a Christian, I would become a Catholic myself. It is an externally beautiful and convenient form of religion. You can sin on one side of the street, and procure absolution on the other; its ritual services are fascinating to the senses, its incense fragrant to the smell, its music attractive to the ear, its architecture most gorgeous, its ceremonial grand, its robes splendid. If you are poor, your poverty will get you to heaven; if you are rich, your riches will help you to heaven ; if you are fond of solitude, you may merito- riously retire to the cell or the convent ; if you prefer splendid society, you can mingle with cardinals, popes, prelates, and other high occupants of power. I confess I wonder that every uncon- verted man is not allured and charmed, into becoming a Catholic. But it is impossible that any man who knows what spiritual Christianity is — in whose heart there are throbs of the new life — should ever become a Roman Catholic. He knows in his heart, not by information, but by inwrought and sensible experience, that '^ God is a Spirit, and that they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." It is their merely out- side Christianity that explains the fact, that many of our own people, our Scottish people, when they come to London, are the fii'st to follow the attractions of a more ritual worship ; and not unfrequently they who have been the most staunch supporters THE UNBELIEVING. 103 of a severe but scriptural form, have subsequently become the most outre Tractarians. So it will be : the most unsanctified must have elaborate gratification of the senses. But the spiritual heart, while it is delighted with the best music, the best architec- ture, and the best forms, provided there is no interruption to thai true spiritual worship which seems to me to be the grandest wor ship, feels that God himself, and God's word, and God's worship .need but to be seen just as they are, to be presented in their greatesr. beauty. Such is another instance, then, of this unbelief. It alsw robes itself in pride and presumption, rushing irreverently where angels vail their faces ; or, if not, it falls into despair. The eye of pride scarcely sees God at all ; the eye of presumption looks at his mercy alone ; the eye of despair, at his justice alone. I must now notice unbelief in its special attitude of departing from the living God. God was, and is now, the great centre of the universe; and before sin was induced into this universe, every thing — every living and inanimate thing (if I may use the expression) — had the Deity for its centre of attrac- tion. Every thing came from God : every thing moved onward to God, and found in him its repose, its happiness, its peace. Sin entered the world, and smote all the springs of things ; and every thing has since this intrusion received a centrifugal tend- ency. At first all things were centripetal — that is, seeking the centre ; now all things are centrifugal — that is, flying from the centre 3 and every object, therefore, which once carried man to God, now, through sin in it and in man, carries him from God ) or he rests in the object instead of upon God, or he has gone with the object to a distance from God. If man had never fallen, the rich man would have been led by his wealth up to Him who is enthroned on the riches of the universe ; and the man of great intellect would have been led by that intellect to seek more and more for light to enable him to decipher the inscriptions upon all things wiitten by God's finger, and thus to be brought nearer and nearer to God ; and the man of great rank would have felt his station but the reflection of the dignity of God, and have seen God in it, and by it ; now all these things, through man's sin, carry him away from God, or become to him substitutes for God. The wealthy worship their wealth ; the intellectual worship Intel- 104 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. lect; the great worship greatness; and all things, smitten by sin, have lost their original centripetal tendency, and, by their acquired centrifugal force, carry all they are and have away from God, and plunge man into departure from the living and true God. Now, the great tendency of the gospel is just the reverse of all this : it brings man back again to God. All religion lies in this : " nearness to God.^' All irreligion, whatever be its shape, name, or form, lies in this : '^ departure from God." To be with, or to approach to God, is real religion ; to be with God is happiness ; and to be in God is safety. To depart from God, this is sin ; to be without God, this is irreligion and misery. We approach God on the wings of faith and love ; we depart from God by the leaden weights of unbelief, sensuality, and sin. And strange it is that man, though he thus departs from the living and true God, yet ceases not to have a god. There is no such thing as atheism in the world : there may be atheism, cer- tainly, in the sense of being without the true and living God ; but there is no such thing as atheism in the sense of being without a god. As soon as a man has lost the living God, that moment he begins to set up a dead god. And is not this attested by the history of the whole world ? Athens, though without the true God, was yet not without a god, for she had her Minerva. Rome, too, could not do without a god, and therefore she had her Mars. The Romanist, having lost the true God by the interven- tion of priestly darkness and corruptions, cannot do without his god, and, therefore, he adores the saints, his guardian angel, the host, &c. The rich irreligious man, too, has his god. True, he may not bow his body before it — that is a mere form ; he may not speak the very words, " Oh, save me, my wealth !" — this is mere lip ; but his heart bows, his heart speaks : it is the heart that worships ; and the heart of that wealthy man really says to his gold, " Gold, thou art my god ! — I worship and adore thee V' That which a man draws his main happiness from, is his god ; and whenever he loses the living God, he must have another god in his stead, because man's soul was made to be a shrine and a temple of the Deity. You may as well try to produce a vacuum that will be permanently so in the midst of our atmosphere, as to produce a moral vacuum in a man's mind that is to expel all re- THE UNBELIEVING. 