shortened." The holy seed of Isaiah vi. 13 will be the substance, i.e., the stock of the Israel of the future, and the divided and scattered nation shall be gathered, and shall once more become one, when they look on Him whom they have pierced, and mourn.

It is thus that God makes man the arbiter of his fate, and He will use for the destruction of a rebel people that very power which they have invoked, thus revealing to all time that the God who is "merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin," is yet the God of holy vengeance and of retributive justice, “who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children."

From this reference to the “enemies" in the parable, we discern the thoughts that were welling up in the mind of the Holy One, as He foresaw what His rejection would cost the devoted nation of Israel, whom He came to bless, and to gather under His wings. He saw what lay behind the indignation of Scribes and Pharisees, as they observed the momentary triumph with which the lowly King was received by the multitude on approaching the city; but His heart was occupied with the miseries that awaited the doomed city, as we see from verse 41, When He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it."

As we connect together the tears of the Son of God. with the divine utterances concerning the judgment of the wicked, hard thoughts of the righteous judgment of God disappear. Those thoughts which naturally fill our minds then give way to a holy reverence and awe in the presence of heights of righteousness and holiness, and depths of sin and transgression, that God alone can understand.

H. G.

"THE BRIDE, THE LAMB'S WIFE."*

And

"Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb's wife. he . . . . shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God.”—REV. xxi. 9-11. IN reading this account of the glory of the Church we may well ask, "Can vile, wretched sinners like ourselves have anything to do with this?" The answer comes, "These are the true sayings of God," and on God's testimony we may believe what would never have entered into the heart of man to conceive. Many of the Lord's people only think of heaven as a place of exemption from pain and sorrow, but God reveals to us what heaven is, in order that our hearts may be set on things above. Most people would like to go there after they have done with earth, but not until then. The young man who left the Lord and went away sorrowful, preferred earth to heaven, but God would give us such a knowledge of heaven as would lift us above earth. It is the cross which speaks to us of the baseness of earthly things and the brightness of coming glory.

Satan has a most distinct interest in keeping us away from this Book of the Revelation, to the reading of which a peculiar blessing is attached. No other book so frequently mentions the Lamb, that Lamb who is our link with the glory, which but for Him we never could have. No other book tells us so much of the glory, but Satan wishes to keep us grovelling upon the earth. It is this book, too, which tells us most of Satan's working and of his overthrow.

*

Notes of an address given by the late Mr. J. L. HARRIS about 1840.

John, who had been employed to tell the churches of their failures, had his heart cheered by these revelations. of future glory. None of God's purposes can be frustrated, and notwithstanding all the Church's failure, God shows John in what way the Church is viewed by Him. How great is the contrast between what we see and what God sees !

The angel who carries John away in the Spirit and shews him the vision, was one of those who poured out the vials of God's wrath upon that which pretended to be the Church; and this reminds us of the connection between grace and glory. We are apt to attach some glory to our own service, but as we read in Rev. vii., "These . . . . have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb: therefore are they before the throne of God." Our eternal blessing is owing solely to the blood of the Lamb, and he who has touched the Lord Jesus Christ is as meet for glory as if he had been as devoted as the apostle Paul. The Lamb is the great object of the glory, and when ourselves in that glory we shall look back upon the riches of the grace which brought us there.

The eighteenth chapter of the Revelation describes the city of man's building, the centre of all human glory. But as the sentence, "The kingdom is departed," followed hard on Nebuchadnezzar's boast, so here, the proud exclamation, "I sit as a queen," is succeeded by "In one hour is thy judgment come.' When man is most righteous, most perfect, as he thinks, then he is most ripe for judgment. Men are big with expectation of what will come in a few years' time, and none can say what man's energy may not produce; but if God's word be true, man can only produce that which God is going to judgeBabylon, the cage of unclean birds."

"

That holy Jerusalem, which is the symbol of the bride, has the glory of God. Of no account in man's estimation, she is one vast vessel to be filled with glory. All men want power; it will be vested in this city, which will have in Christ "the power of God and the wisdom of God." The glory will not add anything to us; it will only manifest what we have already. After man's city with man's glory has been destroyed, then God's city and God's glory will be revealed, and we in the heavens shall minister to those on the earth. God and man are as opposite as possible: the newspapers will tell us of the enlightenment of the nineteenth century, but God tells us that Christ is the light of the world. As to the Church generally, it has lost the power of testifying, and its light has been darkness, but God's purposes are not changed, and the only light that shall enlighten men in that day will be that which comes from this holy city.

"The city," John writes, "was pure gold," and this pure gold signifies that which is divine; there is no place for mere human nature. At present the eye is ever ready to see the workings of the flesh in the believer, but there we shall see Christ in each other, and ourselves reflect Christ. When God gave a religion to man He ordered a temple to be built, and man is still busy rearing temples; but now the Church is the temple of God, and hereafter God and the Lamb will be the temple of the Church. Then we shall know the value of the cross far more than we do now. In "the Lamb is the light thereof," we are taken above creation, for Jesus, the sun's creator, shone above the brightness of it, and God was light before He created the sun. The nations bring their glory into Babylon, but the saved nations will bring their glory into the golden city.

Redemption leads us to serve the Creator before the

creature.

are ours.

Purchased by the blood of the Lamb, all things

Christians should know how rich they are, not by what they give up, but by what they have, for God has called us unto His kingdom and glory. We should tell men how generous our God is, and how we can give up what they are greedy of, because we have more. Is high birth a thing esteemed? We are born of God. Are noble associations coveted ? We have fellowship with God.

The water of life has come to us through the Lamb, but now it is hindered in its course, instead of being like a smoothly-flowing stream. But then the flow will be unhindered; then we shall think the thoughts of Christ alone, and then the Lamb shall knit together the body into that unity for which so many Christians are now pining. The stream proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb circulates through the whole of that city, and flows forth in blessing to others.

God gives us everything in Christ, and it is this consciousness of possessing all things that makes a man lowly. The prospect of glory humbles more than the knowledge of being a ruined sinner. Then God shall have a worship beyond that which we now offer, and the highest happiness of heaven will find its expression in, “Thou art worthy!" The Revelation foretells the most alarming things, but it closes with the glory. Death and judgment await the natural man, but life and glory and incorruptibility are before us. The preciousness of these things is a safeguard against dangers present and future, and we may cheer ourselves with the remembrance that we are born from above, that the glory is our native clime, and that the Holy Ghost has been given to reveal to us the things that are freely given us of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.