social fabric are being loosened and dissolved. "The cities of the nations fall." Great Babylon is coming into remembrance before God. These are the "removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things that cannot be shaken may remain."

Oh, let it not be forgotten that our preparation for this glorious. city is not an acquaintance with its mineralogical or geological characteristics, nor a poetic sympathy with its glory and pure splendour. We may be poets able to sing all sweet songs, and painters able to transfer to the canvas all bright scenes; we may be able to group and catalogue the stars, describe and classify the flowers, and yet not be Christians. It is the pure in heart who shall see God. It is they who are like Christ, who shall live eternally with him. It is holy character that abides for ever. The New Jerusalem is being prepared for those who have new hearts, new affinities, new affections, and new natures. Corruption cannot inherit its incorruption. Unsanctified feet may not tread its golden streets, nor impure eyes rest upon its beauty, nor one unregenerate heart beat amid its blessedness. There is but one essential franchise-a new nature: "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of heaven." No qualification will be accepted as a substitute for this.

Make sure of a new heart, and you may safely calculate on an entrance into this city. This is the only indispensable qualification. It matters not how obscure, despised, or forgotten you may now be; you may be renewed, and sanctified, and made meet for this "inheritance of the saints in light," by that Holy Spirit who is promised to all that ask. "If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Spirit to them that ask him!" It is no superiority to the necessity of a vital moral and spiritual change, that you belong to the very highest orders in the realm. "Ye must be born again." Nothing besides is any other than responsibility. This alone is meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light.

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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 sorrow, 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 endeavoured 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 repeated 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 undefiled, 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 of 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 see and know hereafter." Man's responsibility and God's sovereignty are truths—

The epoch of their

eternal truths; their harmony is real, but not audible to us; our ears are too deaf, our perceptions too blunt. contact their focus-is not yet arrived: it tiently.

will be; wait pa

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-"the world knoweth us not." But then shall be the era of the "manifestation of the sons of God" -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

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 sunshine, 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, goodshall 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 comprehends; 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 immortal soul. His gifts, and graces, and blessings cannot fill it— Deity alone can. It was so meant at the beginning. This inheritance 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 everlasting 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, O Israel! Who is like unto thee, O people,

saved by the Lord, the shield of thy strength, and the sword of thine excellency?"

Do we so hope? Can we feel and say so? Is this our relationship?

And this God, 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 citizens 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, "God shall wipe out (aketet) 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, weeping and rejoicing-but that he 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 accumulation 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.