105 ligion. He must have a god within : some other god he must have, if he depart from the living God : he deserts a great, glo- rious, eternal, omniscient, and omnipotent God ; but he is not, therefore, without a god : he admits another — an idol. And you will find that just in proportion as a man departs from the true God, in the same ratio does the god he makes be- come monstrous and degrading : there is a progressive descent. Take, for instance, the first departure from the living God — the poor superstitious member of the Church of Rome. The moment he has lost the true God, or Father, that moment he begins to project from himself a god, or to form a god out of his own dark, superstitious mind ; and that god a very terrible and vindictive one. He lacerates his flesh, mutilates his body, pines in poverty, lives in solitude, wretchedness, cold, and hunger, wears a painful dress ; and all this he does in order to propitiate a god that he has made for himself. Just as, if you go, while the bright sun shines high in the firmament, into those deep dens and caverns of the earth into which its rays never penetrate, you there find all sorts of poisonous and sickly weeds growing rankly up ; so, just in the same proportion as you depart from the sense and presence of the true God, do the poisonous weeds and offshoots of fanaticism and superstition grow and luxuriate in the heart of man. Let me explain what are symptoms of this departure from God, this unbelief, this mother sin, and endeavour to speak what may be practical and profitable to you. And first, there is the suspicion whether God has actually spoken what the preacher proves unequivocally to be the word of God. Do you recollect the earliest commencement of Eve's departure from God? this will afford you an illustration of what I mean. When Satan came to Eve, he did not dare to say, '' God never said so, or pro- nounced this;" but he put it in the shape of an interrogation: " Hath God said so ? Are- you quite sure that these were God's words ? May you not have mistaken his meaning ? May it not be a misapprehension of yours V And then, again, he taught her to look at it in the light of expediency, as if he said, " Is it likely that God, who made so beautiful a being. Eve, as you are, would visit you with death merely for touching a tree — that beau- tiful tree, the rich fruit of which diffuses so grateful a perfum© 106 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. through Eden, and the taste of which is you know not how sweet? Is it possible? do you not mistake? have you no doubt ?" And she, thus tempted, looked upon the fruit, and saw it was fair to the eye, and pleasant to the senses ; and regarding its fruit as a fruit that would make her wise, (there was yielding to expediency !) plucked an apple, broke the commandment of God, and so brought death upon herself and all her posterity. Whenever a suspicion of the truth of Grod's declarations is in- jected into your minds, remember it is your only safety to resist, repel, and protest against it. Open the Bible : what you find plainly written there, receive; what you do not find there, reject as unessential. The next evidence of his departure from God, will be difierence of sentiment with God. "We say. We agree with this and with that, and. Here are some things we cannot agree with. God says, " Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all, other things will be added unto you.'' But you say, " In the house of God, and on the Sunday, it is right to seek God first; but surely the passage does not mean more than this.'' And you will perhaps say, "Are we required to seek God's honour and glory first in the warehouse, the shop, the bank, the mart, the house of commons, the house of peers, the palace, on the seas, in the field of battle ? — are we to seek God's glory first there, as well as in the sanctuary, and every week-day as well as on the Sabbath ? This will never do : it may be very philosophical, very beautiful, but we could not get on in this way, nor live by it; it will not serve our turn, it must be a mistaken view of Christianity, or an obsolete prescription, or a Jewish one." Then again, we read, " Those who honour me, I will honour" — that if we seek to obey his will first, God will do every thing for us. You say, ^' That may have been all very well for the apostles, but it will not do for us; it may have been most admirable in the apostolic age, but it is altogether unsuited for the nineteenth century, when competition is so keen, and competitors so many. If we shut up our shops on Sunday, we shall go to ruin : if we do not read the newspapers on Sunday, we shall lose the last news from the Continent; if we do not go to the news-room on Sunday, we shall fall behind our neighbours in political information. THE UNBELIEVING, a 107 "Christianity must be adapted to the nineteenth century," you say, " and not the nineteenth century to Christianity.'