PART I<\/p>\n
CHAPTER I<\/p>\n
The Two Spheres of Love<\/p>\n
We shall be the better able to read parables of judgment if we first have some general knowledge of the Revelation of which they form a part. That Revelation is of a God, who is Love; therefore it can be spiritually received only by the spirit of Love; and can be intellectually received best through intellectual knowledge of the principles, which govern our mutual relationships of Love. Since Love is not an abstract science, but an experience, individual experiences have, each and all, a value as materials for such knowledge. Therefore I venture to bring forward for consideration such intellectual perceptions concerning Love as my personal experiences have led me to accumulate.
\nSo far as my life moves in love it is in mutual relationships. In these I find that I walk under two powers of Love. There are those with whom I live as friend with friend, as lover with lover. The mutual tie that exists here depends for its continuance, as for its original existence, upon the presence of certain qualifications in the friend or the beloved. I require \u201ctruth in the inward parts,\u201d and I am justified in requiring this as the condition of my friendship. If I enter upon a friendship on the supposition that this truth exists in the man or woman whom I call friend, and find that I have been deceived, that the person does not justify my trust, that the truth is lacking, or is merely verbal and superficial, I am justified in ceasing from admitting that person into the fellowship of friendship. We judge a man by his friends, and if he admits those who are unworthy to share his friendship, we feel he is not entitled himself to respect. In the sphere of friendship, and of the love which should inspire desire of espousals, qualification is the basis of relationship.
\nOn the other hand, there is a tie which is absolutely inalienable. The tie between parent and child depends upon no qualification. Fathers and mothers have claims to be honoured by, and owe duty to, their children, irrespective of any attractive qualification. The ideal of the mother\u2019s love requires that, if attractive qualification be wanting, she should therefore cling all the closer to the child.
\nPerfect love is the unity of these two principles, and it is impossible to conceive of any perfect relationship which does not move and have its being under these principles in unity. A true friend, having found one gifted with certain qualifications desired, enters with that friend into an indissoluble personal tie, in which he is by the ideal of friendship required to cling the closer, if under temptation the friend fails to his better self, or if under disease power and beauty become impaired. And, on the other hand, parents must, if they would do their duty, constantly urge their offspring to desire and to attain beautiful qualifications; and constantly make them feel shame concerning any personal lack of goodness. But, while this unity must exist in all relationships of love, it is true that all ideals of love presume and require the pre-eminence of one, or of the other, power. I will call these dual powers of Love:
\nI. The Star of the desire of Perfection, under whose ascendency is the ideal of friendship; and
\nII. The Star of the inalienable personal ties, under whose ascendency is the ideal of the parental tie.
\nThere are in Scripture two acts counted for righteousness, and these two acts are representative of the righteousness of these dual spheres of love:
\nFirst\u2014It is counted for righteousness unto Abraham that he considered not his own body now dead, but believed that God was able to give him the desire of his heart, a son born of his flesh. In Scripture Faith is always a thing of personal relation with God, concerning some personal hope. Abraham\u2019s faith was exercised through the cravings natural to one under the power of desires for the personal ties of parent and child. If the merely spiritual seed of faith had satisfied Abraham, he would have been content with Eleazar as his heir, for this Eleazar, the servant set over his house, was a man of faith, as is shown by the subsequent history. Abraham was not satisfied with the spiritual seed, however true its qualification might be. He wanted a personally begotten son, and this wish, and the belief that God could give him his desire, was counted unto Abraham for righteousness.
\nSecondly\u2014It is counted for righteousness to Phinehas, that in an impulse of jealous wrath he rose and slew Zimri and Cozbi. This was an act exercised under the influence of that spirit of requirement, which rules the sphere of friendship, and its operation was for the purging of Israel\u2019s spousal ties.
\nIf we look through Scripture, we find that Abraham and Phinehas are repeatedly powers moving in these two spheres. Abraham is the father not only of the one seed to whom the promises were made, but the father of, and the receiver of promises for, Ishmael; father not only of the righteous, but also the acknowledger of him in torment as his son. Phinehas is prominent in the day when the women of Benjamin were slain because of sin, and again in his descendant Ezra is strong to put away the strange wives, even though some of them had children.
\nThe faith of Abraham, and the jealousy of Phinehas are counted unto them for righteousness; not as righteousness, but as conditions fitted for receiving the perfect righteousness of God. We find therefore that Abraham and Phinehas are in their after histories made recipients of the righteousness of the spheres contrasted with their own. Abraham, representative of the righteousness which belongs to the star of the inalienable personal ties, is brought under the dread word of jealousy, which declares that the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman. He must with trembling and tears send his beloved firstborn out into the desert, not knowing whither he should go. He is revealed to us in Hades, instructing his son concerning the terrible mutual repulsions of those who are of contrary spiritual natures.
\nPhinehas, on the other hand, representative of the righteousness of the desire of goodness, standing before the ark of Eloheem in the day of Benjamin\u2019s sin, has it given to him to witness the awful wrestlings of the spirit of personal love with the spirit of ideal requirement, and to see that the majesty of the parent transcendeth all.
\nLet us turn to Judges 20, and read that history. From the seventeenth chapter all that follows is an appendix to the Book of Judges, an appendix which was added after the captivity in Babylon. It is not known by whom this was added, but most probably by some member of that great synagogue of which Ezra was the head. This appendix was not interpolated in order of time, but added, I think, to call attention to its having been written under the power, if not actually by the pen of Ezra, who dissolved marriage ties in the spirit of Phinehas. Let us read then as in companionship with Ezra, representative of Phinehas, minister of the righteousness of jealousy.
\nMen of Belial among the children of Benjamin had committed a great sin. The whole tribe had made themselves partakers of that sin by refusing to yield its perpetrators to justice. There was a double load of guilt on Benjamin. \u201cThey, knowing the judgment of God, that they who commit such sins are worthy of death, not only did the same, but had pleasure in them that do them.\u201d There is a deliberate abnegation of all goodness in assenting to, and taking pleasure in another\u2019s evil, beyond any commission of active transgressions oneself. This lowest horror of wickedness the tribe of Benjamin had reached, when they not only refused to give up the offenders, but gathered themselves together unto Gibeah, the very place of offence, to go out to battle against the righteous inquirers for blood.
\nNo wonder that the children of Israel, fired with justified indignation, asked in the house of God no question as to whether they should go up against Benjamin or not, but only \u201cWhich of us shall go up first against the children of Benjamin?\u201d and Jehovah said, \u201cJudah first,\u201d and they went, and the children of Benjamin came out of Gibeah\u2014out of the very city of sin\u2014and \u201cdestroyed down to the ground of the Israelites that day twenty and two thousand.\u201d Then the children of Israel remembered perhaps that Judah had given himself to the father who loved Benjamin, a surety for Benjamin\u2019s life: \u201cI will be surety for him; of my hand shalt thou require him: if I bring him not unto thee, and set him before thee, let me bear the blame for ever.\u201d It may be, I say, that they remembered this, and trembled before the Lord, who had thus sent forth Judah first. We find that they returned, no more confident of their right, but with weeping, asking, \u201cShall I go up again to battle against the children of Benjamin my brother?\u201d and Jehovah said, \u201cGo up against him.\u201d And again Benjamin, issuing forth out of Gibeah, destroyed of the children of Israel eighteen thousand men. It is added, \u201call these drew the sword.\u201d Why? perhaps signifying that these who were slain were all the most confident and ardent in wrath. Then the third time\u2014not with weeping only, but with fasting and with offerings of blood, with burnt offerings and peace offerings\u2014offerings of blood, but not offerings to bring sin to remembrance; offerings of sweet savour, offerings of brotherly covenant\u2014with these they inquired of Jehovah, and Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron, stood before the ark of Eloheem in those days; with these they asked the third time, saying, \u201cShall I yet again go out to battle against the children of Benjamin my brother, or shall I cease?\u201d and Jehovah said, \u201cGo up; for to-morrow I will deliver them into thine hand.\u201d Then, when full acknowledgment had been made of the transcending majesty of the personal ties of brotherhood, then, and not till then, Jehovah\u2019s avengers stood in the fight. Therefore is the rarely used word, \u201cthe ark of Eloheem,\u201d here spoken of as the ark before which the priest of jealousy stood in those days; for Eloheem is that name of God, under which the Scriptures do evolve the marvels of the star of the indissoluble personal ties. Phinehas, representative of the righteousness of jealous fury, is such, only as being first the seed of Abraham, representative of the righteousness of the parent\u2019s yearning for a son of the flesh. Yet, though the representative of jealousy be thus subject to the Father, he is Lord over his brethren. \u201cHe is the anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows, because He loved righteousness and hated iniquity.\u201d In the symbolic temple Phinehas kept all the doors of entrance into the House of the Lord. If we would enter into the Heavenly House, we must know God, not only as our pitiful Father, nor only as our gracious Comforter, but also as our jealous God, who will by no means clear the guilty.
\nIn the dual spheres of love, not only are the principles of relationship different the one to the other, but so also are the ideals of the exercise of power by the superior of the two here mutually related.
\nIn the relationships of friendship, the exercise of power by one over the will of another can be only by the spell of charming the will of another into acquiescence with one\u2019s own, for the walk together of friends must be in perfect freedom. Let the very breath of coercive measures once enter, and the sphere of coequal friendship, with its joys of free espousals, at once departs, and the mutual relationships are either violently ruptured, or they become of legal nature, such as obtain under the contrasted principle of indissoluble personal ties.
\nOn the other hand, a parent, a master, a king does not depend on charming the will of the inferior, but such an one commands, and if necessary enforces obedience. The ideal of the sphere of indissoluble personal ties requires that the superior shall here confine the freedom of the inferior, within certain bounds of the fair and fit, and by reason of the parent\u2019s having in his own hands the power to gratify or to deny the various desires of the child, we find that the parent has great powers over the will of the child, and can bind and loose the will in a way which is not conceivable in the sphere of equal friendship. There are mutual discrepancies in the dual accounts in the beginning of Genesis of the Creation, of the generations before the flood, of the salvation of Noah, and of the generations after the flood. This duality of account, so strongly marked in these opening visions, seems to the learned to witness of conflicting writers. It may be so for aught I know. But, by whatever means arrived at, I feel the result to be, that this duality of account does furnish the conditions necessary for true vision for me. I dare not judge for others, but for me true vision of the unity of love, and of God who is Love, is, I believe, impossible without knowledge being awakened of the two spheres of love, and their mutually opposed principles and powers.
\nIt would take volumes to show in full detail that every one of the mutual discrepancies of these dual accounts do serve to accentuate the distinctions between the two spheres, and are calculated to awaken the knowledge alike of their contrasts and of their unity. I am ready at any time to show this in full detail; but for the present I will confine myself merely to mentioning a few leading indications that these dual accounts do speak as under the powers of the dual spheres.
\nIn these dual accounts the name Eloheem represents the star of the inalienable personal ties, and the name Jehovah that of the desire of attribute, where friends walk in perfect freedom. In the dual accounts of the Creation of man, the principle of relationship between God and man, under Eloheem, is the inalienable one of man\u2019s being made in the image of God; whilst under Jehovah, the relationship is by virtue of the breath of livings, which breath man retains only on condition of preserving likeness of mind with Jehovah.
\nIn like manner the principle of relationship between man and woman, under Eloheem, is the inalienable one of being together formed in the same image, while under Jehovah, woman is not brought forth until she has been ardently desired. Not only are the principles of relationship thus markedly in keeping with the contrasted principles of the two spheres, but also thus are the powers. In the sphere of the indissoluble personal tie under Eloheem, God speaks the word of irresistible power, and takes even the darkness, and binds it with the light, forcing it, even in its dividing from the light, to be with the Light, Day One of His Purpose.
\nIn the sphere of the desire of attribute, where the creature has full freedom of will, Jehovah\u2019s word is disobeyed, the God suffers rejection by the creature.
\nIn the same way, when we pass on to the generations before the flood, we find that the principle of relationship between man and man, under Jehovah, is essentially likeness of mind. The generation of Cain, who, not being of one mind with his brother Abel, slew him, culminates in them who are fathers of those who dwell in tents and cattle, of those who handle the organ and the harp, and in him who sharpeneth all workers in metal\u2014while, on the other hand, the principle of the generations under Eloheem is the indissoluble tie of those who are formed in the one image, and who are begetters of personal sons and daughters.
\nAnd yet further, we see the man Abel, who is favoured by Jehovah, share in Jehovah\u2019s rejection and suffer death; while, on the other hand, the man Enoch, who is the favoured of Eloheem, shares in Eloheem\u2019s power, and does not see death.
\nAgain\u2014when Noah is saved from or by the flood, we find both Eloheem and Jehovah concerned in his salvation; and Jehovah alone gives as the reason of His saving Noah, that Noah had been personally righteous before Him, whereas all that concerned the Eloheem was, that Noah had come of perfect generations and walked with God, begetting sons and daughters, i.e. that for Eloheem the principle of the personal tie prevailed, and for Jehovah the attribute of the personal righteousness.
\nAnd yet again, in the generations after the flood, though then, as the fathers come of Eloheem\u2019s race, the power henceforth must be ascendant of Eloheem\u2019s sphere of the indissoluble personal tie, still so far the distinctions are preserved, that in the one genealogy, the conceived progeny is of nations and tongues, whereas in the other genealogy, the generation is of the personal begotten sons and daughters.
\nI have given the barest indication here of the truth of my assertion, that these dual accounts are strong voices calling from the dual spheres of love, to awaken perception of that duality, which perception is to my thinking a necessary condition of all articulate perception of unity. But I am prepared to show that in these and in other dual accounts, such as the dual histories in Kings and Chronicles, every one of the distinctions is adapted for some especial purpose of such vision of a duality in unity.
\nI have, I trust, said enough to be justified in assuming that the name Eloheem is representative of God in the sphere of the inalienable personal ties, and that the name Jehovah is representative of God in the sphere of the desire of attribute.
\nThe dual spheres are spoken of by many voices in Scripture, but their two supreme representatives are, He who manifests the Father, and She who is called Wisdom. These two are contrasted in every particular.
\nHe who represents the Father comes eating and drinking with publicans and sinners.
\nWisdom abhors the table of the fool. The books of Wisdom (i.e. Proverbs in the Old Testament, Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus in the Apocrypha) are filled with maxims urging to the prudent turning away from all vicinity of fools.
\nHe who manifests the Father is unforsaking. He loves them that curse, does good to them that hate, and prays for the despiteful and the persecutor. Wisdom loves them only that love her.
\nHe who manifests the Father seeks even those whom He has judged. Even in the church spued out of His mouth, He stands at the individual door and knocks, and though in Laodicea none can enter in and sit down at the table of God, the manifestor of the Father presses to dignify with His presence the lowly board of the lonely outcast.
\nWisdom is pitiless. If men neglect her counsels she laughs at their calamity. She mocks when their fear cometh. When their fear cometh as desolation, and their destruction cometh as a whirlwind, when distress and anguish cometh upon them, then they shall call upon her, and she will not answer; they shall seek her early, and they shall not find her.
\nAnd yet again\u2014
\nHe who manifests the Father declares that whoso eats of the Bread He gives shall hunger no more, and whoso drinks of the water He offers shall thirst no more, while, on the other hand, Wisdom boasts that who eats of her dainties straightway hungers again, and whoso drinks of her wine thirsts for more and more.
\nThus Wisdom excites insatiability, while He who manifests the Father holds the secret of silencing the insatiable. The gifts, which awaken insatiable desires, bring the receivers thereof into an ever recurring seeking, such as characterises the mutual delights of lovers and friends, but He who manifests the Father gives a Bread which becomes the receiver\u2019s very life, and a water which springs up in the receiver as the very outflow of that receiver\u2019s own blood. He, then, who eats and drinks of the Manifestor of the Father, is by that food once and for ever bought, and shut up into an inalienable bond in unity of life.
\nAlso the opposition roused by Him who manifests the Father, and by Her who is called Wisdom, is contrasted in kind.
\nThe opposers of Him who manifests the Father are masculine, and the nature of their opposition is legal in spirit, and is conducted under claims of special veneration for law, whether by Pharisees in favour of the claims of the elect nation, or by Herodians in favour of the claims of C\u00e6sar.
\nThe opposers of Wisdom are feminine, and \u201cthe Devil\u2019s Ape\u201d of the freedom of will, which characterises her sphere, is seen in the lawlessness of \u201cthe strange woman,\u201d who seduces men away from Wisdom\u2019s counsels.
\nHoping that I have said enough to justify myself in my feeling concerning the dual spheres of love, I will now pass on to further consideration of the Scripture revelation concerning their unity.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER II<\/p>\n
Wisdom<\/p>\n
The question naturally arises, Which of these powers of love rule in the relationship between God and man?
\nI find in Scripture concerning the angels, that some \u201ckept not their first estate.\u201d I know by experience, as well as through history, concerning men, that they do disobey the Light that is in them, and are left to their own will and to the fruit of their own doings. I see that God allows terrific freedom to evil wills, even to the measure of tormenting Job, and of crucifying the Christ. I feel, therefore, that in some sense or way, created spirits stand in relation to God, rather as stands the desired Bride to her lover, or as stands a friend with his friend, than as a child towards his parent. And when I turn to the Scriptures I find somewhat to support this view of creature relationship to God. For Eve, when she brings forth Cain, says, \u201cI have gotten a man from Jehovah;\u201d for, when God elects Abram, He calls him to be His friend; for, when God gives children to a man, He Himself is said to open the womb; for, when the Son is born, He is born of a Virgin. And relationship to the Christ who manifests the Father is summed up in hopes of Bridal rapture. I feel, however, that such a relationship can scarcely be the primary relation between the creature and God, for the creature must have first owed its being to God. And, in dwelling upon this, it has seemed to me that Scripture does indicate to us the existence of two principles of generation, which, as seen upon earth, it calls respectively by the name of the son of man and the seed of woman, the one generation being personally begotten in the One Image, and the other being a multiplied conception, fired with various ideals of seeking and serving God.
\nThe Scriptures, with reference to the eternal verities shadowing over earthly things, tell us of One Only Begotten Son, and of many conceived sons; and speak of One only Light, but of many homes of that Light; of One only Word, who was with God, and was God; but of many hearers of that Word, who in their turn become speakers of that Word. In the eternal verities, then, it seems to me that in the going forth of the Only Begotten God, in the shining of the Light, in the speaking of the Word, there was called forth a Body fitted to receive Him, whose members are Gods, yet so, only as receiving God. The creature cannot receive the Infinite God, except as by His Word that Infinite reveals Himself, therefore the creature, by its very conception, is called forth as a receiver of that Word, and since God is Love, the receiver of the Word stands, in relation to that Word, as friend with friend, in perfect mutual freedom.
\nThis place of creature freedom, if it prove a place of creature disobedience or of creature license, is a terrible place, for it is the place of repulsions which become mutual, and here God is not only rejected but forsaking.
\nBut we cannot feel that any individual soul can justly be here dealt with as a free correlative with God. Whatever may have been in past eternities, for us, practically, in the present day, it is absurd to say that we fools, born of fools, can ever be justly God-forsaken because our fool\u2019s heart does not welcome God. Yet, it cannot be questioned, that the Beauty of God cannot be forced upon the acceptance of a revolting will. The fool must somehow be brought to desire God. And how? That is the question, to answer which, I believe, the Scriptures were written.
\nHitherto, the answer to such a question has been sought chiefly by individual, repentant fools, in personal application to themselves, and when the answer has been received, the further seeking in the Word has been, as a rule, by the individual delight in the milk of the Word. By reason of this ineffably precious individual seeking unto the milk of the Word, the humblest sufferer, the simplest child, the most illiterate have, as well as the learned, ministered in the Church of the living God, the living loveliness of that living Word, which by the Scriptures is ever speaking in our midst.
\nBut a great change is now being effected in the relation of the Church to the Scriptures. The mere individual answer to the question, \u201cHow shall fools be brought to desire God?\u201d does not suffice for the present day. It is a question asked, and to be answered, as concerning all fools. The election of the Church of Christ is to be a partaker in the Counsels of the Highest, and to see and know the working of the Great Purpose which God has purposed in Himself, to unite all in One Saviour Anointed. The time for the fulness of this Election is drawing near. By many signs, they who look for the Bridegroom\u2019s appearing, feel assured that He is near. When He comes, to take unto Himself His waiting people, the number of His friends will be complete, and they who are with Him will enter into the full knowledge of His Counsels.
\nWhen any revelation is drawing near to the Church of God, its influence is, as it were, poured out into the air, and all minds are, according to their natures, affected by it. Under this influence my mind has, from my earliest infancy, been subject to the wrestlings of the dual powers of love, and has been forced, by means of the consequent sufferings, to desire and seek for some vision of their unity.
\nUnder this influence, I have been led to feel that the words, that man was made male and female, in the Image of God, do indicate that there is a Woman in the Divine. But I perceived that in the human image the woman was, as it were, hidden in the man. In the long genealogy of man made in the Image of God, no woman\u2019s name occurs for twenty generations. The very name of Eve is not mentioned. She is a coequal begetter with Adam, but, as apart from Adam, not known. I feel, therefore, that I dare not think of the Woman in the Godhead, as individually to be approached, apart from God the Father. When I cry unto Her, it is with an inarticulate cry within the articulate prayer, \u201cOur Father.\u201d I find many indications in Scripture of this Divine Womanhood, thus divinely hidden. The spirit of Eloheem brooding over the chaos is a feminine spirit. But, beyond this word to the wise concerning Her Presence, She is no more spoken of. The name Shaddahy holds in its mysteries woman\u2019s breasts, but it is a word of masculine gender.
\nTherefore, the more entirely that I believe in the Woman in the Godhead, the more I refrain with trembling awe from daring to exercise any faculty with respect to Her, except that of the suckling\u2019s trust or the weanling\u2019s self-quieting.
\nBut when I turn to the history of man with a body not created in the Image of God, but made of the dust, I find that body is especially inspired with the Breath of God, and in this mystical relation of man to God, I find that woman is of individual importance. Eve, in the generations of man under Jehovah, is regarded as the correlative of Jehovah. In her conceptions she gets a man from Jehovah. She conceives, and she names each member of her threefold seed. And in the short generations of Cain, his wife is mentioned, and the flowing forth of Cain is in the sons of Adah and of Zillah; and woman here is of such individual conspicuousness, that we find the virgin Naamah spoken of, though she be no originator of generations. I feel, then, that there is a sphere in which the Divine Woman may be looked upon as in separate personality. Since, the generation upon earth in which woman thus stands separate, is the generation whose principles of relationship are those of the star of the desire of attribute, I feel that it is in that star that I may look upon the Divine Woman. And since, in this generation upon earth, it is spoken that the man shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh, and it is written that Jehovah, the God of this star, though disobeyed by the woman, became the Head of her seed, I feel that I shall, in the visions of this Divine Woman, find guidance to the unity of the spirit of requirement with the spirit of unforsaking love.
\nThis Divine Woman must be the correlative of Jehovah in the heavens, even as Eve was His correlative upon earth. This correlative of Jehovah in the heavens, I find, is in Scripture called Wisdom.
\nI know, that the strange facility of the Western mind to consider the Eastern figurative speech as a speech of no exactitude, has left many acute intellects strangely satisfied with the idea that the Scripture personification of Wisdom is a mere figure of speech for an attribute of Divinity. To me, who am deeply convinced that no mathematical exactitude could surpass the exactness of symbolic speech, such a supposition is untenable, for the language used concerning Wisdom as the companion and the delight of Jehovah would have to be slurred over, if Wisdom be merely a quality of Jehovah\u2019s own nature. Doubtless Wisdom has proceeded from Jehovah, even as Eve was taken out of man; but even, as upon earth, Eve stood thereafter separate from man, so, I believe, in the heavenlies does Wisdom stand separate from Jehovah.
\nAnd to me there is the most ineffable joy in this belief. For from this vision of a personal Wisdom, representative of the ineffable Womanhood hidden in God, even as Jehovah is representative of the Divine Man hidden in God, there does constantly come to me strong consolation in visions of God\u2019s purpose of unity.
\nI feel, that any personal correlative of Jehovah must be the supreme representative of creature freedom. For I believe that God is Love, and that therefore His Beloved is free before Him. The things of love can be known only by a free-will acceptance of love.
\nAs long as we think of God, as in Himself self-sufficing, we cannot admit any idea of limitation to Him. He is all power, the source of all blessing. But, if once we admit any idea of One whom God loves, of One produced from God, standing before God as His delight, we feel that with this conception there has entered, at once, the idea of limitation into relation with the Infinite.
\nFor, even if the nature of This, delighted in by God, be such as strikes dumb any thought of a possible rejection of God by Her, still, the God, in this vision, is given the power, and is the receiver of delight. The power must here be given to God from the hands of the Beloved. When once a free will enters into relation with God, that Will potentially limits the illimitable.
\nThank God, in this place of terrible responsibility the Scriptures speak of Wisdom. And she is brought before us as exerting her powers of limitation, not to limit Jehovah, but, to gift Jehovah with powers of limiting the freedom of that creature will, of which she is the fountain and the representative. By her, who holds the whole mystery of the freedom of Jehovah\u2019s loved, by her is the whole creature sphere and the movements of every individual will therein existing, represented and overruled. Thus she speaks: \u201cJehovah purchased me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth: when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: while as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When He prepared the heavens, I was there: when He set a circle upon the face of the depth: when He established the clouds above: when He strengthened the fountains of the deep: when He gave to the sea His decree, that the waters should not pass His commandment: when He appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him: and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.\u201d
\nNow, when Wisdom, representative of the creature freedom, thus uses her mysteries of limitation to gift Jehovah with power over those waters which, in prophetic speech, are \u201cpeoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues;\u201d to say to them, \u201cthus far shall ye go, and no further, and here shall your proud waves be stayed she calls up into ascendency the star of the inalienable personal ties, with its secrets of power from above, and its coercions of the will of the beloved. By her, therefore, is the unity of the spheres. She therefore can be said to have her delights with the sons of men.
\nBy Wisdom Jehovah formed the heavens; called into being, multiple free receivers of His Word. The Scriptures certainly reveal to us, that in the creature relationship to God, there have been, in that wondrous receptive compound body, called the kingdom of the heavens, some wills which have used their freedom in folly. It seems to me, that the Scriptures indicate twofold destructions wrought, by folly, in the creature sphere, and experience confirms the tale so forcibly, that I dare to ask my reader to enter into the following suppositions.
\nSuppose that some spirits failed in preserving the unity of the dual spheres of love, and parted from the indwelling in themselves of that requirement of beautiful qualification in the Beloved, which belongs to the star of friendship, and became increasingly deadened to the majestic requirements of the perfect law of love, and shut up in mere personal self-seeking: would not such fall into increasing brutishness, until they sank into a chaos without form and void, such as this earth was, when it is first spoken of in the Revelation of the purpose of God? How would such a fall affect the spirits that remained unfallen?
\nWhen once enmity has entered into heaven, it necessarily involves the unfallen with the fallen.
\nIn one sense, indeed, it is true that the condition of the fallen does not disturb the blessedness of the unfallen. They standing in the unity of love, with Wisdom look ever unto God, and see only the ever unfolding marvel of the infinite love, of which the unity can never be broken. They, by love made one with God, see only the infinite Wisdom, and rejoice in her subtleties.
\nWhat if the rebellious find in the unbroken unity of love, in true relation to themselves and their works, God the chastener, God the forsaker, God the destroyer, none the less, at the sight of the ever new play of such divine attributes as overflow the heavens of delight, and overwhelm the hells of decadence, there awakens increase of knowledge and of life in the heavenlies. It cannot be otherwise for the creature, which, fulfilling its creature condition, lives only by God.
\nBut such a life stands not in love\u2019s perfect unity; for though the unfallen, looking unto the Infinite God, live only by Him, yet their life is increased by another\u2019s death, and that, a death, in which neither God nor the creature have any pleasure.
\nThere is an eternal mystery of sacrifice in which, I think, there is a divine secret of death. If the Infinite reveals Himself to the finite, it can be only in degree and measure. His infinitude holds all our possible conceptions and experiences. We know that our life moves in relation with others in many differing ways. We know there are some who are of natures like ours, with whom we can delight, in sympathetic pursuit of that in which we both rejoice. We know that there are others with natures unlike ours, but who are adapted to meet us; even as the opposing lines of two semicircles meeting form the perfect fruit, and cherish seeds of new life, so the lines of their outflowing meet ours, and perfect our being, and the result is increase of life. There are, again, others whose nature is unlike our own, even as wood and stone are unlike the hand of man, and unlike the spirit of man. Yet even as the wood and stone, so are these adapted to be our instruments, and to carry out our designs. They are necessary for our action, and we rejoice in their nearness. And yet, again, there are natures contrary to ours. Their increase is our decrease. Even as darkness swallows up the light, so their hour of ascendency swallows up our joy. Even as light causes darkness to fly before it, so their arising is for us death. I am sure that this relation of natures contrary to one another is an eternal divine reality, and that eternally there must be this place of an involuntary sacrifice. And I believe that if this place of involuntary sacrifice be also the place of a voluntary sacrifice, by the uniting of the will of the person sacrificed with the will of the God who appoints the sacrifice, and by the uniting of the desire of the person sacrificed with the joy of the person who profits by the sacrifice, that this terrible place is the place of supremest revelation and unity with God. It is that of which Buddha darkly spoke in his Nirvana. It is that of which all theories of sacrifice have, in fierce or in ridiculous language, howled and muttered under sin\u2019s distorting power.
\nIn this divine sacrifice, the voluntary sacrifice must be merely the uniting of the will with the involuntary conditions imposed, by God, upon the sacrificed. And in this unity of the voluntary with the involuntary is, and only is, the acceptable life by sacrifice.
\nWhen this unity is perfect, the heavenlies live in unstained rejoicing, though they live by the death of the sacrifice, for as so living they become partakers in such death, and therefore partakers in the rapturous absorption in God. But when once sin has entered, there is, at once, a parting asunder of the will of the sacrificed from the involuntary conditions of its death. The death into which they fall, who fall away from God, is a death involuntary in its conditions and hideously unwilling. This is a death in which the unfallen dare not partake as one with the sacrifice. They cannot, as one with the fallen, receive God in that relationship. There is for the radiant ones, in their visions of the infinitely glorious God, a rejoicing which requires purification\u2014a rejoicing which, while it lives by the death of the flock of God, requires to be sprinkled with the blood of such an One as can, by force of omnipotent love, preserve unbroken the unity of God, even in the interaction of natures so contrary the one to the other, as is the sunken beast, and the God who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. If the life of the heavenlies be truly nourished and enlarged at the expense of the involuntary deaths of the rebellious and the fallen, it must be so, as living by the involuntary sacrifice in the highest, by the knowledge of Jehovah\u2019s crossed desire, of the Father\u2019s wounded love. Their life is by the Lamb as it had been slain, which was hidden within the throne, till the times were fulfilled.
\nOf this blood, which cleanses the heavenlies, the blood in the earthly tabernacle witnessed. Cleansed with this blood, they go forth to the terrible work of enmity. For the unfallen are necessarily involved in the knowledge of enmity, and of accusation, which belongs to the fallen. They are \u201cmade winds;\u201d they are \u201cmade flaming fires;\u201d they are sent forth to resist evil; they call upon the Lord to rebuke dignities and powers; they separate between the evil and the good, between the clean and the unclean.
\nWhether, with upward gaze, they rejoice in the infinitely adaptive attributes of love, or whether with pitiless severity they chase away the outcast, they, and their holy things, alike need to be purified by the blood of One who shall Himself be the manifestation of the Father\u2019s unforsaking love, and of wisdom\u2019s unswerving requirements; of One who shall, in Himself, unite the extremes of the involuntary sacrifice in the Highest, who wills not the death of the sinner, and in the lowest, in the perishing creature who dies; and, throughout the height and depth of that involuntary sacrifice, shall quicken the dead with the rapture of the voluntary sacrifice, and awakening voices of praise, shall destroy the enmity of death, and lead captivity captive.
\nAnd now, let us suppose that some in the heavenlies have sinned by rejoicing in the judgments of the fallen, rejecting the blood of sprinkling. Suppose that there has been sin which was the despising of the fallen, and the hating of the sinner, and the exulting over the crushed and forsaken. These rejoicers in judgment, parting from the blessed influences of the star of the inalienable personal ties, delivered over to the unbalanced urgings of that spirit of requirement of beauty in the creature, which inspires the star of the desire of attribute, would increasingly lose the secrets of all personal incarnation, and become bodiless spirits of accusation.
\nI believe, myself, that these two kinds of decadence from the unity of the spheres did result, on the one hand, in that chaos, without form and void, over whose destructions the feminine spirit brooded, and imparted power to the angelic germs, which lay in the waters and the earth, to come forth in bodies fitted for them; and on the other, in those bodiless spirits which delight in accusing, called the company of the Accuser.
\nAnd why should God, in relation to this chaos, put forth His great power to arrest and quicken the angelic germs of personal failure? It is to bring them back into the knowledge of law. They are, by the word of His power, forced into upward self-evolving, into bodies of higher and higher organisation; in every degree of perfecting, more and more vitally made subject to the physical laws which permit no trangression, without swift vengeance. These laws, of which the lower organisms are scarcely conscious, encompass the higher lives with ever increasing awakening of the consciousness of Law\u2019s inexorable conditions.
\nIn this bringing back of the lawless, to live under the inexorable conditions of physical laws, it might seem that God had but prepared a dominion for the accuser and his angels. And Satan is indeed called the prince of the powers of the air, and he does boast, with very apparent reason, that all things here are delivered unto him.
\nBut, let us observe that the mother of the anointer Samuel, under whose hand arose many mysteries of anointing, pours forth prophetic song, of which the whole burden is that \u201cJehovah killeth and maketh alive; He bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up. The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich, He bringeth low and lifteth up.\u201d Blessed sequence. Word of woman\u2019s hope; in keeping with woman\u2019s work of anointing unto the burial, that seed of the woman who, through death, overcomes death, and leads captivity captive. Woman, the only anointer, upon earth, of God\u2019s only anointed, pours forth the song of an anointing which comes upon the poor whom Jehovah hath impoverished, and the beggar whom He hath made low, to make them inherit the throne of glory. Upon this I have much to say, but in this place can only glance at the glorious hope, by reason of which we may find faith to say, \u201cIt is good,\u201d though we look upon this world where reigns the person-despising inexorable law, ministered through angels whose righteousness, like that of the legally blameless Saul, is a righteousness that persecutes.
\nMuch of the power of death that prevails upon earth, prevails, however, by no law of righteousness which we have broken, but by the innocent being yielded as food to the law of life working in another. It is easy to see that the reign of law comes upon the beast, and upon man as upon the beast (for he is the king of beasts), in more than one spirit.
\nThere are merciless physical laws which encompass the living creature with inexorable conditions of life, under which results the mere survival of the fittest, irrespective altogether of any personal ties of love.
\nThere are the natural parental affections which, in the breast of every maternal beast, more or less strongly speak of individualising affections, and impel the mother to acts of self-sacrifice. And there are the raging hungers of the fierce, of which the law impels them to rend and devour the helpless. And this last is a law as inexorable in its working as any physical law of earth, or water, or fire. It is a law recognised by God Himself, who gives to the lions their prey.
\nI have suffered much concerning these laws, and especially with respect to the last-mentioned. I have been haunted with the sight of a flying crowd of lovely deer, palpitating with fear, running wildly over wide plains, where at first sight it seemed that no fear was, but in the midst of whom I soon perceived the lion, running in their midst till such moment as he chose to launch himself upon the quivering flesh of whom he would. I have suffered hideously as being myself, whether I would or no, involved in the meshes of the inexorable law which shuts me up to life by the death of many innocent.
\nAnd in answer to questions born of much pain, there has come to me some comfort. The distinctions between Wisdom and Him who manifests the Father, very largely concern food. Not without reason do the Scriptures give such prominence as they do to food.
\nMeat and drink are the symbols of such things as we not only desire, but require as necessary conditions of our individual life.
\nThere is a twofold connection between desire and will made manifest, in the things that are seen, most prominently in the suckling, and in the serpent. The desire in the suckling for milk brings it again and again into such personal relations with the mother, as cause it to be held by the mother\u2019s arms in close embrace. As the child increases in growth the desires multiply, and he is perpetually made aware that the gratification or the denial of these desires, is in the parent\u2019s hands. This power, which the parent possesses, to give or to withhold endows the parent with a certain arbitrary control over the will of the child. Whoever holds the keys of the gratification or denial of our strong desires holds as it were a rod of power to command the will. In Scripture symbolism this power is expressed by the rod of the shepherd who feeds the sheep, by the sceptre of the king who leads his people forth to war, and who gives them peace and prosperity at home.
\nOn the other hand, the serpent possesses a power, inherent in its own desire, to fascinate, and paralyse, and subdue to itself the will of the prey desired. Desire in the suckling throws power into the hands of another over its will. Desire in the serpent gives power to the serpent itself over the will of the creature which it desires. The suckling and the serpent have, alike, been brought out of those angelic destructions which resulted in the chaos without form and void.
\nWere there only one sphere of love, and were there no conceivable relationships to God save those of the free will of the creature, no possibility of return from such a chaotic condition could be imagined. For such a chaos could not, of itself, stop itself in the downward rushing from decadence to decadence, from confusion to \u201cconfusion worse confounded.\u201d
\nBut Wisdom, representative of all creature free will, is brought before us as holding all secrets of limitation. She is present in all things of measure and of number. A limit can be set in her presence to the great waters of creature will. And this limit is set; but set strictly in keeping with the supreme sacredness of that creature free will of which Wisdom is the head. For, when God puts forth His power under the brooding of the feminine spirit, and by the word of that power arrests the angelic germs in their downward rushing into destruction, and forces the waters and the earth to bring forth every such germ in individualised living creatures, then, by Wisdom\u2019s secrets of insatiability, the creature free will is made subject to creature desire. Because of the hunger and the thirst ever renewing in every creature, even the young lions and the ravens must come under the great power of God. They are hunger-driven to \u201cseek their meat from God.\u201d
\nThe hunger and the thirst of the quickened evil germs throw into the hands of God power over their will, and they who have fallen from the glories of their first estate into inchoate confusion are, as thus quickened, brought into a new relation with God, as flocks of His possession. Inalienably His possession, they stand beneath the rod of the Shepherd. He is responsible for them, and has the Shepherd\u2019s power over them. This is the vision of Creation given us under the name Eloheem.
\nBut there is a twofold connection between desire and will. In that sphere of the inalienable personal ties which, by Wisdom\u2019s limitations, is called up under Eloheem, the creature free will, made subject to the vanity of creature desire, brings the creature under bondage, and by reason of its insatiable hunger and thirst, the creature passes under the rod of an external law. But while in the relationships of the flock and the shepherd, of the infant and the mother, creature desire in the things that are seen and temporal does thus foreshadow and make ready the way for that terrible lake of fire wherein all desire shall be concentrated into one fiery thirst, which shall bring the thirsting under the power of Him who has the fountain of the water of life, there is on the other hand given us under Jehovah, the serpent-prompted creature desire, which endows the desirer with power of will to take the thing desired. Eve, in eating the apple, ignores and outrages the very will of God Himself.
