but, more than anything else, this was what I thought and continued to think as the years sped away, Does God take care for bells, and has He no care for manhood? Is there a law for the manufacture of bells, and is there no law by which we may get a perfect music out of manhood? If during six thousand years man's physical nature, considered by itself has been subjected to law, by a rigor so exacting and exhaustive that no least infraction has ever escaped the visitation of penalty, if from the cradle to the grave, each individual of the generations in all the concerns of life has been compelled to measure only such a success as was proportionate to an unrepealable law; is it reasonable to suppose that his moral nature can riot in transgression, laugh at authority, trample law, and set his face against the very heavens, and do it with impunity? Or has God set this universe of His to a music sweeter than the chime of cathedral bells, and must each saved soul be fashioned according to His perfect law, and, poised in His smile, rock to and fro, swung by His love, and send out on His free airs melodious tides of joyous music? Only when the entireness of man's being has been subjected to law, will the sinless angels or redeemed sinners know what it is to listen to the full diapason of a restored Paradise.

The law of the Spirit of life allures, and the grandeur of its proportions, and the delicacy of its perfectness, inspire the disciple's advance, and give him joyous hope that he will one day attain "unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." Eph. iv: 13.

"As many as received Him to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name." John i: 12. The standard set before believers is high, but the power given them to become such is something marvelous. The stature of Christ is the stature of humanity's Archetype. It is the stature of the faultless ideal embodied in its perfection and proportion. Along with the statement of the fullness of the stature, mention is made of the measure of the fullness. Measurements of magnitudes take account of their extension in the three directions of length, breadth and thickness. Paul turns the believers attention to the love of Christ as a somewhat which passeth knowledge, and yet to save the conception. from needless poverty and positive dishonor he sends out the thought over the stretches of its length and breadth and thickness. The love of

Christ, and the stature of Christ are terms cc-extensive with the fullness of Christ. The fullness in length covers both the eternity past and the eternity to come. It sweeps over all that withdrawing distance along which anything can be learned concerning Him who consents to be known as the Being who was, and is, and is to come. The breadth of this fullness takes in all those Bible doctrines, which arranged side by side, modify and reinforce one another, and furnish the truths which give symmetry to character, equipoise to judgment, force to purpose, and guidance for life. The depth of this fullness is the quality of it.

The deeps of redeeming love include its tenderness, its purity, its inexpressible sweetness. Its height is its measurement along the same line, and soars with the soul till it is lost in the smile of God. The fullness of Christ, of which Paul spoke, for the purposes of study may, with profit, be put beside the vision of the New Jerusalem which John saw. "And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb's wife. And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God. * * * * * * 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 a hundred and forty and four cubits, according to the measure of a man, that is, of the angel." Rev. xxi: 9, 10, 15-17.

The city did not stand in all its completed splendor and perfectness till after the millennium. In keeping with this forecast, we have its full description held back till "death and hell were cast into the lake of fire." Rev. xx: 14. From the nature of the case, the city could not have touched the fullness of each and every promise till the end of every end.

But believers ought not to have adjourned till the close of the millennium only what revelation adjourned. Some disclosures which antedated this terminus were too plain to be overlooked, the hope to

which they ministered too dear, and besides the lighted facts too immense to be waived out of view.