^ My dear friends, the religion of God is unchangeable, like God himself: it is meant for all ages and all countries ; and you will find it true, believe me, in all centuries, that if you seek God first, and honour and serve him first, all the information you really need you will have time to gather, and the wealth you can truly want will be bestowed on you, and all the happiness that is good for you will be superadded to you.. Make the experiment. It is not for per- sons to say, "This will not do:" make the experiment : take God at his word : try it, and you will see it will stand true, for the God of truth has pronounced it. This alone is the secret of all wavering, halting, hesitating — the not putting confidence in his truth, as God's own truth ; a constant feeling that it is only man's word : you want that clear, distinct, unhesitating conviction that God has spoken, and that the Bible is his autograph ; the very echo of the voice which resounded through the trees of the garden of Eden. Another symptom of departure from God, is not only difference of sentiment, but faltering in our walk with God. Perhaps we are outwardly walking with God, but we begin to falter. Some one whispers in our ear, " You are over-zealous, you preach too often, you speak too much ; you go to church too often, you read the Bible too much : your health will suffer, you cannot stand it, you must be moderate." My dear friends, what is moderation ? Did you ever hear of moderation in honesty ? If it were preached to you, would you not understand it to mean, "Be a thief?" And if you were told to be moderate in speaking the truth, would you not understand it as, " Tell lies ?" Well, then, if moderation be so intolerable in keeping the sixth, or seventh, or any other of the commandments, how can it be tolerable in keeping the first commandment ? " Love God a little, but not too much !" Hear the law : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thyself." There is no fear of our being too enthusiastic, too zealous in religion. In fanaticism we may be so, in superstition we may be so ; but in real religion there is no risk of this — all the 108 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. risk lies in the opposite way: there is not the slightest fear of expending all one's energies in the service of God. But, strange to say, so constituted is this world — or, rather, so corrupted is it — that the same man who condemns want of en- thusiasm in a physician in the cure of his patient — in the lawyer, in labouring for his client — in the member of Parliament, in pleading for free-trade, or restriction, or some other earthly dogma — the man, in short, who condemns the want of enthusiasm in the things of Cassar, that very man comes forward and repro- bates the possession of it where it ought to burn with the in- tensest light, and glow with the greatest splendour — in the service and in the sanctuary of Grod. Thus unbelief shows itself in falter- ing in our walk with God, and hesitating to advance. It also shows itself in the suspension or diminution of our con- fidence in G*>d. The Christian walks with God as a child walks with its father. It is rarely that a child suspects or fails to con- fide in its father; and as it grows up to years of thought, its confidence in its parent is gradually deepened and strengthened. Now, take the confidence of the child in its father, and multiply it by the immense — the infinite; and, removing the alloy and imperfection attaching to creatures of the earth, then you will have some slight idea of the extent of what should be the true Christian's confidence in his heavenly Parent. When the Chris- tian looks upon God in this light, he walks with all the childlike confidence of a son with his father ; but when he loses this confi- dence, he walks like a slave after his master, crouching and trembling behind him : he looks to God in the sanctuary, but is frightened if God should look at him in his place of business, at his hearth, or his place of amusement. He begins to walk, not as a son with his father, but as a maniac with his keeper — in dread, slavery, and dismay. And whenever this feeling takes the place of confidence, there is a departure from God, and an evidence of an evil heart of unbelief in thus suspecting God. This is the secret of much of the prevailing feeling respecting the communion-table. Much of it has prevailed long in the Scotch churches, and more or less in all other Christian com- munities. Men have had a constant conviction that the Lord's table is a sort of snare or trap — a sort of opportunity which THE UNBELIEVING. 