\nAnd, in dwelling upon the serpent-prompting, we become aware of an insatiability quite other than that of the hungering flesh, we become aware of the hunger of the subtle. Subtlety tends to analyse, to dissect, to reduce the concrete back to the elementary. Subtlety, by impulse, tests, and tempts, and discovers every hidden weakness. Not without reason is the temptation by the subtlest brought in with a conjunction translated in our version \u201cyea.\u201d For thus the temptation is shown to be responsive to somewhat in the woman\u2019s mind. It may be, and I think is true, that subtlety seeks the ideal, but seeks it from the creature. This hunger under judgment is made insatiable, for surely the words \u201cUpon thy belly thou shalt go,\u201d in symbolic speech mean, not the mere depriving of the serpent of wings or of feet, but the adjudging it to have its way upon that insatiable craving of which the belly is the symbol. This craving is sentenced to have for its food dust\u2014i.e. the dust into which man\u2019s form under judgment returns. Dust\u2014that to which all idols are reducible; Dust\u2014the symbol of the bringing to nothing of all creature concrete perfection, is indeed fitting food for the subtle tempter.
\nNow, observe, in that mountain of the Lord, which is the stone which, before becoming the mountain of peace, has struck and shivered to pieces the image of human dignity and power, in that mountain we find that the lion and the tiger have changed their food, but the serpent\u2019s food is still the Dust. Is the serpent, then, even there, still under curse? I cannot find in Scripture that the position of the fallen accusing spirits is that of deniers of the Supreme God, or of haters of God, but rather that of accusers of the brethren, strivers against the Christ, rejoicers in judgments.
\nThe terrible insatiability of the subtle is theirs. They cannot honour the weak, or love the imperfect, or forgive the transgressor, or be tender to the diseased. Like winds they discriminate. Like fires they disintegrate. Subtle powers of death are they, who inevitably bring to nought all that can be shaken. Subtle powers of Hades are they, who bind all that can be bound. Strong wrestlers are they, who \u201cturn to scorn\u201d the thews of the unstable. They are found \u201cagainst God,\u201d \u201cliars unto God,\u201d because by their rejoicing in the evil day, and delighting in \u201cthe strange work,\u201d they have departed from the living God, whose life is love. Being against the brethren, they are found against God.
\nBut is there necessarily the cursed thing in this their awful insatiability? Is not all subtlety with wisdom? Is not our God a consuming fire? Does He not make His angels winds, His ministers a flaming fire? Does not He who baptises with the Holy Ghost, in that baptism use all powers of the winds to discriminate, and of the fires to destroy?
\nFor myself, I know there is in me nothing more terribly precious to my God, as well as more awful to myself, than such touch as is in me, of the insatiability of the subtle. It is my place alike of hope and fear. The insatiability of the subtle, which sees only \u201can end to all perfection,\u201d which, having conceived an ideal of creature relationship to God, tries all by that ideal, may find blessing even in eating the dust of creature failure, when, as in the mount of the Lord, that dust is eaten \u201cunder the hand of the sucking child, eaten as by the playmate of the infant.\u201d The suckling is representative of the ideal contrasted with that of the adversary; it is the ideal of the relationships of the inalienable personal ties of the throbbing flesh.
\nIn the mount of the Lord we have the spirit of requirement of ideal perfection from the creature, which animates the great adversary, still pursuing its way on that insatiable belly, belly or desire, which sees an end of all perfection, and reduces all concrete individuality to dust, but this spirit is harmless, for its subtlety is baffled and overcome by the sucking child. The personally beloved, in the very state of imperfection and ignorance, avails to lay its hand upon the den of the cockatrice, and the serpent, under the hand or power of the sacredness of the indissoluble personal ties, may find that dust is meat indeed, and that the very place of man\u2019s failure is the place of God\u2019s quickening grace, for upon this dust He, whose creative hand was the Alpha or first, shall stand, and shall stand as the Redeemer, Omega the last. The place of His feet shall be glorious, that dust shall be meat indeed.
\nThe serpent eye fixed upon the creature, and from the creature requiring perfection, avails to call forth from the bosom of the Father a son born of woman, a creature subject unto death, and yet one whom no subtlety can overcome, nor searching bring to nought.
\nThe lion, seeking prey from God, has availed to call forth from the midst of the throne a lamb as it had been slain.
\nAnd the sight of this great gift to the serpent and the lion, of the child and the Lamb, as companion and friend, enlightens me as to the Scripture revelations of great redemption.
\nBy the things that are seen and temporal, we are taught that if friend and friend have become such as are incapable of mutual delight, there is a possibility that they should be reunited if they can become of one mind concerning some third object.
\nSupposing that the tempting and accusing spirits have departed from the living God, by despising the weak and hating the ignorant, there is a possibility of their reunion with God, if, by any means, they can be brought to delight in the weak, and to reverence the ignorant.
\nSupposing, on the other hand, that the imbruted flesh has departed from the living God, by ceasing to love the law and to desire the purging fire, it is possible for that flesh to be redeemed, if, by any means, that flesh can be brought into likeness of mind with God concerning the condemnation of sin in the flesh.
\nThis twofold redemption is, I believe, the revelation given us in Scripture.
\nIn the sphere of the inalienable personal tie, man and woman made in the one image are coequal. But such a sphere includes also in its circumference all ties of the superior and the inferior. The parent and the child, the king and his subject, the master and his servant, the owner and his chattel, all are here. And, in such a sphere, the marriage ties may exist without likeness of mind, and merely as an indissoluble legal bond. The body of a slave may here be used to bring forth seed to her master. And here, also, the possibilities of friendship are different to those in the resplendent heavens of the desire of attribute, for here man can walk with God as a child walks with his father, best serving where he fulfils best his natural functions. Nothing is here required of man save the suckling\u2019s trust, the belief that God is, and that He is a rewarder of all that diligently seek Him.
\nIt is possible here for Jehovah to find a friend, and for God to bring forth His Son, born of woman, born after the flesh. And when this friend is found, he is made a centre of a new principle of judgment among men. For, henceforth men are not judged on the basis of personal righteousness or unrighteousness, but wholly on the question of their likeness of mind with God, concerning the seed of Abraham. \u201cThey that bless that seed are blessed, and he that curses that seed is cursed.\u201d The seed of Abraham, as the seed of woman, is made the centre of the same new principle of judgment among angels. For, when He bringeth in the Only Begotten into the world, He saith, \u201cLet all the angels of God worship Him,\u201d and when the woman\u2019s seed is caught up to God, its entrance into the heavenlies at once looses Michael and his angels, to use their swords against the accuser.
\nAnd, blessed be God, the revelations are clear, are sworn to by the very oath of God, that this likeness of mind shall most certainly be brought to pass. Many shall rejoice because of that seed, and with the voices of the flesh and of the grave shall cry aloud, \u201cUnto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given.\u201d Yet again, many shall rejoice because of that seed, and shall, with the multiple voices of the New Jerusalem, rejoice in the advent of the Bridegroom Son of God, of the Bridegroom Lamb, born of the grave. And yet again, many convinced and ashamed because of Him, shall deeply humble themselves before Him, and shall move like serpents out of their holes, to lick the dust before His feet. The oath of God has been sworn by Himself, that to that seed every knee shall bow, and every tongue, even that which licks the dust, shall confess that He is Lord. He is the way of return to God not only for men but for angels. He is the living Way, for He is the firstborn alike of God and of death; He is the seed of the woman, who appears as a great wonder in the heavens clothed with all powers of judgment, and He is the seed of the woman made subject. He is the personally Beloved alike of God and woman. He shall be the delighted in, because of His beauty and His righteousness, by all requirers of attribute, whether they be children of wisdom or the seed of the serpent. By Him the serpent is redeemed from death-giving poison, and is for ever lifted up in life-giving power. For He, instinct with the desire of God the Father; He, instinct with the desire of woman the mother; He, instinct with the desire of the brother the Redeemer; He, instinct with the desire of the subtle for righteousness in the creature; He, instinct with the desire of the flesh for His own personal exalting, He shall, as representative of the power of all desire, as the serpent lifted up, draw all unto Him. By Him, desire shall avail to subdue all wills unto Himself.
\nIf once we understand the Scriptures, concerning this election of a personal third to be the way of reconciliation between God and man, and this endowing of the personal third with a sceptre which holds, alike the rod of power to break in pieces, and the magnetic attractions to overcome, we have the key to its parables of judgment.
\nWhen in sight of the burning bush, the mutual convertibility of the rod and the serpent was shown to Moses, he was prepared for the wondrous work of the Law, whose rod contains the power of the body of Christ to subdue all unto Himself. And when the serpent of that rod, as the rod of Aaron, swallowed up the serpents of the rods of Egypt\u2019s enchanters, the elect high priest was prepared to know that glorious elect High Priest who is in Himself the desire of all nations, the swallower up and representative of all strength of desire, alike in man, and woman, and angel, and adversary, and God. He shall reign, holding for a sceptre the fused duality of the magnetic rod, until all His enemies shall be subdued unto Him, with a subjection like in kind with that great submission with which He, in the end, shall Himself be subject unto the Father, that God may be all in all.
\nIf that which I have spoken be true, it will follow that the voices of God\u2019s judgments will speak from the dual spheres of which love is the unity, and will call us to behold that unity. It will also follow that the creature, when exercising its free will apart from God, will be taken captive in the very motions of that free will, caught in a snare through the excitement of its own desires, as by the overshadowing of the Head and Representative of all creature free will, Resplendent and Crowned Wisdom.
\nBy her, and in her presence, Jehovah shall, in the very moment of the extremest exercise of the sinner\u2019s power to reject Him, seize the victory. Let us see if this be so.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER III<\/p>\n
The Unity of Judgments<\/p>\n
There are in Scripture three voices concerning the judgments of God.
\nThese three voices are spoken,
\nFirst. From the sphere of the desire of attribute, and according to its laws.
\nSecondly. From the sphere of the indissoluble personal ties, and according to its laws.
\nThirdly. In the unity of the two spheres.
\nFirst. A voice from the sphere of the desire of attribute speaks of creature freedom. Adam is left free to disobey. This voice further declares that there is a penal forsaking, by God, of those who do not like to retain God in knowledge. God gives them over to a reprobate mind to do those things that are not convenient.
\nBut this forsaking, which, of itself, could result only in infinite mutual repulsions, in which the creature Will, abandoned to itself, must pass from decadence to decadence in ever multiplying sin and horror, has its term set. In the presence of that Wisdom who is representative of all creature free will, Jehovah has set a compass upon the face of that deep, which in symbolic speech, is the multitudinous will of peoples, and nations, and tongues. Nay, it has even been spoken concerning this deep that the time shall come when \u201cThere shall be no more sea.\u201d By reason of these limitations set, this world has its being; this world wherein no illimitable transgression is possible of the physical laws, for, in their merciless serenity, they dash in pieces every transgressor. This world, where the things that are unseen and eternal can be read through the things that are seen and temporal, bears ample witness in its pitiless reign of law, that in the spiritual spheres there is also a certain and inevitable sequence of a penal destroying of that which has been penally God-forsaken and left to an evil will.
\nThe Scriptures abundantly witness of this to us. Nor the Scriptures only, but history and our own life\u2019s experience also. Though this world seems largely given up to the triumph of evil wills, yet we have enough light poured upon the scene to enable us to know that, \u201cin the long result of time,\u201d it is true that the prosperous wicked are set in \u201cslippery paths,\u201d to the end that they should be \u201ccast down into destruction.\u201d
\nThis terrible dual judgment is entirely penal, a judgment unto death. Under it the irreversible word is spoken, that \u201cthe soul that sinneth it shall die.\u201d Under it the first world was drowned, Sodom perished, the Canaanites were cast out. Under it there was prophesied unto Jerusalem, \u201cA dry wind of the high places in the wilderness toward the daughter of my people, not to fan nor to cleanse.\u201d
\nPenal as these judgments are, there is in their threatenings a call to repentance. The hand of God was stayed against Nineveh when the cry of her repentings went up. To Jerusalem, when the penal wind was threatened it was said, \u201cO Jerusalem, wash thy heart from wickedness that thou mayest be saved.\u201d But if the time given be neglected, if the day fixed for judgment arrives, it is then too late to cry.
\nThe working of the penal judgments, as viewed in relation to the universe, is undoubtedly beneficent. These judgments convey warning and instruction to all beholders, and are preventive as well as purging, calculated to cause beholders to see and fear, as well as to keep the kingdom weeded of transgressors. The sight of the destructions of the wicked is a sight which awakens a great voice of much people in heaven singing Alleluia. But, though beneficent in their larger scope, these penal judgments seem regardless of the individual life. It is impossible, looking only at these penal judgments, to feel that \u201cthe God who can dispose and turn the hearts of men according to His own good will and pleasure,\u201d acts like a God who is love, in so leaving the sinner to his own ways. The voice in Scripture which tells us of the penal judgments speaks of wisdom\u2019s dread requirements, but not of the Father of spirits.
\nMore terribly unlike the ideal of love written in our hearts, do we feel the God thus witnessed of to be, when we find that He actually exercises influence upon a man to harden him, and to cause him to be more strong in an evil will than he otherwise would have been, for the purpose of hastening his destruction. This direct exercise of hardening influence upon the sinner, by that unseen power in whose hands are the hearts of all men, has been matter of universal observation. The heathen proverb as well as the Scripture recognises it when it says, \u201cWhom God would destroy, He first makes mad.\u201d
\nSecondly. There is a voice in Scripture which speaks of judgments as in precious promise. These are judgments which hold in life. But, while the penal judgments are universally operative, these judgments, which hold in life, are promised only to one especial family of all the families of the earth.
\nIt is a promise to the seed of David, that he shall not be suffered to continue in iniquity, but if he commit iniquity he shall be chastened with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men. To Jerusalem it is said, \u201cI will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot.\u201d To the children of Jacob it is promised that \u201cthe Lord their God will circumcise their heart, and the heart of their seed, to love the Lord their God with all their heart, and all their soul that they may live.\u201d God will put His fear in their heart that they may not depart from Him. This is a voice from the sphere of the indissoluble personal ties.
\nBut this individualising fatherly care, exercised only towards one chosen nation, seems to jar in the harmony of an infinite love. God here seems \u201ca respecter of persons,\u201d and we thence receive no vision of a Father of spirits.
\nThe judgments that deliver over the reprobate to an evil mind to do evil unto the measure that provokes destruction, and the judgments which with parental care chasten Israel until repentance abounds unto life, are alike incompatible with the ideal written in our hearts of an Infinite God Love.
\nOur perplexity is but deepened when we turn to listen to the third voice, and hear it speak of judgments which involve the innocent with the guilty. Abel the innocent is the first who tastes that death which is the wages of a murderous will. Canaan is cursed in all his generations for his father\u2019s sin. Joseph pines in slavery, and Jacob spends years in mourning, by reason of the envious ten. Jephthah\u2019s daughter wails because of her father\u2019s vow. Jonathan yields his hopes of a kingdom, and falls on Mount Gilboa, because Saul sinned. Job is cast into the mire, and becomes like dust and ashes, because Satan falsely accused him. Jesus is crucified because Israel had forsaken her God, and Judah was blind to her king. That which Scripture declares concerning this, is amply witnessed of everywhere and in every time. Here God would seem to have let go of judgment altogether, and the horror of a great darkness prevails.
\nYet it is in this darkness that we must seek the unity of the three judgments, and find the vision of our God, for here stands the Cross of Christ. At the foot of that cross we shall find that the apparent negation of all judgments, in which the innocent is involved with the guilty in that death which is the wages of sin, is indeed the darkness wherein God dwells and effects His purpose of unity.
\nAround that cross we see the Gentiles and the Jews, alike, \u201cgiven up to a reprobate mind to work the things that are not convenient.\u201d In the madness of their deeds they alike show that the first part of the penal judgment which delivers the sinner over to unchecked freedom of sin has been accomplished in them. We know that the last part, the penalty of destruction is inevitable. Death, the penalty of the murderous deed, cannot be warded off when once the Representative MAN has been put to death by men. The soul that thus sinneth must die. Humanity, by the representative voices of civil and of sacerdotal governors, and by the voices of the people has crucified the sinless man. The judgment which delivers over to a reprobate mind cannot further go, than in such license to crucify the spotless man in whom God delights. Thereafter comes death to the sinner.
\nAgain, He who there hangs is the representative of the elect seed of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David. As that representative He is sorely chastened; He bears the chastisement of their peace and the strokes of their iniquity, and by His sufferings He is perfected.
\nAnd yet again, He who hangs on that cross is innocent, yet involved in the death which is the due of the guilty.
\nObviously here all three streams of judgment converge in one event. But, to see their living unity and not their co-existence merely, we must more deeply consider the Scripture revelation.
\nThe elect, as we have seen, are distinguished from the non-elect, as receivers of a promise of the judgments which hold in life. The Divine significance of this distinction lies in the fact that in the promises made to Abram, God provided in the elect seed a new centre of judgment for all men. Men, by nature under the judgment which penally forsakes the sinner, and leaves him to a fatal freedom of sin unto death, were, through the promises to Abram, called to return from the dead under the judgment which holds in life. For, from the time of the free promise to Abram, God judges men, no more by the laws of heavenly righteousness, but only according to their behaviour towards the elect seed. They that bless that seed shall be blessed; he that curses that seed shall be cursed. There is, in the especially favoured seed, a way opened for all men\u2019s return to God, that way of which we have already spoken, the way of likeness of mind with God concerning a personal third, a way in which, however otherwise incapable of mutual delight, God and man may still be at one.
\nBut this way, thus provided, still recognises the free will of the creature. There is a possibility that the individual creature may refuse to joy in Israel, and may curse David. Therefore, for the fulness of the election of that personal third, as the seed of redemption and the way of salvation, another promise must be given.
\nThe Son once born, and delighted in, must be instructed and chastened that he may be partaker in the holiness of the Father. Therefore to this son there is the promise made that he shall not be forsaken to the evil way, but that he shall be visited with chastisements where he errs. There is the promise made to the father David for his seed, of the judgments that hold in life. Through these promises we arrive at the sacrificial use of the personal third as a seed of redemption, not only for opening the way of salvation unto all people, but also for preparing the way for the entrance into triumph of God our Saviour, God our King.
\nFor, these promises say, that God will use the rod or power of men, and the stripes or the cruelties of the children of men to chasten the sinning son. And yet again these promises say that the Lord will give the heathen for the son\u2019s inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the world for His possession.
\nFor the present let us confine ourselves to the first promise.
\nThis promise involves the exercise, by God, of a power ab extra upon sinning men. In the very day of their pride, and hour of their uplifted rod or power, God will use them instrumentally for the effecting of His purposes towards the elect seed. The rod which God uses is sanctified in that use. The rod upon which God\u2019s purpose lays its hand is, by the touch of that purpose, redeemed. Let us trace this through Scripture.
\nPower exerted by God, ab extra, upon men was, before the call of Abram, confined to the penal judgments which drive out of Paradise, which drown under floods of water, which confound speech at Babel.
\nWith Abraham and his chosen seed enters the exercise, by God, of power exerted ab extra on man\u2019s actions, desires, and will, with revealed goodwill towards men for its object and aim. This power we find in the course of the history of the elect nation to be exerted in a fourfold way.
\nI. For the protection of the chosen seed, God exercised His power from without upon Pharaoh and Abimelech, to restrain them from unconsciously committing adultery. In protecting the elect women, Sarai and Rebekah, God brought his preventive grace to bear upon the non-elect. In protecting the man Lot, that preventive grace, acting from without, restrained even the consciously evil will of the Sodomites from consummation in action.
\nII. For the chastening, training, and instructing of the elect, God hardens the heart of Pharaoh, and exalts the pride of Assyria. By thus identifying His own work with the work of the hardened sinner, God prepares the way for the salvation of Egypt and Assyria. His purpose is the Redeemer in the midst of their destructions. The wicked, snared in the work of his own hands, shall be taught that there is One God, and beside Him is no other, and shall be humbled to worship, there, where he had insulted.
\nIII. For the lifting up and enriching of the elect, God exercises his power, from without, on the hearts of men, by giving His people \u201cfavour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that Israel went out of Egypt laden with the gifts of the Egyptians.\u201d \u201cHe made them also to be pitied of all those that carried them captive.\u201d
\nThis power is exerted by force of the influence of His own mercy, shown in the sight of the heathen. He Himself gave them \u201ccompassion before them that carried them captive, that they might have compassion on them.\u201d \u201cHe showed mercies unto them, that the king of Babylon might have mercy on them, and might cause them to return to their own land.\u201d \u201cShow me a token for good,\u201d says the Psalmist, \u201cthat they which hate me, may see and be ashamed, because the Lord hath holpen me, and comforted me.\u201d
\nThe bringing back the captivity of the elect is thus identified with the quickening of those who oppressed them. If the casting away of Israel was the casting far and wide the seed of redeeming grace, through the identifying of the chastening purpose of the Father with the malignant deeds of oppressors, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?
\nWhat shall the receiving of them be but the upspringing of that seed of redeeming grace unto life everlasting?
\nIV. In that day the non-elect shall be brought under the knowledge of the judgments that hold in life. They shall become partakers with the chosen seed in receiving the Gospel of salvation through judgment. Egypt shall be smitten and healed. God shall write His perfect law upon the hearts of His \u201cpeople,\u201d \u201cthe work of His hands,\u201d not in any narrow election, but \u201cas a faithful Creator.\u201d
\nThis fourfold operation of power exercised from without, by God, upon men, is repeated in the history of the elect man Jesus Christ.
\nI. For His protection. Until the appointed time came, the preventive grace restrained the working of all the enemies who thirsted for His blood.
\nII. For the chastisement of our peace which was laid upon him. When God willed to sow among the people the perfect seed of redeeming grace; when Jesus, obedient unto death, poured forth His blood with thanksgiving, the power from without was exercised to harden the hearts of the disobedient, and to strengthen the hands of the wicked-minded, that the wicked should be snared in the work of His own hands, and made ready for the day of shame.
\nIII. For the exalting of the elect. The Lord, even in the hour of death, and in the day of burial, gave, by the centurion\u2019s acknowledgment, the first sound of the great voice of many people who shall confess that Jesus is the Lord.
\nIV. The judgment of God shall be brought down into the vision of all people, and shall, by the display of the terrors of Him whom God has appointed judge, awaken, in all hearts, likeness of mind with God concerning Him who was crucified. All nations shall wail because of Him. All transgressors shall be smitten with the judgment that holds in life.
\nThis exercise by God of a power exercised from without, which, by means of the elect seed, unites the purpose of God with the freewill action of the creature, and in that union effects condemnation of sin, is our gospel, our good news of salvation by judgment.
\nTo behold the unity thus effected in its perfection, let us again look upon the cross of Christ, and behold Him, not only as the Representative of the elect seed, but as the Son of God manifesting the Father.
\nAs such a Manifestor, He shows us the marvel of an unforsaking love; He shows us how indissoluble are the personal ties that unite God and man; He shows us the Shepherd seeking the one wandering sheep; the woman toiling for the one lost coin; the Father yearning for the lost son. Unforsaking even unto death, He reveals God\u2019s unity with man. Man\u2019s sin and death is God\u2019s cross. By reason of the unity of love, the dishonoured Father suffers in the cutting short of the days of the disobedient sons.
\nAnd, blessed be God, He, who thus manifests the unforsaking love which reigns in the star of the indissoluble personal ties, manifests also the majestic powers of those who there bear rule. If the history of Christ ended with His death and burial, we should have the terrible lesson read to us that God had abandoned the world to an evil choice, even unto the measure of such sin as necessitates absolute destruction. But by the resurrection of Jesus Christ we are assured of a better hope. We are shown that God is indeed unforsaking, and that the sinner, even in the hour of his fullest exercise of freewill in sinful deeds, is still beloved and sought, and held by God. Held by strong and everlasting arms, caught by powerful hands, shut up under laws whose operation he cannot evade, unto life eternal, which he must perforce enter under judgments which hold in life. From the person of the risen Christ light flashes upon the penal judgment which leaves the sinner to the freedom of his evil will. Thus left, the sinner is yet not abandoned.
\nIndividual wills, apart from Him who alone and only is Life and Light, work confusion and bring forth death. Nothing can break the sequence of sin as a cause, and death as result. Nothing but the bringing in of a new cause, which, entering into the body of sin, shall overpower and abolish sin, and shall in the place of sin\u2019s sequences of sin upon sin unto death, awaken sequences of repentance unto life and immortality. This bringing in of a new cause, and new sequences, God has accomplished, in the terrible fusing of God\u2019s purpose and man\u2019s purpose, which was effected in the sacrifice on the cross.
\nThe heathen raged and the people imagined a vain thing. They imagined that the troubler of their false peace, the rebuker of their low ideals, had fallen beneath their power. The Pharisee and the Scribe, the Herodian and the Sadducee, exulted in the triumph of their will; the slave and the soldier gave free license to their insulting impulse. But what has been, even upon this earth, the result? The name of Christ has for 1,800 years been glorified among the nations, while Scribe and Pharisee, Herodian and Sadducee, Jerusalem and Rome, have passed under condemnation, and have passed into shame and destruction. And we, who believe in the Scriptures, know that the Father, who has raised the name of the Son thus as an ensign among the nations, has also raised His person to glory in the heavens, and we believe that another dispensation is at hand, when the longsuffering of God will have an end, when there will be no longer any freedom accorded to any spirit to be otherwise than of one mind with God concerning His chosen, when, with a shout and with the trump of God, and with the hosts of heaven, He who has ascended shall again descend, and shall smite His enemies with shame, and cast His adversaries into purging fires.
\nThe fact that Jesus Christ in His life and death manifested the unforsaking love of the Father in the sphere of the indissoluble personal ties, is an assurance to us that the destructions at the coming of the Son, and during His reign, must have for their scope the exercise, for the offspring\u2019s good, of those strong powers of coercion which do belong to the ideal of Fatherhood; the use of the rod for the good of the flock and of the subject, which does belong to the ideal of the Shepherd and the King; but we feel that such a consummation is very insufficient. For an answer to the question, with which we started, \u201cHow shall fools be brought to desire God?\u201d we require something more than this assured exercise of the Parent\u2019s rod; something more than this inevitable rule of the King. And the Scriptures certainly do indicate that, by whatever means accomplished, the subjection of the nations to the Son is like in kind with that Son\u2019s subjection to the Father; and that subjection, we know, is no bondage, but perfect freedom; is no passing under the rod, but the passing again into the infinite glory of that unity which was His before the worlds were made.
\nTo receive the fulness of the hope which is ours in Jesus Christ, we must again look upon His cross, and there behold Him, not only as the manifestation of the Father\u2019s unforsaking love, but also as the rejected Jehovah. We must hear the voice of His cross as a voice that wails from the star of the desire of attribute, with the wailing of the rejected Lover, of the forsaken Friend.
\nThus hearing, and thus beholding Him, it seems to us as if the correlative of Jehovah were, indeed, no more resplendent wisdom; as if she had given place to the fool. But every fool who here awakens to the hearing of the voice of the rejected God, here finds life through death. In the very place where the individual freewill has exercised its freedom to commit sin unto death, there the sight of the wounded God awakens condemnation of sin in the flesh, and gives birth to that likeness of mind concerning His Elect which is love and which is life.
\nWe behold upon that cross the manifestation of a God who waits to win where He might crush; who so loves the creatures He has made that His very Omnipotence suffers abeyance so long as they love Him not. His love gives power to the beloved, even to the measure of this cross. Oh! longsuffering God, our repentings are kindled, we accept the death for sin. We accept it with rejoicing, for He whom we have crucified holds the keys of death and hades, and can set even the lawful prisoner free. Death has no dominion over Him, for He, when taken by the barren, has there sufficed to see His seed.
\nHis crucifiers, beholding in Him, the Son of God, as the seeking lover, may also through death overcome death. Dead under the penal judgment that leaves the sinner to freedom in an evil way, we have crucified the Christ. Dead under the penal judgment which sets a term to such individual life, we have, as it were, perished. Our purpose, rushing in its course, has met and has been shattered by the purpose of God. Dead to sin, dead to self, we arise, wedded to that divine purpose in the Christ, and dead to the law, dead to the world, dead to shame, we live, and in the very valley of Achor find our door of hope, find ourselves choosing the subject God, ready for the rapture of His joy. The dispensation of longsuffering is prolonged only until their number is complete who can so choose the subject God, and prove themselves capable of becoming, as it were, of the seed of wisdom; capable of using their freewill power to limit the Holy One of Israel, not to limit Him, but to give Him freedom and power over all that is in and by them.
\nWhen once that number is complete, then the returning Christ will come, not only to exercise the power of the rod, which belongs to the sphere of the indissoluble personal ties, but also the powers of all serpents which that rod contains, the powers of fascination which belong to the sphere of the desire of attribute. Jehovah the rejected, the longsuffering, the seeking Jehovah, will then arise as Adonahy, the personally-related God of man, the personally-related desire of woman, the lovely among ten thousand. He shall be seen in all His glory by those who have rejected Him, and shall pour out upon them the judgments of derision and shame; such judgments as are possible only in the mysteries of that sphere where the spirit desires beauty, and requires righteousness. Then, to all despisers, to all scoffers, to all mockers, the King shall reveal the poor and the afflicted, nay, even the imprisoned and the diseased, as His chosen representatives, and shall cause all, who rejected Him in His subjection, to ache with conviction of sin, to burn with conviction of righteousness, to thirst in the fires of judgment, to cry out for the living God.
\nThen shall be the unity of judgments made manifest by the united action of the dual spheres in Jesus Christ our King.
\nFor then, all who have been involuntarily sufferers, the innocent with the guilty, shall be shown to have been sacrificially one with that Great Sacrifice who, upon the cross, who, upon the throne is the unity of all purpose, and the unity of all love and life.
\nThe value of Scripture lies in the revelation of this wondrous unity of judgment and unity of the dual spheres in the effecting of that purpose which gathers together all in one incorruptible sacrifice, and blesses all in one Saviour Anointed, who by the condemnation of sin in the flesh effects the salvation of His people from their sins, and enters into the fulness of His inheritance through the exercise of the fused duality of the serpent in the rod.
\nThe full perception of this is possible only by the uniting of our wills with His will, of our purpose with His purpose of unity, even to the measure of yielding our bodies a living sacrifice for the bringing forth of His seed. This is the position, unconsciously, of His flock, who yield Him increase. This is the position, consciously, of His servants, who work His increase. This is the position, joyfully, of the companions of His Bride, who wait to increase His glory. This is, above all, the position of her who shall be His wife. We cannot better prepare our understandings, to be fruitful in this matter, than by dwelling with the simplicity and exhaustive pertinacious questioning of children, upon those parables of judgment which include in their scope the Bride, the friends, the servants, and the flocks, and to the contemplation of these we will now pass.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER IV<\/p>\n
The Flocks of the Lord<\/p>\n
If we take a general survey of the three parables of judgment contained in Matt. 25, we perceive that these parables of judgment speak of three distinct relationships to Christ, and infer a fourth.
\nThere are some who stand in relation to Christ as companions of His Bride, and whose presence makes us aware that there is a relationship to Christ which cannot be spoken of in parables of judgment, except as thus inferred. There are others who are His servants, or more properly speaking, slaves, and again, others who are His flocks.
\nThe Bride and the friends belong to the sphere of creature freedom; the slaves and the flocks to that of creature bondage. The place of creature freedom is a place where creature failure may break relationship, and here the Bridegroom says, \u201cI know you not.\u201d The place of creature bondage is a place where creature failure calls forth only stronger assertion of the Master\u2019s right, and the king\u2019s authority over those who are His possessions.
\nThose who live only on the level of the lower relationships may be ignorant of the higher ones, but all who have entered into the knowledge of the higher must include, in their life, the knowledge of the lower experience. The knowledge that lives in the Bride must include all lower knowledges of every conceivable relationship, and therefore, though many are called and few chosen for that excelling glory, yet may all be spoken of as included in the Bride, and all, in the day of judgment, be touched with the serpent-including rod, and even those who are as beasts before the Lord may then be raised into perceptions of the king.
\nIt is important to dwell upon this double truth:
\nI. That there are many relationships to Christ, and that these relationships are vital and precious, even though they are only such as of sheep who have unconsciously eaten of His pasture; and II. That the bridal relationship is all inclusive. The ignoring of the first truth lies at the root of much perplexed despising of Christ in Christianity, by those who demand the sight of Christ\u2019s beauty in all who bear His name. Very few in any age have touched the high ideal set before the Bride. If that ideal be the only standard of Christianity, i.e. of relation to Christ, Christ\u2019s inheritance is indeed small, His possessions scarce. Christianity in such case may be pronounced a failure. But the Scriptures show us that there is no limit to relationship to Christ. Vessels of honour, and vessels of dishonour, alike, find place in the house of the king, and all that is His He gives to Her in whom is His delight. In the day of the manifestation of the Bride, all the glory of the nations shall be seen flowing into Her gates.
\nThe ignoring of the second truth lies at the root of much limiting of the Holy One of Israel amongst Christians themselves. For, in the mutual communion of Christ and His Bride, He receives through, and in, and by Her, those who, of themselves, are incapable of entering into such vital union, for she knows and vitalizes every conceivable relationship to Her Beloved.
\nThe word of judgment is revealed to us in descending order, beginning at the kingdom of the heavens, the members of which kingdom are spoken of as companions of the Bride. But our self-examination as to which of these judgments belong to ourselves, should commence at the lowest grade and ascend to the highest.
\nLet us then commence with the judgment of the flocks.
\n\u201cWhen the Son of Man shall come, \u2026 before Him shall be gathered all nations, and He shall divide them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.\u201d He is said to be like a shepherd, but He is not the Shepherd known to the flock. He comes as the unknown possessor of all flocks. Sheep and goats, however familiar they may be with the shepherd, are unconscious of their possessor, and incapable of expecting him. His coming among them is unlooked for, his claims on them are unexpected and startling. This unexpected, swift, startling assumption of might and right is always predicted of the coming of Christ to the world that knows Him not. \u201cAs the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. For, as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.\u201d In like manner, while the preachers of righteousness know, as the preacher Noe knew, that the day is near, the dull hearers will not know. While the servants stand ready for their Lord, the multitude will be astonished by the advent of an unknown and undreamt of possessor.
\nThere are those who watch for the Lord\u2019s approach as the husbandman watches for the summer. Even as the husbandman knows the sign of the budding tree, so do they know the signs of the times, and rejoice that He, their summer, is at the doors; but the multitude will be as mere animals, unprepared and undesirous.
\nThis coming to the multitude is spoken of, not as the coming of the Bridegroom, nor of the Lord, but of the Son of Man. Had the title given to Christ been \u201cthe Son of God,\u201d we should have expected to find the nations spoken of, in comparison with Him, as creatures of lower nature. But when Christ is spoken of as the Son of Man, it is startling to find that, in relation to the Son of man, the nations are as beasts of His flock.
\nThere is something very terrible in this. It brings before us vividly how low we have sunk, how degenerate we are, how incapable in ourselves, of our own birthright; changed from the likeness of God in which Adam was made, into the likeness of the beast. But, if this be on the one hand terrible, it is on the other hand suggestive of comfort. We are, even if thus fallen, the flocks of the King. We are His possessions, His wealth. In our loss He would suffer loss.
\nHere let me pause, to forestall a possible objection.
\nIt may be said, and indeed it has been said to me, that \u201cthe fact that Christ speaks of His people as His sheep, should warn one away from the idea that He means that the nations are as beasts, or as property.\u201d This objection is, of course, founded on passages such as occur in the tenth chapter of St. John. To me it seems that the distinction between such passages and the one we are now considering is very great, and very important. The parables which speak of Christ\u2019s people as His sheep, represent Christ Himself as their known Shepherd, whose voice they know, whom knowing, they follow. The parabolic expressions in Matt. 25. (from ver. 31 to end), which occur in a passage which, as Alford notes, is itself no parable, speak of the sheep in no such relationship to Christ as to a known shepherd, but as to an unknown and unthought of possessor. I think, therefore, I am justified in taking the flocks of the last judgment to be quite other than that \u201clittle flock\u201d which had known Christ as their Shepherd, and had been taught to recognise His voice. The one flock, knowing the Shepherd, are fed by Him. The other flock, not knowing their possessor, are valued in measure as they have fed Him, and helped to clothe Him. The one flock are known by Christ as a sacred charge, for whose sake He is ready to give His own life. The other flock are regarded as objects upon whom Christ has rightful claims.
\nMaking this distinction between flock and flock, I believe (and in this I am borne out by most commentators) that the judgment spoken of between the sheep and the goats is of a later date than those of the servants and the virgins, and does not concern the sheep who have belonged to the flock that has known Christ as a Shepherd. I believe that the one flock which knows Christ, and follows Him as sheep follow the known shepherd, does not appear in the judgment as sheep, for its members have all been quickened during their time in the flesh, and have all, in this present life, passed from death into life, arisen from the mere natural life into the eternal life. I believe that the other flock, which does appear in the judgment as still in the lower life, is a flock of which the members, sheep as well as goats, have not entered into that eternal life which is the knowledge of the One true God, and of Jesus Christ whom He has sent.
\nWhen I meet, as I often do, souls who are not on my own spiritual level, in whose hearts the name of Christ awakes no response, who yet bring forth abundantly the good treasures of a good heart, I feel that I am in the presence of the sheep who are inheritors of that kingdom of which I am a child, and I know that it may be that these shall pass in to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven, while I, a child of the kingdom, may be shut out.
\nThe flock which, in this life, follows the Shepherd Christ, can be spoken of as sheep, only in parable. The flock, which, at the last, are manifested as still in their natural life, are not in mere parable, but in very truth, in relation to the risen and glorified Son of Man, only as are beasts to their possessor.
\nThus, while on the one hand the natural goodness of a good and honest heart is recognised as good, it is made manifest, on the other hand, that such natural goodness does not of itself suffice to make us like unto the Son of Man made in the Image of God. A new principle of life must be entered into by the blessed sheep, even that Life Eternal which is now the portion of those who, in this life, know Christ as the Sent of the Father.
\nThe nations gathered as beasts before the Son of Man are separated by Him into two flocks; the sheep on the right hand, and the goats on the left.
\nObserve, the division is not into flocks of the clean, and herds of the unclean; for the goat as well as the sheep is a clean beast, and is fit for the altar of God and for the table of man. These flocks are not of sheep and full-grown goats, but of sheep and kidlings; those gathered on the left are little kids. The word at once conveys to our mind the picture of a crowd of those quaint-looking, oddly misshapen, undeveloped, frisky, bounding creatures, incapable of reverence, pushing one another, chafing at restraints, self-assertive, even before the king.