A sermon preached in Middletown by Rev. D. Lee Aultman on the parable of the Ten Virgins was reported to me the same night by a friend of mine who heard it. It made a strong impression on the listener, and in the transfer made a lasting impress on me. One thing especially held me, and that was the emphasis he placed upon the representation that, on this occasion, when the Bridegroom came only the attendants were seen; the bride was not seen. It was in harmony with my view, tenaciously held, that the company constituting the redeemed would not be complete till the expiration of the thousand years; but I had not put into my treasury the tribute ready at hand furnished by this plain parable. It was a Klondyke find. The fact was, the bride was not five virgins, nor ten, but a unity, and she was not ready at the coming of the King's Son. "At midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the Bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet Him." Matt. xxv: 6. This was at the outset of the millennium; but away on toward its close, after the full ingathering of redemption's harvest time the year of Jubilee becomes joyous indeed, and the one universal shout is, "Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to Him: for the marriage of the Lamb come, and His wife hath made herself ready." Rev. xix: 7. The glory which came upon the planet when Christ came was a glory from God out of heaven, and every way worthy of a God; but the glory at the ending was so much augmented that we may well consider the earlier glory as an attendant glory. It was descending from God out of heaven during the whole thousand years. This much was clear, the city was the bride, but a part of the company known as the bride descended from heaven when Christ came, yet not all. But we are explicitly told that the city is the bride, the Lamb's wife. John's vision of it was in perspective; he says as much when he tells us he "saw it descending out of heaven from God." The seven vials outpoured and the plenitude of the Holy Spirit outpoured are during the same period. "The marriage of the Lamb is come" could not have been said until the final number of the saved was complete; "and His wife hath made herself ready" is most certainly not said of only such a frac

is

tional part of the redeemed as are ready at the beginning of the thousand years.

The three dimensions of the city are equal. It is the inspired way of setting forth the final perfection of the saved. The redeemed of the Lord are saved, body, soul and spirit. The habitat they occupy is the renewed earth. The bodies tenanted are made immortal, birdlike and volatile. The city has equal height and length and breadth. The conditioning environment for the pure spirit as well as the transcendent beauty of character made Christlike are to be pictured.

But what is specially noteworthy in the city's faultless future, is that it takes the form of a cube. Science says, that a hexagonal crystal in the mass is still hexagonal when separated into the smaller cubes that composed it. Each one of the individual units that helps to make up the New Jerusalem must needs be a cube.

The words cube and cubit are cognate. A cubit is the length of the forearm. The forearm is the measure of so much of the arm as was needful for the resting of the body when reclining at meals. The word recumbent is a derivative from the same root as supplies the term cube. And is not the moral fact as comforting as the literal is beyond cavil that a cube rests with equal ease and security on one face as on another. Try to so cast a cube as that on striking it shall lie uneasy and you strive after the impossible.

If a handful of cubes are tossed from the palm to the floor not one of the number can be either superior or inferior to its companions, in the good fortune of how or where it may chance to fall. There can be no choice in the matter. There need be no fear through any unforeseen happening. "There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God." Heb. iv: 9. And so at last under the reign of law each believer will be at rest in the presence of God and in the peace of God which passeth all understanding.

CHAPTER XII.

THE SABBATH.

ITH beautiful simplicity the Bible sets before us the story of creation week.

man.

Day rejoiced over day.

Wonder grew out of wonder.

The surprise of each new

morning rose higher than the last; until on the sixth day all earlier work was crowned by the creation of

On the seventh day the Maker of all rested.

The summit had been reached. Bathed in the smile of divine compiacency, the supreme achievement glowed in the luster of its perfectness and invited the creature's worship. As an avenue of magnificent palms seems a suitable approach to a tropical home that beckons in the smiling distance and is only waiting to turn every wish into a satisfying welcome, so the Sabbath is the fitting climax, with which to close the perspective of creation work and week.

As the Scriptures unfold and yield up their riches of meaning, it is at length manifest that the seven primal days furnish in bold outline the course of the ages. Man is a miniature universe. The oak is in the acorn. The world's long week is to have its awaiting consumima

If the Sabbath properly ends creation week, so an appropriate rest rounds out and supplements the centuries which lead up to the millennium. Following fast upon man's fall was the promise of his recovery. The eyes that looked upon Eden lost beheld by faith Paradise regained.

The tears that started at the backward glance turned into a rainbow that stooped over the forward vision. And so the weary years of waiting were the experience, nevertheless, of hope. For the promise spoken to the sinning pair, who had been driven forth from the garden, was close to consciousness, because fresh was the memory of what had been forfeited. No procrastination could empty the promise of the affluent certainties stored in its bosom.