109 God takes for pouncing upon the unwary, the un watchful, and infirm, to destroy them. It is not so : this is all a delusion. A communion-table is spread for the humble, hoping, trusting, be- lieving Christian : it is meant for those who desire to be Chris- tians, if they cannot say they are more. It is spread on Calvary, not on Mount Sinai. And yet, communion Sabbath after com- munion Sabbath, only four or five hundred persons come to the Lord's table. Why do you not all come? It is nothing on Grod's part that prevents you, but something in yourselves: in short, an evil heart of unbelief leads you to depart from Grod ; you have lost the impression that Grod is your Father, and gathered the conviction that he is only your keeper and master ; and you are, therefore, afraid to meet him. You grow into a state of dis- satisfaction with God altogether. Strange, that the eye should be dissatisfied with the purest light, the ear with the noblest harmony, and the heart with the holiest worship ! But so it is ; and simply because the heart is seared with unbelief. And, lastly, you stand still. You faltered in your walk with God, you suspended your confidence in him, you became alto- gether dissatisfied with God, and now you stand still. This is the progression described in the first Psalm : " Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners; nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.'' First, you go among the '^ungodly;" that is, excellent moral men, who have no real vital religion : then, when you have com- panied with them awhile, you go with " sinners ;'' that is, the openly wicked : and when you have gone with them awhile, you reach the company of the ^^ scornful ;'' those who scoflf at all sacred things. First of all, you ^' walk in the counsel of the un- godly '/' that is you take the advice of the ungodly. By-and-by you " stand in the way of sinners -/' you think you can stand and look on without getting any harm by it. And by-and-by you ^'sit down in the seat of the scornful." Such is the declension or departure of a man from God. You have too much conscience at once to retreat wholly, and too little faith to advance. You dare not give yourself wholly to the world, and will not give yourself wholly to God. You will not renounce your sins, and dare not renounce your religion. You dread your skepticism, SECOND SERIES. 10 110 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. lest it should fail you ; you dread your religion, lest it disquiet you. You have neither the peace of the world, that is but for a season, nor the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, and is the blessed possession of the true believer; and, therefore, you are the most miserable of men. You occupy an incessantly disputed ground. In the history of this country, we read of the men who walked, lived, feasted, and slept in their armour, with sword in hand, and all accoutred and prepared for battle. These were the borderers of Teviotdale, and Nithsdale, and Eskdale. Their lives were the most harassed and disquieted, because they were always exposed, on both sides, to the incursions of the foe. So in spiritual things : the man who has got religion enough to drag him to the sanctuary on the Sabbath, but love of sin enough to take him to the playhouse next day — the man who dare not keep away from public worship, but cannot keep away from all the sinful follies of a sinful world — that man is the most wretched and miserable of all. The thorough reprobate has his heart hardened, and enjoys a degree of peace } the thorough Christian has perfect peace 3 but intermediate persons, who are now nibbling at heaven, and now revelling in the earth, and taste, each by turns, the cup of the Lord and the cup of the world, are men in a ceaseless fever, who know neither the world's peace, which is the devil's, nor the Christian's peace, which is Grod's. I care not so much to what denomination of Christians a man belongs — that is circumstantial ; but it is of most vital importance whether he receives Grod's truths as the Bible reveals them, or the lies which obscure and hide them. For instance, it is not of eternal moment whether you be a Churchman or a Dissenter ; but It is so whether you be a Socinian or a Christian. It is not, I gay, of eternal moment, whether you be of the Church of England or the Church of Scotland ; but it is of eternal moment whether you are a Roman Catholic, or a Protestant or evangelical Chris- tian ; because the differences between the several denominations of the Christian church are not so great as they thjnk them, who constantly apply the microscope to those differences, and try to magnify and make them as great as possible. And, depend upon it, those men who do so are conscious of something wrong; in short, that there is no real difference, and, therefore, the little THE UNBELIEVING. HI that there is they must try to make as great and momentous as they can. I believe that Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Inde> pendents, Baptists, and Wesleyans agree in essential, vital, last- ing truths. Look at the points upon which they dijBfer from each other, and make your election ; but remember, it is an election in circumstantials, not in vital and essential truths. Indiflerence to vital truth or to deadly error is a very different thing. The world may call this liberality and enlightenment ; but Christ will look upon it as latitudinarianism and lukewarmness. Essential truth is essential to salvation ; circumstantial truth, to complete- ness or comfort. We may err in the latter, and yet be saved ; if we err in the former, we cannot be saved. Socinians and Roman Catholics, as such, cannot be saved. I do not say of those who are Socinians or Koman Catholics, that they cannot and never will be saved; but this I do say of each, that it must be, if there be truth in the Bible, in spite of their creed, and not in consequence of it; and salvation will be more or less probable to them, just in the same ratio in which they abjure their peculiarities of doctrine, and learn that the arm of salvation is not an arm of flesh, but the arm of God manifest in the flesh. • Another evidence of departure from God, or unbelief, is not making progress. If there be no increase, the presumption is that there is decrease ; if there be no progression, the