\nBengel, upon this passage, says, the diminutive shows that \u201calthough giants, they will be kidlings. They will not then be mighty and he-goats.\u201d The dead leaders of the earth are called \u201cgreat goats.\u201d Even among the dead in Hades, the leaders of the earth are represented as preserving the knowledge of their dignity, and as rising up from their thrones to receive the dead king of Babylon. But in that day of the judgment by the Son of Man, every one shall be manifested, as he in truth is. Those who had, by reason of their own greater strength and more conspicuous position, thought themselves great goats, rulers and leaders of the flock, shall be revealed as foolish, undeveloped kidlings.
\n\u201cThe families of the kingdoms of the north coming every one to set his throne at the entering of the gates of Jerusalem, and against all the walls thereof round about, and against all the cities of Judah;\u201d no doubt were, in their own appreciation, glorious powers; but by the prophet\u2019s opened eyes they were seen as \u201ca seething pot,\u201d and thus, no doubt, they must yet one day see themselves to have been, a pot in the Hands of One whose purposes were accomplished by their unconscious means. The humiliation for all such as have trusted in their own strength, and have been satisfied with their own portion, is certain to be very great in that day of revelation; but observe, again, that the kidling is not an unclean beast. I have seen people so exceedingly like swine in their lives and in their appearance, that I could not conceive their appearing, in true manifestation, in any other form than that of swine. I have, with others, been at times unable for a moment to resist the feeling that I was in a company of dogs, for their whole conversation showed no higher delight than delight in the offal of petty scandals; they were capable of no reverence towards that which is holy; they could only snarl over Christ\u2019s mysteries, and snatch and tear at the sacrifice, as dogs do over bones. For a moment I felt myself justified in this feeling, for Christ Himself had bid me to beware of such, under the very name of swine and dogs. The courteous St. Paul had called such \u201cevil beasts\u2014slow bellies,\u201d going on their bellies like snakes, gorged like boa constrictors, with some huge gulp of mere fleshly satisfaction, totally incapable of being roused to hunger and to thirst for the bread and the water of life. In some sense I believe I am justified when such terrible judgment speaks in me, for without its voice I should have no guidance what to give and what to withhold. I should be constantly throwing pearls before swine, and giving that which is holy to the dogs. Yet ever and again, thank God, I have been saved from despising my brother, by the recollection that in the day of the judgment of all nations by the Son of Man, there shall appear no hideous circe herd of unclean beasts, but only the equally clean sheep and kidlings of His flock. For God has cleansed the unclean, as was revealed to Peter in the vision which prepared him to receive the Gentiles. Christ has tasted death for every man, therefore as by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men to justification of life. Therefore all appear as cleansed beasts before the judgment-seat, manifested, not in their inherited nor in their personal uncleanness, but all as the Redeemed, bought of the Lord, bought with a price, out of the hands of all accusers, out of the power of all in whom they had vainly trusted; not only bought, but given, given to the Son for His inheritance, and for His possession.
\nHe who spake the parable of the one lost sheep, and of its value in the eyes of its possessor, is not capable of speaking any parable which would teach us that He Himself would so little value His own possessions, as to deliver up to wanton and reckless destruction the half of His flock.
\nWith this certainty, let us look further, and consider the principle of the judgments of the flocks.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER V<\/p>\n
The Principle of the Judgment of the Flocks<\/p>\n
The judgment of the flocks, alike of the sheep and the goats, proceeds not in the sphere of the Law which searches out transgression and iniquity, to punish every offence with stripes, but it radiates from the new principles of judgment, brought in by the freely given promise of God to His friend Abraham.
\nThat promise was that men should henceforth be blest, and cursed, by God, according to their standing toward the Elect seed. Blessing Him who is the seed, men shall be blessed; cursing Him who is the seed, that one shall be cursed. The king who inherits this promise applies it in His own judgments, and apportions blessing and cursing according to its principle. His judgment proceeds according to that spoken of by God to His friend\u2014not on questions of right and wrong\u2014but solely on like-mindedness in goodwill towards the chosen representatives of the King. The only difference is that the curse falls no more only on him that curseth, but on them who do not bless. This negative character distinguishes all the judgments spoken of by Christ as to be revealed at His coming. The virgins rejected had not sufficient oil; the servant reprobated had not given out the money to the money-changers,\u2014the kidlings had not performed the works of human charity. We ALL stand under the free gift of Jesus Christ\u2014and are no more judged as under the law, but as under grace, no more dealt with according to active infraction of law, but according to refusals of free grace. There is in this, as in all revelation, alike Terror and Hope. The fear of the Lord should be the beginning of wisdom for all who hear this word. In this place the negative character of the judgment indicates that the indifference to others\u2019 sufferings, on the part of the kidlings, had been in rejection of a light given to man as man; had been in defiance of the natural heart; for none of these flocks, sheep as well as goats, had ever risen above the merely human level.
\nThe sheep had never attained to the works of the disciples of the Lord, for their powers had extended only to the visiting of the sick, and the prisoner, never to the healing and the setting free, which disciples are commissioned to do.
\nThe principle of judgment, which God introduced by His election, in the promises to Abraham, is thus brought into the sphere of the natural life; and in that sphere, the representatives of the king, or the inheritors of the position promised to the Elect among men, are declared to be the poor and the suffering.
\nThe words, \u201cthese my brethren,\u201d have been taken to mean the disciples of Christ; but I venture to think that the significance of the parable depends upon a wider application of the term. The followers of Christ have, in these parables of judgment, been brought before us as virgins dressed for the marriage-feast, as servants with entrusted wealth in their possession. Why should they be spoken of now as the naked and the stranger? How can the followers of Christ be spoken of as having been the especially diseased and imprisoned?
\nWho are mentioned as being present with the king? The holy angels. May we not take these angels as the representatives of the little ones mentioned in Matt. 18\u2014which angels always behold the face of the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven? May we not take the words \u201cthese my brethren\u201d to apply to a host of \u201clittle ones\u201d who having, in this life, had their portion among the sick, the imprisoned, the naked, the stranger, are in the judgment represented by their angels? May there not be a host of little ones concerning whom no word of judgment is uttered in our hearing save that which announces the standing of their representative angels, and identifies the king with them, as one in the ties of kindred?
\nIf this be so, how wondrous is the Vision! The King, who speaks thus, is the Son of Man.
\nThere are two generations given of man, even as there are two accounts given of the Creation. The one under Jehovah, the other under Eloheem; the one the seed of woman, the other the Son of Man. The seed of woman, under Jehovah, has a principle of relationship which depends for its continuance upon certain qualifications. Cain, not being of one mind with his brother, kills him. The race of Cain culminates in those who are Fathers, not of personally-begotten children, but fathers of such as dwell in tents and have cattle, and fathers of such as handle the harp and the organ. This is a spiritual community whose relationship is based on a community of tastes and sympathies. Though born of brethren, the race of Cain flows forth in infinitely divergent lives\u2014on the one side the uncultivated pastoral life, on the other the cultured sons of harmony; on the other hand, the Son of Man, under Eloheem, has His relationship based not upon any qualification, but upon the image in which Adam was made, and in which sons and daughters are, by birthright, begotten. This community stands mutually related, not by virtue of mutual sympathies and like faculties, but by a bond of relationship independent of all qualification, which cannot be done away with by any difference of individual desires, for it is founded upon a pre-existing image which has begotten them as brethren.
\nThese two generations are, throughout Scripture, spoken of as \u201cMan that is born of woman,\u201d and as \u201cthe Son of Man whom God has made strong for Himself.\u201d
\nWhen Christ is spoken of as \u201cthe Son of Man,\u201d we are, I believe, justified in looking upon Him as the representative of the whole revelation, which is given throughout Scripture, of that principle, of the personal, inalienable bond of relationship, which exists in the race of the Son of Man under Eloheem, as contrasted with the principle of relationship, through likeness of mind which exists in the generations of the seed of woman under Jehovah.
\nIt would take many volumes to make my meaning fully clear, and to show my assertion fully justified. In this place I can give only such amount of suggestion as shall, in some measure, indicate the significance which I attach to the name \u201cthe Son of Man.\u201d
\nThe two generations of man correspond, I believe, to two principles of Love. Of these two principles the one seeks the ideal, and owns for its principle of recognised relationship, the satisfaction of its demand for certain attributes. Let us call this the desire of Attribute. The other lives by virtue of a pre-existing relationship. It recognises the personal tie\u2014and, without reference to any attribute, acknowledges personal claim. Let us call this the ties of personality. These two principles of Love have great spheres belonging to each, of which spheres the impulses and laws are mutually antagonistic. For instance\u2014by the law of the first, i.e., the love of Attribute\u2014one who requires truth in the inward parts, abhors a liar and casts him out; by strong repulsion keeps a liar in the outer darkness, never admitted into the city of such love. By the law of the second\u2014i.e., the love of Personality\u2014one who loves the liar clings to him through every lie, gives him the freedom to dip his hand in the same dish\u2014nay, even if He have spued a church out of His mouth, and in just judgment shut a church out of all participation in the halls of His own delight, seeks every individual door, stands and knocks, longing to come in and to become partaker of the individual fare\u2014ready to dignify by His presence the humble board of those who are not sharers at the table of the King\u2014nay, even unto the lake of fire, He seeks the athirst with free offering of the fountain of the water of life.
\nThese two strongly contrasted principles of Love, are shown to us throughout the Scripture revelations in strong wrestling upon the earth, in revealed unity in the heavens.
\nThe principle of the judgments of the Flocks is the principle of that inalienable bond of relationship, wherein no poverty, no imprisonment, can break the tie of brotherhood between the King and His people, nor do away with the sacred nature of the claim of man upon his fellow-man, and this is shown not only by the judgments spoken, but by the very name of Him who speaks, which name is the Son of Man.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER VI<\/p>\n
The Contrasted Judgments of the Sheep and the Goats<\/p>\n
Judgment begins with those on the right hand. To them it is said, \u201cCome, ye blessed of My Father;\u201d but to the goats, \u201cDepart, ye cursed.\u201d
\nObserve, it is said, \u201cblessed of My Father,\u201d but not cursed of My Father. The blessing of the sheep comes from the Father God, the curse of the kidling is from no such source. The curse is only the declaration of the actual condition of those whom the judge rebukes.
\nObserve again, the blessing is \u201cCome an invitation indefinite in its scope. \u201cCome\u201d not unto Me, but \u201cCome\u201d unto the whole wondrous manifold glory of the kingdom of the Father.
\nThe curse is, depart from Me. Not Depart, with indefinite and infinite signification, but from Me. He who bids them depart is the Son of Man. The Son of Man moves in a finite sphere. All things concerning Him have a time set. They who, at His appearing, are not found pleasing in His sight, have no share in His glory; nay, His very appearing is for them the time of shame, His Presence is the destruction of their pride. But, whilst departure from the presence of the Son of Man is an irretrievable loss of the day and the age of His glory; irreparable loss, immeasurable as is the gain of His favour; still, this departure from the presence of the King is not departure from the presence of God; for from the Infinite and Omnipresent God there can be no departure. \u201cIf I make my bed in hell, behold Thou!\u201d Can fire separate from Him who is a consuming fire?
\nAgain, the blessing is \u201cCome, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the world.\u201d
\nThere is, as Alford observes, a Book of Life, but no book of Death. There is a predestination unto Eternal Life which comes of free grace, upon every freewill choice of love\u2019s gentle impulses, though that choice be merely on the level of the natural life; though it be love of men, not of God. But there is no predestination of men unto rejection from blessing.
\nThe curse is, \u201cDepart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared\u2014(not for you) but for the accuser and his angels.\u201d
\nThey who have failed to feel the attraction of the suffering, the diseased, and the imprisoned, are identified in their sentence with the accuser. And if we trace the offences threatened with the vengeance of fire, we shall find that a like character prevails in them all. If one looks upon another, and says \u201cApostate wretch,\u201d that is, if one considers another as outcast from God\u2019s regard, he is worthy of hell fire. If man looks upon a woman to lust after her\u2014that is, so fails in the reverence due to woman as to degrade her in his own imagination to the level of a beast\u2014he shall be cast into hell fire. If the commissioned apostle of Christ restrains preaching because of persecution\u2014i.e., fails in anxious effort for the convincing of the persecutor, not fully feeling the worth of that persecutor\u2019s soul\u2014he is threatened with hell fire. Capernaum, which rejected Christ as the Carpenter\u2019s son, shall be brought down to hell. The self-righteous Pharisees who would not eat with the Publicans and sinners, and who thanked God that they were not as other men, shall not escape the damnation of hell. The fallen angels, self-seeking despisers of dominion and walkers after the flesh; and the accuser, which is the meaning of the word Devil; Death, and Hell, these are the inheritors of Fire. For these the everlasting burnings have been prepared. For these rejoicers in judgment\u2014for these majestic reigners because of sin\u2014these holders of the lawful captive\u2014for these the everlasting fire is prepared. \u201cOur God is a consuming fire.\u201d Our God, who is Light, who is Love. I know that no image of devouring Flame can be more terrible than the searching of His jealousy in behalf of those little ones whom the strong despise.
\nObserve, that into this awful Fire the kidlings are not driven. They do not depart at the word of command. They answer the King with questioning, \u201cWhen saw we Thee?\u201d And He does not repeat the authoritative \u201cDepart,\u201d but awakens their own perception of His identification with the poor and the suffering, with the diseased and the imprisoned. As compelled, not by any external force exercised upon them, but by reason of their own awakened perceptions, they \u201cgo away;\u201d not, are driven, but they go away into everlasting punishment.
\nBengel, in his Gnomon, Jukes, in his Restitution of All Things, and Dr. Robert Young, in several letters in the Scotsman, have called attention to the word translated punishment as being a word which in the Greek is never used for vengeance, but for discipline, i.e., for suffering inflicted not for the satisfaction of vengeful desire, or legal demand on the part of him who inflicts it, but for the good of the sufferer. Robinson\u2019s Lexicon says of the verbal form of this word, \u201cproperly mutilation or pruning as of trees,\u201d to make them more fruitful. Liddel and Scott\u2019s Dictionary, \u201cto prune, to retrench, metaphorically to hold in check, to keep in, to confine; thence usually to chasten.\u201d Trench, in his Synonyms of the New Testament, says, \u201cIn Kolasis\u201d (the word used here, as contrasted with other Greek words for punishment,) \u201cis more the notion of punishment, as it has reference to the correction and bettering of him who endures it.\u201d \u201cThen,\u201d as Jukes acutely notes, \u201chaving clearly proved that this word has reference to the correction and bettering of him who endures it,\u201d he adds, \u201cit would be a very serious error, however, to transfer this distinction in its entireness to the New Testament;\u201d in other words, \u201cit would be a serious error to give the word its proper meaning.\u201d
\nA serious error to give the proper meaning to a word used only once by Jesus Christ, and that concerning the judgments to be executed at His return! As if the Lord could have been guilty of using a misleading word concerning so tremendous a theme! It is a word of such rare occurrence, that it is found only once again in Scripture, and that is in 1 John 4:18, where it is written, \u201cThere is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment\u201d\u2014the word torment here is the same as the word punishment in relation to the kidlings. And what follows? \u201cHe that feareth is not made perfect in love,\u201d inferring that the place of such torment, or, more properly speaking, restraint, is the place of undergoing some process of being made perfect in love. The construction of the parable requires the punishment to be so read. They who undergo the punishment are kidlings. It is written that, of all the beasts of the field, the kidling is especially distinguished as having recognised, in its relationship to its mother, the sacredness of the mere physical bond of natural affections. To the dam\u2019s yearning over the little kid such honour is given, that its recognition forms an essential part of the Covenant of Law. Whatever else is omitted, the command \u201cThou shalt not seethe the kid in its mother\u2019s milk\u201d is retained. Doth the Lord take care only for the beast? Has He not, from the very beginning of the Covenant of the outcasting Law, provided a voice that witnesses, that in relation to that very beast, whom He has made the symbol of the outcast, the yearnings of natural affection are eternally consecrated to be an eternally recognised power?
\nIf I have read rightly in considering that the brethren represented by their angels, towards whom the kids had failed in brotherliness, are a multitude concerning whom no judgment is spoken in our hearing, these are such as, our own common sense tells us, are below the level of human responsibility. Multitudes of idiots, thousands of such as are born of drunkards and harlots, enter into existence with unbalanced minds, and crippled powers, and diseased propensities. Millions never have had the opportunity offered them, not only of Christian standing, but not even of ordinary human freedom. These, including, I believe, every beast, and bird, and creeping thing, by this parable are, in their involuntary bondage, and involuntary sufferings, shown as involuntary sacrifices used, by the Wisdom of God, to bring down into the lowest levels of human relationship, the possibility of return into the forfeited joys of creature friendship with the Highest. These involuntary sacrifices are the media where the exercise of that pitifulness which is possible on the merely human, nay, on the merely bestial, level (for the ideal of parent-love is written in every heart of flesh), may choose the subject God, may bless the King in the day when He holds His power in abeyance.
\nMay we not, then, believe that the kidling, representative of the inalienable bond, chosen under the outcasting law, to have the mother\u2019s yearnings for ever recognised in its use for food, is in its suffering in that fire which is prepared for the accuser and his angels, there, in its turn, an involuntary sacrifice, to be the medium of bringing into contact with that accuser the powers of that sphere of personal Love from which he has become disunited?
\nInto this punishment the kidlings depart, not as driven, but as themselves going away into it, under the operation of convincing grace. The work of the Spirit of God is \u201cto convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment.\u201d This is precisely the work which, by the word of the Judge, has been loosed upon the kidling. Sin is, in Scripture teaching, the disturbing or breaking personal relationship with a personal God. Of this sin they are convinced, by the revelation that these weak ones, whom they had despised, were the kindred of the King. Righteousness is, in Scripture teaching, a food and a drink by which we live. It is not right doing in the abstract. It is the knowledge, through ardent desire, of the Being and the Will of our personally related God, and the living by that God. Of this righteousness they are convinced, and made to feel how utterly they had been wanting therein. Convinced of sin, because they had not, by belief, seen the unity of the King with the despised Jesus of Nazareth; convinced of righteousness, because of the unity of the Son with the Father, they are also convinced of judgment by the casting out of the prince or power of their world. All their riches brought to nought, and their strength struck into nothingness, they go away, under the operation of the Spirit\u2019s work, for a great convincing, for a being made perfect in love.
\nThey go, there, whither they were bidden to depart, into everlasting fire prepared for the accuser and his angels.
\nThere are two judgments spoken of in Scripture. One by water, and one by fire. The judgment by water is only partially operative. It is powerless in relation to all who, like the fish, have their life in the instrument of judgment. A judgment by water actually enlarges the borders of the great Leviathan, the king over all the children of pride.
\nThe great waters in Scripture signify alike the judgments of God and the multitude of peoples. When the symbol is used concerning judgments, these are judgments effected by means of the multitudes of people. When the earth was without form and void, whelmed under the waters of the great deep, and when again the terrible waters prevailed above the mountains, doubtless the accuser and his angels found large place for exulting freedom. The children of pride triumph in the day of such judgments, and think that, even though the dead are there, these great waters are a crystal shrine. But, no lower life can live in fire. A judgment by fire consumes all that is destructible: it enlarges no life except the life of God, of our God who is a consuming fire. The great Accuser, and his angels Death and Hell, which terms, no doubt, indicate spiritual communities of such as have delight in penalties, and in strong restraints vengefully imposed on the guilty, these great rejoicers in judgments, these great children of pride, who cease not to accuse the brethren day and night, these, who had their domain enlarged by the judgment of the waters, these are powerless in the fire, restrained in the fire, punished and instructed concerning Love in the fire.
\nAnd is there no return from that punishment? Are we, by the symbol of fire, shut up into dire doctrines of the annihilation of personal sufferers? Does not some indication of hope lie in the confined space of this fire? The place of torment is not immeasurable, such as might have been expected, but it is a lake of fire. Immeasurable fire let loose upon any creature might, indeed, prove destructive of all creature individuality, but it is a lake. The action of the Eternal Fire is, as it were, confined in a finite measure. And the word used for this fire is not a word which signifies eternity without beginning as without end, but, as has been often pointed out, it is the word \u00e6onial, or age-long. Eternity, in the Scripture revelation, is not a question of duration at all, but a question of nature. Under such a question, fire is indeed truly eternal, for our God is a consuming fire. But under such a question, the work of restraint or of destruction, which is the work of this fire, cannot be eternal, for such a work is \u201cthe strange work\u201d of God.
\nThe Father God, who is Love, willeth not the death of a sinner, but He willeth that all should come to the knowledge of the truth; His pleasure is in the free life of His beloved, and He hateth nothing that He has made. The operation of restraint by His Fire cannot be other than age-long. When it has prospered in that to which He has sent it, the man shall be saved, yet so, as by fire.
\nIf I had not so often been met with the objection that the hope of the righteous for eternal bliss must be shaken, if any doubt were cast upon the eternity of the torment of the sinner, because the same verbal expressions were used in Scripture concerning both bliss and bale, I could not have believed it possible that Christians could so feel. How can aught be eternal save God? How can eternity ever become a question of mere duration, when duration is an idea which essentially belongs to conceptions of time? How can anyone read Scripture, and not perceive that the terms used for eternity, so far as such terms concern duration, signify merely a duration of hidden extension, or, as sometimes, a duration coeval with the duration of the thing spoken of?
\nOften these things are such as cannot, by their nature, last long, and are by the Scripture context immediately thereafter, shown to be transitory. We are irresistibly forced, by a comparison of all such passages, into the conviction that both threats and promises must be received according to the nature of the thing spoken of. If that thing or condition be one which is opposed to the nature, and contrary to the desire of God, it is a condition which is necessarily transitory and finite. It has had a beginning and must have an ending. If, on the other hand, that condition be in keeping with the nature and desire of God, it is necessarily a partaker in God\u2019s Eternity.
\nThe cursed condition of His own flock cannot possibly be in keeping with His desire, who has \u201cno pleasure in the death of him that dieth.\u201d It therefore cannot be eternal. The blessing of His flock must be in keeping with His desire, and the blessedness of those who trust, not in their own righteousness, but in His mercy, therefore must have Eternity for its scope. The hopes of such have no such narrow foundation as the mere grammatical signification of words of human speech. Their foundation is God Himself. Demonstrate, if you can, that there is not one word in the whole Scripture which is applied to the blessedness of the chosen, which is not equally applied to the sufferings of the outcast, and Reason, with Scripture as her guide, sees that the one condition must endure as long as God endures, for it is His pleasure, whilst the other can endure only as long as revolt endures, for it is not God\u2019s pleasure, but man\u2019s chastisement. And this we are shown by all that is written concerning everlasting fire.
\nI will ask you to glance through the prophecies of unquenchable fire in the Old Testament.
\nI. The law of the fire of the altar of burnt offering, Lev. 6:13.
\nII. The prophecy of Huldah concerning Judah and its inhabitants, 2 Kings 22:17; 2 Chron. 34:22.
\nIII. Of the strong and his work, Is. 1:31; glance through the chapter from beginning, and observe it is addressed to Jerusalem.
\nIV. Of Idumea, Is. 34:10.
\nV. Of the outcast from the Holy Mount (as quoted by Jesus), Is. 66:24.
\nVI. Warning to men of Judah and Jerusalem, Jeremiah 4:4.
\nVII. Of Jerusalem, Jer. 7:20; 17:27.
\nVIII. Of the house of the king of Judah, Jer. 21:12.
\nIX. Of the forest of the south, Ezek. 20:47.
\nX. Warning to house of Israel, Amos 5:6.
\nOf these ten mentions of unquenchable fire, one is the law of the altar of burnt offering; out of the remaining nine, six distinctly concern Judah, Jerusalem, and Israel.
\nThree out of the ten are addressed to, possibly, other than the chosen nation. Out of these three, the forest of the south is supposed to represent Jerusalem. The two that are left are both quoted by Jesus. The threatening of Idumea, Is. 34, He uses in that memorable prophecy (Matt. 24) in which, through the vista of the final judgments upon Jerusalem, He makes visible the final judgments upon the whole world. The description of the carcases of the unnamed transgressors against Jehovah (Is. 66) He uses in warning the twelve called and chosen Apostles, to beware of being hardened in pride by the exercise of their excelling powers of hand, and foot, and eye, and of thereby offending the little ones of the flock. The only two threatenings of unquenchable fire, which in their first utterance were not distinctly directed against the elect, are the only two quoted by Christ, and by Him applied to the elect.
\nWe may therefore justly consider that the unquenchable wrath, the fire that cannot be quenched, is always spoken of in threatening or in prophecy concerning God\u2019s Elect. And is there then no restoration of the outcast Elect? no hope for the building again of Jerusalem, for the rejoicing once more of Judah, for the peopling of Israel?
\nSurely, from beginning to end of the Scripture revelation, nothing can be clearer than the declaration that \u201cthe gifts and calling of God are without repentance;\u201d that God justifies His Elect; that He is unswerving in His faithfulness and truth to the seed of Abraham, His friend; that He is pledged to bring again the captivity of the outcast, and to make Jerusalem a rejoicing and her people a joy. \u201cAll Israel shall be saved.\u201d Ezekiel gives the vine branch \u201cgiven to the fire for fuel\u201d as the symbol of the people of Jerusalem, with whom, nevertheless, God\u2019s covenant shall be remembered, Ezek. 15.
\nIt is obvious, then, that the word concerning the unquenchable fire is not a word which shuts the door of all hope against those upon whom it comes. This is obvious upon the very surface, and the more abundantly obvious the deeper we search into Scripture. For instance, Jude v. 7 tells us that Sodom and Gomorrha are \u201cset forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.\u201d Is there no hope for Sodom\u2019s return? Can there be no hope for Sodom\u2019s return, when the Elect city of Christ, Capernaum, shall be brought down to hell with a judgment more terrible than Sodom\u2019s judgment? We are not left to conjecture on this. Turn to Ezek. 16; observe (ver. 2) that the address is to Jerusalem; and then read from ver. 44 to the end of the chapter, and you will find it clearly written that this Sodom, which is set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire, shall \u201creturn to her former estate,\u201d she and the cities around her; \u201cher daughters\u201d shall return (Ezek. 16:55), and shall be received by Jerusalem as her own daughters (Ezek. 16:61); Jerusalem herself, the Elect beloved of the Lord, shall be brought back only as in the midst of Sodom\u2019s returning captives.
\nLet those who desire to keep closely to the text of Scripture explain these and many other passages in any other way, as satisfactorily in keeping with verbal as well as spiritual truths, as in the way of regarding them as plainly indicating that the threatening of the burning by the \u00e6onial fire does not shut the door of hope against them on whom it comes.
\nGod alone is Eternity. God abhors iniquity. Therefore that iniquity upon which God cannot look must have an end, and all the spirits whom He has created must, every one, be brought out of sin into His Holiness. God delights in them who hope in His mercy. The faith which makes a man acceptable in His sight, is the substance of things hoped for. The fearful and the hopeless unbelieving cannot enter into the city of His delight. If hope be thus delighted in by Him, if fearfulness and despair be thus abhorrent in His sight, can He shut any creature into the necessity of eternal despair. What would be thought of a human king and judge who, hating thieving or murder, at a certain period seized all thieves and murderers, and shut them up into an eternal necessity of thieving and murdering? How can it be any more conceivable of the Eternal Fountain of all conceptions of judgment, that His justice requires that any creature should be eternally shut up into the necessity of continuing in that fearfulness and despair, which in the kingdom of Love is sin, which in the enumeration of sins by the seer is named in company with the sins of murder, and sorcery, and all uncleanness.
\nAnd yet again to return to the scene of the parable. What reason is given for the declared cursed state of the kidling? Nothing is said of sins against the law, nothing of lying, of stealing, of slandering, of dishonouring of parents, of breaking of Sabbaths, of idolatry, of forgetfulness of God. Are we to suppose that the goats have never failed in these respects? Can we imagine that all these laws had been kept inviolate? What, then, must we think of this strange silence concerning the whole province of legal enforcement? Obviously this is no scene of merely judicial action, and reasonings concerning it, based on merely judicial principles, are entirely out of place. The Law deals with positive infractions of forbidding commandment. The Law says, Thou shalt not do thus and thus. The curse upon the goats is not spoken on account of active transgression, but wholly on the ground of an absence of good deeds. If we, according to our power, have not fed the hungry, have not given drink to the thirsty, have not counted the stranger as one of our own circle, have not clothed the naked, and have not visited the sick and imprisoned, we are in the condition which is accursed. Let us, for the understanding of the word of judgment applied to such a condition, make a personal application of it to ourselves. The only way in which we can receive the knowledge of God\u2019s judgments is by realising them in relation to ourselves.
\nIf we have passed into a standing above that of the flocks, and are consciously related to Christ, still the higher relationships include the knowledge of the lower. If we be of the servants or of the virgins, we are also of the flocks. We do eat of the Lord\u2019s pastures, and do belong to Him in a manner, and a degree quite beyond the limits of our own consciousness. He will take us by surprise, even if we be looking for Him, even as the lightning startles us, though we be expecting its flash; His claims and His revealed Omnipresence will amaze us, transcending all that we have thought or known. Let us now be faithful to ourselves. Let us now judge ourselves, that we be not judged of the Lord.
\nLet us examine ourselves, in our past and in our present selves, in the terms of this judgment.
\nFirst, with respect to the seeking out of others in their physical needs. I, for one, confess that my humiliation is ever and again terrible concerning this. Not that I think of my God as a hard task-master in this, any more than in any other matter. The burden of human woe is greater than I can lift. My own personal duties are undoubtedly my first concern. I have no right to give beyond my own means, and no right to neglect home duties for other ministerings; but my conscience often makes me writhe, in well-nigh intolerable agony, concerning this one, and that one, towards whom I have cruelly failed. Many is the hour I have lain awake, and cried out under the burnings of God\u2019s jealousy in behalf of His poor, and owned His righteousness. I pray you to drive home, to your own hearts, these same questions, with all faithfulness, concerning the physical needs around you. Do you, according to God\u2019s providence, do all you can for the sufferers around you? If the answer be the blessed assurance of the Son\u2019s witness of the Father\u2019s knowledge, blessed indeed are you; but if your hearts condemn you, remember that your condemnation proceeds on the principle, that the King identifies Himself with every necessity and every suffering, though it be but the hunger and the thirst of the passing hour, though it be but the sickness of the body which is under judgment slain, and the imprisonment of the lawful captive. Shall this be true concerning the King, and shall there be no hope for the soul that learns, under the searching of God\u2019s jealousy, its own immortal hunger and thirst, its own terrible condition of nakedness, and disease, and imprisonment? Is it only for the temporal body that God\u2019s pity moves, that God\u2019s love works identification? Impossible! The very sufferings under which the rebuked suffer, witness to them that there is a word which gives, to him that is athirst, the fountain of the water of life FREELY. The very identity of the judgment, awakened within themselves, with the judgment of the King, assures them of a free grace, by belief in which it is possible to overcome even in the dread wrestlings with God\u2019s jealousy.
\nAnd in thus laying hold of His strength, to make peace with Him, we come forth into the higher sphere of mental and moral being, to question ourselves concerning our own standing, in dealing, with those around us, as with living souls. There are hungers and thirsts for ever crying out around us. The hunger of the heart is ever insatiate for Love. The thirst of the spirit is always insatiate for judgment, and for knowledge.
\nThe nakedness of our brethren is constantly to be seen displayed, often with awful unconsciousness. There are innumerable strange incomprehensible desires going up and down in our midst, the words of which we cannot understand; there are those around us who are fast bound in the imprisonment of evil habits, in the bondage of bigotry, in the prisons of ignorance. How are we dealing with these? Are we coolly ignoring all these necessities? or are we even making them the butt of our shafts of would-be wit, rejoicing in others\u2019 shame? Let us take every relationship of life, and drive home these questions faithfully to our hearts. The result may be very dreadful self-condemnation. We may find ourselves in contact with searching flame\u2014for myself, I know that I find myself in such contact as often as I search myself\u2014but therein is my hope, for the salvation I desire is not from the punishment of sin, nor from God\u2019s righteous abhorrence of sin, but from sin itself. Sin itself is the unutterable horror, the unspeakable shame, the sting of death, and the power of the grave. From sin, good Lord, deliver us; and if thus I ally myself with Him who searches me, I arise to question myself in yet higher mystery. I know that in myself there are sacred hungers, wondrous thirsts; that Christ in me is ever seeking unto His own, is ever crying out under bonds, under sore smitings and much tribulation. In me, there is that which cannot be satisfied with any mere earthly satisfactions. Oh, Christ! how am I dealing with Thee in me? Press home this question to yourselves; press it home under every item given\u2014of hunger, of thirst. Are you stifling and starving to death the royal needs of your own spirit? Are you blinding yourself to your own diseases, refraining from stirring up within you the knowledge of your own bonds? Content to be a spectacle to gods and men, in your own nakedness\u2014provided you yourself know it not.
\nThe answer may be terrible, must be terrible, if you are sincere. So let it be, for so only can you really welcome your Saviour, and so only arise into the higher fellowship of those who wait for their Lord.
\nBy thus judging ourselves we learn the doctrine, we know that the very judgment necessitates a door of hope; for, it is against reason that we should suffer because the King identifies Himself with all suffering which we have left unrelieved, and that our own greater suffering should have no right of appeal.
\nAnd now, let us suppose that we are of the sheep; that we know ourselves blessed, with a blessing contrasted with the condemnation of which we have spoken; that we know that the blessing of the physically poor and suffering has come upon us, and come in measure that has amazed us, as truly \u201cthe gratitude\u201d of men often \u201cleaves us mourning.\u201d Does not that very blessing fill us with power to arise as preachers of righteousness and of hope? If such blessedness attaches to the ministering in such small measure, if such be the value set by God upon every effort, however slight, to mitigate the burden of human woe, (for, observe, it is mere mitigation that is spoken of; mere visiting of the sick and the imprisoned, no healing or setting free,) oh! how illimitable, how awfully incalculable, must be the opposition of God\u2019s desire to all bondage, to all suffering; how unutterable His desire to bring to an end all the mystery of iniquity.
\nWe shall enter with ever-renewing youth and strength into that Eternal Life, which is the knowledge of the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. We shall arise as \u201csaviours upon Mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord\u2019s.\u201d
\nAnd now, observe that the sheep, though their judgment was spoken before the judgment passed on the kidlings, yet do not enter into Eternal Life until AFTER the kidlings have gone away into the everlasting punishment.
\nSome of the writers, whose incomprehensible eagerness in behalf of their dogma of well-nigh universal perdition has urged them far, have laid hold on this, and have said that the blessed do not enter upon their own delights until they have seen the destructions of the wicked, that the contrast might make their delight the greater. This idea is flagrantly illogical, to say the least of it; since the judgment has declared the sheep to be blessed of the Father, simply because they had been pitiful over physical sufferings, it is rather a violent leap for one\u2019s imagination, to pass into an idea so absolutely against the spirit of such a judgment, as delight heightened by the sight of others\u2019 sufferings. That pitiful souls, who had been tender towards earthly sufferers, should become such hard-hearted, selfish creatures as could look on spiritual sufferers and rejoice in their own contrasted ease, and should so become under the Father\u2019s blessing on their pitifulness, is a jumble of incongruous ideas which, for my part, my reason rejects.
\nBut we need not go far for deliverance from such a chimera. Jesus Christ has Himself told us what Eternal Life is. \u201cThis is Life Eternal to know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.\u201d Life Eternal is the knowledge of the only true God, who is Love, whose commandment is Life Everlasting, whose \u201cwill is our sanctification,\u201d \u201cwho will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.\u201d Life Eternal is the knowledge of the only true God, and the Saviour Anointed, whom He hath sent.
\nHow can any enter into that Eternal Life, except as knowing the condition, out of which salvation is to be effected? How can any know of the doctrine, except as doing the will? How can any know the only true God and Jesus Christ\u2014the anointed Saviour whom He has sent\u2014except as having the Divine will to save sinners awakened in themselves? If the sheep enter into Eternal Life, only after seeing the destructions of the outcast, it is that only then do they feel and know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has sent\u2014it is that only then, they who have been pitiful in the physical sphere are awakened to knowledge of sufferings in the spiritual sphere. That such a word as entering into Eternal Life is used of the sheep, shows us that those who in the judgment day appear as the flocks are on a lower standing than the firstfruits of the Lord. The Servants and the Virgins who are blest in the preceding parables are not said to enter into Eternal Life, for they could not consciously know the King as their acknowledged Master, or expect Him as the longed-for Bridegroom, unless they had already become partakers of that knowledge which is Eternal Life.
\nThese who appear as flocks of the Son of Man are brought before us as taking up, in future ages, the same mysteries which are now the portion of the called in Christ, only taking them up, no more on the level of God\u2019s longsuffering weakness, but, in the whole awful aggregate of the powers accumulated throughout the ages, in that Kingdom which they shall inherit\u2014in that Kingdom which is being built up from amidst us now.
\nIt is such an inestimable privilege now, in this day of \u201cthe weakness of God,\u201d to speak His Word, to declare His righteousness, that they who have taken up that Word prize it above all earth\u2019s treasures. Much more excelling shall be the glory, then, of those who are raised up from the level of human pitifulness into the newness of Eternal Life. Much more shall they rejoice in that day of power, for then the treasure will be no more in earthen vessels, but in that body of which the glory as yet appeareth not.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER VII<\/p>\n
The Servants<\/p>\n
We will now pass upwards to the parable which speaks of the relation of servants to their Lord. Observe that the words, \u201cThe kingdom of heaven,\u201d are in italics, an indication that they are wanting in the original. Some commentators consider that the words supplied should be \u201cthe Son of Man,\u201d rather than \u201cthe kingdom of the heavens,\u201d since these words would be more in keeping with the personal nature of what follows; and \u201cthe Son of Man\u201d is the name which Christ most frequently uses of Himself, when He speaks of the day of judgment.
\nTo understand this parable, we must remember that the relationship indicated is not that of domestic servants as amongst us, but of slaves, such as existed in the time and place where the parable was spoken, who were often given money, with which to trade on their master\u2019s account. Three men are especially instanced\u2014one who received five talents, another two, and another one, each according to their several ability. The owner of the talents was a long time away; long enough to admit of the money given being doubled in its amount; but however long his absence, his right to reckon with the servants was unaffected. Two of these servants were faithful, and were able to give to their lord his own money back, with increase, unto the double. Each of these, according to his ability, had been equally faithful, and to each the same approval was given, \u201cWell done, good and faithful servant;\u201d and to each the same reward, \u201cThou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.\u201d The servant who had received but one talent had no gain to offer to his lord; had only the talent he received to return, which he did return, with an insolent assumption that there was no further claim to be met, at all, on himself, and on his time. He is judged as wicked and slothful\u2014wicked, in having harboured harsh judgments of his master; slothful, in having neglected his master\u2019s interests. His talent is taken from him, and given unto him that hath ten talents; and instead of being made ruler over many things, he thus suffers loss of the little he had: instead of being called to enter with joyful freedom into the joy of his lord, he is cast into outer darkness, where there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.
\nLet us compare this parable with that of the sheep and goats.
