He has celebrated them all accoutred for battle. The day of vengeance is in His heart, and the year of His redeemed When He issues forth, His Bride comes with

is come.

Him; for the armies in heaven which follow Him are clothed in her fine linen, white and clean.* And it is said of Him, "He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God." The Beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, are gathered together to make war against Him that sitteth on the horse, and against His army. But the Lamb shall overcome them, for He is King of kings and Lord of lords; and they that are with Him are called, and chosen, and faithful. The Beast and the False Prophet are cast into the lake of fire; and the rest are slain with the sword of Him that sate upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of His mouth. Then the Dragon is bound, and the thousand years of peace set in upon the earth.

* Ver. 14, 8. † Comp. ch. xvi. 14—16.

Ch. xvii. 14.

THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT.

The Heavenly Jerusalem.

Rev. xxi. 9-xxii. 5.

ADVENT sets us looking out towards the future. What is it we see at the end, as we gaze down its long vista ? We see walls, and gates, and foundations, and streets : there is a river also, and a tree. Is this a dream of a poet, a mirage of the desert? Nay; it is the realization of all hopes, the fulfilment of all promises. It is the goal of our journeyings; it is the City of God.

All things that happened unto Israel happened unto them for examples, and they are written for our admonition. Not without meaning, therefore, was it that their earthly hope was uniformly connected with a city. Abraham sojourned in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise, looking for a city which hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God. As His children journey through the wilderness toward the land of their inheritance, they continually hear of the place which the Lord shall choose among all their tribes to set His Name there. The place of His choice becomes manifest when David takes from the Jebusites the stronghold of Zion, round which had grown the city of Jerusalem. Hitherto the land had had no metropolis; the people no centre of government and worship. But now the ark of God is brought hither by David; and, later, the Temple is builded by Solomon, and also his own palace. Jerusalem becomes the holy

place of the Most High, the heart of the national life, the symbol of all that is most dear to the patriot and most sacred to the worshipper. Psalmists and prophets make it the theme of their sublimest strains. Illustrious kings sit on its throne, and holy priests minister at its altar, and lofty seers are among its councillors. It is beautiful for situation, and the joy of the whole earth.

God allowed the earthly Jerusalem to stand until its value as a symbol was complete, and then He broke it to pieces. He would not have His people to rest in any earthly fulfilment of His promises. Joshua gave them not His_rest :* there remaineth yet a rest for the people of God. Jerusalem that now is was not their continuing city they had yet to seek one to come.+ Abraham, and all his, well knew that it was so. They died in faith confessing that they were strangers and pilgrims on

the earth. Now they that say such things declare plainly

They desire a better

that they seek a country. . country, that is, a heavenly."+"They are not to be heard," the Church of England truly says in one of her Articles, "which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory promises." If their descendants of a later day had declined from their spiritual faith; if they had come to bind up with the earthly Jerusalem all that God had to give to man, it was in mercy that He broke their idol in pieces. But as He did so, He caused to rise before the vision of His last Apostle the heavenly reality of which it was but a shadow. The wilderness of Sinai was seen to be the type of this present world, and the true City of God would only be manifested when all things were made new.

* Heb. iv. 8.

↑ Ibid. xiii. 14.

Ibid. xi. 13, &c.

. . .

To this truth the Lord Jesus Himself had led His disciples. On that night before He suffered, when His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, He spake thus unto His own, whom He loved unto the end. "In My Father's House are many mansions I go to prepare a place for you . . . . I will come again and receive you unto Myself: that where I am, there ye may be also." Many mansions—that is, places for abiding, not merely for sojourning-many mansions in the one House, as many dwellings in the one city; the joy of the Lord to be entered into by the saints not as separate individuals, but as members of one family, citizens of one city. Such is the force of the image. And then observe that the Father's House is in the heaven to which the Lord was about to ascend; for He said, "I go to prepare a place for you :" and that His people are not received to the many mansions at death, but at His second coming. "I will come again and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there ye may be also."

St. Paul also had learnt the truth of the heavenly city before St. John had seen the vision of it. He knew that, besides the Jerusalem which then was, and was in bondage with her children, there was a Jerusalem above, which is free, and is the mother of us all who are Abraham's true seed in Christ Jesus.* He was confident that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.+ And when, in contrast with the earthly-minded, he said, "our conversation is in

heaven," he could not but think of the city there to which we belong; and he used for our conversation a word implying citizenship.* And who but he, recalling the glories of the chosen city, but desiring to show that it had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth, burst forth into that rapturous strain"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 perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel"?+

Of that which was shown to St. John in Patmos we say nothing at present.‡ Suffice it, that the glimpse he caught of the heavenly city has set all hearts burning from that time to this. Christian poets have found in its every aspect a theme for song and Christian congregations have never wearied of singing the hymns they have made about it. It has given form and colour to our vision of the heavenly home. No mere rest in a Paradise will that be for us, no lying at continual feast in Abraham's bosom; but rather the life of citizens in a city, full of high counsel and noble fellowship, wherein we stand around the King thereof, and aid Him to make it indeed the joy of the whole earth.

Truly "our citizenship is in heaven." It is not that we are to be half-hearted in the work we have here to do. Whatever duties our capacities call us to, whatever claims our position makes upon us, let us discharge

* Phil. iii. 20. † Heb. xii.

See Sunday after All Saints.

B