presumption is that there is retrogression. I cannot find in the Bible the least evidence that I may stand still. But, of course, there are two or three ways of growing : you may grow downward in humility, as well as upward in holiness and conformity to God; and it is quite possible that we may be growing down- ward in humility simultaneously with our growing upward in holiness and likeness to God. If we are growing in our ac- quaintance with our own weakness, our own sinfulness, our own nntrustworthiness in ourselves and of ourselves, we are growing in the right direction ; or if we are growing in greater victory over sin, greater conformity to the image of Christ, greater supe- riority to the attractions and allurements of the world, having our hearts more in heaven, then we are growing in another and no less heavenly direction. But the Christian must either grow 112 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. and approach to, or retrograde and depart from, the living God ; he is never stationary. A great sign of unbelief is the love of this world. This is the great source of apostasy to many. As long as you were without the riches of this world — when you were making your way, and just gaining enough to live by, and had nothing to spare — you were Christians, spiritually-minded men, devoted men; but at length the world begins to smile upon you, wealth begins to flow in, and in proportion as you become rich and prosperous, how true is it, in many cases, that you depart from the living God ! We all long for more than we have -, but we have to bless God through the endless ages of eternity, that God never made us what we wished, but what he, in his infinite wisdom, saw fit to make us. The smiles and blandishments of the world are often the stings and poison of the Christian life and character : you cease to place your affections on God, and place them on the world ; and you begin to love, and serve, and worship, and finally die in and with the world. By the world I do not mean mere external nature. The Christian is not called upon to have a distasteful eye or a tuneless ear, to wear a gloomy visage or exhibit an austere and sombre air ; nor is he called on always to speak theology or teach its doctrines, or dispense his prescription* (if he be a physician) amid a cluster of texts, or to sell doctrine (if he be a trader) along with his commodities. But when the world says, "Do this," and Christ says, "Do that," he then shows his Christianity by proving he has no choice. If Christ be his Master, he will follow him ; if the world, he will follow it. It is more in the quiet decision of the Christian heart that true Christianity exists, than in all the noise and confusion you often hear in the world. I do not think the loudest professor the greatest believer. The very reverse of this is often the case. The great deep stream, as it rolls on its course, till it disembogues itself in the main, does so silently and softly. The brawling little mountain-brook, fed by a thunder-shower, makes a noise as its waters rush along its stony shallow bed, soon to leave it dry. It is often the soil which is scarcely fertile enough to bear grass upon its surface, that conceals rich veins of gold in undug mines below. So, often, under the most rugged and uncouth, or the THE UNBELIEVING. 113 most quiet and apparently taciturn aspect, there lives the sustain- ing principle of true religion. Be slow to conclude that the loudest professor is the greatest Christian ; be slow to conclude, that when you see nothing without^ there is nothin within. This departure from Grod, the great accompaniment of unbelief, is the commencement, unless arrested, of endless ruin : just as the approach to God is the commencement, unless stopped, of endless happiness. Remember the last words, addressed by our Lord to the two great classes of mankind : he says, *^ Come, ye blessed of my Father,'' to the one class ; and to the other class, " Depart from me, ye that work iniquity.-' The word " Come," addressed to the weary and heavy laden on earth, will also be repeated from the judgment-throne; the word "Depart," that strong charac- teristic of the unbelieving here, will also be repeated from the judgment-throne. And thus heaven is, as I have often told you, but a ceaseless approximation to Grod the centre; each being there is touched with a centripetal impulse, and brought nearer to God in light, happiness, holiness, knowledge, and joy. And hell, again, is just an eternal departure from God, each step in that departure deepening the agony felt, and darkening the dread and terrible eclipse. Departure from God is the twilight of darkness and everlasting wo ; approaching to God is the morning twilight that ushers in a day of everlasting glory and felicity. It rests with you, my dear hearers, under God, to take your choice — departure from God, or approach to God — ^hell with its misery, or heaven with happiness. It rests with you, under God, to choose this day which shall be your portion for ever and ever. I call on you to cleave to the word of God. Do not admit any thing supple- mental to it, nor subtract any thing that is necessary to it. God's word, as I have already told you, is the very autograph of Deity ; it is the only vicar and vicegerent of God that we have upon earth ; it is God's voice perpetuated in music and multiplied echoes. He still speaks in it, as he spoke in paradise to Adam and Eve. Cleave to this book, then ; hold it fast as the voice of God. What it condemns, shrink from; what it applauds, cleave to. Take