\nThe servants stand in relation to the Son of Man, not as beasts, but as slaves. The servants appear, not as beasts, but in the likeness of the Son of Man. Their spirits, unlike those of the flocks who were unconscious of their possessor, are thoroughly aware of their Master. However long that Master may delay His coming, the servants expect His return. That return is personal and private, of significance to the household alone, and has not the world-wide interest of the coming with angels as King. There is here no universal claim, by the Son of Man, of all nations as His flocks, but only of certain men out of innumerable others indicated; and these men are called to reckon concerning certain talents received, not judged on their bearing towards the necessitous. The point concerned is personal increase in riches, not the feeding of the hungry.
\nThe faithful servants are judged first, as were the generous sheep; but instead of a blessing from the Father, they have approval from the Son of Man proportioned to their deeds; instead of inheriting a kingdom prepared for them, they are made rulers over many things; instead of entering into Life Eternal, they are called to enter into the joy of their Lord.
\nThese blessings, as compared with those of the flocks, do not seem to be compared in greater terms, such as we would have expected, in proportion to their appearance as men instead of as beasts, as servants instead of as flocks. Does this not teach us that they who stand in the higher privileges of men, who are aware of their Master, have already entered into Life Eternal, and are already inheritors of the kingdom, and already, by virtue of their likeness to their Lord, receivers of the Father\u2019s blessing?
\nThe judgments upon the flocks are regarded by most commentators as judgments which concern the whole world, as contrasted with judgments which concern only those who are called after the name of Christ. We may then believe that when the sheep are brought before us as called to enter into newness of life, and to arise as sons under a Father\u2019s blessing, they enter into that blessedness which is the portion now of those who are called to be firstfruits; they receive a new principle of life, which has been entered into already by all who know that the Son of Man is their rightful Lord and Master.
\nThe judgments upon the outcast are alike contrasted.
\nFire is the symbol of judgments which, with irresistible power, seize upon the body and act upon it from without. The weeping and the gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness tell of agonies of remorse and of vain repentance awakened in the spirit within. Darkness is not a condition of sufferings inflicted from without upon a man. The body may there lie down in painless quiet, but the light-desiring spirit strives and cannot rest.
\nAgain, observe that the goats are not cast into the fire, but themselves go away into it, as under the operation of that Spirit who convinces of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; but the wicked and slothful servant is bound and perforce cast into the darkness. This distinction is deeply significant. The servant, by the mere fact of his being already a receiver of talents, conscious of the giver, is shown to be one who has already been brought under the Spirit\u2019s convincing work. He has already had given to him the freedom to ally himself with the judgments of the Lord, and that which his case requires is a forcible necessitating of his own desire. In all parables of the judgments to be exercised by the Son of Man, there is some exercise of power exerted from without. This power, symbolised by fire into which the goats freely pass, is exercised upon the servant, to force him into a condition of weeping and wailing desire for forfeited joy.
\nIn keeping with this distinction, while on the one hand the sheep do not enter into Life Eternal until they have seen the departure into fire of the goats, the outcast servant, on the other hand, is not thrown into darkness until after he has seen the reward of the faithful; for the sheep cannot enter into that life, which is the knowledge of the only true God, and the Saviour anointed whom He has sent, except as having their pitiful natures made cognisant of the goats\u2019 sufferings; and the servant cannot have his hardened heart broken into repentance, except as beholding the joy he has forfeited, and forfeited for ever. There is no room for repentance, though he seek it carefully with tears. There is no possibility of his ever hearing the \u201cWell done\u201d spoken to him; no possibility any more of his being made ruler over many things, of his entering into the joy of his Lord.
\nThe loss is terrible, the loss is final; but let us be clear in our minds as to what that loss is.
\nSlaves, equally with flocks, are the possessions of a man. But the argument is not admissible concerning them, which we have rightfully used concerning the flocks, that no man recklessly destroys half of his flock; for, a slave is a form of possession in which, we know that, any loss incurred by a master, through the destruction of the servant, may be quite counterbalanced by the master\u2019s satisfaction in the just punishment of an insolent malefactor. When the kidlings are commanded to depart into \u00e6onial fire, we feel that this fire cannot be such as would destroy the flock, for a parable requires some consistency of idea in the relationships chosen, and no man recklessly destroys half his flock. But, were the punishment by fire spoken of for the servant, no such reasoning could be ours, for in the system of the things that are seen, many a master has thus destroyed his slave. But the word is not of fire, it is of darkness, and darkness does not hurt the body. The symbol of judgment used, shows it is not a judgment of destruction. No annihilist theory can rightly be built here. Nor is there any word here of such a condition as the shutting up of a sinner into everlasting sin and ever-increasing devilishness. On the contrary, the picture brought before us is that of a man forcibly thrust into knowledge of repentant shame.
\nThere is no indication here of the impossibility of the servant\u2019s improvement; on the contrary, the man crying out under sense of loss is really a nobler being than the lazy discontented despiser had been. And though there is no room left for hope of again winning the golden opportunities forfeited, there is no reason why we should not recall the typical case of the forfeited privilege in Esau, who found no way for repentance concerning his lost blessing, though he sought it carefully with tears. Recalling that case, we may remember that Esau still was blest; that the only instance given of Isaac\u2019s faith in the chapter of faith, is that he blessed both Jacob and Esau. Recalling this, may we not hope that some touch from the Infinite Comforter will find the weeper in the outer darkness, and will enable him to overcome and to see the light arising within the darkness, and to know God, who giveth songs in the night, and to lay hold of Him who maketh darkness His secret place, whose law was spoken out of the thick darkness, whose treasures are in darkness, before whom darkness hideth not, but the night shineth as the day.
\nAnd again, observe that the judgment is exercised, not by the Son of God, but, by the Son of Man.
\nThe Son of Man moves in a finite sphere. Ever above and beyond Him is the Infinite God, who is not bound by any limit; whom the heavens cannot contain, \u201cWho made the darkness and the light, and dwells not in the light alone.\u201d
\nThe slothful servant\u2019s very loss is effected in a manner which witnesses against his own harsh judgment of his master\u2019s character. The talent taken from him is not resumed by his Lord, but is given to him that had ten talents. The faithful servant is seen, by the unfaithful, to still retain the talents originally given, as well as the increase. The Lord has not resumed any of His own. Outcast and wretched, the man carries with him new knowledge of his master\u2019s character; and what may not that new knowledge effect?
\nAnd now, let us apply this parable to ourselves. We do avowedly expect the return of the Son of Man, to take account of His gifts entrusted to us. Are His talents working increase in our hands?
\nThis is a question we can scarcely answer, until we have clearly made up our minds as to what we shall regard as talents. We are too apt to think of these as representing only especial mental or physical powers. St. Paul gives us a much wider view of these. Not only are the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, the gifts of especial faith, of healing, of working miracles, of prophecy, of discerning of spirits, of divers kinds of tongues, of interpretation of tongues\u2019 gifts, for the use, or the neglect of which we must answer, but also the offices which we may be called to fill, whether of ministering, of teaching, of exhorting, of ruling, of showing mercy, and also the persons of all with whom we come into relationship, are gifts or talents. In this great multiplicity of gifts, we constantly find that the exigencies of our lot force upon us the absolute sinking of many of our natural so-called talents.
\nThe providence of God constantly endows a person with certain powers, and shuts him into a circle where quite other powers are required, or fills him with certain riches, and binds him in companionship with those whose desires run after quite other things than he possesses. From my own experience, and from observation of the experience of others, the ways of providence are, to a superficial glance, strangely perverse in this. As a rule, those who hunger seem to knock at the wrong doors, and those who are willing to impart of their own abundance, find their fulness refused, and demands made upon them for what they have not got.
\nHave we not an answer given to us for this very perplexity in this parable, which teaches us that the increase of talents must be in the hands of the exchangers; that our wealth must be gained according to the principles of all trade, and our capital must often be sunk for the purpose of being doubled. Our Saviour\u2019s teaching in Luke 11 is most precious in this connection. Lord, teach us to pray, said the disciples, and he taught them to say, Our Father. And he taught them, that if a man out of his way (as the original has it), comes asking for that which we have not, there is a possibility, in the unity of the body, of our obtaining, that which is required, from another. Nor only is our fulness the fulness of the body, but ours also is the immeasurable gift of the Spirit, the source of all gifts. We are bound in ourselves, not in God.
\nThe personal increase in riches is all that is called in question with the servant. We are not, as servants, required to feed the hungry, for it may be that we are set where none hunger, where all count themselves full, yet that very increase can be accomplished only through the wisdom which can understand and meet a fellow creature\u2019s need. For do any come to us asking what we have not got, such asking should beget in us desires otherwise unknown. Many have come to me, strangely \u201cout of their way\u201d and out of season, as in the night, asking of me bread which I had not. Very painful, very humiliating necessities have thence been mine, of standing, myself, long knocking at other\u2019s doors, to get the bread required. Am I not the richer in desire, in life, and in knowledge this day, for every such strange demand on me?
\nAnd if, on the other hand, the day casts us among those who, far from asking even that we have not got, are perverse, refusing, counting themselves filled with all good, and imagining themselves too rich to receive anything; nay, even if these self-styled rich and strong be perverse and injurious, we should still be the richer, by our own increase in patience, in subtle secrets of overcoming. No experience should ever come amiss to us; in all things we should effect increase, as co-workers with, as entire trusters in, that great Financier, our God, who can make all things work together for good, for those who are the called according to His purpose.
\nBlessed be the fulness of the gracious words of our Master Christ, the increase does not depend only on our own trading. That, which it is our duty to do, is to give the money into the hands of the exchangers, into the trained and established powers of the Bank. All we have to do is to submit to these dealings, and for ourselves to conscientiously work in keeping with them, as shown in God\u2019s various providences. This it is to have that which we have.
\nAlas! how often do we, like the slothful servant, become hardened by the very circumstances which are favourable to exchange, and instead of entering into bold and successful trade, spend our time in hard complainings of the Providence which seems so harsh in its conditions, so unreasonable in its demands of reaping where it has not strawed.
\nThe two parables of the flocks and the servants are both spoken in the sphere of the inalienable personal ties, and if the spirit of requirement be brought to bear upon flocks or slaves, we must bear in mind that it acts within that sphere of which the ideal is the relation between the mother and the suckling. All judgments in a sphere ruled by such an ideal must be for the good of those who are chastised. Therefore \u201clet the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof. Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord: for He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth: He shall judge the world with righteousness, and the people with His truth.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER VIII<\/p>\n
The Symbol of Oil<\/p>\n
The two parables of judgment which concern flocks and servants are both spoken in the sphere of the inalienable personal ties.
\nIn the parable of the virgins we pass into the freewill standing of friends, and the mysteries of judgment here will be such as belong to the star of the love of attribute.
\nThe practical meaning of the parable of the virgins depends so entirely on the significance of oil, that we will give our attention to the reading of this symbol, before we attempt to read the parable.
\nTo understand a Scripture symbol, I always look at it in nature.
\nOil in a lamp is somewhat which, in conjunction with a wick of some kind, feeds the spirit of burning. Oil permeates a substance which of itself would instantly be consumed, prolongs the burning, and makes the consumption of that which it permeates immensely slower than it would otherwise be, and enables it to endure the operation of fire as otherwise it could not, and thus ennobles the wick, which of itself would flame and expire, into a steadfast light-bearer, enlightening those around it.
\nOil, then, in the spiritual sense of the word, I would expect to find somewhat that would permeate the filthy rags of my own righteousness, and would enable these to endure the consuming fire of God in a manner, and in a degree, which otherwise were impossible; and would change these from a condition which is theirs by nature; a condition in which one touch of fire would reduce them to nothing; into a condition such as would enable me to hold them up as light-givers in the darkness. I am strengthened in this expectation, when I further observe that oil used for anointing the human body has a like operation. The anointed body is able to endure such heat of the sun as otherwise it could not meet, without the skin crackling up like paper. I have often in India seen servants cover themselves all over with oil, or with grease if they could not afford oil, as a preparation for a day in the sunlight. That which operates to so wonderful an extent in retarding the consumption of the inflammable, we may reasonably identify with that which, Scripture tells us, can, and does, keep the sons of Jacob unconsumed in the Refiner\u2019s fire.
\nIn Malachi 3 we read, \u201cBecause I, Jehovah, I change not, therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.\u201d
\nHis presence endows the inflammable bush with power to burn and still endure.
\nOil then, I believe, to be the unchanging Purpose of Jehovah; and the possession of oil is the possession of the knowledge of that Purpose, in such manner as to be able to apply that knowledge to the brightening of the personal witness.
\nAnd what is the Purpose? It is to gather together all things in One Saviour united.
\nI next look upon a symbol in its social use in Scripture days. I find that in the daily life of those times, oil was used for the purposes of increasing personal wealth and comfort, and for the sign of joyful welcome. The sick were anointed with oil, on account of its soothing healing properties. The dead were anointed with oil, to check the progress of corruption. I should expect, therefore, to find in that which is symbolised by oil, the power of giving life, and the conquest over death and sin, such as is, indeed, inherent in the Purpose of Unity. In mourning the use of oil was omitted. Therefore the anointed of the Lord, having for ever upon him the oil of anointing, was separated from mourning. If the anointing had been only upon the garments, as of an ordinary priest, he was allowed to mourn for his nearest of blood kin, but if the anointing had been poured upon the head, as of the high priest, no mourning at all was permitted. This seems a terrible command; but when we look more closely, we find that such a separation from the dead is only a call to the anointed with oil, to live in ever-abiding knowledge of God, the resurrection, and the life; to realise an ever-abiding possession of the oil of God\u2019s saving health, the oil of God\u2019s assured victory over all corruption. The Anointed of Jehovah is anointed to comfort all that mourn, to pour out upon them that mourn in Zion the oil of joy for mourning, to raise up these anointed by the Anointed, that they should build up the old wastes, and raise up the former desolations. The anointing is a certain pledge that every yoke shall be broken, and every burden removed.
\nBy the Scripture command against the mourning of the anointed, we are then conducted to the same conclusion as by nature and by social use, viz., that the presence of oil enables the mortal to endure the heat of such trial of faith, and of such searching of the fire of jealousy as otherwise would cause destruction.
\nThere are two words translated oil in Scripture\u2014Yitzhar and Shehmen.
\nYitzhar is found, by comparison of the passages in which it occurs, to denote, not oil proper, but the whole class of orchard fruits, of which the olive was the most valued; but which included dates, apples, oranges, &c. When the word \u2018yitzhar\u2019 is used in connection with ideas of oil, it would signify the fruit from which oil is pressed rather than oil itself.
\nShehmen, or oil proper, is the word we must keep chiefly in view, and we will keep the word oil as solely its equivalent, and when we require to take in the thought of that from which oil is pressed, we will use the Hebrew word \u2018yitzhar.\u2019
\nThree great symbols run throughout Scripture. Wheat and its harvest the symbol of the good. The grape and its vintage the symbol of those who are trodden in the winepress of wrath. And oil the symbol of the Purpose to unite all in One Saviour Anointed. These three symbols are represented by three terms, which include all produce, and which are very frequently found together. This triad of terms is Dagan, or corn, representing, not the seed, but the growing corn; Teerosh, representing, not the wine for drinking only, but all the fruits from which wine was made; and \u2018Yitzhar,\u2019 representing, not simply oil, but all the orchard fruits capable of yielding oil. These three terms represent thus the whole of produce, and they are, in the larger number of their occurrences, found mentioned together. The omission of one of the three is as significant as it is rare; most significant when such an omission is found in a blessing so important as is the blessing of Jacob by his father. In this blessing, while corn and wine are promised, oil is not mentioned. It is not mentioned, either, in its own proper name, \u2018Shehmen,\u2019or under the collective term \u2018Yitzhar.\u2019
\nOil, the symbol of a purpose of unity, could not, in symbolic truth, be mentioned in a blessing which separated the chosen Jacob from the outcast Esau. But when the children of Jacob are brought back from captivity, then they receive the promise of oil, for their bringing again, will be in the midst of the outcast, and their restoring again shall be the resurrection of the dead. Oil is the sign of covenant between Ephraim and Egypt, a sign which is elsewhere read to us as of Ephraim\u2019s desire to make himself acceptable in the eyes of Pharaoh. It is the name of the Bridegroom in the eyes of the Bride. It is the gift of the Husband to the Wife. It is the secret of unity among brethren. All these indications show us that even as in the physical body it heals wounds and penetrates all the bones, so, in the spiritual body, its office is to unite, to make whole, and not to separate.
\nOil is first made the subject of promise in Deut. 8:8, but this promise given to the people is later in date than the first mention of Yitzhar, the fruits from which oil comes, which first occurs in Num. 18:12; Deut 18:4, in the firstfruits given by the Lord to His Priests for their portion for ever.
\nThe great triad of produce is then first complete\u2014the corn, the wine, and the oil, and this, taken with the significant omission in the blessing of Jacob, is inexpressibly precious\u2014for the Priest is not chosen in a choice inferring the outcasting of his brother as was Jacob, but chosen as a mediator between God and man. \u201cEvery High Priest, taken from among men, is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins; who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself is compassed with infirmity.\u201d
\nBlessed be God that the triad of produce appears complete, first, in gift to the Priest, for thus the Oil, symbol of the Purpose of Unity in One Saviour Anointed, is an inalienable gift.
\nThough Yitzhar is so far made subject to the people\u2019s sins that it is blessed if the people be righteous, it is given to the enemy if the chosen seed be wicked, it languishes because of sin, it is visited with drought if the people run, every man to his own house, forgetting the Lord\u2019s house, yet Yitzhar is not taken away in the day of Jehovah\u2019s jealousy. When adulterous Israel did not know that Jehovah gave her corn, and wine, and oil, He returned and took away His corn in the time thereof, and His wine in the season thereof, but the Yitzhar is not removed. \u2018Dagan\u2019\u2014the corn; \u2018Teerosh\u2019\u2014the wine; both in the blessing of the elect Jacob, obtained by subtlety, can be removed, but the Yitzhar, made the portion of the Priests, cannot be removed. The anointing oil, which thence flows, is the subject of the oath of God to His anointed. From that oath He cannot turn. His gifts are without repentance. Yitzhar, as I have before mentioned, includes all orchard fruits\u2014therefore the vines and the fig-trees are not taken away, but are made desolate, in this significant way,\u2014that they are given enormous, natural increase, even unto a forest, but their fruit is eaten by beasts of the field. In the outcasting of Israel, the Gentiles rush in. There is a like sparing of the oil in Rev. 6:6.
\nIn the ceremonies of the lepers\u2019 cleansing, oil, precious symbol of the purpose of God to bring all into one covenant of saving health and love, is spoken of, as having, like blood, the power to make atonement for the soul.
\nWhen we turn to the history of the Tabernacle, we find that the whole place of atoning blood requires the touch of this oil, and can become the House of God, only, as having been first sanctified by the anointing with oil.
\nFirst, the Tabernacle and all its contents, the altar and all its vessels, the laver and its foot; and, secondly, the head of the High Priest; and, thirdly, the garments of Aaron and his sons must all be sanctified with this oil; the two first greater consecrations with the oil alone, the third and lower one with the oil in combination with the blood of the altar.
\nPrecious witness, that all blood shedding is subject to, and is sanctified by, the all uniting purpose of God to reconcile all things to Himself, and that the mysteries of the Tabernacle of the separated nation required such sanctification, to make them acceptable in the eyes of Him who knows no respect of persons, who \u201cconcludes all under unbelief that He may have mercy upon all,\u201d who \u201cwilleth not the death of the sinner, but that all should turn and live.\u201d
\nWitness yet more precious found, the more closely that we search the Scripture.
\nThe history of oil witnesses not only of the purpose, but also of the mode of its effecting.
\nOil is first mentioned as poured forth in free-will offering by Jacob at Bethel.
\nThe same character of free-will rejoicing is preserved in all its use in sacrifice.
\nOil was offered with the daily burnt-offerings of praise, with the meat-offerings in which God and man were partakers in peace, with the thank-offerings, with the Nazarite\u2019s peace-offerings on release from the vows of his separation, with the rejoicing firstfruits, but it was not offered with sin-offerings, nor with trespass offerings, nor with the offerings of jealousy, for the symbol of God\u2019s purpose is a symbol of His good pleasure and delight. Man cannot appear before God with the possession of such a symbol, except as a friend, as one capable of pouring out the oil in his own free-will rejoicing. Such a symbol could not appear in sacrifices which brought to mind that death for sin, in which neither God nor man can have good pleasure.
\nBut oil, the symbol of free-will desire, oil poured out as free-will offering by Jacob at Bethel, is required from Jacob\u2019s children. The Father\u2019s free-will vow was remembered unto the children\u2019s children, and they were not left to the impulses of their own hearts.
\nThe slavish hordes, ever ready to eat, and to forget the hand that fed them, would never of themselves have thought of thus honouring Jehovah. Therefore He, in remembrance of the fathers, drew near to them to stir them up to bring the offering willingly.
\nIn like manner, because of the righteous, He will visit the unrighteous, and stir up their hearts to fulfil the fathers\u2019 vows. And, observe, this stirring up of the freewill desire, which was theirs by inheritance, took place through the Lawgiver\u2014and the first-fruits and tithes of the freewill gift were exacted by command. This is a token unto us of the unity, yet to be manifested, of the apparently, mutually contrary principles of man\u2019s freewill and God\u2019s compelling Law. Humanity has, by the new Head, Jesus Christ, poured out the freewill offering unto the uttermost. Individually we have a time allowed us, under manifold stirrings up of our will, to identify ourselves with the Majesty of \u201cthe Father of \u00c6onial ages;\u201d but let our freewill fail to the uttermost, we still can know only the loss of the individual reward, for by reason of Him, who is our Head, the certainty is before us of an enforced desire being awakened in us.
\nThis is very subtly indicated in the connection between oil and tithes.
\nIt is with Jacob\u2019s vow of the paying of tithes to God that the first mention of oil occurs in Scripture.
\nThe law, concerning the tithes of Yitzhar, was that they must not be eaten in loneliness, or within individual gates, but by a whole family in the public gathering place. Two years of this tithe was devoted to the learning to fear the One God, beside whom is no other, in rejoicing all, the whole family, together, in whatsoever the soul lusteth after; and every third year this tithe was given to the needy and the Levite.
\nThe Levite was the representative of the firstling bought by Jehovah by the sacrifice of Egypt\u2019s firstborn.
\nThe right of these consecrate firstborn in the tithes of Yitzhar was always held in remembrance, even in the two years in which the Levite did not partake of it, for the tithes of Yitzhar were paralleled with the firstlings of the flock and of the herd.
\nIn the tithes of Yitzhar the needy, the disinherited firstborn, and the stranger found their joy. The tithe of the flocks and herds, promised by Jacob\u2019s poured out oil, \u2018showed, in still plainer revelation, the ever extending infinity of the purpose of grace, for in that tithe, the bad as well as the good, found acceptance. The bad, otherwise rejected from the service of God, were here declared holy unto the Lord. Through the connection therefore of oil and tithes, apparent in the first pouring out of oil at Bethel, we perceive the meaning of its symbolic power to separate from all such mourning as is not consistent with lively faith in God, the Resurrection and the Life. No man could bring the tithes, vowed by Jacob, without being reminded of the individualizing God, of freely electing grace, who drew near to the wandering outcast and gave him songs in the night; nor could he bring such tithes without having a witness, borne to, and by him, that God so prizes the blood of the Egyptian as to count the firstborn of one of Egypt\u2019s generations a price to buy the firstlings of Israel in all generations; that God cares for the disinherited firstborn of whom the disinherited Levite was the representative; that there is a day of grace in which God makes holy the bad alike as the good; in which God shall yet prove His own Omnipotence, by overcoming the four insatiable\u2014the grave, the barren womb, the earth not filled with water, and the fire. The knowledge of God who can rob the grave of victory, who can cause the barren womb to bring forth, who can and will fill the earth with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea; the knowledge of Jehovah by reason of whom they who are in the refiner\u2019s fire are not consumed, this is the oil which separates from mourning, which is salvation, which gifts its holder with power to lift up the rags of her own righteousness as light bearers in the world, even in the hour when the door is shut, and the Bridegroom refuses to open.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER IX<\/p>\n
The Virgins<\/p>\n
\u201cThen shall the kingdom of Heaven be likened to ten virgins who went out to meet the Bridegroom.\u201d
\nAll commentators agree in calling attention to the word \u201cthen\u201d as a word indicating some especial point of time. This especial time, no doubt, is the time indicated by our Lord as the time of His visiting the servant whom He had set to rule over His household. It is, I think, obvious that before the coming of the Lord to His bridal joy, there is to be a coming of the Master to judge the servant set over the household on earth. In other words, before the rapture of the saints there must take place a rewarding, or a smiting asunder of such powers as have, during this dispensation, been invested with authority. With such judgment the Jewish Church was visited, its sanctuary profaned, its name dishonoured, its portion given among the hypocrites. In that day it was known among such as went out of their respective creeds and homes to meet the Bridegroom, that their calling and election was to \u201chave made known unto them the mystery of God\u2019s will, which He hath purposed in Himself, that in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ \u2026\u201d They had oil. In that day there was an especial urgency of looking for the Bridegroom\u2019s appearing, and a hastening of members of the kingdom of the heavens to acquire possession of the oil of God\u2019s purpose, wherewith to endue the rags of personal righteousness with power to feed, and to endure, the spirit of judgment, or of burning. They who failed to receive the Bridegroom\u2019s call then, failed because they were shut up in self-seeking, and were incapable of the larger hope offered in Jesus Christ, incapable of receiving the oil.
\nNow, again, the time is full of witness of a like visitation.
\nThe Christian Church, as has been said by a modern writer, is on trial for its life. It is but a question of time\u2014of how short a time, who can say\u2014when the power of this Steward of God\u2019s mysteries shall be struck out of its hands, and there shall be passed upon it the doom of the hypocrite.
\nAt this time\u2014when the authority of teachers of dogmas, unfit for the human heart, is being shaken, and the body of their power is being smitten asunder\u2014we do see that there is a kingdom being made manifest, whose members are coming out of their individual homes of inherited creeds, and are bound together by the one desire to honour the Bridegroom\u2019s appearing, and are upholding lights fed by the oil of God\u2019s purpose.
\nIt might therefore seem as if this time were the time especially indicated for the going forth of the Virgins.
\nTo my mind, however, this is rather the time when the cry is being raised, Behold the Bridegroom\u2014when the need is being felt for stores of oil wherewith to brighten witness because He is near. Let us, then, take the point of time indicated as the time of the going forth of the Virgins, as being the time of the smiting of the Jewish Church.
\nLet us take the rapidly approaching, if not actually present, hour, of the smiting of the Christian Church, as the hour when the cry is raised, \u201cBehold the Bridegroom,\u201d and let us read the parable of the Virgins according to these times. That which we read of the Churches, we read also in individual application to ourselves.
\nA virgin life is a hidden life, waiting to be perfected\u2014waiting, separate from the world, knowing not man, nor being known by him; waiting, not seeking; not working, but waiting.
\nVirgin companions of the Bride, waiting for the hour that shall consummate the mutual desires of their friends, for the hour that shall crown with rejoicing the desires of the Son and the daughter of the King. Such is the relationship to Christ upon which we must now look.
\nThe Virgins are not possessions of the Bridegroom, as the flocks and the slaves were of the Son of Man. They are free in their persons and in their actions.
\nThey go out to meet the Bridegroom, not as under any constraining law, but as moved by their own desires only. These desires are conceived in a natural longing to be partaker in a friend\u2019s festivities, and in a loving wish to honour the Bride.
\nWe move no more in the region of servants.
\nWe have passed out of the sphere of legal and indissoluble ties into that where the will is free, and friend walks with friend.
\nTwo processions are connected with marriage festivities in the East. The bridegroom first goes in procession to the bride\u2019s own house to take her, and then returns with her in procession to his own house. It is the returning procession which the virgin companions of the bride go forth to meet. The festival they desire takes place in the bridegroom\u2019s house, for it is he who is represented as having the power to admit or to refuse. The Syriac, the Persic, and the Vulgate versions add the words\u2014went forth to meet the bridegroom and the bride.
\nThe connection between Christ and the Virgins is not so immediate as between Him and the servants\u2014He comes into knowledge of the Virgins only through the bride. They know Him also only as being partakers with the bride. The glow of her desire, the rapture of her knowledge, lights up the hearts of her friends, and by her being the link between them their relationship to Christ is capable of being one of tender affection, and of that most perfect friendship, which can be realised only, where two are of one mind concerning a third. The Virgins, along with the bride, adore her lord, and, along with the bridegroom, love the bride, and are sharers with her in receiving the love of the King. Such a threefold cord is not soon broken. To cohere at all, such a threefold tie must needs be perfect. An entire unity of mind must be here with care preserved. However long the bridegroom may tarry, the Virgins must be ready at a moment, at the cry, Behold! to welcome him with undimmed rejoicings.
\nTen Virgins went forth to meet the bridegroom; all of them, with free will, wishing to honour him, to show their friendship for the bride; and all of them, with freewill desire, eager to welcome the bridegroom\u2019s appearing, as the signal for their own festivity. These ten are the kingdom of the heavens. In like manner they, who now, as the firstfruits of the Lord, receive the kingdom which cannot be shaken, do look and hope for the appearing of the Lord, and wait for His appearing as the time appointed for all their rejoicing; and pass the time till then as they that watch long in the night, dead to all other attractions. If weary of watching, they do not turn to other hopes and other employments, but sleep; and if they sleep, they sleep not as those that slumber heavily on beds of ease, but lightly as women, watching in the streets for a longed-for approach, might slumber. It is a slumber which is broken up by the first cry\u2014\u201cBehold, the Bridegroom.\u201d This is true of all the Virgins. All ten had taken their own lamps with them. These words, their own, which have been dropped in our version, are significant.
\nLet the word \u201clamp\u201d signify what it may\u2014let it mean, as many think, a torch such as was and is used in Eastern festivities, or let it be a lamp proper\u2014it is equally important to note the personal ownership. That which we lift up as light-bearers in the time of the Bridegroom\u2019s coming must be essentially our own. The lamp, or outward form, in which is borne the oil of the purpose and the fire of the Spirit of Light must be our own\u2014no form of words, or ceremonial of worship, or manner of work, which belongs to a life other than our own, will serve the purpose. The Virgin going forth to meet the Bridegroom must have that which holds the Oil and the Light her very own.
\nAll ten had their own lamps. But five of them were wise and five were foolish. They that were foolish took their lamps, and took no oil with them. But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.
\nThe wise knew that the spirit of burning had requirements such and so great, that great store of oil would be required to keep the rags of their own righteousness unconsumed, and capable of being light-givers in the hour of the Bridegroom\u2019s appearing.
\nWhile the Bridegroom delayed they all slumbered and slept. Their watch had been long, and in deep silence. The streets had been empty, as in the dead of night, for the world knows not of, and cares not for, the approaching pageant. And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold the Bridegroom. Servants of the Bridegroom raise the cry, and fling open the doors for the Lord\u2019s Household to go forth to meet Him. At the cry which is raised when the Bridegroom appears, the wise, with swift hands, pour fresh oil into their lamps. There is hardly time for appeal and answer when the foolish Virgins, finding that their lamps are going out, ask the wise for oil. Only by hurried gesture the wise refuse to give, \u201clest there be not enough for us and you\u2014but go ye rather to them that sell and buy for yourselves.\u201d
\nEven as the lamps, or outward forms of creeds and words, must be our own, so also must be the oil or knowledge of the purpose of God. This oil must be our very own\u2014acquired by us in a covenant of sacrifice. The general knowledge that there is such a purpose will not suffice. We must ourselves buy, and in our own vessels bear store of that oil. The vessels differ, as do our individualities.
\nThat precious oil of the purpose of unity may be held in vessels of very various form, may be hidden in vessels quite unworthy of so great a treasure, for \u201cwe have this treasure in earthen vessels that the glory may be of God, and not of us.\u201d It may be contained in vessels of good deeds without knowledge, or it may be borne in vessels translucent with the light of Knowledge, alike as of Love. In whatsoever contained, it must be bought from them that sell; from the two Sons of Oil who empty the golden oil out of themselves. From Him who searches out iniquity, and from Him who forgives freely, who covers transgression and passes over iniquity, from both must we buy ample store, alike, of the rebukes of the righteous and of the welcomes of the merciful. And they who sell are to be found at the Oil-press, at Gethsemane. If we are found at the Bridegroom\u2019s appearing without store of the oil of the purpose, we must go away to buy; away from the triumphant festival to the dim garden of agony, away from the presence of the watched for Lord to the knowledge of the unwatched with friend.
\nThere is a terrible warning to us, in this, to hasten and buy unto ourselves increasing knowledge of that Will which is our sanctification, by the offering of the Body of Jesus once.
\nAnd while the foolish went to buy, the Bridegroom came, and they went in with Him to the marriage, and the door was shut. Afterward came also the other virgins, saying, \u201cLord, Lord, open to us!\u201d But He answered and said, \u201cVerily, I say unto you, I know you not. Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour.\u201d There is no judgment passed upon the Virgins\u2014they go in, or they stay out, as judged by themselves. The Bridegroom, in denying knowledge of them, only endorses their own judgment, that they are unfit for sharing in the bridal rapture. Whatever suffering they have, arises wholly from their loss of that which, by nature and by intention, should have been their portion of delight. They are not in the outer darkness\u2014for they have bought the oil, they have returned with five blazing torches, only they have failed in their desire to honour the Bride; only they have gained no entrance into the Bridegroom\u2019s house, and can never taste of His bridal feast. Such a loss as this is agonising, exactly in proportion as the loser has knowledge of the forfeited delight, and has sacrificed time and means in the desire to gain admittance to it.
\nIf the rapture of that feast be infinite, even the consummation of the desires of Christ and His Church, the loss by any of His friends of their share in such delight must be infinite also. And it is a final loss, for the man Christ moves in the sphere of Time. There is a day and an hour in all that concerns His promises and His threatenings. Yet, terrible as is the loss, there is no word spoken of weeping or gnashing of teeth.
\nThe gift of oil, as we have seen, is God\u2019s inalienable gift. The Virgins who were unready to enter into the marriage feast\u2014yet in that dread hour, when the doors were shut, were able to buy thereof for themselves\u2014were able, though kept out by the Bridegroom, yet to stand without, bearing aloft the blazing torch, light-bearers in the darkness.
\nEven in their outcasting, such as these are, by virtue of the oil, separate from the mourning known on lower levels; and the weeping and gnashing of teeth cannot be spoken of such as these. They are commanded to watch as witnesses, in the outer darkness, of a day and an hour when the Bridegroom shall come forth to judge the world in righteousness.
\nTwo sons of Yitzhar stand by the Lord of the whole earth and feed the sevenfold lamp in the Temple of Vision. The angel of the Lord, who came, and, again, and again stirred up Zechariah to question concerning these, is ever stirring up the spirit of prophets to look upon them and to ask, What are these?
\nIf my reading of the symbol of oil be right, sons of Yitzhar must be special ministers of the purpose of God to gather all in one Saviour anointed. They must be representatives of the contrasted principles of the dual spheres of which love is the unity; and oil, we find, as a symbol, has a twofold character corresponding to these spheres. It is, on the one hand, the symbol of luxury, the sign of welcome. It is, on the other hand, the reproofs of the righteous.
\nThe knowledge, of both the unforsaking tenderness and the unsparing requirements of our God, must be united in that oil of His purpose, which purpose is to unite all in one Saviour, upon whom is poured the oil of gladness above His fellows, because He has loved righteousness and hated iniquity.
\nIt is a tender word, that oil can thus be obtained even in the hour when the door of the joyous festival of espousals is shut. Thus we are taught that, however unswerving are the requirements in Wisdom\u2019s sphere, though to the unready the Bridegroom says, \u201cI know you not,\u201d still there is, in the possession of the oil, that knowledge of the purpose of the Saviour God to unite all in one salvation, in one Saviour anointed, which knowledge precludes despair.
\nAnd when we compare the parables, we feel how true a word the poet spoke when he said, \u201cIf my bark sink it is to another sea;\u201d and how exquisitely the dual spheres of love are mutually adapted for the redemption of their several children from their various destructions.
\nThe friends who have been partakers in the councils, and have had prevision of the Bridal Hour, may indeed fail of entering into the bridal festivities; but, if they so fail, they stand, in the place of outcasting, holding torches of witness which enlighten the darkness of the outcast slave, and which reveal that unchangeable Jehovah whose purpose of unity changeth not, but avails to keep the sons of the worm Jacob unconsumed in the fires. The outcast slave and the departed kidlings have, in their several judgments, a witness of hope in the blazing torches of the shut-out Virgins. Fallen from the star of espousals, they, unknown as friends, are witnesses of the sphere to which they by nature belong, and are still the Kingdom of the Heavens upon earth.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER X<\/p>\n
The Twenty-third Psalm<\/p>\n
There is a wonderful parallel between the parables of judgment and the successive visions of the twenty-third Psalm. The sheep of the pasture arises into the servant treading the paths of righteousness, passes into the oil-receiving, anointed sharer of the feasts, and bursts into assurance of everlasting joy as one whom the Lord pursues with ardent love.
\nLet me give you this Psalm as I heard it, through Kent\u2019s Anthem, in Westminster Abbey.
\nI never count that I have heard any utterance till I have heard it in many voices. The voice of the Lord is the only teacher, and that voice is as the sound of many waters. Poetry, painting, reasoning, music, nature\u2019s innumerable voices, and the tones of personal experiences, must all concur to reveal what the Lord saith. The Psalmist, above all, speaks in especial relation with the voice of music. He himself tells us, that in music lies the key to his prophesyings: \u201cI will open,\u201d he says, \u201cI will open my dark sayings on the harp.\u201d Nor was he alone in this use of music, for the companies of the prophets prophesied of old with a psaltery, and a tabret, and a pipe, and a harp; and when Elisha sought the influence, he sought it not with sacrifices of blood, as did Balaam, but called for music.
\nThus under music\u2019s spell I heard, as if hearing afresh, the words of that Psalm, without which I had never in childhood entered the darkness, nor faced any reproof; which had been so incessantly my familiar, that, to this hour, I never feel the approach of any danger, real or fancied, without its words arising involuntarily to my lips. \u201cThe Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:\u201d satisfied to the full with tender herbage. How delicious the rest in the dewy stillness of the ever-renewing grass! \u201cHe leadeth me beside the still waters.\u201d How delicious the wandering beside the quiet ripplings!
\nBut, drinking of that stream, I feel a wonderful change come over me. \u201cHe restoreth my soul.\u201d I pass into a higher life. I rise from drinking at those still waters, no more a sheep caring only for the pasture, but a living soul, aware of my master, capable of uprightness; and the Lord who has fed me in the lower life, fails me not now. \u201cHe leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name\u2019s sake.\u201d These paths are narrow and steep. They lead away from the dewy stillness, away from the quiet peace; they bring me quickly into sight of a terrible region. Passing along these paths, I soon \u201csee an end of all perfection,\u201d and am aware of the enmity of Death.
