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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 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 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, having 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 measure 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 foundations 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 the advent of Christ, and as plainly precede the long expected Millennium.

First of all, as it seems to me, the earth will be purified by 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 his

coming-"will come as a thief in the night;" or as it is elsewhere 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;" 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 husband." This glorious spectacle is just the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah lxv. 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. c. beloved servant) shall be king over them, and they shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgments, 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 Lamb"-the sackcloth-wearing witnesses, once all but extirpated from the earth-" a woman,' "" once concealed in the wildernessnow 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.

This scene is the realization of a vision thirsted for during eighteen centuries, Rom. viii. 19: "the manifestation of the sons of God," "the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body;" and also 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 in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me;" and also of Gal. iv. 26: "Jerusalem, which is above, is free, and is 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; all this erection 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. God'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 actualized, 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 city, 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.

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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 perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant."

This city reveals its origin in our presenting its definition.

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 God 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

There is no weed, no regenerated soil; and,

that defileth can enter;" and, therefore, nothing that can originate and feed decay can fasten it on. brier, nor thorn, nor upas-tree, in that 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 elements 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 imperfect 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 shadow is sunk beneath the glory that streams down, uninterrupted by passing cloud, and yet neither scorching the earth, nor wearying 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, infinite beauty never grows old, and infinite excellence never wearies. Our homes on earth have but alloyed delights, and the fairest of

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 the 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.

3:

"And I

This idea is still more fully brought out in verse 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 shechinah 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