it as your chart sent from heaven, to guide you 10» 114 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. through your journey on earth; take it as your lamp in life, as your hope in death, as your pathway to Jesus, to immortality, and the skies. Maintain communion and fellowship with God ; walk with and live near G-od. Miss not the house of prayer; forsake not the assembling of yourselves together. Do not let it be said that while a bright day fills the church, a wet day empties it ; that a little headache, which would not detain you from the exchange, keeps you from the sanctuary. Do not make the Sabbath a day for recruiting your body : rather take a day from Caesar for that end. Make the Sabbath a day of communion and fellowship with God. Do not show that you are punctual in the things of Caesar, but careless in the things of God. Be thankful for yout Sabbaths, for you know not how long they will last. Be thank- ful for the Bible, for you know not how long it will be open be- fore you. Be thankful for your privileges, for you know not how long they will be continued to you. Work ye while it is yet day, for the night cometh in which no man can work. And, further, look upon all that surrounds you in this perishing world as transient, ephemeral, evanescent ; all its glory is approaching to an eclipse ; all its grandeur is soon to pass away, like as a fleet ship glides swiftly past us at sea. All that men call high, will soon be of low estate ; all that men pronounce to be little, will be seen to be great and glorious. Look around you, and you see the^ long-established institutions of the nations tottering, and crash- ing, and falling to pieces. Even in our own country, men's hearts are failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth. We are now quiet, at peace — • comparative peace ; like a beautiful gem, placed in the bosom of the mighty waters, our throne, and our country, and our people are secure ; but it is, I solemnly believe, because upon that gem the name of Jesus is legibly inscribed, and that here among ua his truth is more or less reverenced and prized. But, however long these privileges of ours may last, we know that our country must be moved ; the shocks which shake the world cannot leave Great Britain unmoved. The day is fast hastening, I am per- suaded, when all human institutions will be more or less THE UNBELIEVING. 115 loosened; let us, therefore, look up, and learn to place our hearts upon that throne which cannot be shaken ; and we shall hereafter have to bless Grod for dethroning kings, scattering dynasties, shattering thrones, and convulsing the world ; for the shaking of things here will thus have led us to look to the things which never can be shaken or removed. And, dear friends, let us walk with Grod. Let me give as the last prescription, ^^ Love to walk with God.^' Learn more and more to see God. We always carry so much atheism with us when we travel into different countries, or go forth into the fields, or stroll by the seaside. Try not only to see nature, but to ^^rise from nature up to nature's God." Try to realize God m the less perspicuous book of nature, as well as in the more perfect page of revelation. Let the stars that shine in the firma- ment be to you as the eyes of the omniscient, omnipresent Deity. Let the tints of flowers, and their fragrance too, be to you but as visible creations of the smiles and breath of God. Let all nature's sounds proclaim to you his love ; all scenes reflect to you his glory and greatness. And, whether the thunder-cloud overshadow you with its lowering darkness, or heaven's golden sunshine beam upon you in all its effulgence, you will have no awful forebodings of the future, no paralyzing reminiscences of the past. Every hill shall be to you a Tabor, every day a Sabbath, every house a sanctuary, every table a Lord's table; the bright orbs and worlds above and around you, as God's shining footprints in the immensity of space. You will taste of the grapes of Eschol in the wilderness, and see a door of hope in the valley of Achor. You shall hear the voice of God in all sounds, and realize the presence of a heavenly sunshine in the tents of Mesech, and the tabernacles of Kedar. And, above all, pray for that Holy Spirit who is needed to create that confidence, arrest this departure, and give us a new impulse to carry us to God. And may that Spirit descend on us all, and make us earnest, loving, consistent, devoted Christians ! I have thus tried to analyze the mother sin, of which the Bins enumerated in verse eighth are but the progeny. It may 116 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. be that these sins are here enumerated as the special charac- teristics of the antichristian and Roman apostasy. They are, unquestionably, the historical characteristics, and, I believe, necessary fruits of that system. But whether there or here, unbelief is the parent. Faith is the cure : it worketh by love — purifieth the heart — overcometh the world ; it is the gift of God, and the privilege and possession of them that pray. 117 LECTURE YIII. ENDLESS SUFFERERS. " Which is the second death." — Revelation xxi. 8. I HAVE already addressed you on previous Sunday eve Lings from the subject of " the New Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband ;'' and also on its peculiar accompaniment, " The tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them ;" and we have rejoiced together at the promise of the final extinction of all tears and sorrows in the hearts of God's people, for God shall wipe