\nThe waters, swiftly increased in volume, pour into a deep gorge between huge and precipitous mountains. In dense shadow, through thickly tangled masses of vegetation, through haunts of the tiger, beside dens of the wolf, past hiding-places of the snake, the waters tumble and roar, chafing amongst rocks, flinging themselves down precipices. It is a fearful region, yet a region of sublime beauty; such as men, in the physical sphere, travel over half the globe to see.
\nA brave heart and an assured confidence are all that are required for such glorying in God here, as could never be known in the quiet pastures and beside the still waters. A brave heart and an assured confidence are mine.
\nThat roaring stream, down in the deep shadow, in the valley, is the same stream as that whereby I rested. My leader here is the same as He who made me lie down in green pastures, in peace and unquestioning ease. \u201cYea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.\u201d Thy rod that guides the righteous, thy staff that protects the sheep. Both are mine; for renewed though my soul may be, arisen as I am in form of man, still am I helpless and ignorant as Thy sheep. Still must Thou, and Thou only, be my guide. Thy rod and Thy staff both are mine, for though I have had my soul restored, and though I have passed away from the regions of the flock, and have entered on the individual walk in the paths of righteousness, still I am Thine, Thine only, Thine own, Thy loved one, signed with Thy Name. For that name\u2019s sake Thou leadest me. \u201cThy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.\u201d Thy rod that divides the waters; thy staff which, though dry, can bloom in almonds; Thy rod, which can swallow up every serpent, Thy staff, which can stay the decay of the dead. And lo, another wondrous change! Wondrous even as was the restoring of the soul. Where is the horror? where the gloom? I am at home, for I have Thee! \u201cThou preparest a table for me.\u201d I triumph, and am at high festival, for I have Thee. \u201cThou preparest a table for me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil\u201d of gladness. Thou callest me to rise in newness of life, anointed from on high. \u201cMy cup runneth over.\u201d My cup in which, oh! wonderworker, thou hast changed the water into wine; waters of judgment into wine of life; waters of cleansing into wine of joy. Forth from that high festival I pass, and no more can I see the leader!
\nThine anointed are free with a royal freedom. For them there is no law. Ah! freedom too dearly bought, too fearful gift, if I lose thee. But no, from Thee I can be never parted. Let my path be far and free, I am not alone. Thou followest me. Thou, in Thy wondrous unity of contrasted powers\u2014perfect good, unstained purity; forgiving grace and tender mercy\u2014Thou followest me.
\nI need not weary myself with doubt, and question. I need not seek for Thee in the height nor in the depth, for Thou art ever near; near as the mother to the child, near as the lover to the Bride. Thou wilt follow, ever follow, me\u2014thou wilt rush after me\u2014all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
\nWords are unable to render that which music reveals. I cannot, in any measure, speak what that vision was, as under music\u2019s spell, the stately walls and long-drawn aisles passed away, and I was a sheep in the peaceful pasture, and I was a newly-living soul, panting up the narrow paths, trembling in the haunted valley, where death\u2019s stupendous mountains shut out all the sky; and then again, under the same spell, the same lofty arches, and dim distances of pillared shade returned, arisen with more transcending majesty as the house of the Lord, the house of my joy, the house of the Lover of my soul, where, even now, song of high rapture, anthem of many-voiced praise, makes known what shall be, when the voice as of many waters, the voice of the Lord, welcomes home His own.<\/p>\n
PART II<\/p>\n
CHAPTER XI<\/p>\n
Blessed are the Poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of the Heavens<\/p>\n
The parable of judgment, which tells us of the Virgin companions of the Bride, shows us that there is a relationship to the Christ which is nearer, and dearer, than any of those with which the parables of judgments are concerned. The companions of the Bride infer that there is a Bride.
\nThe beatified painter, Fra Angelico, gives us, in the picture of the coronation of the Virgin, nine steps, of different tints, which lead up to the place where the Lord and the Virgin meet, as the Crowner and the Crowned. That picture haunts me with a conception, perhaps, somewhat different from that of its own intention. It haunts me as a vision of the Bride of the Lamb of God. I pause upon each step, as upon the nine successional beatitudes, and burn with desire to mount, step by step, in vital experience, even unto the place where the soul knows the spousal mystery. The nine beatitudes do, I think, correspond to successive steps of progress in Christian development and experience; the beatitude of the one giving rise to the characteristic of the next. Let us ascend these steps to the vision of the Bride.
\nUpon the first step I hear the words\u2014
\n\u201cBlessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of the Heavens.\u201d
\nWhat is poverty?
\nPoverty is a relative term.
\nThere is no degree in possession of any kind, whether of money, knowledge, power, or what you will, at which you can fix the standard either of poverty or of riches.
\nFor instance, take a man with \u20a4300 a year, and let him live in one of our Highland huts, and let him have no requirements beyond his neighbours, and that man will be a rich man.
\nTake a man with the same income, and place him in some rich part of London, and he will be a man in abject poverty, unable to pay even for the ground on which a house stands.
\nIn the same way take a man with a good knowledge of three or four languages, and well read in three or four subjects, and moderately versed in any one of the sciences, and place him in a country district, and he will be accounted rich in knowledge. The same man, placed in any great centre of intellectual activity, will find himself poor in knowledge.
\nPoverty and riches depend upon the relation between a man\u2019s means and his condition. If his means are above the average of the means of his habitual companions, and more than equal to the demands made upon them by the number and nature of his desires, the man is rich. If his means are below the average of those of his habitual companions, and below the compass of his own requirements and desires, the man is poor.
\nNor are riches and poverty relative only in this sense. The nature of a man\u2019s possessions must be such as are of value in his immediate circumstances. A man with a bagful of diamonds, for instance, would be a rich man were he near the jewellers\u2019 shops in Bond-street, but he would be a wretchedly poor man had he nothing but that same bag of diamonds in a desert island.
\nAllowing that poverty must be a term which has significance only in relation to a man\u2019s surroundings, let us pass on to ask what is meant by the word spirit? This is a question to which I scarcely dare adventure an answer, except, as it were, conjecturally. I can speak only out of the abundance of my heart, and according to that which has satisfied my own limited questioning.
\nIn my own individual approach to this first step of beatitude, my heart has reasoned thus\u2014
\nIt seemed to me, that the term \u201cspirit\u201d in this place must mean the power which can inform, subdue, control, and, use according to individual desire, the various substances and forces of the material universe. That which has \u201cformative power\u201d over matter is, I think, meant by the word \u201cspirit.\u201d
\nMan, in relation to his natural life, is not poor in spirit. Humanity, as a whole, is richly endowed with power to use the material riches. Man has availed to subdue to his use the fire, the water, the air, the beasts; the whole compass of nature pays him tribute. Day after day, man adds to the riches of his spirit, and increases in his power to control and use matter. If we turn, from humanity in the aggregate, to individual men, we find, as a general rule, that each individual is, in relation to his own individual sphere and in relation to his material life, amply endowed with spirit\u2014able to eat, and to drink, and to digest\u2014able to walk and to speak, to hear, and see, and handle\u2014able to use and to enjoy.
\nBut if a man becomes aware of the presence of the Invisible God, as of One with whom he himself desires to walk, he at once finds himself poor in spirit.
\nObserve the words I have italicised, for they are of extreme importance.
\nIt is very possible for a man to attain unto such a perception of the infinite God as to feel that he himself is as a moth before Him, without in any degree realising that poverty of spirit which is blessed, for such knowledge awakens no personal desires beyond the human measure. The very feeling of the immensity of the infinite often tends to throw a man more utterly back upon the merely human level of desire, to make him more eagerly intent upon the life that is his in the flesh. For the realisation of such poverty of spirit as is blessed, the spirit that is in man must be born again; must pass into the knowledge of new relationships; must become aware of God as of one with whom it desires to dwell; must know the presence of the sons of God, and become conscious of their splendid standard of life with desire to make that standard its own.
\nThe moment this happens, man finds himself, consciously and utterly, poor in spirit.
\nThe twenty-eighth of Job gives us a splendid rendering of this riches of man\u2019s spirit in relation to the material universe; and his poverty of spirit, when once he desires to pay the price of Wisdom, who lives with God as His Companion:\u2014
\n\u201cSurely there is a vein for the silver and a place for gold which men refine.
\nIron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone.
\nMAN putteth an end to darkness; he searcheth to the utmost limit the stones of darkness and of death shade.
\nThey work a shaft from where they sojourn: Lo! they forget the use of the foot: they descend and wander from men.
\nAs for the earth, from it cometh forth bread, though its interior be subverted as by fire. Yet among its stones is the place of the sapphire; and the ore of gold is found in it.
\nA path this, which no bird of prey knoweth; beasts have not dared to tread it; the fierce lion hath not marched over it.
\nMAN putteth his hand to the flinty rock; he upturneth the mountains from their root. Among the rocks he cutteth out rivers, and his eye seeth every precious thing. He bindeth up the raging streams, and the hidden treasures he bringeth forth to light.
\nBut where shall Wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding?
\nMan knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living.
\nThe depth saith, She is not in me: and the sea saith, She is not with me.
\nShe cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for Her price.
\nShe cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir; with the precious onyx or the sapphire.
\nThe gold and the crystal cannot equal Her, and the exchange of Her shall not be for jewels of fine gold.
\nNo mention shall be made of coral or of pearls: the price of Wisdom is above rubies.
\nThe topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal Her, neither shall She be valued with pure gold.
\nWhence, then, cometh wisdom? And where is the place of understanding?
\nSeeing it is hidden from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the heaven.
\nDestruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears.
\nEloheem understandeth the way thereof, and He knoweth the place thereof.
\nFor, He looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heavens.
\nTo make the weight for the winds; and He weigheth the waters by measure.
\nWhen He made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder: then did He see it, and declare it; He prepared it, yea, and searched it out.
\nAnd unto man He said, Behold the fear of Adonahy, that is Wisdom, and to depart from evil is understanding.\u201d
\nExamine the Scriptures concerning Wisdom, and you will be astonished to find how largely she concerns the relation of God to the things of time and space.
\nNot without reason is it said, of the physical growth, of Jesus, that He waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom. Spirit has power to inspire matter with individual will. Wisdom has power to inspire Spirit with Divine Will. The physical growth of the child Jesus was an increase (as it is in every child) in that spirit of the physical man, in which humanity is by nature rich; this increase in the child Jesus was always wedded with Wisdom; i.e. with God\u2019s own mind in relation to the things of time and space, and the result was the manifestation of God in the flesh, able to walk with God and to be God.
\nNo sooner does desire for wisdom stir in man, than he becomes aware there is no price in his hand which can buy Her. No sooner is man born again into the sphere of Divine relationships, than he knows that he is poor in spirit, incapable of manifestly living according to the standard of his companions, incapable of walking with God. Without the witness of such poverty pressing upon us, we cannot stand upon the steps of Christ\u2019s beatitudes.
\nIt is, then, a question to urge upon ourselves how far we are consciously poor in spirit. Does day after day pass and find us satisfied with our own powers, attainments, and possessions? or, if dissatisfied, dissatisfied only with our circumstances or with our neighbours, desiring only more of this or that earthly good? Or does day after day find us with voices witnessing, in our hearts and consciences, of ever nobler and nobler ideals for our own attainment\u2014of ever purer and warmer desires for our own loving action, such as force us to cry unto God for increase of our own powers to keep His perfect law\u2014for enlarged measure of the Spirit?
\nThe blessing of the poor in spirit is a present one. \u201cTheirs is the Kingdom of the Heavens.\u201d It would be mockery to offer a future blessing to one who suffers from the pressing needs of a PRESENT poverty. The needs are of the present hour, and God is not such an one as says to the naked, \u201cYe shall be blessed;\u201d He gives a present clothing, a present food for the hungry, a present life and light, for the poor in spirit. Theirs is the Kingdom of the Heavens.
\nWhat are we to understand by the Heavens?
\nThe Kingdom of the Heavens comes to me associated with childhood\u2019s earliest lispings, \u201cOur Father, which art in Heaven.\u201d I think of the Kingdom of the Heavens as our Father\u2019s House, as the Home of the living God.
\nWhen David, delighting in his own ceiled house of cedar, conceived a wish to build a house for the ark of God, he received a message, which awakened his perception that man cannot dwell in any house of cedar, that, even for the human king, such a house was no fitting dwelling-place. The living man must live in the living son; the king must have for his house a king for ever on the throne. The prophet Nathan brought the word from God to David, \u201cI will build thee a house.\u201d
\nIf such, and so great a thing is man, that his dwelling-place can be no other than the living Son, how can any material Heavens be the dwelling-place of God? His dwelling-place can be no other than the living House of living children. Our Father, which art in Heaven, the Heavens are Thy dwelling-place, the Heavens are Thy Sons, and those Heavens are even now my Home.
\nIt is obvious that a realised poverty of spirit proves that we have passed into those Heavens, in whom God dwells. It might, therefore, be said that the beatitude of the poor in spirit merely signifies that the realised poverty witnesses to our having passed from death into life\u2014from the sphere of the things that are seen, and temporal, into the sphere of the things that are unseen and eternal\u2014but the language seems to me much stronger than such an explanation suffices for. Theirs is the Kingdom of the Heavens seems to me to speak of this, that the poor in spirit have not only entered that Kingdom, but are also holders of power therein, and that by very reason of their poverty.
\nOur lovely Christ, you know, set a little child in the midst of His disciples, and said, \u201cOf such is the Kingdom of the Heavens.\u201d
\nWhoever most vividly realises the presence of God as of a Father with whom he desires to walk, most vividly knows the poverty of spirit; the one who most nearly approaches, and in largest measure knows the transcendent beauty of God, is necessarily, at one and the same time, the greatest in the Kingdom of the Heavens, and the poorest, and the most childlike.
\nAs we increase in spirit and in wisdom shall we ever cease to be poor in spirit? Never, for in the Kingdom of the Heavens we walk with God. Never can we so reach the fulness of the Infinite as not to be poor in spirit. Never can we, in ourselves, find spirit that shall suffice for the desires awakened in us by the infinite loveliness of God. Never can we, in ourselves, find spirit sufficient for the requirements of the infinite God. And for this blessed be God, for where is any limit set to our riches? The only limit is such as the Wisdom of God, like a wise and prudent mother, sets for our good and for our increase in spirit.
\nWhere is any limit set to our power? The only limit set is such as that Divine Womanhood in God folds about our limbs, with loving restraining arms, to the end that we may increase.
\nPoor, for ever, in relation to the Infinite God, we, and all the Heavens must for ever be, but therefore blessed, with the freedom and with the omnipotence of the babe in a loving Father\u2019s Home.
\nOur realisation of poverty is without pain and without impatience, for we know that we have passed into our Home, where every one\u2019s abundance is our abundance, where our weakness is a charm and our emptiness a claim.
\nBut in measure as we realise this, our poverty in spirit, by reason of walking with the immeasurably gifted Heavens, we become partakers in a poverty which can be known only in the Heavens. What this poverty is let us now inquire.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER XII<\/p>\n
The Powerlessness of God Manifest in the Flesh<\/p>\n
\u201cHe that hath seen Me,\u201d said Jesus, \u201chath seen the Father.\u201d The Father, of whom He spoke, is the One God, beside whom is no other; the Omnipotent Creator and Preserver of Heaven and Earth. Yet, the Man, in whom God was made manifest, appeared as one bound by others\u2019 infirmities and crucified by others\u2019 sins. He wept over the Jerusalem, whose children he would fain have gathered as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and they would not. He could not, in many places, work, because the inhabitants lacked faith. He constantly, in His parables, represented His Father, and Himself, as One whose desires were baffled, and whose success was partial, and gained at the expense of the Cross.
\nWhen He appears as the Sower, fowls devour, the sun scorches, and the thorns choke three-fourths of His seed, and the success of the fourth that remains is owing to the ground on which it falls. Among the increase even of that fourth, tares are sown.
\nAs the Lord that showeth mercy, His mercy is rendered void, and is overborne by wrath through the hardness of heart of the forgiven.
\nAs the Bridegroom, five of the chosen virgins fail Him.
\nAs the Man who delivered unto His servants His goods, He is deprived of so much gain by reason of the slothful.
\nAs the Lord of servants, His substance is wasted and His household abused by the riotous.
\nAs the Giver of a feast, He is disappointed by all His bidden guests, and has to put up with the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind, and with the enforced presence of the \u201ccompelled.\u201d
\nAs the Landholder, He is cheated of His due, insulted in the person of His servants, pierced through the slaughter of His heir.
\nAs the Shepherd, He has to go after that which is lost, painfully wandering till He find it.
\nAs the Owner of coin, He has to seek diligently for the one piece wanting.
\nAs the Father, He has to sustain the loss of the portion which the prodigal claimed and wasted, and to meet a mournful wreck on that prodigal\u2019s return. He has also to have it brought home to His heart, by painful experience, that the righteous son, who was always with Him, knew but little of His love and shared little in His nature.
\nWe, who hear these parables, are ever apt, in view of the ultimate triumph predicted, whether of vengeance or of love, to lose sight of the real grief and loss. What if the Sower reap a hundredfold of the seed which fell into good ground? None the less are three-fourths of His time, of His seed and labour wasted. What if the tares be finally burned? None the less, during the whole long summer, does the Husbandman look upon a field disfigured, and upon good grain robbed of part of its sustenance, and checked in the fulness of its growth. What if the merciful Master display the greatness of His authority in delivering the once forgiven servant to the tormentors? Yes, what if He even thus get the poor pennies of which He had remitted the payment, will that lessen the pang of mercy recalled? Will the punishment of the servants restore to the Master the substance wasted, or indemnify Him for the past wretchedness of His household? Will the presence of the poverty-stricken strangers, and of the unwilling \u201ccompelled,\u201d make the heart of the feast-giver glad, through all the aching void of the rejection of His kindness by His friends? Will the giving of the vineyard into other hands restore the outraged honour and the slain son?
\nLet the ultimate triumph be what it may, for ever, and for ever, through all these parables, is shown the working of the power of death; the power that works upward from below, the power that is of darkness, that is of the void, laying its hand upon the Highest, crucifying God manifest in the flesh.
\nThe will of God towards the sons of men, as manifested in Christ Jesus, is a good will; but that good will is practically defeated, bound, and crucified by the will of men.
\nWhence arises this freedom, this power of the will of the created to cross the will of the Creator? How comes it that the manifestation of God is a manifestation upon the Cross?
\nLooking upon this terrible mystery of the powerlessness of the Anointed, upon this crucifixion of the manifestation of the Father, I feel that the men who cross His will, and bind Him, can have such power only as being sharers, with Him, in that mystery of love wherein all power is given to the Beloved. I feel, in sight of the Cross of Christ, in sight of the grave of the Anointed, that they who crucified Him must stand, in correlation with the Supreme, in the same mystery of love wherein Christ is appointed Heir of all things. God must so love the world that the children of wrath have, through that love, power to wound and cross the heart of God. The Living Word showed forth this grief: the written Word is full of its utterance. The parables of our Lord only repeat the truth shown forth by prophets throughout the preceding ages. There is no human relationship which the prophets have not used to give vent to this unutterable sorrow\u2014a father\u2019s heartbroken indignation, a mother\u2019s pitiful yearning, a lover\u2019s agonised relentings, a husband\u2019s outraged honour, a friend\u2019s broken confidence, a master\u2019s insulted dignity. Nor mutual human relationships only, but as if the whole compass of universal nature were needed to show forth the fulness of that sorrow, man\u2019s relationship with the animals, and with inanimate nature, nay, even of inanimate objects one with another, are all used. The trouble of the shepherd over one strayed from his charge, the disappointed expectation of the husbandman, add some tones to the great lament. These tones, indeed, exist in the mutual human relationships as over tones sounding with the fundamental notes, but they are required by the demands of the great theme to take a more prominent part in the harmony, and are perhaps thus made appreciable to ears which would otherwise fail to detect their presence. God so loves the world that He respects the free will of men, that He desires and waits to win, where He might, with strong hand, compel.
\nHis love gives all power to the Beloved. His love makes Him a beggar at our doors\u2014poor in spirit\u2014bound in His desire\u2014limited in His free love.
\nIn this poverty the heavens share. Of this poverty we become partakers the moment that we have heard the beatitude that begins the ascent of Heavenly blessing: \u201cBlessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of the Heavens.\u201d
\nPoverty is a relative term, as we have before said; relative not only to the measure of our companions, but relative also with respect to the mutual relation of our possessions and our surroundings.
\nWere I placed with possessions of priceless paintings in the civilised world, my possessions would be such as command respect, and their equivalent in money would be great riches. But the same possessions among uncultivated boors would be valueless.
\nIn like manner, as we increase in heavenly riches, we increase in treasures which have no value upon earth. The world\u2019s market cares not for these.
\nThe poverty which we share with the Kingdom of the Heavens is, however, deeper far than the mere knowledge of holding undesired treasures.
\nThe Kingdom of the Heavens is spoken of as a Kingdom which judges of trees according to their fruit. It is a Kingdom which comes to men, the trees of the Lord\u2019s planting, desiring fruit. It is a Kingdom which comes seeking food. Even as God, Himself, is said to have sought unto His vineyard, Israel, for fruit in due season, so the Kingdom of the Heavens seek unto trees of the Lord\u2019s planting.
\nGreat mysteries of mutual connection are brought before us in Scripture under the figures of food. The judgment of the tree, which is cut down and cast into the fire, turns upon its failing to give good fruit; the judgment of the goats, upon their withholding food from the hungry.
\nThe Kingdom of the Heavens hunger, and thirst, for the Living God.
\nEvery individual life is adapted to manifest God. The Infinite God, who is invisible, becomes visible in every individual child who makes manifest the Father\u2019s wisdom.
\nThe Kingdom of the Heavens closely encompass us about, and constantly seek unto us for such glorious fruit of the knowledge of God, as is possible only to be borne upon each individual tree.
\nAngels and Archangels in the Highest are dependent upon me and upon you, and upon each child of woman born, for some especial revelation of the Infinite God, which can be ministered, only, through that individual creature. Earth\u2019s denial, or earth\u2019s gift, of the fruit desired, affects the Heavens with diminution or with increase of joy. This Kingdom passes the ever present, unerring, judgment of hunger fed or baffled.
\nIf we have become poor in spirit as having been born into the glorious company of the Heavens, we have become endowed with a like power and right of judgment.
\nWe often come seeking fruit within ourselves; we often yearn, desiring fruit from others, and sharing in the experience of the seeking Heavens, we share in the poverty of their denial. We know what that poverty of spirit is which belongs only to Love. We know the despised condition of the undesired. We know the weakness of the loving unloved; we know the baffling of a hunger urgent to be satisfied.
\nAnd such poverty we realise, as poverty of spirit indeed, as incapability of subduing matter unto ourselves. We find ourselves baffled at every turn.
\nHow can such poverty be blessed? Blessed, as sharing in the nature of God, who is Love. Blessed, as passing up, from poverty of spirit, to that mourning which is more to be desired than any earthly gain.
\nThe first beatitude necessarily leads us on to the second. Let us rise to the mourning that shall be comforted.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER XIII<\/p>\n
\u201cBlessed are they that Mourn, for they shall be Comforted\u201d<\/p>\n
Mourning implies sorrow for somewhat that is lost, that was ours and is taken from us. It implies also an element of tenderness in our sorrow, a personal living tie with that which has been taken away from us. It implies life in the object for which we mourn.
\nWe cannot, in legitimate use of language, be said to mourn for the loss of any merely material possession, though we may be said to mourn over our own condition of suffering or of poverty. We mourn for the lost or the absent, only, when these are our personally related beloved ones.
\nCan there be any mourning equal to that mourning into which, of necessity, the poor in spirit rise?
\nAre they poor in spirit, as having been born again into a sphere other, and greater, than is the sphere of the things that are seen and temporal? Then they have become aware of a Father in the Heavens whom they cannot see; of a Brother and a Friend who is hidden from their eyes; of a home from which they are divided.
\nThe poor in spirit\u2014whose very poverty witnesses to their standing in relation with the Heavenlies\u2014know that they are the sons of God, and they cannot see God; know that they are made to possess God, to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever, and they find themselves bound to a body of death wherein they constantly fail to do the things that they desire, and as constantly do that which they do not desire. They groan within themselves; they cry, \u201cOh, wretched that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?\u201d They long for, and are hastening unto, the day of the Lord\u2019s appearing.
\nAre they poor in spirit as sharers in the mystery of the Cross\u2014then where is mourning equal to their mourning? Sons of God with the riches of God in their hands\u2014where shall they find acceptance? Who cares for their desire? Who will yield to them the fruits of their seeking? Sons of God\u2014they look around upon their brethren in the flesh, and where is the praise of the Highest? Where is the likeness of the Begetter? Where is the rendering to God of the things that are God\u2019s? They look around them on the brethren in the faith, and where is the mutual love that makes the riches of one the riches of all?
\nIn some measure all who love must mourn in a world which is under the power of death; but the intensity of mourning can be realised only by those who are of the Kingdom of the Heavens, for they, and they only, can realise the measure of what man has lost. It is our right to be free, and we are bound; it is our right to rejoice evermore in the Lord; it is our right to be blessings among the people\u2014and it is rare to find any who care for our abundance, who will yield to us the sweet fruit of an accomplished success.
\nThe mystery of physical death is terrible enough; but its burden is as nothing in comparison with the anguish which is wrought by the power of death in all our mutual ties, in the seasons of our seeking fruit.
\nThe narrow, selfish heart of the natural man has too largely prevailed in all the readings of the Scripture parables. The attention has been too exclusively fixed upon the downfall of the unfruitful tree, as if no pang would rend the heart of the patient gardener. But one, who has known what it is to mourn with the mourning of the poor in spirit, knows that even as the relative pain of a tree crashing to its fall, and the pain in the heart of the man who sees his labour fruitless, even so is the relative pain of the condemned tree, and the pain of the loving and condemning Heavens. Let us once realise this, and we shall find our hearts responsive to the wailing.
\nIf thus it be, some may say that it were better not to enter into the poverty of spirit at all. But no choice is ours as to whether we will, or will not, mourn. Mourning is inevitable. The choice is only between mourning now or hereafter.
\nThe mourning NOW is blessed. \u201cBlessed are ye that mourn now, for ye shall laugh and sing.\u201d
\nA great significance is attached to the present life. This present life is always brought before us in Scripture as the time of a free-will choice, as the time during which the long-suffering of the Lord waits.
\nIf now, in the present life, we realise the present Kingdom of the Heavens, and, as realising their constant loving requirements, repent of having grieved their desires, refused their demands, affronted their purity and outraged their rights, and, on account of such realisation, repent and pass into the sphere of mourning, we have a sure promise of comfort. But conceive, for a moment, what it must be, if we persistently shut our eyes, and harden our hearts, against all this pressure of Heavenly influence; what it must be when the veil of the flesh is rent, and we see ourselves as we are seen, and we become aware of all we have done in the way of wounding and alienating the desires of Love.
\nThe sting of judgment is bad enough when we judge ourselves, is biting enough when we are judged by those whom we little reverence or love. Conceive what it would be to see yourself in the eyes of any man whose hold upon you was through your deep affection and respect, and to see yourself in those eyes as unlovely, unfruitful, unprofitable. Conceive the pain of that even now; even in this state of things, of which Leigh Richmond, on his death-bed, truly said, \u201cNone of us are even half awake,\u201d and be sure that it is as nothing to the agony that shall awake mourning, perforce, hereafter, in those who laugh now.
\nYes, there is no choice as to whether we will mourn or not; but now is the accepted time, when the choice of mourning with the Heavens has promise of great reward.
\n\u201cBlessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.\u201d
\nNote the blessing here is not a present one, as it was in the beatitude of the poor in spirit. It is future. \u201cThey shall be comforted;\u201d \u201cthey shall laugh and sing.\u201d
\nThere is indeed a present Comforter promised to them, but the very work of that Comforter is to take part in, and to increase, their mourning.
\nTo their mourning (by reason of their own separation from their Father and their home; by reason of their own loss in the Beloved, who are now unseen in the company of the innumerable blessed), the Comforter\u2019s work is to bring to mind the words, the looks, the gestures of the loved. Listen to Jesus speaking to His friends, when He promises that they, when they mourn His absence from their sight, shall have the Comforter. \u201cHe shall take of Mine, and show unto you;\u201d \u201cHe shall bring to your remembrance all things that ever I said.\u201d A Comforter, who constantly reminds of the absent, increases mourning, even in His comforting.
\nIs the mourning in relation to the world that lies under the power of death? The office of the Comforter is to groan with those who have the firstfruits of the spirit, even with groanings that cannot be uttered, waiting for the adoption, to wit the redemption, of our body.
\nIncrease of mourning, help in mourning, this is our present comforting\u2014for which blessed be God\u2014for this is our conclusive witness of the comforting that shall be.
\nA true mourner can be comforted only by the full restoring of that which has been lost. We shall be comforted, only in that glad day coming, when we shall see God, when we shall delight in the triumphs of our King, when we shall have the full freedom of our own good will in the boundless delight of the Father\u2019s Kingdom.
\nOur mourning witnesses to us according to its measure of the comforting that shall be.
\nIf its measure reaches to the knowledge of the crossed desire of God, its witness is of an infinite comforting, of a sight of the glory of the Highest, such as can be only when \u201call flesh sees it together.\u201d
\nNot without significance is it told us that the servants of God, who are the Kingdom of the Heavens, come seeking fruit from us. The infinite God can be infinitely known only by the only-begotten God. Other individual knowledge is a knowledge only of somewhat of His infinite glory. The individual portion of even the Bride of Christ, of even the New Jerusalem, is, in relation to the infinite God, spoken of as \u201cthe little Lamb of God.\u201d The Kingdom of the Heavens requires your personal knowledge of God, my personal knowledge of God, to satisfy their infinite hunger for the Vision of God. You and I are, each of us, temples, in and through which are possible such prayer, and such praise, as could not otherwise be, by means of our individual growth. Such abundance of delight and sustenance may be yielded to the Heavenlies, as but for us can never be theirs.
\nNot until that blessed day, when God is All in all, can the comforting come which shall satisfy the mourners with the spirit. And it shall come. Our very desire is a witness unto us; our tears, or our tearless groaning, our articulate desires, or our inarticulate speechless emptiness, all work together unto that blessed \u201cfar off event to which the whole Creation moves.\u201d
\nThe very judgments of the day of the Lord are a witness unto us of this hope of full comforting.
\nGod\u2019s love gives all power to the beloved, even to the manifestation of our God upon the Cross of Christ.
\nYet there is a limitation. St. Paul, in speaking of the Man under whose feet all things are put, says: \u201cIt is manifest. He is excepted which did put all things under Him;\u201d and with respect to the Man Jesus, who is the manifestation of the Father, it is also evident that there is a limitation. He submitted His body to the will of those whose good He sought; He submitted to all the failure and the death involved in the fact that He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. He did put all the things that concerned His earthly life under the feet of beloved Jerusalem, yet He Himself is excepted. The Man Jesus, who is the manifestation of the Father, though swallowed up by death, rose again and passed beyond the reach of human enmity. God manifest in the flesh was crucified, dead, and buried, but manifest in the flesh He rose again and ascended into Heaven; and though He still suffers wrong in the person of His little ones, we believe that He will return in overpowering majesty, and that all will tremble before Him. This exception of the resurrection body of Jesus, to the eye of sense, only separates between the good and evil, puts a term to the involvement of the body of the righteous in the destructions of the wicked, but does not set free the infinite yearning of the Father; for in the day when Jesus triumphs, the wicked perish. He triumphs as individual man, rewarding friends and destroying enemies.
\nTo the eye of faith, however, this manifest exception of the body of Him who is the manifestation of the Father witnesses of a large hope, declares that in the day when the Father put all things under the feet of the Son, yet was He, who did so put all under the Son, Himself excepted. Faith, looking on the triumph of the Son, of Man, waits with assurance for the day when the Son, having destroyed all enmity, shall deliver up the Kingdom to the Father, who willeth not that any should perish, but that all should turn and live. The terrible destructions of the reign of the Son are our very ground of hope for the final accomplishment of the desire of the Father, who has no pleasure in the death of him that dieth.
\nIn the vision of the smoke of the torment of the enemies of the Lamb is the faith and the patience of the saints.
\nA long mourning is, and must be ours, but, blessed be God, an infinite comforting is our promised beatitude.
\nIn the strong assurance of that comforting we become strong to labour in \u201cthe patience of hope.\u201d We join ourselves to the Kingdom of the Heavens in their labour; we go forth to work in the Lord\u2019s garden, to dig about and trench the ground, to cause the sunshine and the rain to play upon our desired trees.
\nAnd thus we rise to hear the beatitude of the meek, for the work of meekness is the work of the Teacher.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER XIV<\/p>\n
\u201cBlessed are the Meek, for they shall Inherit the Earth\u201d<\/p>\n
What are the characteristics of the meek?
\nThe Scriptures bring the meek before us as those who are apt to teach: \u201cThe servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves.\u201d \u201cBe ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.\u201d \u201cWho is a wise man and endued with knowledge amongst you? let him show out of a good conversation his works with meekness of wisdom.\u201d
\nThe man who is called meek above all men, was the giver of the Law to Israel, was Moses, the prophet, priest, and king. When Christ spoke of Himself as \u201cmeek,\u201d it was in a call upon the weary and heavy laden to come and learn of Him; to come and take His yoke upon them. When His meekness was prophesied of, it was in connection with the only occasion on which He assumed a kingly dignity.
\nThe meek, who are apt to teach, have the power and the authority to restore those who are overtaken in a fault; such restoring is wrought in the spirit of meekness, for to the meek is promised guidance in judgment.
\nIt is the meek who work God\u2019s judgments. In common parlance, meekness is often confounded with humility. At the best, the only distinction observed between humility and meekness is that meekness is an active product of humility, even as strife is of pride; but the Scriptures give to meekness a place entirely its own. Not without reason, not as a mere heaping up of synonymous terms, are both mentioned in enumeration of the Christian graces. The contrast to humility, in Scripture, is haughtiness, while the contrast to the spirit of meekness is the use of the rod. The companion grace of humility is the fear of the Lord. The companion grace of meekness is long-suffering towards the brethren. The humble submit themselves and are subject, whilst the meek are the teachers, the instructors, the givers of the law, the givers of the yoke, the restorers of the erring, the workers of the judgment.
\nAn intense tenacity of purpose characterises the meek, an assured confidence in the rightfulness of their hopes, and strong desire for the bringing forth of their own righteousness. This is, I think, obvious from the Psalm of the meek, from which Jesus quotes the beatitude. The meek trust, delight, rest in, and wait for the Lord, in such measure as enables them to cease from all fretting, envy, anger, and wrath; from all putting forth of their own hands to snatch before the time; but, mark well, this position they maintain in the assured confidence that their own personal desires shall be fulfilled by the Lord, their own personal righteousness triumphantly brought forth as the light, and all that oppose their work be forced to pass away. Their waiting is tenacious of personal desire. The word received by the meek is an engrafted word, bringing forth fruit as a graft does, modified by the individual stock on which it is grafted.
\nThis view of meekness may startle at first sight, yet if we think of the Satanic counterpart of meekness, we shall find that this quiet tenacity of purpose and this certainty of right, are necessary and prominent features in what we would call a detestable meekness. Every Christian grace has its Satanic counterpart, its truly constructed parody, and these parodies often do serve to awaken perception of the true.
\nNo man could be ready to give an answer to those who oppose truth, or be apt to teach, able to judge, and constant in hopes of judgment, without the tenacity of desire, and hope, and purpose, which so largely informs the character to which the promise of the earth is given.
\nWe have seen how the poor in spirit necessarily become mourners. Holding in remembrance the characteristics of meekness, let us now see how such mourners necessarily pass on to the work of meekness.
\nWhen one who has received the knowledge of some important truth meets another who opposes that truth, or depreciates its value, the natural inclinations of the human heart lead him either to engage in disputes bordering upon, and ending in, anger and uncharitable wrangling, or else to subside into an equally harsh and uncharitable silence. It is not so where we really love the opposer, and are hopeful of importing the truth we prize even to those who oppose themselves. They who mourn because of their loneliness in a land where the treasures of the heavenlies are not prized, who mourn, as finding themselves alive amongst the dead, desire ardently to quicken and enlighten the souls amongst whom they dwell.
\nThey who mourn as having often sought to the individuals around them for the fruit of the individual knowledge of the living God, spare no pains to open the heart of relation or friend to receive that knowledge. They who, so mourning, have heard the promise of the future comforting, are strong in \u201cthe patience of hope\u201d \u201cto teach with precept upon precept, precept upon precept, precept upon precept, with line upon line, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, and there a little.\u201d Often baffled, never daunted, in the spirit of meekness they are apt to teach.
\nA teacher is perfected only in measure as he can abnegate self, and live in another\u2019s life. \u201cHe must become as a babe among babes, even as a nurse nourisheth her little ones.\u201d Able himself to walk with firm footing on the explorer\u2019s adventurous way, he must be content to take strong effort to keep himself within the measure of the tottering. Watch a strong man teaching a babe to walk, and you see an illustration of the spirit of meekness instructing. And often the task of the teacher is even more one that requires meekness; for the taught often largely partakes alike of ignorance and petulance. Old Bunyan speaks of that \u201cbrisk lad, Ignorance,\u201d with incomparable humour.
\nThe teacher must give up all self-seeking of immediate reward. If he teaches God\u2019s truth, he must be content to meet with small result and much criticism. Take what way he will, he is putting his hand to an untried labour, in sight of multitudes who prefer to \u201csit on the wall,\u201d and who, in the fashion of such idlers, of course, in their own judgment, \u201cbowl well.\u201d In practical effect, the teacher\u2019s labour is always in a new sphere. The teaching, especially of God\u2019s truth, is essentially the effecting of a new mutual relationship between souls which are both individual, distinguished from one another, and from all else by individual peculiarities of combination. Their coalescence in the relationship of teacher and taught is a beginning of unknown and untried result.
\nTake what way of working that a teacher may, in such a field as God\u2019s truth, he will, in the first place, find difficulty in the natures he seeks to instruct; and in the second place, will assuredly reap from the world little but shallow criticism. Let him set himself to the labour of minute practical detail, and he is judged at once incapable of the larger vision. Let him bend his energies to the quickening of that personal joy in the vision of the Highest, which is the spring that sets in motion all the wheels of practical religion, and he is a mystic, a dreamer.
\nEven where the taught are willing and anxious to learn, the teacher must lay his count, after years of constant labour, to find that questions start up which show an absolute lack of comprehension in the pupil. He must be content constantly to find himself emptied of all his fancied fruit, and convinced of an apparently total failure. He must be content with such result, for if he be fit to teach, he must know that the value of his own individual teaching is but a mite in the universe. He himself has entered into other men\u2019s labours. In measure as he has an individual and original reception, and power to impart, in like measure, he knows of that unity of the body, of that communion of saints, wherein he himself stands but as a vessel filled with other\u2019s fulness.
\nIf success be given him, he realises the truth that other men laboured, and he has entered into their labours. By success, I mean success in vitally imparting the truth he loves\u2014not that most abject of all failures, the mere drawing together of numerous hearers, who would crowd to listen to an Ezekiel denouncing woe, with their heads wagging in applause of his fine faculty of speech.
\nA teacher must be possessed of the calm assurance of one who knows the truth, and knows that truth is great and must prevail. An intense tenacity of grasp of that which he holds precious must characterise a teacher; just that intense tenacity of purpose which characterises the meek.
\nThe beatitude of the meek is essentially relative to the desires of a teacher, of a lawgiver. It is the promise that they shall inherit the earth. This promise is one of such marvellous import, so much depends upon its meaning, that we will make it a subject of separate consideration.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER XV<\/p>\n
The Inheritance of the Earth<\/p>\n
We will make a study of the Psalm in which this inheritance is declared, before we ask what the inheritance may mean.
\nThe promise of the earth is given seven times in the thirty-seventh Psalm.
\nWhen we look into the construction of the Psalm we find that it presents a true septenary of promise.
\nThe septenaries of Scripture are all significant as prophetic intimations of the times of the purpose of God to unite all in one Saviour anointed.
\nTheir construction, as a rule, is the same. They are composed of two triads, mutually opposed in spirit, joined together by a fourth which combines the characteristics of the triads, and the complete septenary is followed by an eighth, which is, as it were, its fruit and crown.
\nThe first triad of promises of the earth occurs in verses 1 to 11. The fourth promise in the passage which occurs in verses 12 to 20. The second triad of promises in verses 21 to 34, and to the end. For the eighth of this septenary we must wait.
\nThe first triad speaks of the meek in relation to the Lord; they are placed in circumstances where it is difficult to trust the Lord. The promises of the inheritance of the meek are brought forth to strengthen them under the temptations incident to the sight of the prosperity of evil-doers and workers of iniquity. The man who brings evil devices to pass occupies the field; full freedom is given in the present day to the sinful will, and, as a counterbalance to this influence, the first triad gives assurance that God recognises, and will preserve and make manifest, the individual desires of those who wait upon Him, and the day will come when their wills shall have full freedom accorded to them, and they shall be able to bring their devices to pass, for the Lord will be on their side, the Lord will bring their way to pass.
\nThe second triad concerns the work of the meek as walking in the midst of men, and brings forth the promise of their inheritance to strengthen their hearts under the grief and oppression of their own failures. The \u201cupholding,\u201d \u201cunforsaking\u201d Jehovah, who loves judgment, will preserve His saints and will not condemn them. \u201cThough the good man fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for Jehovah upholdeth him with His hand.\u201d \u201cNone of his steps shall slide.\u201d \u201cThe wicked watcheth the righteous, and seeketh to slay him. Jehovah will not leave him in his hand, nor condemn him when he is judged.\u201d
\nThe mediate fourth holds in it the present prosperity and strength of the wicked, which prevail in the first triad as the cause of oppression and reason of temptation, and in its promises of upholding, in its redemptions from shame, in its promise of satisfying the soul even in the times of its own visitation, in the days of its own famine, we have the sense of personal failure which in the second triad oppresses the meek.
\nIf we have in any measure entered upon the work of the meek, we shall understand the significance of these contrasted triads. We shall know the temptation which assails a man who is consciously righteous in his aims and innocent in his desires, when he finds himself baffled and sees the wicked prosper. We shall also know the temptation which assails a teacher who has given cause to those who observe him to bring accusation against him. Both temptations are terrible. Both oppressions are hard to bear, and both are of necessity known in the experience of all, who pass on from the beatitude of the mourner to the work of meekness. Such an one, \u201capt to teach,\u201d is conscious of righteous aim, is certain of personal uprightness, knows that his desires are such as work no harm to the neighbour, and finds the riddle of this earth practically cutting into him, when he sees success attend those whom he knows to be not as righteous as he is himself. But the worker of the work of meekness, the man \u201capt to teach,\u201d finds himself beset with infirmities in the midst of observers, whose delight is in seeing his shame. They make him \u201can offender for a word.\u201d Still, whatever their motive, however ignoble their desire, the meek who delights in judgment dare not, cannot justify himself where he fails. His soul knows \u201cthe evil time,\u201d and \u201cthe days of famine.\u201d In these he yet shall not be ashamed, for his teaching has been of the Redeemer, his desire has been for peace; he has shown mercy and given freely.
\nAll this is easily understood. But there is somewhat in this Psalm which is not easily to be received.
\nThe character delineated throughout it is that of a man whose desires are for peace, \u201cwho shows mercy and giveth,\u201d who is \u201cever merciful and lendeth,\u201d who delights to \u201cdo good,\u201d whose \u201cend is peace.\u201d
\nHow shall we reconcile with such a character promises which speak of vengeance? How shall we conceive of such a spirit staying itself upon hopes that other men shall be cut down as the grass, shall wither as the green herb? Can such a one rejoice in the thought that Adonahy laughs at a brother, seeing his day is coming? Can such a one earnestly hope for the day when he shall consider the place of the wicked and it shall not be, seek for him and find him not, so thorough shall be the destruction, so unsparing the consuming of all the hopes and aims of the evil man?
\nThe inheritance of the earth, promised to the meek, obviously involves as its necessary and most desirable condition the destruction, and the seen destruction, of the wicked. We cannot receive the beatitude of the meek without receiving desire to see and know the destruction of sinners.
\nTo understand this apparent paradox let us glance back on the steps we have already ascended. We have known the poverty of the undesired, we have mourned with the mourning of the Heavens over the manifestation of God upon the Cross of Christ, we have joined ourselves to the work of the teachers and the preachers of the law; are not our hearts then prepared to hear as good news that there is a day coming, when God shall set a term to the mystery alike of iniquity and of godliness? There is a day appointed, when God shall bring in a new order.
\nWhat is the inheritance of the earth? When shall it be given?
\nIs it not the hope of the resurrection of the dead? Shall it not be given in the day, when, according to the good news preached by the Apostles, there shall be a resurrection of the just and of the unjust?
\nWhat can there be in this inheritance of the earth, which can be an object of desire to those who already know the possession of the Kingdom of the Heavens?
\nWhat can there be in the resurrection of the dead, which shall be an object for hope for such as have already known the resurrection from among the dead?
\nSt. Paul, looking forward to the hour of his departure from this life, said, \u201cTo me to live is Christ, and to die is gain;\u201d asserted that, precious as might be the profit of work in the body, to depart and be with Christ, \u201cabsent from the body, and present with the Lord,\u201d was \u201cfar better.\u201d \u201cIn the path of righteousness there is no death.\u201d They who have passed into the Kingdom of the Heavens can say, \u201cThe dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into the pit, but we shall praise the Lord from this time forth for evermore.\u201d
\nIf we have passed from death unto life, the death of the body of this flesh is for us deliverance. No \u201cintervital gloom\u201d awaits us; we shall pass into joy, into living, real delight.
\nWhat, then, can the hope of the resurrection of the dead signify to us? An increase in our joy, a passing from one state into another more perfect, would be a progress of the living, in no sense a resurrection of that which was dead. And in such a progress what share can the unjust have? The \u201cgood news\u201d of the resurrection of the dead concern the unjust as well as the just. What possible connection can there be between the passing of the just into a fuller blessedness, and the rising up again of the unjust?
\nObviously the Scripture doctrine of the resurrection of the dead requires somewhat more than has been hitherto attached to it, to make us understand, first, why such importance is attached to the hope for the righteous, and secondly, how the unjust can be participators in such a Gospel, i.e. good news.
\nI have often felt amazed how the hope of the resurrection of the material body has been preserved at all in the Churches, and I consider its preservation on an utterly insufficient intellectual basis one of the greatest wonders of God\u2019s Providence,\u2014for in that amazingly preserved hope has been kept, though hidden as in a casket, the Divine and unperceived truth of the hope for all through the election of one.
\nThey who are satisfied with hope for themselves in Christ, or who are resigned to hope only for the elect in Christ, have, I think, only to be brought thoroughly face to face with modern Spiritualism to be shaken off their ground as to the hope of the resurrection of the material body. Their souls may indeed be held individually in that hope, but it will be without the assent of their own reason, and therefore without power of appeal to others\u2019 reason. I do not hesitate to say that if there is no desire open for us beyond the salvation of the elect, whether those elect be regarded by old dogma, as persons predestinated by God, or by new lights, as persons whose free-will choice of good receives a freely given recompense of eternal life, there is no witness for, and no need for, the resurrection of the material body.
\nTo show what I mean I will explain how, to me, the parable of Dives and Lazarus is the portion of Scripture which is most precious as concerns the hope of which I speak.
\nOur blessed Lord gives us in this parable the following information concerning those in Hades or the intermediate state.
\nI. They that are in Hades are in a body. We hear of the rich man lifting up his eyes and longing for water to cool his tongue. We hear of Lazarus as having a finger which he could dip into water. We are told of the limitations of space, of going and coming, of near and far, of question and reply. Such terms as these would be grossly misleading if our Saviour did not wish us to understand that there is in Hades somewhat, which strictly answers to the individual body and its relations to an outer world. This we are further confirmed in by observing,
\nII. That there is a continuance of individual connection one with another in Hades, else why amongst the myriads there should Dives desire the intervention of Lazarus? The slender nature of their mutual tie, which had consisted merely in the one being fed with the crumbs that fell from the table of the other, is a witness in favour of the continuance of all individual ties, and it is a witness strong in proportion to the apparent slenderness of the connection in the especial case; for if this endures, how much more must endure such links as are of a deeper significance! This leads us to perceive,
\nIII. That there is a certain incapability of action, which shackles the freedom alike of the righteous and of the unrighteous, alike of the blessed and of the tormented. They that would pass from the region of the comforted, to impart of their comforting to the tormented, cannot, any more than can they that would pass from that of the tormented to the blessed.
\nThat there is a will and a desire in the blessed to comfort the tormented is evident not only from the words that Abraham uses, \u201cThey that would pass from us to you cannot,\u201d but also from the obvious effect of the Hades condition upon the soul, for we see,
\nIV. That the passage into Hades has awakened in the hitherto merely sensual soul of the rich man a desire for the good of his brethren. He longs to save them from coming into the like torment, but he is powerless to carry out his new desire. If this atmosphere of Hades has so worked in Dives, its influences are not likely to have worked in a reverse direction in the hearts of Abraham and of Lazarus. It is not conceivable that Dives should have enlarged in loving desire, and Abraham and Lazarus have contracted in the same. He, who in the days of his flesh had pleaded for Sodom and Gomorrha, can scarcely be supposed to look unmoved on the torment of one whom he acknowledges to be his son. In the hearts of Abraham and of Lazarus we may be certain that there was at least as much desire to help Dives as was in the heart of Dives to help his brethren, and we find that Abraham and Lazarus in this respect are as powerless as is Dives himself. They, that would pass from the side of the blessed to comfort those that are on the side of the tormented, are as incapable of carrying out their intensified desires as are those who would, if they could, save their brethren on the earth. This awful discrepancy of will and power shows us, then,
\nV. That the life of the comforted in Hades is, in a far more awful sense than even on earth, a life in Faith.
\nBy these words I mean, in the fullest sense, such a life as St. Paul speaks of, when he says, \u201cI live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.\u201d This life is not, as is often misread, a life by belief in the Son of God, but something much more precious. \u201cI live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.\u201d Dean Alford, in his notes upon this, says, \u201cFaith, and not the flesh, is the real element in which I live,\u201d and he quotes Luther, \u201cI live indeed in the flesh, but I do not count this insignificant particle of life which is going on in me to be really life. For it is not, but only the mask of life, under which another lives, viz., Christ who is really my life.\u201d Beautiful as in a certain sense these remarks are, they do not satisfy me. To me the worth of this life in faith is that it is a life in the flesh. It is the justification of the flesh that is in question, and that is shown to be not by the works of the Law, but by the indwelling of the Son of God, who loved me, the individual man, and gave Himself for me, the individual man.
\nWhen I pass from this outer court, where the life I live in the flesh I live in the faith of this manifested God Love which has individualised me, I pass into a state which is far better, into a state in which I shall be living, not only in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me, but in my own individuality. With Him I shall rejoice in my own life, which is now hidden with Christ in God. To be with Christ is far better than to be \u201chere in the body pent,\u201d and yet there is a certain awful incapability, which obviously attaches to the Hades condition into which at death I pass, which does not in the same manner and degree belong to me here; for death is penal.
\nIn this life in the flesh I love in diverse ways.
\nThere are those whom I love because their spirits move in the same sphere as mine. Their tastes are like mine, their pursuits are in the same or in kindred desire. I can understand them; they can understand me. I can impart to them spiritual riches and spiritual comfortings, and receive from them in like manner.
\nThere are, again, those whom I love because their spirits move in a sphere totally unlike and yet adapted to mine, between whom and me there can be no true mutual imparting, but whose powers can be used by me, or who can use my powers. We can be very useful to one another, and even, in a certain sense, very delightful to one another.
\nAnd yet again, there are others whom I love, whose life moves in a sphere which is contrary to mine, whose gain absolutely involves my loss, whose ascending absolutely necessitates my disappearance. In the day of their power I am powerless, non-existent except as darkness is existent when inferred by the light, or as light is existent when inferred by darkness. This contrary nature I can love, for the mystery of this contrariety is in the Divine and is eternal, and is indeed the Wonderful\u2014but, as brought into practical contact with a Christian\u2019s individual life in the flesh, this contrary nature, for the most part, is iniquitous, and I shall make myself more easily intelligible if for the present I assume it to be a sinful nature, though truly it is not necessarily so.
\nAssuming it, then, to be a contrary, sinful nature, and to take an instance as the best way of making myself understood, I will say I love a woman whose whole desires are corrupt. Between her and me there is a gulf set, over which I cannot pass with spiritual comfort. As long, that is, as her will is absorbed in the carnal life, I cannot bring to bear upon her one single drop of the comforting wherewith my spirit is comforted in God. It is as absolutely impossible for me to touch her with such a drop as ever it can be in Hades for the comforted in faith there to pass over with water to the tormented, but thanks to this wonderful body of the flesh, I can bring influences of various kinds to bear upon her. I can, if she be in need of comforting, minister to her, and by means of material things, bring to bear upon her the working of a love, which, were it not provided with instruments of the flesh, could never be brought within her perceptions at all. I can also bring to bear upon her certain restraints which, had I not freedom of the powers of the flesh, would not be available to me. By means of this body of the flesh I can help the one I love, even though, were we out of the flesh, we never could, in any way, pass over the one to the other.
\nNow, if I do love such an one, consider how terrible a loss there is for me in the loss of the flesh. This is the loss which obviously attaches to all who are in Hades. We see, then,
\nVI. That the righteous in Hades, however glorious may be their freedom in the spiritual body, and however glorious may be their rest, and however full their comforting, yet are not perfected.
\nPerfection is by Jesus Christ spoken of in relation to those of contrary natures, and necessitates the free play of good-will towards the enemy. The perfected Will has not a body fitted to it, as long as it has powers only for the spiritual communion of saints in Hades. It is necessary for the perfecting of the souls that are with Christ that they should, together with Him, be brought into a freedom of action upon the contrary natures, like in kind with, though immeasurably more glorious and free than, the freedom in relation to such natures, which is ours now, in this body of the flesh.
\nAnd this is to me the hope of the resurrection of, as well as. from the dead. I believe that in the day of His power Jesus Christ will bring with Him the souls that have, together with Him, been waiting upon the working of God, and that each shall be individually raised up and have the fulness of power in every working of individual desire, to subdue all things unto themselves. Herein lies the distinction between the everlasting life, which is at once and for ever the portion of all believers in Christ, and the raising up promised to them at the last day. The souls that were seen as coming with Christ are therefore said to live, as if with a new life; to live, meaning the resurrection of the dead, as is shown by the following words, \u201cThe rest of the dead lived not.\u201d
\nUntil that day set, until that full time is come, the Father works. The gulf does not limit the Infinite.
\nThis is intimated to us by Jesus Christ in the parable, for there we find that the voice of the Father instructing the Son can pass over that gulf, over which no brother can take his drop of comfort. No limit can be set to the Father of spirits. If I make my bed in Hell, behold Thou! Not in Abraham, not in Lazarus, but in the Infinite God is our infinite hope, and they who live to God wait with Christ while He subdues, while He refines, while He instructs, while He tests and destroys.
\nI am content to wait, and that though I know that I pass, where the generations before me have passed, into the unseen place where, under test, they only who rest in the bosom of the Faithful are free from the torment, which even here we know to be inseparable from the test which brings into vivid realisation our own incapabilities. The literal translation, if I am rightly informed, of the words \u201cin hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments,\u201d is \u201cin the unseen place he lift up his eyes, being under test.\u201d Speaking from my own experience, and without reference to the historical explanations of how the word \u201ctest\u201d came to be identified with \u201ctorment,\u201d I can well understand that such an identification of meanings might naturally come, even if there had been no putting to the question with thumbscrews and racks. How can we, even in this life, escape burning torment, when in our unseen place where the heart knoweth its own bitterness, the terrible test now and again is applied, and the awful mystery of death enthralls us, and under test we cannot do that we would? We cannot, even in this life, know rest except as we can under pressure have the answer of death in ourselves, viz., that we trust not in ourselves, but in God who quickeneth the dead. Still less, when, passing nearer to the heart of God, we realise in increasing measure the incapability to bless where we would, can we rest, except as in the bosom of that faithful man who \u201cconsidered not his own body now dead,\u201d but counted Him faithful who had promised a son of the flesh.
\nTo me, the hope of the resurrection of the dead is the hope of the renewal of the mysteries of the flesh, by means of which the pure and impure can be brought together into arbitrary juxtaposition, and the pure can bring the manifestation of God to bear upon the impure. It is a matter of comparative indifference to me in what body I shall come. All I care for is the assurance that the Christ in me shall have a body fitted for a Saviour\u2019s desires, which body I feel assured must be other than a spiritual body; that is, must be a body conceived in the mystery of the flesh.
\nThe flesh, as manifest in the things that are seen, is a sphere in which the most arbitrary relationships can take place, and be held as sacred and inviolable. Spiritual relationships must be constituted on the principles of spiritual affinities, and the lapse from these affinities breaks the tie.
\nNo man unendowed with music\u2019s divine fire has a right to call himself a son of Jubal, the father of all who handle the harp and organ. The bonds of the flesh ignore spiritual affinities, nay, often exist in flagrant defiance of such. Oil and water are more truly kindred than many a sister and sister, and yet the bond is sacred in that generation which is of personal sons and daughters. The sphere of the flesh is a sphere capable of arbitrary ties, in which those who are of spiritual natures contrary to one another can meet in peace. Jesus can sit and eat at the Pharisee\u2019s table, and can heal the ear of Malchus in the very hour of the servant\u2019s enmity.
\nBut the renewal of these arbitrary ties is seen to be precious only, when we further dwell upon the fact that the sphere of the flesh is a sphere wherein the exercise of coercive forces intensifies relation. In the sphere of spiritual affinities there must be perfect freedom. One will has not the power to infringe the freedom of another\u2019s will, nor can one compel another\u2019s sympathetic action. But in the sphere of the flesh it is otherwise. A wondrous subtle power belongs to those in the flesh to compel sympathetic action, to infringe upon the sanctity of the will\u2019s freedom.
\nTo make myself intelligible I will give an illustration of what I mean.
\nI was once, by the momentary pressure of a crowd, kept beside two boys; one of these, by his dreadfully mutilated face and repulsive expression, caused me to shudder as I saw him, and while I stood there he used some hideous words to his companion. Had that boy and I been in spiritual condition only, we could not have come together in such relation. He could not have forced upon my unwilling reception such revelation of hideous impurity as were his face and words to me. The body of the flesh gifted him with the power to outrage my freewill, and against my will, in violent rupture of my desire, he was able to defile my consciousness, and to bring into my sanctuary the knowledge that defileth.
\nYears afterwards I sank, after severe sufferings, into a state of low delirium, and in that state I passed through inconceivable agonies. Every word that had ever outraged my ear I heard spoken again, and spoken with intensity. I thought, in my agony, that in the working out of the Purpose of God, I had, as a member of Christ, been sunk into hell. I was quite powerless against the horrid host of evil words which memory revivified, and all I could do was to cry unto the Lord to destroy those tongues. Foremost among my tormentors was that boy.
\nI learnt somewhat in that agony. I knew thenceforth the hope of the resurrection of the dead. I knew that the awful powers of those in the flesh had been exercised upon me in defiance of my will, in flagrant violation of my free desire; they had forced my organ of memory into sympathetic action; and I laid strong hold before the Lord of my hope of being myself invested, in relation to all such violators of my freedom, with power equally to infringe upon their free-will, and in defiance of their desire, to bring my judgment to burn within them.
\nI perceived that God waits and allows full free play to the evil will, even to the measure of tempting and crucifying Jesus; but there, even there, where the evil will has taken its most brutal license, there shall it be snared and taken. \u201cEvery eye shall look upon Him whom they have pierced, and all kindreds of the nations shall mourn because of Him.\u201d
\nTo return to my illustration.
\nMy contact with that boy was but momentary in time, but significant for eternity. It did not require years of futile effort to convince me that the power of the will was on his side, I knew that at a glance. His was the power to outrage my freedom, while I had no power to break in upon his freedom. I, who was panting for freedom from all sin, athirst for purity, I was forced to bear, written upon the tables of my memory, foul words; and, on my side, I was as powerless as are the dead to force entrance into his spirit, with the revelation of the loveliness of purity. I do not mean that no one could have touched his soul with this, but that I personally felt powerless, and that, in the enormous majority of cases, the power to force the will of another does, in this dispensation, lie with the unrighteous, and is not in the hands of the righteous. In the strength of this conviction, I became instinct with the hope of the resurrection of the dead. I required the renewal of the arbitrary relationships of the flesh. I required of God that I should again be brought into knowledge of its arbitrary juxtapositions, in that new order of things, wherein God shall judge the world by the One Man whom He has raised up.
\nI felt that in myself, and in the strength of my own desires, the only desire I was capable of, was the desire to be for ever separated from such injurers of my peace, but that the Christ in me required otherwise. The Christ in me, inspired with the Father\u2019s yearning, knew and witnessed that the Father\u2019s Son could not be satisfied with the divine rest of communion, such as belongs to the spiritually akin; nor even with the glorious activities which shall be ours when our salvation is complete, and we are clothed upon with the glorious body of the Resurrection day, unless that body renews and crowns with success every sacrificial use of the arbitrary juxtapositions known in the flesh; unless that Resurrection body be such as is endowed with all the powers of the flesh, in relation to those of natures contrary to our own. Such a Resurrection body is fitted for the Saviour\u2019s Anointed, who are members of that body of Jesus Christ, which was not evolved by the force of His own nature, but was fitted Him by the will of the Father. Even Jesus Christ Himself had not, in Himself, such infinity of love as could have brought Him into one body with the beast. Even He was, in that body wherein He was sacrificed, in some measure, an involuntary sacrifice, and that body was His, as given to Him by the Father\u2019s will, for the sanctification of our bodies, who have fallen away from God.
\nAs a living member of Jesus Christ, I know that every involuntary suffering, to which I am exposed through the arbitrary ties of the flesh, is the sign and seal of my call to arise as a Royal Priest, armed with authority towards the outer congregation of the dead, from among whom such priests are called. I know that even such momentary contact, as was mine with that unhappy boy, has eternal significance in the counsels of God. Every tittle of my consequent suffering has its value in the great preparation for the day set, when God shall give power unto the involuntary sacrifice to make its wrath known and felt.
\nThen shall the Saviour Anointed manifest Himself as the Lamb of God, instinct with wrath. A wrath, as was observed to me by the Rev. Barton Brown, which is according to the nature of that Lamb, not the wrath of the dragon, but the wrath of the body fitted for the Son by the Father, by the offering of which once, all are sanctified or made holy. The Church has dwelt upon the willing sacrifice in Christ too much, to the exclusion of the vision of the involuntary and unwilling sufferer. \u201cHe suffered, being tempted.\u201d He cried with strong crying that the very hour, for which He came into the world, should pass from Him. Is there no significance in this cry in the saving work of the Saviour? There is the deepest significance. There is the revelation that the Lamb of God in His suffering hears and does the will of another, whose desire is beyond the measure of even a brother\u2019s love. There is the revelation of the sacrifice offered by the Father of spirits. And in this revelation we receive another. We see that the Lamb of God gathers up in Himself, and presents unto the Father, not only every impulse of willing service which did ever, or will ever, stir in the children over whom that Father yearns, but also every unwilling, involuntary, sacrificially used sufferer, whose will revolts and cries out against the hour in which he is laid hold of by the Great Purpose. The wrath of the Lamb, in the day of its manifestation, will make manifest, as endowed with the might and the right of the Elect of God, and subordinated to their saving desires, the wrath uttered, or unuttered, of every involuntary sufferer, man or brute, since the world began. All kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman and every freeman, shall then hide themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains, and say to the mountains and rocks, \u201cfall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?\u201d
\nThis belief flushes every incident of present experience with awful significance. It makes me tremble concerning all the involuntary and unwilling sacrifices by which I must perforce live. It drives me to live by the altar, that I may in that day be found partaker with God, whose sacrifice is holy and sees not corruption. It makes me see how every involuntary and unwilling injury I have personally undergone has its significance and its use, in the effecting of that Purpose upon which I love to dwell. It makes me hasten to bring all my revolt to the Lamb of God, that my very wrath may be absorbed in the Saviour\u2019s will, and be ready to enter into priestly function as a medium for the awakening, in those who are dead in trespasses and sins, the consciousness of the judgments of God. Every time that my free-will desire for good is baffled or outraged, I seize the hope, the certainty, that there, in that relation, I shall be used as the medium of God\u2019s coercive grace, in that new dispensation which is at hand. It is an assurance unto me that the injurer shall not be left to the freedom of decadence, but shall, in measure as he has outraged the free-will desire of God, have exercised upon himself, through the tremendous irresistible powers of my risen flesh, that will of God once outraged, but for ever risen triumphant.
\nThus I read the Psalm, which identifies the inheritance of the earth by the meek with the hopes of seeing vengeance fall on the wicked. Thus I understand how He, who is ever merciful and giveth, can hear, as words of richest promise, the words that speak of His seeing the passing away of the very place of the wicked.
\n\u201cThe Lord will beautify the meek with salvation. Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon their beds. Let the high praises of Ehl be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand; to execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people; to bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; to execute upon them the judgment written: this honour have all His Saints. Praise ye Yah.\u201d
\nI can say with the prophet, \u201cLet favour be showed to the wicked, yet will he not learn righteousness: in the land of uprightness will he deal unjustly, and will NOT behold the Majesty of Jehovah. Jehovah, Thy hand is lifted up, they will not see; they shall see, and be ashamed for their envy toward thy people.\u201d I can pray with the Psalmist, \u201cArise, Jehovah, let not man prevail; let the heathen be judged in Thy sight. Put them in fear, O Jehovah, that the nations may know themselves to be but frail men.\u201d \u201cBreak thou the arm of the wicked and the evil; seek out his wickedness till thou find none.\u201d And I can, with the seer, know that the smoke of their torment ascendeth in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb, and perceive that \u201chere is the faith of the saints that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.\u201d
\nWhen once the heart has been awakened to hear the beatitude of the meek, it awakens also to the perception of the preciousness of the judgments of God\u2014the Christian rises to hunger and to thirst for righteousness.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER XVI<\/p>\n
\u201cBlessed are they that Hunger and Thrist after Righteousness, for they shall be Filled\u201d<\/p>\n
It is evident that one, who has, in the realised nearness of the Kingdom of the Heavens, known its mourning and shared in its labours, and has passed on to work the work of the meek, cannot rejoice in the beatitude of that inheritance wherein the wicked are judged, without at the same time knowing that God\u2019s judgments are ardently to be desired.
\nThey must hunger and thirst for righteousness.
\nTwo things strike us at once in this expression. First, Christ here speaks of righteousness as a somewhat by which we live,\u2014as food that sustains us. Not, as we might have expected, as actions of our own.
\nSecondly, that Christ here speaks of righteousness as of two kinds\u2014adapted for hunger, and adapted for thirst.
\nRighteousness, in our natural definition of the word, is right doing. How can our own right doing be likened to food? Is this not a strange confusion of ideas?
\nHe, who thus speaks of righteousness, said to those who after a long journey pressed Him to eat, \u201cI have meat to eat that ye know not of; \u201cMy meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work.\u201d His righteousness, then, was obviously no mere duty work, but an ardent desire for the knowledge and the manifestation of another\u2019s will. Our righteousness, in like manner, must be an ardent desire and constant receiving of the same will of God.
\nThat will, we are told, is our sanctification through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once. Our righteousness, then, is the bread of life, is the body of our Lord Jesus Christ by which we are sanctified. Our own right doing is at the best defective. We cannot fulfil the requirements of the law, for one failure is like a dead fly in a pot of precious ointment\u2014it makes the whole stink. We do not by nature love God enough to rise to the realisation of this as concerns our standing towards Him, but sometimes some one or other amongst men, or women, or children, loves some one on earth enough to know a true ideal of Love\u2019s requirement, and then the torture of even one failure convinces the soul that by the righteousness of the law it cannot live, for there is no recalling the moment that is past, there is no power to arrest the action gone forth as a hateful odour to pollute the whole atmosphere of that relationship. How could Peter, as under the law, have ever had any pleasure in the remembrance of the ardour with which he left the enormous haul of fish, the crowning triumph of success after a long night\u2019s work, to follow Christ; or in the remembrance of having cast himself out of the ship upon the raging waves to meet his Master; or in the recollection of quiet evenings in his own home where Jesus lodged, where doubtless all that Peter had was daily lavished on the Lord; or in the remembrance of the confession blessed, of the association to which he had been called in all hours of highest revealing,\u2014what pleasure could he have in any of these? Knowing, feeling that upon the stream of his own life he must at last come to the dread hour when he failed\u2014when he denied his Friend, denied his God? Never, as under the law, could Peter feel other than the inconceivable agony of one caught in the whirlpool\u2019s circling, swiftly, steadily, inevitably being drawn into the vortex of death. If at any moment he turned into memory of the past, never could he feel other than prescience of the intolerable fire of jealous wrath, the invincible stench of the brimstone of remorse; whenever he looked to the future, he would feel he must become partaker of the Omnipresent God, must find it impossible to shut his senses to all that lovely past with the dread failure into which its currents hastened.
\nI am sure there are some who, having loved, if not God yet man, know this to be true in their own case, know that they madden if but for one moment they are left to their own righteousness. They cannot live by their own righteousness\u2014they dare not face contrast so terrific as their own love\u2019s desires, and their own actions\u2019 failures. Little omissions, wilful transgressions, a perception awakened too late of desires, to which selfish habits had made us blind\u2014ten thousand times ten thousand horrors pollute the stream of the past into which we yet must plunge and shuddering know our loathsomeness.
\nI think no one who has really loved, if it be but man and not God, but can understand that righteousness is not to be found in ourselves, and can never be found in mutual relationship, except by constant ardent reception of the redeeming God. Peter, not under the law but under grace, can rejoice in all things; for, living by the bread of life, righteous not in himself, but in the God in whom he trusted, what though he knows the dread hour of failure to which his own stream runs fast? He knows the look that there awaits him\u2014he knows the victory over death which Christ shall there achieve. He lives\u2014yet not he, but Christ lives in him. He lives by Christ, and where Christ is, death is abolished; the grave itself is become the haunt of angels, a place that angels desire to look into. Peter\u2019s hour of failure, then, is the hour of His life-giving power. For myself, I know, whenever the hour comes for me of open communion with those whose names are dear to my reverence, I shall turn first to him who denied his Lord, and sheltering under the mantle\u2019s fold of him, whose faith failed not under faith\u2019s direst sifting, I shall venture in.
\nLove is the fulfilment of the law. If where love is most keenly living, there we experience most keenly that in ourselves we have no life\u2014that we are powerless to work love\u2019s good will; nay, often do the thing we would not, and wound where we would bless; then we understand what it is to hunger and thirst for righteousness. Then we become aware that the very fulfilment of the law is for us only a place of strong desire. We cry out for the living God, we feed eagerly on every crumb we can find of an incarnate manifestation of the redeeming God, we run to the table of the Lord\u2014many of us only to pick up slender crumbs from its precincts\u2014believing dimly \u201cthat somehow good will be the final goal of ill,\u201d and getting nothing of the fruit of the vine which makes glad the heart of both God and man; some of us to feed on the very body and blood of Jesus Christ.
\nRighteousness is of two kinds. It is adapted to hunger and adapted to thirst. Hunger and thirst know their objects. No hungry man will mistake water for bread; nor will any thirsty man think that bread is the thing he requires. If genuine hunger and thirst for righteousness have been awakened in us, we shall know what the two kinds of the sacramental feast are.
\nFrom personal experience, and from that great aggregate of many personal experiences, which we call the Scripture, I know that the righteousness for which I hunger is that bread of life, that body of Jesus Christ, which is the expression of the Father\u2019s individualising tenderness, by which my own individual body is redeemed from death, and is daily built up, a temple of the Holy Ghost. I know that the righteousness for which I thirst is the revivifying and purging word of judgment, is that water of life, which cleanses the soul, is that blood of the Lamb, which condemns sin in the flesh.
\nI believe that true perception of the spiritual truths, conveyed in the symbolic language of Scripture, must accurately correspond to the physical truths of the symbols used. Accordingly, being ignorant of physiology myself, I had recourse to my dear friend, Dr. John Brown, and I asked him if it was a true statement, as concerns the natural body, that food renews the waste of tissue, and constantly builds up the individual body, and that water, or the natural drink, serves to purge and purify the body. He answered that the statement was strictly accurate. With all confidence, therefore, I proceed.
\nIn my hunger I come to God my Redeemer, and I claim of Him individualising love, such, and so inalienable, that however often I may fail, and do that which is unpleasing in His sight, I may have the witness that He loves me, and I hunger for this witness, not only in a general but in a particularised way. It is not enough for my hunger, that the Scripture witnesses to me that while men were at enmity with God, He still so loved them as to send His only begotten Son to suffer for their sakes. It is not enough for me to look upon the Cross of Christ as evidence of universal redemption. I must know the redeeming power of that Cross in individual application. For instance, supposing I have a friend deeply beloved, and that I repeatedly experience in the course of that relationship, the strange sad work of death wasting my substance and turning hope into despair, and aspiration into dismay, I hunger unto God to build me up just where I fail. It is not enough for me that the relationship should endure in spite of failures; no, I hunger for the Redeemer, for my Redeemer, who shall triumph in and by my failures, and use my very sins for the effecting of that unity in which He delights. The wasting of my tissue must be the cause of my feast, the condition of my sacramental union with my God. But, no sooner is that hunger satisfied than I thirst. It is not enough for me that my individual body should be thus constantly redeemed. I cannot continue in sin that grace may abound. God forbid. I thirst to appropriate as my own, as my life, the condemnation of sin in the flesh. Can I live by the Redeemer, who has borne my iniquities and carried my sorrows, without condemning the iniquities which have caused His Cross? Impossible. Whoso eats of the flesh of Christ, must straightway thirst for that blood which is the life of His flesh, that blood which is strong to cleanse every stain. Whoso eats, and knows the individual redemption, longs and pants for the living God. My hunger causes me to know that God, my Redeemer, enters as a new Cause into the very place of death. That Cross upon which man dies, which could cause of itself nothing but a sequence of death unto death, He seizes, and there brings in the new cause of His redeeming Purpose, and thence evolves new sequence of life unto life. Herein I rejoice. Yet, so rejoicing herein, I cry out with pangs of thirst for the knowledge of His judgments, for here I behold the pierced brother, the crucified God. The water of the fountain of life alone can quench such thirst, ever more purging the conscience from dead works to serve the living God, to serve Him with such service as is in accordance with His desire, and in consonance with His pleasure, and not leading to His Cross, but thence proceeding with life-giving blood.
\nIn that sacramental feast to which Jesus bids His disciples, that which is ministered to thirst is, however, not water but wine.
\nThe sacramental signs with which Melchizedek met Abraham were bread and fermented wine. My beloved physician told me that fermented drinks were of no service in the body, except to stimulate the several organs of the body. A very little of such drinks went as food to nourish the body, the rest did nothing but greatly increase the fire, which daily and hourly wastes our substance. For every moment of such stimulation, he said there was a correspondent loss. In a body such as ours, under the power of death, he said that, as a rule, stimulant was positively hurtful.
\nThe Scriptures also, as a rule, speak of the cup as a cup given in wrath, to bring about a fall into shame and grief. Still the cup, which is the cup of fury, the cup of trembling, the cup of astonishment and desolation, the cup which maketh the enticers to drink mad, is also the cup of salvation. Jehovah Himself is the portion of the cup of those who wait upon Him.
\nThe wine which made Noah, Lot, Nabal, Amnon, and Ahasuerus drunk, is the same which Melchizedek brought forth, which is promised to make red the eyes of Judah, which maketh glad the heart of God and man, which was poured out in sacrifices of good savour. And it is observable that this wine, when poured out by God in anger, is poured out first for the elect, and only after them extended to the Gentile.
\nI do not wish to differ with any of the brethren and fathers of the Church, who desire, on account of the infirmities of many worshippers, to banish fermented wine from our sacramental signs. I do not even wish to touch upon the controversies concerning the fruit of the vine, which the Lord gave as the symbol of His blood. This only I would urge, that the voice of symbol, which has its oracle in the Hebrew Scriptures, places fermented wine in the hands of that Melchizedek, after whose order Jesus Christ came, and therefore when we approach the great High Priest who has passed within the veil, that which we spiritually receive at His hands must be the spiritual antitype of the type of fermented drink.
\nThat which, in a body subject unto death, is necessarily hurtful as greatly increasing the fire which wastes our substance, if ministered to a body which is not under the law of death, but is living for evermore, does no injury, but only quickens and glorifies. In that living Body of which we are members we can know the call to the house of wine, as to the feast of love, as to the table of Wisdom. We can come with a thirst, not only for the purging water of life, but for the stimulating wine of God. Our hearts can know the meditation of terror. Amazing things and things that we know not, things such as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man to conceive, can be poured into us by the Spirit, and we can still be unashamed.
\nIn that bridal chamber, into which we are by anticipation called, the wine of our cup comes not from the treading of the wine-press, and the spouting of the crushed fruit, but for us the waters of cleansing are poured out as wine to make us glad. The judgments of purging are become the wine to stimulate, and greatly heighten, our own rejoicing strength in the Lord.
\nBlessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.
\nNor shall their satisfaction be only as received from the Lord. There is no blessing which He gives from the Heavens, which He does not also give from the earth.
\nIn the bridal chamber, not the Lord, but the human and astonished brother bridegroom receives praise for the best wine kept to the last. Into the City of God Jehovah will not only extend peace like a river, but also the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream.