away, and wipe out the fountains of all tears from their eyes. I noticed the creative intimation, ^' Behold I make all things new,^' and the free invitation addressed to all : ^'I will give unto him that is athirst of the water of life freely/' lastly, I stated that all these promised good things are to be the inheritance of "him that overcometh,'' an expression which involves conflict, weapons, a leader, and victory. My object this evening is to show that the notion held by some in the present day, that the sufferings of the lost will not be eternal but temporal, is erroneous, and without any scriptural or reasonable foundation. Before entering upon my subject, I will read a short quotation from Archdeacon Paley. He says, " It is very difl&cult to handle this dreadful subject properly ; and one cause of the difficulty is, that it is not for one poor sinner to de- nounce such awful terrors and appalling consequences upon others.'^ In stating that the pains of the lost are not temporal but eternal, I am aware that I take the unpopular and, to many, the unpalatable view; but the truth of a doctrine does not de- petid on its agreeableness, or upon the many or the few that hold it : " To the law and to the testimony ! if they speak not accord- ing to this word, it is because there is no light in them." 118 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. As far as I can conceive of the state of the lost, I think the expression in the text, ^'ihe lake thatburneth with fire and brim- stone,^' is figurative. I do not think it is here implied that there will be a material fire, or a literal gnawing worm, to torment the lost ; these are the expressive, and it may be inadequately expres- sive, vehicles and symbols of their intense and untold agony. Besides these there are elements of wo enough in hell. Let a virtuous and delicate mind, to allude only to one, conceive what it would feel, were it condemned for a time to the company of persons selected from the bridewells or the penitentiaries of the earth. Would not the scene be a painful one ? Would not their blasphemous oaths strike terror into the heart, and their impure words create disgust and abhorrence in the pure and delicate soul ? And yet, to be placed in such a hell on earth is but a faint sha- dow of the realities of that literal hell : here, amid all the varied forms of depravity, redeeming traits are thrown up, mitigating and relieving elements of aboriginal beauty shine forth; but among the lost there is no softening element at all, nothing but unmixed sin, unmitigated and unmingled evil in its various de- grees. In the state of the lost, too, those evil passions which so often rankle latent in bosoms here, and develop their powers with years and opportunities, we have reason to believe will there be released of every restriction, and left unshackled to revel in full and exasperated expansion for ever. " He that is holy, let him be holy still; he that is unholy, let him be unholy still." Hea- ven is the full and unfettered expansion of those noble principles of holiness, and buds of happiness, that God has implanted ia the renewed heart; and hell is the eternal growth and expansion of the poisonous passions and rankling elements of misery formed in the natural heart. Thus a sinner sinks to hell as a natural consequence of his past conduct ; it is not God who has doomed a soul to hell, it is not his fiat that sends him there, but sin, which has ripened the soul for it, weighs it down and buries it there. I gather from the Scriptures, that whatever of beauty and splendour, and ennobling motive, and inspiring hope, sur- vive here, are emanations of the Almighty. But there will bo with the lost God's curse concentrated ; no trace of beauty with* ENDLESS SUFFERERS. 119 out, no trace of joy within — an ever-gathering and seething sense of wo, casting over the length and breadth of hell one dark, terrible shadow, crushing the soul, yet never filling its capacity of wo — the whole past distilling bitterness, the future evolving from it not one ray of happiness or hope ; but down the terrible steeps of hell the cataract of God's wrath shall precipitate itself over palpitating piles of men, and no intimation heard that one drop of the water of life shall flow to cool or quench the burning flame. The lost will be in the possession of all their faculties. Me- mory will be there, as we see in Abraham's address to the rich man : " Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things." Memory will record salvation past like a ship at sea, seen for a moment and gone for ever ; a preached Saviour rejected, and offered mercies the most precious then perished. " Which way I climb is hell, — myself am hell ;" and then will be the consuming recollection, " I might have been rejoicing with the redeemed in heaven, but now I am to suffer eternally in hell, not because there were no invitations in the gospel addressed to me, or any unwillingness in God's heart to receive me, but because I did it all myself." The conscience will be fully alive in hell. You have only to imagine man's conscience in full unfettered action, all the opiates of earth withdrawn, and around it a sea of overflowing evil, to conceive what a hell man bears in his bosom : " Which way I climb is hell, — myself am hell," will indeed be true. A man may carry coiled up in his heart so terrible a prestige of hell, that it needs but the hand of death to uncoil the life, and the intense agony symbolized by " the consuming fire" and "gnawing worm" will be produced. " So writhes the