\nThe evil man comes to his neighbour, and \u201chis heart gathereth iniquity to itself,\u201d \u201cthe mouth of the wicked devoureth iniquity,\u201d \u201che drinketh up iniquity like water,\u201d but they who hunger and thirst for righteousness unto God, so hunger and thirst also unto their neighbour. Their delight is in goodness, \u201cand they shall be filled.\u201d Oh, blessed assurance! The beatitude of the meek, the inheritance of the earth, held in its awful promise the assured certainty that God would judge the world in righteousness. Whoso arises to hear that beatitude, by the steps of the blessed poverty in spirit, and of the blessed mourning, thence conceives hunger and thirst for the dual righteousness, and so hungering and so thirsting, knows that he shall be filled.
\nThe Lord is known by the judgments which He executeth. The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
\nThe beatitude of the hungry and the thirsty, therefore, gives profound assurance, concerning the brethren as well as concerning ourselves, that every knee shall bow to God, and every tongue confess that He is Lord. We henceforth look upon our brother man with a new reverence, with a new recognition of his worth to ourselves, we conceive personal love to others, and begin to burn with desire to be ourselves beloved by others, knowing they are worthy. We rise to the step where we hear the beatitude of them, who are zealously affectionate.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER XVII<\/p>\n
\u201cBlessed are Merciful, for they shall obtain Mercy\u201d<\/p>\n
The word merciful is a word, which, in the original has another significance than merely that of showing mercy. It signifies the being filled with zeal towards another, the being instinct with personally related vivid benevolence.
\nThey who are here blessed feel within themselves, not only the stirring of personal love towards their neighbours, but also the personal craving and necessity to receive such personal love themselves, for it is said they shall obtain mercy.
\nIt is possible to stand on the first degree of blessedness, and, knowing the beatitude of the Heavens, in the strength of this beatitude to pass into the blessed mourning, and through knowledge of the mourner\u2019s promise of full comfort to go on to the work of the meek, without having attained this personally related grace of giving and desiring personal love.
\nIt requires greater growth in grace than is often met with, for the step to have been taken from a general to a particular benevolence, from a general to an individualised knowledge of, and share in the effecting of God\u2019s purpose of salvation.
\n\u201cMany,\u201d as St. Jerome observed, \u201chave been found ready to die for a cause, but it took the Son of God to die for men.\u201d The same truth applies to the individual Christian. Many are ready to give up time and strength, and to concentrate desire on the establishment of the Kingdom of God, who have never attained to the individually related Christianity.
\nI myself feel that I have hitherto spoken out of the treasures of long experience, but that here I have barely touched the step of progress, and can speak only with the slight and superficial language of a novice. It is a new thing to me to hear this beatitude with other than the mere hearing of the ear.
\nI have in some measure learnt to go on working, waiting on the Lord, ready, in confidence of the far-off result, to forego the present fruit. Even without the inspirations of the Kingdom of the Heavens, we all, by sheer force of years spent under Christian influences, attain more or less to the power and the habit of giving without looking for return, of doing justly, and even kindly, without expecting affection or regard.
\nWhat enormous benevolence is at work among the poor, which makes a boast of being entirely disinterested, looking for nothing again. What self-denying, painful faithfulness to duty goes its way day after day, year after year, without any deviation from the sad patience of doing what is right, without care or concern for any touch of human sympathy.
\nThose who by nature most ardently turn to the creature, and most vividly crave for sympathy, are often the most ready to abjure that craving as idolatrous, and the most liable to allow all hopes of creature communion to die of the inanition of the starved.
\nOur powers of mutual understanding are jarred. There is no sense of security in mutual relationship long possible to us. As the years go on, we learn to be astonished at nothing in the way of mutual misapprehension and false judgment. It is deadening to find another\u2019s affection fail under test, but this is not so deadening as to find, as we are perpetually liable to do, that the friend with whom we have walked for years imputes to us motives and intentions of which we are constitutionally incapable. A friend\u2019s false judgment alienates more than any injury. Nothing is ours inalienably in mutual intercourse, not even the past, for often we may dwell with fondest yearning over this or that time of the past, and picture the mutual relation of that time as blessed and serene, and suddenly find that the correlative of that time nurses memories quite other than ours. We may have dwelt on the sunshine and the flowers, on delights together known, while the one with whom we walked remembers nothing but weariness, and our defects. Our past is not our own, for it is a past encompassed with relations. It lives not in our memories only, but in the memories of all with whom we shared it. Very possibly it only needs some moment of vivid contact with another\u2019s mind and memory to have that past all demolished and deflowered, to leave us incapable of ever living over again that remembered day and hour, without a sneering presence at our side.
\nI think some of us learn to look no more backward than forward, to cease from memories which are necessarily relative, as well as from hopes that are contingent on unknown conditions, to feel that the past is as profoundly unknowable as the future. It is a state of mind in which the Christian learns to \u201ccease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils,\u201d and to live unto God. This sad distrust is a result of experience, compatible with every step we have hitherto taken in the Christian progress up the degrees of beatitude, but a vital change is required, as soon as, hearing the beatitude of those who hunger and thirst after the dual righteousness, we pass on to know the beatitude of the merciful. The touch of that individually related food and drink, which correspond to the hunger and thirst for righteousness, and the hopes of being amply filled with the righteousness of the brethren, awaken in us the personally and individually related Christianity, which gives, and craves to obtain the individually related human beneficence. The knowledge of the dual righteousness has brought us into a place where we must surrender much, not only of the natural results of life\u2019s experience, but also much hardly won, and dearly paid for Christian knowledge. We are emptied from vessel to vessel, out of the repudiation of trust in the creature, into the faith of brotherly love.
\nEven as the day came, when the Israelite Saul, \u201can Hebrew of the Hebrews, as touching the law a Pharisee,\u201d trained in obedience to all statutes, which sharply divided between the seed of Abraham and the outer world, was brought to a place of vision, where all the righteousness of such obedience had to be put away as a thing that had waxed old, as a gain to be counted loss for that Christ, in whom there is neither Jew nor Gentile, but \u201ca new creature,\u201d so the hour has come when the beatitude of the merciful speaks of a God, who includeth all under unbelief that He may have mercy upon all.
\nAs, to the Peter, who with all sincerity had never allowed any unclean thing to enter his mouth, a sheet was let down from Heaven containing both clean and unclean, and a voice spake, saying, \u201cArise, Peter, kill and eat,\u201d \u201cThat which God has cleansed, call not thou common,\u201d so, to him who has hungered and thirsted after righteousness comes the call to live by the brethren, as by those who, whatever they may be in themselves, are the cleansed by God.
\nHere we are made capable of receiving, in practical individual application, the vision that, as by one offence judgment came upon all men to condemnation, so by one righteousness, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. Our eyes are opened to behold the truth that the life, and death, and resurrection of the body of Jesus Christ have not merely a subjective result, but are an independent, effective cause of justification of life for all men.
\nSwift, looking upon the world of his day, said that if the belief in Christ were universally to disappear to-day, the world would go on to-morrow as to-day. Arthur Clough cried, with bitter refrain, \u201cChrist is not risen; Christ is not risen.\u201d \u201cModern Christianity is a civilised heathenism\u201d is the name chosen for his work by one, who speaks much bitter truth.
\nIf the only value of Christianity lay in the number of those who devoted themselves to the imitation of Christ in His public career, it might indeed be said that Christianity is a gigantic failure. But the true value of Christianity lies in the person and work of Jesus Christ Himself. Faith may fail upon earth, but nothing can do away with that free justification of life, which has come upon all men by the raising again of that Incarnate God whom men have crucified. By reason of this universal redemption, the flocks of the last judgment appear, not as flocks of clean beasts and herds of unclean beasts, but as flocks of sheep and of goats, animals alike clean, and alike fit for the table of man and the altar of God. By reason of this universal redemption, a universal sanctification must finally ensue. We are all redeemed from the powers of death and hell, and the certainty of this, in measure as we have eaten and drunk of the dual righteousness, quickens us with individualising love, strong to trust, and able to endure in vital longings of human affection towards companions and friends. We abjure the righteousness so painfully learnt of disinterestedness, and live by the sacred yearnings of personality.
\nI look upon my Lord and see that thus He did, He of whom it was said, \u201cHe did not commit Himself unto them, because He knew all, and needed not that any should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.\u201d He avoided not the traitor\u2019s kiss, and confided the feeding of His flocks to the disciple who had denied Him. And I desire to follow Him, whose power lay in His recognition of the Divine in man. He believed in the faculty of God-consciousness which is in man, and believing in it manifested the Father.
\nAccording to our faith it is unto us.
\nOh! God quicken in me the personally related Christianity, that I may give and obtain that personal love in which Thou delightest.
\nThe word translated merciful has, according to Gesenius, the meaning of personally related ardent affection, but it includes all beneficence; very especially does it include the forgiveness of another\u2019s trespasses.
\nNot without significance is the forgiveness of sins, as an article of belief, spoken of, after the communion of saints. As our Saviour shows us in the children\u2019s prayer, our Father\u2019s forgiveness can be known only after we have conceived desires for His Kingdom, and have received our daily bread from His hand.
\nOur narrow hearts conceive of God as of a hard man, whose presence we can approach only through a bought and paid for forgiveness. The Son\u2019s witness of the Father is, that after He has inspired our hearts with yearnings for our home, after He has drawn near to us with the bread and wine of righteousness, He calls upon us by the exercise of mercy to obtain mercy, by the exercise of forgiveness to know our own forgiveness. This is a place where many searchings of the heart take place, where many thrusts of the two-edged sword are known, where the spirit of burning exercises purging influence on our souls.
\nLord, I dare not write as if I knew aught but desire here.
\nYet search me, and see what evil way is in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
\nThe exercise of Thy Spirit, in the personally related Christianity of the merciful, makes me aware of the approach of some ineffable revelation of personal relation to me in Thee. Not that the knowledge of that personal relation in Thee to me is a new thing, for it has been known on every step of Thy beatitudes, but that it now approaches with a new significance, and flushes life with a new consciousness.
\nA new desire arises. It is not enough that Thy purpose should succeed. I long personally to be beloved by the brethren, and in and through them by Thee. That love which has been known as between Thee and me, I desire to find at the hands of my brethren. The Father\u2019s welcome must be echoed by that of His servants, and repeated by the brother. Oh! Thou who art the Merciful, Thy mercy has been shown by Thy seeking to reconcile the world unto Thyself, Thy mercy, becoming incarnate in Thy sons, causes them so to desire to reconcile others unto themselves, and this is the promise unto the merciful, that they shall obtain mercy.
\nThe exercise of the individually related Christianity necessitates a constant purging process of keeping ourselves unspotted from the world;\u201d for, on the one hand, it is a place where the tempter most readily deceives us, and causes us to mistake the self-seeking and law-despising good nature of vanity and worldliness for the love of the brethren, which animates the merciful; and, on the other hand, the true exercise of this mercy cuts with a two-edged sword, laying bare and reproving every remnant of the world\u2019s stain that is in us. The true exercise of this grace is necessarily secret and private. It seeks the brother in private, tells of faults between me and thee in loneliness, seeks to give and receive in \u201cthe secret place of Love.
\nThere is no desecrating publicity possible for this mercifulness, no retailing of its experiences, no invitation given to any witness save God Himself. Yet it is incapable of absurd precautions and subterfuges to conceal itself. It is free as love is free. Its left hand knows not what its right doeth, and meddles not with the work of blessing, either to publish or to hide, for the very consciousness of the presence of the blame or praise of men must be purged out of the hearts of the merciful; all impulses of the lower nature must here be cast out. Inevitably, from such a place we rise to be pure in heart. We receive first-fruits of the promise that God will unite our heart to fear His name.
\nIn the physical body we have \u201ca heart and a heart,\u201d but this dual heart acts with one beat, and performs its twofold work as with one will. The health and life of the body depends upon both valves of the heart working together. Death would ensue were either silenced.
\nIn our spiritual selves the same truth reigns. We have the twofold heart to give, and to receive\u2014the twofold relation to a multiple body. The body of the bones, the body of the nerves, the body of the flesh must all be nourished and fed by the dual action of the heart. In the perfect man the body that is hidden, and the body that is manifest must alike be honoured. When I am wearied with the inward strife of the spirit that lusteth against the flesh, and the flesh that lusteth against the spirit, the temptation is often strong to cast myself into \u201cthe falsehood of extremes,\u201d to condemn all cravings towards the creature as evil absurdities, sinful futilities to be abolished, but the over-mastering witness that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh holds me in prayer, in crying out for the \u201cadoption, to wit the redemption of the body,\u201d with all its desires, whether those desires be, as it were, of the bones to be hidden, or of the flesh to see and be seen face to face, to touch and be touched hand to hand.
\nI pray for a single heart; single, not as devoid of the perfect duality, but as united, made one, to fear the name of the Lord; I pray to be pure, not as water that can be polluted, but as light that can pass through pollution unpolluted, as life, as fire, that at touch of life my life may be increased, at touch of fire my fire may be quickened.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER XVIII<\/p>\n
\u201cBlessed are the Pure in Heart, for they shall see God\u201d<\/p>\n
I have said that I feel that I have myself reached only the step, where the soul is instructed in the beatitude of the merciful, and that I am no more capable of speaking, as hitherto, out of the treasures of personal experience. Still, somewhat I can say, \u201cThey that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.\u201d
\nThis apparent anticlimax\u2014first flight, then running, then walking\u2014is strictly true of the Christian\u2019s experience. He is not called to rise by painful steps of the moral law to God. He is at once endowed with eagle\u2019s wings to soar to the highest, from Him to descend with increasing power of steadfast manifestation of sonship among men. Even as the eagle\u2019s eyes behold the whole land from his lofty height, so the eyes of those, who wait upon the Lord, behold in their first soaring flight all the places where, in renewed strength, they shall learn to walk. I have seen and can speak of that, into which I yet must be brought. I have gazed from the heights of transcendent vision upon lands of far distances, where I was afterwards brought to run, with the runner\u2019s knowledge of the stumbling-blocks and pitfalls, and yet again was brought to tread with the circumspection and calm discretion of one who walks and does not faint; and that which hath been shall be, concerning all that the Spirit seeks for my inheritance.
\nThe Scriptures abound with touches descriptive of the pure in heart, who shall see God.
\n\u201cThe sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?\u201d \u201cOur God is a consuming fire.\u201d To dwell with Him is to dwell with everlasting burnings, for He is Love, and love is strong as death; jealousy cruel as the grave; the coals thereof are coals of fire, a flame of Yah. Who shall dwell with such a God? Well may the hypocrites, who have professed to desire His appearing, be surprised with fearfulness.
\n\u201cHe that walketh in righteousness, and speaketh uprightness; he that despiseth the gain of deceits, that shaketh his hand from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of bloods, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil; he shall dwell on high.\u201d \u201cThine eyes shall see the King in His Beauty.\u201d
\n\u201cJehovah, who shall abide in Thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in Thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart. He that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbour, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbour. In whose eyes a vile person is contemned; but he honoureth them that fear Jehovah. He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not. He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent. He that doeth these things shall never be moved.\u201d
\n\u201cWho shall ascend into the hill of Jehovah, or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from Jehovah, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is the generation of them that seek Him, that seek Thy face, O God of Jacob.\u201d
\nWould we know if we are pure in heart, let us not cast ourselves into baffling introspection of spiritual yearnings and inward desires, for the tests given are all easy to apply, and all consist of outward manifestations of conduct among men. A healthy heart shows itself in a healthy body, and a pure heart must be made evident by purity of life.
\nIf we are given to mean gossip; if we circulate scandals; if we are apt to say things behind our neighbour\u2019s backs, which we would not say to their faces; let our attendance on the offices of religion be what it may; let our giving of alms, and works of benevolence abound; let our knowledge of Scripture be deep, and our visions sublime, we are not pure in heart, we are not fit to see God.
\nIf our speaking of truth be merely superficial and verbal; if our hold of truth be such, as can be easily shaken by pressure of expediency, and gusts of temptation, let us not deceive ourselves, we are not pure in heart; Ave cannot abide in the tabernacle of Jehovah, for there he alone can dwell, who \u201cspeaketh the truth in his heart, who sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not.\u201d
\nIf we are spotted with the world, and give honour, on the world\u2019s principles, to those who have rank, or money, or position, without reference to character; if we do as the world does, and forgive and forget all iniquities, where advantage serves, and coldly and cruelly thrust down all offenders, where our \u201cset\u201d so decrees; we may rank high in the religious world, but we shall not see God.
\nLet not the man who, being a shopkeeper, sells adulterated goods, passes off damaged stock, or gives short measure, lay store by his church membership, or his influence in the congregation, for he is not pure in heart. Let not the lawyer who, for gain, perverts the cause of the righteous, and taketh reward against the innocent; let not the speculator who, for the sake of usury, risks the welfare of those who trust him, let no father or mother, master or mistress, servant or child, who in daily mutual intercourse forgets honesty, truth, and faithfulness, presume to expect the vision of God.
\nIt must, I think, here strike every one, as it has often struck me, that this well-balanced, strong, pure morality, is oftener found in men who are not spiritually-minded, than in those who are.
\nThere are men in whom God seems immanent, moving in an instinctive morality, as unconsciously perfect as is instinct in the beast.
\nThere are, again, men to whom God seems objective; whose desires are ever kindling after Him, whose impulses are constantly to know His mysteries. The spiritually-minded belong very largely to the latter class, and it is true, though strange, that it is not amongst these that we do, as a rule, find the natural nobility of natural truth.
\nI have had many thoughts upon this subject, a few of which I will venture to speak in this place.
\nI. I feel that it is strictly in keeping with the wonder of God\u2019s mercy, that He should lay hold, first, of those who are in themselves the least godlike among men, and choose \u201cfoolish things of the world to confound the wise; and weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory before God;\u201d but that \u201che that glorieth should glory in the Lord.\u201d
\nII. I feel that they who are the called of the Lord are come, not only to Mount Sion and the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, and to the general assembly and church of the firstborn which is written in heaven, but also to God, who is the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of the New Covenant, who makes of two one new man, and to the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than that of Abel, even the things of brotherly love, whereby the family of man is no more divided. The just man, who by his actions proves that his heart is pure, shall be perfected, shall see God. I believe, in all simplicity, the word that says, \u201cTo him that ordereth his conversation aright, will I show the salvation of God.\u201d
\nI know that human morality is not enough, that there is a SALVATION still to be shown to the upright man, but am certain that this, if not shown here, shall be entered into hereafter. Many shall come from the east and from the west, and shall come and sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, while the children of the kingdom are cast out. But while I thus give \u201chonour where honour is due,\u201d wherever I mark \u201cthe upright man,\u201d whether he be able or not to understand the speech which seems to me spiritual, still I do feel that the Scripture ideal of the man, who shall see God, is quite other than that of a mere moralist. The tests given, if taken in their entirety, require a strong hold of the knowledge that there is One God, and beside Him is no other.
\nThe pure in heart \u201cstoppeth his ears from hearing of bloods, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil.\u201d \u201cWho is blind but my servant? or deaf, as my messenger that I sent? Who is blind as he that is perfect, and blind as the Lord\u2019s servant?\u201d
\nLet us seek the knowledge of what science tells us concerning physical hearing, that we may understand this word.
\nWe see and hear through sympathy. All the intelligence of the outer world which we receive is through motion. \u201cIt is (says Tyndal) the motion excited by sugar in the nerves of taste, which, transmitted to the brain, produces the sensation of sweetness; while bitterness is the result of motion produced by aloes. It is the motion excited in the nerves of the nose, which announces itself to the brain as scent. It is the motion imparted by the sunbeams to the optic nerve, which, when it reaches the brain, awakes the consciousness of light, while a similar motion, imparted to other nerves, resolves itself into heat.\u201d
\nThis motion is not a movement of the nerve as a whole, but a vibration or tremor of the small particles of which the nerve is composed. Different nerves are suited to take up the different news of the outer world, and tell them to the brain. \u201cThe nerves of taste, for instance,\u201d to quote Tyndal again, \u201ccannot tell the brain of light, nor can the nerves of sight inform the brain of sound.\u201d Sound is a motion of the particles of air. In the same way as our nerves vibrate, the air vibrates. Sound passes through the air by one particle communicating its tremor to another, and it is heard by us through the particles of air, which fill the ear, delivering up their motion to the nerves of hearing. How these nerves converse with the mind we cannot tell; but there is great interest in the thought of how they receive the vibrations of the air, which constitute sound.
\nLet us take two tuning-forks which sound the same notes, place them mounted on sounding-boards eighteen inches apart from one another, and draw a bow vigorously across one; if after it has sounded a while, we stop its sounding, the sound is still heard for the untouched tuning-fork is giving out the same note. The fork removed from its sounding-board, held free in air, though thrown into vibration, is not heard, but bring it close to a silent fork of the same pitch, and a full mellow sound at once begins, due not to the tuning-fork which has been originally struck, but to its untouched sympathetic neighbour. If the two forks were not in full sympathy, prepared by their conditions to sound the same note, the one would in no way take up the sound, or, to speak truly, the movement of the other. Now, according to Tyndal, \u201cour nerve of hearing is probably set in motion by bodies associated with it, which are capable of entering into sympathetic vibrations with the different waves of sound.\u201d In the labyrinth of the ear, he says, there is a wonderful musical instrument, with its chords so stretched as to accept vibrations of different periods, and transmit them to the nerve filaments which traverse it. This musical instrument is composed of 3,000 microscopic strings. These strings are not exposed to the vibrations of the air directly. Those vibrations pass through many most marvellous conductors, before the inner lute of 3,000 strings is reached. The labyrinth of the ear, in which the lute is found, is itself sheltered from the drum of the ear by a bony partition in which are two holes closed with fine membranes. The labyrinth is filled with water. When the membranes next it receive vibrations, they transmit these vibrations to the water, and the water transmits them to the chords, nor only to the chords, but to other musical instruments, which lie in the same water. Within this water grow exceedingly fine elastic bristles fitted each to take up different vibrations. These in their turn stir the nerve fibres, which lie between their roots, and which transmit their vibrations to the brain. At another place in the labyrinth there are little crystalline particles embedded among the nerves, which vibrate with different periods, and subserve a different purpose to the bristles. \u201cThey are fitted by their weight to accept, and prolong vibrations of evanescent sound, which might otherwise escape being heard.\u201d
\nI have been diffuse in my abstract from Tyndal in hopes of being understood the better, when I say again that we hear through sympathy. The nerves of taste do not vibrate in unison with the vibrations of air which convey sound, so do not tell us of music. The nerves of the eye, which vibrate in unison with the vibrations of ether, cannot take up the vibrations of sound, so they also do not tell us of music.
\nWhoso is pure in heart is in sympathy with God, and strives to deaden his perceptions of all that is not of God. He strives to become as it were dead to all that is not vibrating with the living God. He stoppeth his ears from the hearing of bloods, from the hearing of the mutually destroying, and mutually cursing claims of Panthea\u2019s children. He shutteth his eyes from seeing evil, from seeing the powers of regnant wrong. He strives so to deaden himself to the scene where the Devil boasts \u201cAll this is delivered unto me,\u201d that his own consciousness may know of no presence save of God. God the Creator, God the Preserver, God the Redeemer, God the Sanctifier, God visits and chastens him, God sacrificially uses him; for him the wicked are not. His own trespasses against others he looks upon as sin against God. Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight. He learns and knows that, when others sin against himself, God is drawing near to enlarge, and to chasten the soul He educates to dwell with Himself.
\nThe Scripture ideal of the pure in heart is one that requires the soul to know and to acknowledge the One God. This knowledge and acknowledgment existed in pure-hearted men before any creeds were formulated, and exists now in many, who reject these formulas now that they are enunciated.
\nIt seems to me that as a step of progress in the Christian life, this purity of heart is a place of recognition of a great brotherhood of purity. Here the Christian passes on from the personally related love of the brethren, of which we have already spoken, to the knowledge of a kindred with all that is honest, just, pure, lovely and of good report. From this mountain top the Christian sees where many lofty ranges parley with the skies. And it does not surprise me that this purity of heart, which in other parts of Scripture I find spoken of as the condition, to which is promised the vision of the salvation of God, should in this place be a step so far on in the experience of those, who have already tasted the salvation of God. For, judging by my own experience, I know that the entrance of the spiritual life into our mortal bodies often has its first results in increased failure, and that many years are required for the perfecting of purity. I have seen in the earthly life, if man or woman conceives love for another, in kind and degree greater than is truly relative to that lover\u2019s trained powers of loving action, then the very magnitude of the love so dwelling in a body whose faculties are not according to its measure, is certain to result in failures and inconsistencies, greater than would otherwise have been. We often sin most against the one we love most, just because the love we have there conceived is such as finds in us no \u201cbody fitted for it.\u201d In the same way the higher spiritual life may, and often does, actually trouble and decrease our apparent beauty of action, striving in us till it has \u201cthe body fitted for it.\u201d This body fitted for the Spirit, this pure heart, with correspondent pure action when it is found in the spiritually born, is as much more glorious than the pure heart and corresponding pure action which may belong to the unregenerate, as the Spirit of God is greater than the spirit of man, as the body of the resurrection shall be greater than the body of mortality.
\nThe later beatitudes move in Resurrection Life. We have already found that, in the beatitude of the merciful, we had to pass on from the repudiation of the creature to the love of the brethren. Here we have to pass on from the repudiation of our own righteousness, to the perfect morality. And the beatitude, which speaks to us of an objective God, still further calls up into resurrection life the longings, which had been in the lower life condemned as idolatry. I know no longing so terrible, no urgency so imperative, as the soul\u2019s natural longing to see its God. How often must we find our idols crumble into dust, before we cease our mad efforts at snatching at our veneration\u2019s Heaven. An unseen God can never satisfy us. \u201cBlessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed,\u201d for \u201cHe shall appear.\u201d As this life\u2019s deadening touch subdues our aspirations, we do (oh! with what fearful facility) cease from the longings, and die to the desires, which troubled our yearning youth. But we cannot hear the beatitude of the pure in heart, without knowing the call to arise from the dead, that Christ may give us light. Oh! may God be then with us, making us willing to arise, and again to stretch forth hands that feel after God.<\/p>\n
In a waking dream I once found myself lying in an open grave. I was alone, and I was powerless to move, but the grave was open, and my eyes were open, and I saw an angel dancing in the skies. I saw him by his own light, for no sun, nor moon, nor stars were there; but only that beautiful angel moving in mazes of wondrous rapture. And I became aware that the angel\u2019s eyes were always fixed on me, and that, wherever he moved in his mystic measures, he looked on me. And consciousness awakened in me, that he gazed on me with love so intense, that he drew the whole impulse of his motion from me. From every point of my body to every point of his, streamed rays of vital connection; and I knew that I was sunk in the sunless roots of being, and that this angel was, as it were, my flower. His beauty had its genesis and sustenance, as it were, in my failures and my grave; and I knew not which was sweeter, his large freedom in the skies, or my bondage in the grave, for he drew his impulses through his loving gaze on me, and I could look on him. And I knew that none could see him, but I only. Would any know either him or me, such knowledge could be only by identification with either him or me. I felt willing to lie there for all eternity, so only that living bond were never broken and never adulterated.
\nWhen I returned to the light of the common day, I knew that I had realised my part in the body of great humanity, above whose grave was shining the unspeakable loveliness of an incarnate God, whose every attribute drew, as it were, sustenance and impulse from the body of the beloved. In my waking dream I felt that I was content to lie in that grave to all eternity, so only that I should always see that angel, and know of his love. But, as years passed on, I knew that it is these angels that behold the face of the Father in Heaven. It is the one great Angel of the Covenant, the Only Begotten Son of God, who alone hath seen the Father, and hath declared Him, and that I, if I would behold God, must myself arise, and in like manner move above the earth, in the Heavens of Peace. And after many years the angel of my dream seemed to be one with that Word of God, which is often said to be purified, refined, as silver tried in a furnace of earth purified seven times, which is \u201cdistilled as the dew.\u201d There are many Hebrew words all alike translated \u201cWord\u201d in our version. This word which is distilled and refined I found was the feminine Imrah.
\nHow can any Word of God become purified? Obviously such a word must be a word identified with the receiver of it, must be a word wedded to the receiver, and capable of manifestation only in alliance with the individual receiver. It is the word which enters with Joseph into prison, there to try him, and with the oppressed poor and the sighing needy these words are tried and purified. Ehl, whose way is perfect, makes, by means of this purified word, the way of His servant perfect also. It is a word hidden in the heart, to keep its recipient from sin. It is a quickening word, which comforts in affliction, and is the reward of all who keep Jehovah\u2019s precepts. It is the word for meditation in the night watches. Sweeter than honey are these words, words of comfort, words of righteousness for which the eyes fail, if they be withdrawn. In measure as the receiver of this word becomes purified, the word received becomes purified also, for it is a word which identifies itself with the receiver, until at last the feminine Imrah comes forth, not having spot nor wrinkle, nor any such thing; but holy and without blemish, ready to be wedded to the anointed Word of God. It is the word of jealousy over woman, essentially private in its reception, not to be uttered in the market place, nor heard clamouring in the streets. This is the word which identifies itself with the pure in heart, and for the coming unto me, and abiding with me of this word, I daily pray, that I may see God.
\nI stay myself upon the hope of this word which has its very life by and with me, in my individual necessities of purging and purifying, and only by reason of its indwelling do I dare to look for the vision of God.
\nOur God is a consuming fire. So terrible is His appearing that His prophet cries to them who have wrought His judgment, still to seek righteousness, and to those who are meek, still to seek meekness, and even then to stand in awe, \u201cit may be, ye shall be hid in the day of Jehovah\u2019s anger.\u201d Therefore blessed be the word of promise that he, who hath clean hands and a pure heart, shall \u201creceive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.\u201d
\nAnd what is this vision of God for which the pure in heart may long?
\n\u201cEye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things, which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed unto us by the Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.\u201d
\nLet us each exercise ourselves in the personal question asked of the Spirit, What is the vision of God for which I long, and for which I am being prepared? The answer to such a question must necessarily be in large measure incommunicable.
\nYet, let us hold firmly to the truth, that there is a self-existent One God, an objective Reality, therefore let us with fear and trembling wait upon all revelations which He has vouchsafed to humanity.
\nOur relation with Him, and our vision of Him must indeed be essentially individual. Each one of those who look for that vision can say, \u201cI shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not a stranger.\u201d Yet that individual vision can be ours, only as in vital unity with the revelations given to all men. Therefore while we enter more and more deeply into the secret place of individual relationship to God, let us be careful to keep our hearts ever humble, and ready to receive the revelations given to all men through Nature, through Providence, through the Churches, and above all through the person of Jesus Christ, that so our time be not lost in a vain dream of God.
\nFor me, my abiding dream of God is, that with Him is plenteous redemption.<\/p>\n
On Giotto\u2019s Campanile at Florence is a sculpture which many call by the name of Architecture. It may be meant for a symbol of architecture, but, if so, it is of the architecture of a bell tower, perhaps of the very bell tower upon which the sculpture is placed. A bell tower is the sign of the creed, to whose expressions and services the bells call worshippers to come.
\nThis tower is represented as being built round a giant man. Puny workers, lifted up on scaffolding, pile brick upon brick, striving to enclose the grand giant. They have built high enough to hide his lower limbs. He stands in the midst, one hand grasping an enormous club, the other raised with deprecating gesture; his face is full of pleading and of warning. The puny workers work on unheeding. We feel, as we look, that the time must come when that Great One, whom the framers of the creeds strive to enclose in buildings made with hands, will with one blow shatter their poor device, and from amongst the ruins of their work, He will walk forth free.
\nI feel very sure that no dream, that was ever formed into a temple for the living God, can stand the day of His arising. But this I know, that I can form no dream too great, no hope too unlimited for the living God. With Him is plenteous redemption. Therefore I pray that my dream of God may not be of such narrowing brick-built towers as these, but may rather be, however small in comparison with God, yet living, living as is the Lamb of God, the little lamb of God.
\nAnd here let me describe another picture I have seen.
\nUpon the verge of a lofty precipice an angel stands, looking up to Heaven with face of intense appeal. His hands hold a triple church, symbol of the three-fold seed of woman, the living race of man\u2014where on either side of that faithful Abel, who being dead yet speaketh, rise the generations of the dual spheres. This three-fold seed of woman is the triple church the angel bears, and has, as it were, formed into a sanctuary for the living God. A sanctuary how small! How inadequate! The angel of that Church stands in peril, trembling in lonely yearning \u201con the unenvied station of the rock,\u201d trembling in sight and hearing of the immeasurable Heavens, and the unfathomable deep. \u201cWill God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, the Heaven and the Heaven of Heavens cannot contain Thee; how much less this house that I have built?\u201d
\nAnd as we look at that angel and his offering, we perceive that one shell has arisen, wafted upwards from that \u201ceternal deep, haunted for ever by the eternal mind,\u201d and out of that one little shell there ripples a sanctuary of delight, formed of ordered flow on either hand of unfolding leaf and flower. Out of that one shell, the marvel of roses, and lilies of the valley, and starry flowers emerge, sufficient for a sanctuary of delight, large enough to enclose the angel and his church in a temple, whose flower bells ring the matins of a larger world. Yet this greater temple with its tender ministries holds for its central vision, for its treasure, the angel and the church. Even so the ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands of Heaven, and earth, and sea encompass with delight that which, though it be, in comparison with the infinite God, but as is a little lamb to man, is still the vision of all visions, the delighted in of woman and of God, the portion of the bride, the little Lamb of God.
\nI know, I know right well that all human knowledge together taken, and all human dreams and visions together uttered, are but small in comparison with the Infinite God, but this also I know, that His Infinitude, with all its rich possibilities, flows round this lovely angel, and accepts this central church of the woman\u2019s seed. Therefore I am bold to dream of God.
\nAnd yet another picture let me speak of.
\nAn unwinged human child kneels upon a great leaf, blowing bubbles from a pipe. Behind it stands its angel, holding a large bubble in its hand. Two others beside the babe hold bubbles also, and, though their faces are wan and haggard, they point upwards to an angel of immense stature, who with the one hand encourages the child to blow on, and with the other holds concealed a large cluster of bubbles which are changing into the grapes of God.
\nAt sight of this simple thing I smiled; for I knew, full well I knew, that I too was sending forth reasonings and fancies, which were but as the bubbles of the infant\u2019s pipe. I knew that around me too were angels watching, some perhaps with faces wan enough with long watching of many bubbles, breaking as soon as they appeared, yet, with knowledge of the great angel of the church, who can and does take the children\u2019s fancies as they rise, and keep them in his great hand preparing for fruition.
\nTherefore I am bold, not only to dream of seeing God, my God, whom mine eyes shall behold and not another, but I also dare to dream of being myself likened unto God, and conceive desires of being myself recognised as being a child of God.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER XIX<\/p>\n
\u201cBlessed are the Peacemakers, for they shall be called the Children of God\u201d<\/p>\n
Again I say I speak as a novice here. Peace in the Hebrew tongue is synonymous with health. There is no peace, saith my God, for the wicked. Spiritual peace, like physical peace, can only be where there is spiritual health in the body. The pure in heart alone have peace. When the Psalmist prays for the lifting up upon us of that light of God\u2019s countenance, which is promised to the pure in heart, he adds, let this be to the end \u201cthat Thy way may be known upon earth, Thy saving health or peace among all nations.\u201d They, that being pure in heart have the saving health, necessarily long to impart that health to others, and to work the work of peace. But, even as in the physical body, he who would work the work of peace must often, where disease lurks, use means repugnant to the quivering flesh, so also must it often be with him who walks among his fellows instinct with the desires of spiritual peace.
\nHe to whom God gave the covenant of His peace was Phinehas, representative of the righteousness of fiery jealousy.
\nHe, who is the Supreme Peace, says of Himself that He came not to send peace, but a sword.
\nThe place, in which God says He will give peace, is a place of a strange revealing of the people\u2019s uncleanness, and of the uncleanness of their work.
\nPardon what may seem digressive, and permit me, before entering on thoughts concerning our individual work of peace, to say a few words on that book of Haggai which holds the promise of peace.
\nThe word of the Lord by Haggai came in five messages. First, it called upon the people to consider how little return any received for labour, how baffling God\u2019s providence proved to all their calculations, and told them that this troubling of their peace was because of the Lord\u2019s jealousy concerning His House which they neglected. Upon this the people obeyed, and feared before the Lord. Resultant on their obedience came a word of encouragement. \u201cI am with you,\u201d saith the Lord. So the Lord stirred up the spirit of governor, priest, and people. We are told by Ezra that those who had seen the first temple in its glory wept aloud when the foundations of the second temple were laid\u2014good cause had they for weeping, for by reason of the disappearance of the ark, the holy of holies in the second temple was perforce empty, and the Shekinah would there find no cherubim on which to rest. The third word of the Lord by Haggai was in answer to this weeping. The third message by Haggai told them that the glory of the house of the Lord is in His presence. He who can, and will, shake the heavens and the earth, the sea, and the dry land, and all nations, and by reason of the terrible shaking make all hearts desirous of peace, will in that house fulfil that desire, and in that place give peace. Silver and gold are the Lord\u2019s, He requires not at men\u2019s hands offerings or gifts. He, Himself, with His own presence, will fill that house with glory. Thus the people were taught that the Lord of Hosts was jealous over them with the jealousy of love, with the jealousy of a God, who would have His people God-remembering and God-honouring; and not with the requirements of an idol, which needeth gifts. For us, who have the light of history beating upon this page, there exists a word of power within this word. We know that the actual building upon which the people were then engaged did not last long. It was destroyed more than once before the true ark of the convenant of peace, the child Jesus, was borne within the temple precincts. Antiochus Epiphanes, B.C. 175, pillaged and desecrated that building, and dedicated it to Jupiter Olympus. It became so desolate that it was overgrown with vegetation. Judas Maccabeus restored it B.C. 165; Pompey attacked it, B.C. 63, and entered the Holy of Holies; Herod the Great, B.C. 37, destroyed its outer walls, and removed most of the older structure, and, to please the people, built a magnificent new temple. The actual building within which the Christ stood was the temple adorned with all riches by the popularity-seeking and abominable Herod. Yet in the sight of the Lord of Hosts, the house built in the days of Haggai, and the house standing in the day of Christ, are one\u2014being the outward expression of the one spiritual period of the purpose of God. To understand this, let us pass on to the fourth message by the Prophet Haggai. This was a word spoken to the priests. It called their attention to the law by which holy flesh, carried by anyone, did not endow that one with the power of communicating holiness to aught that he touched; whilst, on the other hand, if one had but touched the dead, uncleanness was communicated to all over which his garment passed. Nothing could be more powerful than this contrasted powerlessness of good and power of evil, for in the first case the holy thing itself was actually present, carried in the garment, while in the second case the unclean thing was not itself present; yet in the one case the holy thing, actually present, communicated no holiness, and in the other case the unclean thing, which was not present, having been but touched, communicated illimitable uncleanness. This contrast is all the more powerful, seeing that the holy thing is the same as the unclean thing, viz., flesh, the body of the dead. The holy thing and the unclean thing were both dead. Therefore the priests must have known that the mere fact of touching a dead body did not constitute uncleanness, for no one could perform the priest\u2019s office without touching the dead beast. That which was offered in sacrifice was holy, and not unclean, because it witnessed of that wondrous unity of love, whereby God\u2019s altar was identified with the human need, and the enmity of death thereby abolished. To touch the dead is to pass out of that unity of life by sacrifice, wherein God suffers not His holy one to see corruption. To touch the dead is to suffer our souls to enter into knowledge of the destructions of the enemy, rather than into the vision of the ever-present God, the resurrection and the life. With the priests, whose lips should keep knowledge, God reasoned out of their own law, that the people, in thus weeping for the perished glory of their destroyed temple, were spiritually touching the dead, and were, therefore, unclean, and imparting uncleanness to all their work and all their offering, while the dedication to the service of the Lord of such work and such offering did not avail to impart holiness to the people, any more than did the holy flesh carried in the garment impart holiness to aught that it touched. Yet the Lord would accept the people\u2019s work and offering. In this reasoning there was communicated to the priests a deeper, fuller revelation of the love, which had prompted God to seek the building of the temple at their hands than had been given before to the people. To the people it had been spoken that the silver and the gold are the Lord\u2019s, and that He requireth not gifts at men\u2019s hands, but only the fruit of righteous remembrance of God, and loving exalting of His service. The Lord revealed Himself to the people as jealous over them for their righteousness. To the priests it was revealed that the best righteousness which the people can offer is as uncleanness in the Lord\u2019s sight, and that He is jealous over them not as requiring righteousness at their hands, but only as seeking to bless them, and to do them good. He desires to bring them near unto Himself, not as one who will be served, for their best service is unclean, but as one who can bless only those, who turn to Him with hearts willing and obedient. After this, for the fifth time, the word of the Lord came by Haggai to the governor of Judah, declaring that a time was coming, when God should terribly shake all principalities and powers, and should cause all those that ride in chariots and ride on horses to come down every man by the sword of his brother. In that day of universal shaking and destroying of all trust in the powers of the flesh, the only thing that should remain unshaken should be the individualising election of God. The freely chosen of the Lord of Hosts, His \u201cborn at Babylon\u201d (such is the meaning of the name Zerubbabel) shall in that day be as the signet of the Lord of Hosts. Precious word! The seal of the living God has a twofold inscription. First, \u201cthe Lord knoweth them that are His,\u201d and, secondly, \u201clet every one that nameth the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.\u201d This twofold inscription on the one seal gives us the unity of the two contrasted principles of love; the principles of that sphere which requires attribute as the necessary condition of all relationship, and, on the other hand, the principle of that sphere which acknowledges the inalienable sacred tie of blood without respect to any attribute. These two principles were manifested in the two generations of man in order reverse to that of the seal. The generation of Cain, the seed of woman, having for its principle the spiritual relationship of likeness in tastes and pursuits, was first born, and the generation of Seth, the Son of man, having for its principle the inalienable personal tie of the begetters of sons and daughters, came second in order. In the seal of God it is first the inalienable personal tie\u2014\u201cThe Lord knoweth them that are his;\u201d and, secondly, the requirement, \u201cLet every one that nameth the name of the Lord depart from iniquity.\u201d This seal of the living God is the spiritual reality, of which circumcision, the seal of Faith, is the symbol.