mind remorse hath riven. Unfit for earth, undoom'd to heaven. Darkness above, despair beneath, Around it flame, within it death." Have any of you committed some terrible crime against society ? If so, do you not remember the burning shame and agonizing 120 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. self-reproach that followed that act? Wherever you went the recollection haunted you ; to escape from it was impossible ; it stung you from every point. This is but a faint shadow of the power of conscience in the regions of the lost. We need not the doctrine of eternal reprobation in its popular sense. Whatever good is in man, comes from God } whatever of evil, comes from man ; the lost plunge into hell solely by their own personal course and choice ; each sin one indulges in is but a budding wo, and perseverance in the wicked practices of sin is just travelling on the high road that leads to destruction, while the renunciation of it and return to God would restore him to the pathway to eternal happiness. But I do not delight to dwell on the misery of the lost. Blessed be God, my message to all is an offer of eternal life, and that without preparation on your part, or any delay : no preparation is necessary ; you are invited to come just as you are to Him " who is the resurrection and the life." I do not believe that the terrors of the law, or a description of the miseries of the lost, are God's consecrated instruments for the salvation of souls. The weapon that is all but omnipotent to convert, is the manifestation of the love of God in Christ, the preaching of '^ God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever be- lieveth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'' " He who knew no sin was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." These are God's appointed and effectual means of converting the sinner, and when applied by the Spirit of God they cannot fail. But the chief object of inquiry this evening is. What is th6 duration of the state called " the second death ?" Is it temporal or eternal ? for a little, or endless ? Some able divines are of opinion that its duration is temporary, and this idea is gaining ground in the present day. I humbly think that it is the grace of God alone that keeps the holders of this opinion from Socini- anism, and not the consistency of their own logic. They are amid the rapids — let them watch, and tremble, and fear. I will now lay before you several theories that have been broached on this subject, founded on the idea that the sufferings of the lost will be temporary. ENDLESS SUFFERERS. 121 Some think the wicked will be annihilated, either at death, or after suffering a season, and that immortality is the special gift of the gospel ; others that they shall be transferred to heaven after being punished a season. To confute these opinions, I would quote such texts as these : " Many shall come from the oast and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven j but the children of the king- dom shall be cast into outer darkness, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." ^' The Son of Man shall send his angels, who shall gather together all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire." " Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness." ^' Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." Notice the very strong expressions here used to describe the miseries of the lost. " Outer darkness," without a hint of a future ray of light ; ^'a furnace of fire," without the promise of a cooling drop of water; 'Hheir worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." Do these expressions denote no more than a merely temporary punishment ? Again : ^^Then shall he say to them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from be- fore the foundation of the world ;" to those on the left, " Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." Heaven and hell are here beautifully represented by the terms "come" and "depart." Heaven, here described by "come," is the application of the cen- tripetal power, each movement of the Christian drawing him ever nearer to Christ his centre ; and hell, here embodied in the word "depart," is the continuance of his centrifugal force, by which every unbeliever is carried to a greater and greater distance from Christ, throughout the gloomy cycles of a ceaseless eternity. "These shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." The same language that describes the duration of the punish- ment of the wicked, limits also the happiness of the righteous; the duration of the one is in the same words as that of the other, since the same word is applied to both. If you hold that the state of the lost here described is temporary, you must admit the state of the righteous to be temporary also; SECOND SERIES. 11 122 APOCALYPTIC SKETCHES. if the term " everlasting" stamps eternity on the one, on what grounds can you determine that '' eternity" stamps temporal dura- tion on the other ? If there be any limitation in the time, there would surely have been a glimpse of it given here ; tut no such limitation appears. ^' Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord ;" " shame and ever- lasting contempt;" or, in the Apocalyptic description, " the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever ;" not one intima- tion of an abatement of wo is discoverable : no dim dawn, no vista of deliverance. The Greek word, ei<; rohq alwvai; tujv aiujvwvj here translated ^^everlasting," signifies literally '^unto the ages of the ages," ale)