\nTherefore, when Jesus speaks of Himself as the Life Giver, He speaks of Himself as the sealed of God. As the sealed of God the Father, the Son of Man is the Giver of Eternal Life. His servant brought back from the land of the enemy, His servant born in Babylon, born under outcasting judgment, shall be upon the finger of God as the very signet, wherewith He seals other sons unto regenerative and life-giving power.
\nGreater, fuller, more amazing revelation of peace, the peace of God which passes all understanding, could not be, than in such a place as is built under the power of such a prophecy. Under that power the widow\u2019s mite is acceptable in the sight of God, though it be cast into the treasury of a temple built by a Herod, governed by Ananias and Caiaphas, and doomed to destruction for having rejected the Christ; of a temple whose innermost sanctuary was empty, and whose walls were unclean. And our work of peace must, as it were, repeat the work of our Father\u2019s peace. Sooner or later, I believe, in every relationship of life, there comes the revelation of the Father\u2019s peace in the place of human failure.
\nIf we do not often realise this, it is because, we are, for the most part, seldom touched by the fiery finger of strong Love, and therefore seldom experience in any relationship the terrible shakings, with which He shakes, not earth, only, but also Heaven, that, before His awful sincerity, all that can be shaken may pass away; and that only remain which is of God, and is God. But though we, who are but half awake, for the most part seldom know this awful work of peace, there are among us prophets who speak, and natural priests of Love\u2019s Great Temple who hear, and who understand the dread word of Peace, the lovely, precious word of Peace, and who walk among the people, knowing, seeing that they are in their best services polluted, yet accepted of God. These speak of a Peace such as the world knoweth not of. The Father\u2019s Peace is signed upon them. They have seen the Christ, and in and by Him known the Father.
\nAnd they know that the Father\u2019s peace is signed upon many a son well beloved, though he be in open revolt.
\nThey are at peace with God, for they have laid hold of His strength to make peace with Him.
\nThey are at peace in themselves, for they have renounced all thought of acceptance with God or man, except by Love.
\nThey are at peace with men, for they stand where Peace has found them in the very hour of the piercing revelation of their own weakness.
\nBut, if such a one puts out his hand to the work of peace, it is as in the sincerity of truth.
\nThere is in his action no lowering of just demand. No hollow truce-making with aught that is unlike that Ideal of Love, whose touch is Peace.
\nTherefore, he necessarily troubles all who say, \u201cPeace, Peace, where there is no Peace.\u201d
\nHe necessarily is found hateful by a half awake world, which says to the prophets, \u201cProphesy to us smooth things.\u201d He necessarily arouses against himself all those who do not like to retain God in knowledge. All false prophets who are ready for sake of some gain to \u201cprophesy peace,\u201d are enraged at him.
\nIt is deeply significant that Scripture speaks of a great change in the two witnesses, which shall occur immediately preceding the return of \u201cthe Prince of Peace\u201d to His Kingdom. These witnesses are by nature, as \u201cstanding before the Lord of the whole earth,\u201d instinct with the healing virtues of the Olive Tree, they are, as in the sight of God, yielders of oil. Olive trees, media of oil, pipes that empty out the golden oil, light-giving burners of oil, candlesticks. They are \u201csons of oil,\u201d indeed, witnesses of \u201cthe two immutable things,\u201d the Promise to the elect seed of Abraham and of David, and the counsel shown to the Elect, the purpose revealed to the chosen \u201cwhich God has purposed in Himself\u201d to invite all in one salvation, under one Saviour anointed. Those witnesses are witnesses of hope for all, through the election of one, witnesses of an individualising salvation. Witnesses of Jesus, the Saviour, witnesses of Christ, the Anointed\u2014anointed, on earth, only by the hands of forgiven and loving woman, their nature would impel them to speak of peace, their Lord has commanded them to be forgiving. Yet these, in the latter days emit from their mouths devouring fire, and have power to smite the earth with all plagues as often as they will.
\nThere is, in ever-increasing degree, working amongst us, the will of the flesh to cast away all fear of the judgments of God.
\nWho can read the literature, and the news of the day, without perceiving that the heathen are tumultuously assembling to reject the God of Israel, that \u201cthe people\u201d of that God, are themselves \u201cmeditating a vain thing,\u201d and it scarcely needs prophetic revelation for any observer of past times not to be aware that, out of the troubled waves of such assembling and such meditation, there must arise kings and rulers, who shall take counsel against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, \u201cLet us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.\u201d This widespread and powerful contempt of the judgments of the Lord must produce a change in the character of His witnesses. For they who are instinct with the Love which rules the sphere of the inalienable personal ties, must, alike with them who burn with desire of attribute, speak flames in such a day.
\nI feel this change already operating in myself. I, who have from my earliest youth declared the Infinite, unbounded, Hope for All, now feel increasingly urged to call for Fear.
\nI long for a wider diffusion of the Hope I hold so dear, as much for the sake of having the tongues of all preachers loosened concerning Fear as concerning Hope. For, hope of salvation can be a Hope only, in so far as it is recognised that no salvation is possible, except a salvation from our own personally besetting sins. This is not a Gospel easy to preach, nor easy to receive.
\nIt is fatally easy to assent to the proposition that salvation is salvation from sin, so long as no personal application is made of that salvation to our own or to our friend\u2019s personal sins. It is fearfully difficult to bring home to ourselves, or to others, that the only salvation possible is salvation, for each individual in stern personal application, \u201cfrom my squint-eyed vanity, by reason of which I must spiritually appear as leering at the world with one eye, while I look at God with the other; from my delight in the sin and the shame of my neighbour, whereby I must show in the eyes that seeing can see, even such, as is the filth-delighting sow, or the carcase-devouring vulture; from my grasping covetousness; from my readiness to equivocate and lie; from my mean envies, and suicidal jealousies.\u201d No need to run over more of the sins that do so easily beset us. I purposely omit from the list any mention of hasty temper, for it is my experience that the confession of that is always ready. It is a confession easily made, and little humiliating when it is made. Anger, of all human faults, most nearly verges on the noble; when rightfully burning against wrong-doing it is amongst our Divinest treasures. It is, I am sure, one of Satan\u2019s subtlest snares, that we so often readily confess quick temper, to the deadening of our consciences to the presence of meaner propensities.
\nI have upheld the Hope for All, through many years of its evil report. Now a day of its good report is dawning. I feel that increasing faithfulness of opposition to sin is required. How certain is the prospect before me of thereby forfeiting all personal share in that day of good report! How certain the prospect of being myself counted as \u201ca tormentor!\u201d
\nStill I desire to work the work of peace, and to be more than a tottering novice under this beatitude, and that though I know, by that which I have looked upon, that such workers of peace arouse against themselves not only those whose wills are alienated from the judgments of God, but also many who are of the household of faith. I have seen sons of oil, sons of peace, rejected by the brethren.
\nSuch a worker of peace, as is the Christian under this beatitude, sees with other, larger eyes than belong to the brethren on lower levels. The head of such a peace worker is raised above the turmoil of the conflicting conceptions of God, which divide the visible Church into contending factions. He who has passed into the work of peace by the steps of the merciful and the pure in heart, has large reverence for the individual tie between God and the spirits He has made, and is capable alike of hearing the speech of the fierce, and of understanding the ridiculous tongue of the unlearned. Therefore belonging to neither nation, he is likely to be repudiated by both.
\nSuch an one is capable of the larger wisdom, which foresees the unity of present antagonisms, and is, of course, detested or mistrusted by the smaller natures to whom the necessary strivings are committed.
\nSuch an one in this period of our world\u2019s history, even as in the past, is to the Jew a stumbling-block, and to the Greek foolishness; and is ever apt to have the taunt flung at him, \u201cWho made you a prince and a judge over us?\u201d
\nThere are many children of God, who never pass on to such a work of peace as necessitates an awakening of priests to the knowledge of the uncleanness of the people, and the nation, and of the work and the offering, which still are by God received and rewarded.
\nThere are many living Christians, who walk through life encompassed with the bands of a camp, with which they move in stately march, and these never know the loneliness of having no party, which necessarily belongs to the peacemaker. These have abundant recognition by those, with whom alone they come in contact, that they are the children of God, and even if, venturing out of their own circle, they meet with rebuff and questioning, they have a camp to which they can return, and there speedily efface all remembrance of opposition, except as of the persecution which is glory. But, for the peacemaker, who stands on this step of beatitude, there is the great loneliness of belonging to no camp. There are but few, and those are far between, who are with him outside all camps, gone out to Jesus.
\nTo these lonely ones there is unutterable preciousness in the beatitude, which assures them that they who now are by their fellows often ignored, or cast out of communion, shall yet be recognised as being the children of God.
\nIt was said to me by my friend, Miss Dewar, once that the recognition of the peacemaker as the child of God is in especial fitness, for He who is the only begotten Son of God is the great Peacemaker and Reconciler of all. This is true, yet I felt then, and years after I still feel, that no work had ever less obvious and less immediate connection with the recognition promised; and no work requires more largely that faith, which is the evidence of things not seen. For the immediate result of efforts at making peace is certainly seldom, if ever, gain to the peacemaker, and the place of the peacemaker is proverbially a place between meeting shears.
\nThe resurrection life, which, in the later beatitudes stirs, and raises up that which had been slain, in this beatitude raises up and quickens that, which in the lower life had been slain as vanity.
\nUnder the beatitude of the zealously affectionate, we were commanded to arise from the dead, where we had been crucified as regards trust in the creature, and seeking for its love.
\nUnder the beatitude of the pure in heart, we were commanded to arise from the dead, where, as regards the idolatrous cravings for a visible God, we had been slain.
\nNow we hear the word that speaks to us, as to those who, as concerns the instincts of natural vanity, or as concerns the promptings of natural ambition, have been by the law put to death; for as concerns these promptings of the natural heart, this word says: \u201cAwake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.\u201d This beatitude encourages and kindles desire for self-recognition as being the children of God. Vanity which desires to be admired, ambition which desires to be feared and obeyed, could no further go, than in the desire to be recognised as being the child of God. How often must the dreams of this desire shine for a moment, vivid with iridescent hues, and break as doth a bubble, before our feet stand with firm assurance of hope under the beatitude of the peacemaker!
\nThe work of peace, of itself, rouses opposition, and ensures suffering, but let the world once perceive that this work is prompted by the desire of personal recognition as a child of God, and opposition becomes intensified into hatred. Nothing so stirred the rage of the Jews against Christ.
\n\u201cTherefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was His Father.\u201d
\nAnd nothing so stirs the rage of the world against the witnesses of Christ, as the word that says:
\n\u201cNow are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER XX<\/p>\n
\u201cBlessed are they that are Persecuted for Righteousness\u2019 Sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of the Heavens\u201d<\/p>\n
They that go forth to the work of peace, with that claim of being the children of God, which desires to be personally so recognised, inevitably pass on into experience of persecution.
\nThis is a species of religion, which never \u201cwalks in silver slippers.\u201d Persecution is the word applied in Scripture to the mocking, which Ishmael bestowed on Isaac. We should think this a word too large for one boy\u2019s scoffing at another. But, the Scripture judges all things by the judgment of Love, and many things, which seem slight in the world\u2019s eyes, loom large in the eyes of Love. \u201cIn this world ye shall have persecutions,\u201d was a word, which, in the apprehension of Him who spoke it, included more than the physical tortures which martyrs have endured. Otherwise he could not have spoken of receiving now in this time houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions. The test of the persecution is this. Is the worldly standing of the lover of righteousness affected for the worse by his or her righteousness?
\nIt is a question of easy application in our own individual ties; and I have very little hesitation in saying that those, who have given their hearts to righteousness, do always more or less suffer for its sake. They are persecuted in this sense, that among their natural fellows their popularity is thereby lessened, their company undesired. I underline the words their natural fellows; for a man\u2019s first foes are of his own family. A duchess may, by her righteousness, be brought into a large household of faith, but her standing as a duchess, her position in the courts of the great, will be affected for the worse in proportion to her faithfulness to righteousness. A working man may, by virtue of righteousness, win the respect of those whose work he performs; but among working men his righteousness will oftener impede than aid his influence. Every class has its interests, every society its Shibboleths athwart some of which the follower of righteousness is certain to pass. A man or woman who loves righteousness, is so far from being helped by that love to social success, that as a rule such a one takes a lower place among compeers, than natural claims and abilities would otherwise ensure for him or her.
\nBlessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness\u2019 sake, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens. This is the same beatitude as was given to the poor in Spirit. There is a certain fitness in this, for under persecution the poor in Spirit are indeed brought to realise in its fulness that poverty, which belongs to the undesired. They who have been born again, and have taken up into the resurrection life the earthly desires of self, do under persecution realise that their home is not here, that on earth they are pilgrims and strangers. The persecuted require, even as do the poor, the present blessedness of a present refuge and home, where the standards of judgment are according to righteousness. But, while the fitness is manifest of according the same present beatitude to the poor in Spirit, and to the persecuted or poor in condition, I think that it requires only a little meditation on the Scripture term, \u201cthe kingdom of the heavens,\u201d to perceive that its significance in this place is extended beyond that, which we saw in relation to the poor in Spirit. To see this, let us give a few minutes to study of the term, \u201cthe kingdom of the heavens.\u201d
\nThere are three kingdoms spoken of in Scripture, so clearly distinguished the one from the other, so absolutely identified as one, that we have in them truly a trinity of three in one.
\nThese three kingdoms are\u2014
\nI. The kingdom of the heavens.
\nII. The kingdom of the Son.
\nIII. The kingdom of the Father.
\nThe term the \u201cKingdom of the Heavens\u201d is confined to the Gospel of St. Matthew; but the kingdom thereby signified is spoken of elsewhere as the kingdom of God, though the kingdom of God is a term of wider significance, and not always confined to that kingdom which is the kingdom of the heavens.
\nThe kingdom of the heavens includes the whole period of the long suffering of God, wherein He suffers various losses of His seed, and permits tares to grow with His wheat, and gathers bad as well as good into His net, and comes seeking in vain unto His trees, and sees strangers enter in, while the children are shut out, and the friends are not present. This period, which is identical with the course of the first part of the penal judgment, which leaves a sinner to the evil of his ways, is one of that silence which precedes a storm. The long suffering of the kingdom of the heavens has its term set, after which unfruitful trees are cut down, and cast into the fire; tares are made into bundles for the burning. The kingdom of the heavens culminates in final judgments between the good and the evil, and in the apportioning of rewards and punishments to every creature according to their work. It necessarily brings forth that Judge of all men, Who is the Son of Man. The kingdom of the Son begins where the kingdom of the heavens culminates. There is no long suffering in the kingdom of the Son. All power is His. He is manifested before all, as the One Supremely desired of all nations. All tribes of the earth mourn because they have rejected and injured Him in the days that are past. All are His inheritance and delivered into His power. If His wrath be kindled, but a little, kings and rulers perish before Him. He shall reign until He has subdued all principalities and powers, and brought to an end all enmity. The kingdom of the heavens, through long waiting, brought forth the manifestation of judgment, in the terrors of the coming of the Son in His kingdom. The kingdom of the Son is the operation of strong restraints, of powerful purgings, of irresistible conquests, which kingdom in its culmination must pass into the kingdom of the Father, where God shall be all in all.
\nIt would require a volume to bring forth all Scripture teachings concerning these three kingdoms, in their diversity, and in their unity. For the present I must confine myself to a few words upon the kingdom of the heavens, as presented in the beatitude of the persecuted for righteousness\u2019 sake.
\nThe kingdom of the heavens, throughout the period of its long suffering, is represented as having the rule.
\nThe world is the field of the kingdom of the heavens. If the enemy there plant children of the evil one, he plants them within the jurisdiction of the kingdom of the heavens. Once sown in that world, which is the field of the kingdom of the heavens, the tares as well as the wheat fall under the power of the Son of Man. Therefore, even those who are cast out into the weeping and gnashing of teeth, are called children of the kingdom of the heavens.
\nThe net, which is the kingdom of the heavens, gathers of bad as well as good fish; and having so gathered, it lifts both alike out of the judgment of the waters, i.e., out of that judgment, which increases the freedom of the lower natures, and into that dispensation wherein the judgment of the one life of God, who is a consuming fire, is enforced.
\nIt seems to me that the poor in Spirit, who have known the blessedness of that poverty, which can be known only in the kingdom of the heavens, here pass on, through the resurrection Life of the arisen Self which desires love, which requires a visible God, which wishes to be recognised as a Son of God, into partaking individually in that majestic right to judge, and that assured waiting for triumph which belong to the kingdom of the heavens.
\nThat, which under the beatitude of the meek was promised in the future heritage of the earth, is given in first fruit, and made present in the beatitude of the persecuted for righteousness\u2019 sake. One so persecuted is on the side of the Right, and has the Right on his side. A great trumpet is, as it were, placed in his hands to call with the might of right angels of judgment forth to victory. He is as Samson, sure of overcoming his foes even in his own hour of death. He can cite earth\u2019s proudest to meet him before the throne. This is a terrible power; but it is one which all, who have heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ must earnestly desire. Come see what desolations the Lord has wrought in the earth. He burneth the chariot in the fire, and snappeth the spear in sunder. He breaketh the horn of the wicked, and cutteth off the lips of liars. He breaketh the arm of the oppressor, and shooteth bitter words at them, who shot at the poor.
\nThese are blessed desolations, and quickly may they be wrought. They that are persecuted for righteousness\u2019 sake, know that, while the abstract righteousness of the Infinite God may indeed suffer long and be kind; yet, that there is, in the individual sufferer for righteousness\u2019 sake, a pledge which cannot be broken, that justice must be done, that iniquity must be silenced, and the lover of righteousness be exalted. The persecuted for righteousness\u2019 sake is, as it were, a witness, and a hostage to a suffering world that the heavens do rule, and that the right shall be established, and all oppressors put to shame.
\nThe persecuted for righteousness\u2019 sake is, with the kingdom of the heavens, as treasure hidden in a field, which ensures the buying of that whole field in which it lies hidden. Its interests are buried in that world which is the field, and for its sake shall all the field be redeemed, and dug up, and trenched. The persecuted for righteousness\u2019 sake is, along with the kingdom of the heavens, as it were, the bringer forth of the Son who comes to judge the world in righteousness.
\nWhoever therefore has, as persecuted for righteousness\u2019 sake, thus become partaker of the kingdom of the heavens, necessarily passes on to witness of the Judge, and to speak of that Jesus who, once crucified by men, is now exalted, and shall return in glory to judge the world in righteousness.
\nEvery sufferer for righteousness\u2019 sake necessarily, whether consciously or not, becomes a witness for that Son of God, who, in His unsullied innocence and supreme rejection, was and is a pledge to all worlds of a judgment yet to be made manifest. But, it is the crowning privilege of the baptised into Christ, to pass on consciously into the suffering for the personal friend, which is blessed as having promise of great reward in the heavens.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER XXI<\/p>\n
\u201cBlessed are ye when they shall Revile you, and Persecute you, and shall say all manner of Evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your Reward in Heaven: for so Persecuted they the Prophets which were before you\u201d<\/p>\n
Itremble as I approach this beatitude, for it is no more appreciable as spoken of a third. It is possible, as I have said, to see from afar lands of promise, which our feet have not as yet personally trodden. I have felt justified in speaking of steps of beatitude, upon which my own feet have but slight hold, because I have not only seen much from afar, but because I feel that I am in the one body with others, of whom I can say that they are merciful, that they are pure in heart, and that they are peacemakers and persecuted for righteousness\u2019 sake. But vicarious knowledge has here no power or place. It is no longer said \u201cBlessed are they,\u201d but \u201cBlessed are ye.\u201d
\nUnder the beatitude of the merciful, I became aware of the approach of some ineffable revelation of a personal relation in God to me. Under this personally addressed beatitude, \u201cBlessed are ye who suffer for My sake,\u201d I feel that I am met by that personally related God face to face.
\nTime was, in my early youth, when I longed that this word should have been more personal than it is, that it should have been \u201cBlessed art thou\u201d rather than \u201cBlessed are ye,\u201d when, in my senseless, presumptuous ignorance of self, I boasted greatly in fervent prayers concerning His sake. But now experience of self\u2019s weakness causes me to cling to the plural ye as to a word of hope.
\nThe burden of sustaining personal relationships, even in this earthly sphere, is never laid upon one only. Many share in the vital relationships of kinship or of love to each one of us, and it is wonderful how one relationship subserves another in working redemptions from destructions for each. If I feel, in relation to the finite creature, that I should perish, if in relation even to my best beloved I had no sharer in love, and no help in duty, how much more must the individual soul confess inadequacy in relation to Jehovah Jesus, and rejoice that the company of the Bride is multitudinous, that it is a body, of which the members mutually supply each other\u2019s needs and fill up each other\u2019s deficiencies. Blessed, then, the word that speaks to us, when it speaks in personal relations, as to many, \u201cBlessed are ye.\u201d
\nAnd again my nerves thrill as under some electric touch, when I observe that the word \u201cmen\u201d is in italics, is not in the original, is supplied by commentators. For to my spirit the word supplied is indefinite. \u201cBlessed are ye when they shall revile you.\u201d This impersonal they Jesus does apply to the dread ones, who \u201crequire the soul.\u201d And for myself, I, who was in youth as forward as Peter in pouring out love vows before my personal God and Lord, I know that, like Peter, I must have greatly provoked the adversary to ask that I should be given into his power to sift as wheat. Were the beatitude of persecution for the Lord\u2019s personal sake confined to such as meet persecution from men, it would include none but those who make a public profession of personal love; and personal love, especially in its first fervour, is often unspeakable, deeply hidden, not from cowardice, but by nature\u2019s \u201cnoble monitions.\u201d But though thus hidden from men, this ardour is not hidden from the adversary, if the spirit be fired with its spiritual utterance beyond the measure of the personal power to walk thereby. It is impossible but that the adversary should strongly desire, with the desire of the subtle, to sift to the utmost such pretenders to love. And if this adversary were suffered to descend at once with subtle powers of wind and fire, what hope would there be for the poor foolish lover of the Lord, that wheat would be found with him, fit for the garner?
\nAs was said of Israel of old, so it might be said of all youth\u2019s early fervour, \u201cThou wentest after me in a land not sown.\u201d Therefore again I thank God that the persecution prophecied in this beatitude is in the future. The disciples who first heard this beatitude had not, at the time they heard, realised any persecution. Still less, in that time when multitudes were seeking their Master, had they known the temptation to deny Him.
\nMany days of personal converse with the Christ lay before Peter before he was called to know that direst sifting, which the adversary cruelly rejoices to apply, the trial of love which lies in the lover\u2019s personal failure to the beloved.
\nBut that which provokes the adversary is precious to Him who is beloved. He knows the weakness of the flesh, but does not therefore despise the willingness of the spirit. He knows that Peter will deny, but does not the less bear witness to the truth that Peter exceedingly loves. He prays that Peter\u2019s faith fail not in that dire sifting. And when our poor foolish babblings of a love which, huge in desire, is weak in body, thus provokes them which observe us, to revile us in the Heavenlies, to persecute us with great winds, how can we be \u201cBlessed?\u201d That which they say against us is false. Let our failure be what it may, God knows the love that spoke was true. Therefore \u201cGreat shall be our reward in Heaven.\u201d
\nOften and often did I question the Lord concerning this, before I saw the hope here set before me.
\nMy heart said, \u201cIf the Lord would have me love my enemy, how can I rejoice, even in hope of my own exceeding great reward, in actions which display that enemy\u2019s loveless condition and sin, and which are, so far as he is concerned, the sowing of seed, which must result in harvest of shame, when He, for whose sake we suffer, shall appear.\u201d But Jesus never puts before the disciple, who suffers for His sake, a reward less than His own personal recognition of him before the Father\u2019s face. The great reward in Heaven is union with Jesus Himself. Upon this condition the disciple becomes \u201cworthy,\u201d not of this or that lesser gain, but of Christ Himself.
\nTherefore every persecutor is in his wanton action taken in a snare, and shut up into the certainty of a vision of the loveliness of Christ. The breaking in pieces of the unrighteous, which is a certainty assured by every suffering borne for righteousness\u2019 sake, would not of itself hold the hope of an infinitely extending personal salvation of fools from their folly, if the persecuted for righteousness\u2019 sake did not hold the witness of the One righteous, for whose personal sake lovers rejoice to suffer. For justification of personal lovers can be accomplished only, by the revelation, to all despisers of their love, of the exceeding glory, and beauty, and all-sufficing faithfulness of Him whom they had loved.
\nThis, then, will be the great reward of the personal lovers of the Lord, that their personal sufferings will prove to have been the sealing of their persons wholly unto the Lord, whereby they themselves, in their own personal relations, whether human or demoniac, shall be media of His personal appearing, and of His personal exercise of all those unspeakable powers, which shall convince fools that He, and He only, is desirable, that He, and He only, is the reality of which their own crude desires had feebly testified. He who is our Salvation.
\nAnd observe, the suffering for this personal Christ is a suffering in the company of the prophets.
\nThe witness of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
\nThis has been too largely forgotten among those who are called by the name of Christ. The testimony of Jesus has been made too much a matter of clinging to a sound form of words, dictated by the fathers in the past ages, too much a matter of poring over the history of the sinless life, that was lived \u201cbeneath the Syrian blue.\u201d But Jesus Himself identifies the suffering for His name\u2019s sake with the suffering by reason of the spirit of prophecy; and nothing can be clearer than the words of the Apostle John, \u201cThe witness of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.\u201d
\nThe personal love can be known only on the level of personal knowledge, and that personal knowledge must raise the lover of Jesus above the level of the mere earthly day, and gift him with insights greater than belong to the age in which he lives. Ever more and more visions will be granted to such an one of \u201cwhat eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man to conceive,\u201d but the Spirit hath revealed.
\nThe suffering for His name\u2019s sake is rejoiced in, from no idea of there being merit thus acquired, from no thought that He who delights in joy can have delight in tears. No, the suffering here rejoiced in, is rejoiced in as by the prophetic spirit. The great promise of reward is a personal share in the giving larger and larger freedom to the life of Christ.
\nIts great promise of reward is that they, who have voluntarily offered themselves for persecution, shall be sacrificially used, even as Christ Himself was used for the taking in a snare of all wills opposed to the will of Love.
\nChrist, the spotless One, in His cross made manifest the Father.
\nThe lovers of Christ, willing, but weak, shall, in their freely justified state of the redeemed and accepted in Christ, make manifest that God, who is our Peace, our Emmanuel, our Lover and our Friend.
\nOh, my God, I know how justly the adversary may mock me, even as Shimei mocked him who, aspiring to build the house of God, was, under judgment, driven out of his own, who, dreaming of raising up a son to God, could not overcome the will of his own Absalom. Yet, because I have known Thee and Thou hast known me, I dare to rejoice in trembling hope that all who observe me \u201cwith the observation that is not sympathy,\u201d shall, by reason of me, be forced to dwell, as Shimei was, in that City which hath foundations, whose builder and whose maker is God.
\nThis ineffable hope of being sacrificially used, in my very failures, to bring even the bodiless spirits of accusation into contact with the personal Lover, God, emboldens and enables me to raise my eyes to that glorious city, which is set on the height above the rising beatitudes, to that City whose name is Jehovah Tsidkenu, \u201cThe Lord our Righteousness.\u201d<\/p>\n
CHAPTER XXII<\/p>\n
The Bride<\/p>\n
The silence of Christ concerning His Bride is great. His parables infer that there is a relationship to Himself which is nearer and dearer than any of those with which the parables are immediately concerned, but of direct utterance concerning the Bride he gives us none.
\nWould that the same silence had been observed by His followers, and that there had been no profane babblings about this central mystery of Christian Revelation.
\nI have, in reading these parables of judgment, ascended from the judgments of the flocks to the vision of the Bride; but the parables are given by Christ in descending order. There is One who is the Bride, and who therefore cannot be spoken of as under judgment at all. The parables begin with the friends of the Bride who judge themselves, and descend through the servants to the flocks. Not without reason is this the order in which Christ gives the visions of judgment, for all judgment issues from the vital centre of the unity of the Redeemer and the Redeemed. The world shall be judged according to the principles of judgment brought in by the promises to the Elect seed, not on its own demerits, but as being the family from amongst whom the Bride has been taken. The world shall be judged as having been, by the Bride, brought into new relationship with the Lamb of God. Therefore the true understanding of all parables of judgment is possible only to such as can descend from the place of Love\u2019s communion with God, and with the Lamb as it had been slain.
\nAll we have known in that ascending order through which we have gone is but superficial, is but preparation for that only true and living knowledge which descends from the Highest, and which no man shows to another except in type and by sign. To exemplify what I mean let me call attention to another series of revelation which, as known or worked out upon earth, was worked out in order reverse to that in which it was given.
\nThe commands of Jehovah concerning the building of the tabernacle were given to Moses in sequences, which fall under nine divisions. All that bears upon the abiding place of God is revelation concerning the Bride, and fulness of knowledge concerning the Bride must pass through every such revelation, from the stone of Bethel to the descending city; from the tabernacle seen on the mount, to the city descending on the mount; from the Temple seen on the mount, to the Temple not seen on the mount\u2014because God Himself is that Temple.
\nWere I desiring to write fully upon the Bride, I should put myself in attitude of contemplation of the progressive visions of the House of God given in Scripture. But my desire at present is only to touch the theme, and leave all unsaid that is not of immediate application. I shall, therefore, only remark that of the nine divisions into which the commands concerning the making of the tabernacle fall, three only are of patterns seen in that mount which gendereth to bondage. These three, as revealed, proceed from the ark outwards to the brazen altar of burnt-offering, but miss much in the passage, for the altar of burnt incense and the priests are not there. These three, as effected, are in reverse order. That which was first is last, and the last first.<\/p>\n
As revealed.
\nAs effected.
\n\u201cThat which I showed thee,\u201d \u201cand thou wast caused to see in the mount.\u201d (Ex. 25:9\u201340, marg.)
\nThe Ark, the mercy-seat and Cherubim, table of shewbread, candlestick and dishes.
\nBy every wise-hearted man.
\nThe curtains and coverings, boards, sockets, bars, vails, and hangings. (Ex. 36:8\u201338.)
\n\u201cThat which was shown thee in the mount.\u201d (Ex. 26:1\u201330.)
\nThe curtains and coverings, boards, sockets and bars, and form of building.
\nBy Bezaleel.
\nThe Ark, mercy-seat and Cherubim, table of shewbread, candlestick and dishes, altar of incense, anointing oil, incense, altar of burnt-offering, laver of brass, outer court. (Ex. 37; 38)
\n\u201cThat which he showed thee in the mount.\u201d (Ex. 26:31\u201327:8, marg.)
\nThe vails, the hanging over the doors, and the altar of burnt-offering.<\/p>\n
But if the group of the innermost mysteries be thus in human operation reached necessarily after the outer coverings, he who handles and makes their symbols passes from the knowledge of the ark outwards with fuller knowledge, and places the altar of incense and the secrets of anointing before the altar of blood, and knows the sacredness of the outer court as enclosing, not as waiting for, the laver of the priests, and is able to call up multiple workers into co-operation with himself for the making of the priestly personal ornaments.
\nIn like manner, if we have approached the innermost sanctuary, as passing through the lower relationships of flocks, servants, and friends, when once we have touched the knowledge of that sanctuary, we shall be able to thence pass out, taking with us the power of placing an altar of incense among the things \u201cHe shewed in the mount\u201d \u201cthat gendereth to bondage,\u201d which incense had not been there in the earlier vision. I hope that it may be so with all who have, with me, by personal application and personal handling, prepared the tabernacle of external relationships, and have now come to the covenant therein to be enshrined. I hope that they for themselves, as I for myself, will thence descend, with higher knowledge and more vital appreciation of the mysteries of that God of judgment who fills with His Presence not only the Holy of Holies, but also the whole Tabernacle; not only the Heaven of Heavens, but also Hell.
\nWith all reserve, let us, then, for a moment speak of the Bride. And let our speech be but a sign of that which the individual heart knoweth, each heart for itself, that they alone may hear who have ears to hear.
\nThe first question that strikes me concerning the Bride is what is her relation to the kingdom of the Heavens? She is obviously one who has come out from the kingdom of the Heavens into a standing separate from and above that kingdom. The ten Virgins who are her friends, who have been her companions, and who desire to be partakers in her feast, are the kingdom of the Heavens. She has been one of their circle, but has passed out of that circle into a closer relation to the Lamb of God than is known in the kingdom of the Heavens.
\nThe standing of the Bridegroom, as well as that of the Bride, is distinguished from that of the kingdom of the Heavens. The kingdom of the Heavens in relation to the Bridegroom is as that of a parent to the child.
\nProlonged study of the Scripture concerning the kingdoms, has led me to the conclusion that the kingdoms are terms synonymous with three great dispensations.
\nThe kingdom of the Heavens includes all that moves within the sphere of the love of attribute. All that is possible of the rejection of God by the creature, and of the rejection of the creature by God; all that is possible, also, of the free-will choice of the creature, and free delight in and by God, belong to the kingdom of the Heavens. All sifting judgments, all testing flames, are of this kingdom.
\nThe kingdom of the Father includes all that belongs to the unforsaking, inalienable, personal Love; all, whether it be in the chastening and bringing again of the chosen seed born of the flesh of Abraham and David, or whether it be in the perfected subjection of willing sons, which shall be in the end of all ages.
\nThe kingdom of the Son, which is the culmination of the kingdom of the Heavens, expresses and makes manifest the judgment of the Heavens, by giving glory to the righteous, and shame to the unrighteous. It satisfies, also, the longing of the Heavens, by bringing in new powers of the risen flesh, to effect the desire of those who live by the trees of God\u2019s planting, and by the flocks of His pasture. So satisfying the desire of the kingdom of the Heavens, the kingdom of the Son is the unity of all antagonisms, and passes into the perfect rounded whole when God shall be all in all.
\nThese kingdoms are eternally co-existent; but, dispensationally, one or other of them rises into pre-eminence and rules the times. The dispensational aspect of the ruling kingdom is of a twofold nature. For instance, the kingdom of the Heavens was, until the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh, a kingdom seeking fruit, and often finding none; often passing the judgment of baffled hunger upon the trees of the Lord\u2019s planting.
\nPresent then in weakness, it may also be present in power; and the period of its power seems to me to begin with the descent of the Spirit upon Christ when He rose out of Jordan. This period is one of such glory that the least of its members, receiver of its spirit, is greater than the greatest of the seed of woman.
\nAnd the Bride is one called out of this company of the greatly exalted into a position still higher; out of the circle of friends, out of the adoption of sons, into vital unity with the Christ.<\/p>\n
The Bride cannot be manifested to the world until all things that can be shaken have passed away, and He who sitteth on the throne has made all things new.
\nShe cannot descend from Heaven until that stone which dashes in pieces the earthly image of empire has become the exceeding great mountain which fills the earth. Until that mountain of sacred, civil power is ready to receive Her, She remains hidden in the Heavens. And for this I thank God. For I know that the hour of bridal relationship is the power of that one of the dual stars of love, in which the requirement of qualification is the principle of relationship, and in which the free will of the Beloved cannot be coerced into receiving the things of the Lover. Were this mystery to descend upon the earth as it is now, nothing could follow save outcasting and annihilation for all, whose natures were abhorred by the Bridegroom, and abhorrent to the Bride. But the Scriptures show us that the Bride shall be taken away out of the earth before the coming of that great and terrible day of the Lord, when He comes in fulness of power to overcome all enemies, and that She will not descend upon the earth until after the final judgments have taken place, and the mount that cannot be shaken of the established kingdom upon earth is ready to receive Her. Thus the Scriptures say to ears that can hear, that the new dispensation, now at hand, will be inaugurated by the taking away from the things that are seen and temporal of all Divine seeking of friends and counsellors; and that then will come upon the earth the full exercise of all that belongs to the star of the inalienable personal ties. The Elijah ministry, which precedes the day of the Lord, is the entrance of the principle of these inalienable ties into renewed and intensified power. The physical seed of Abraham is the head and representative of this principle. The return of the Jews to Palestine will be the first great result of a great spiritual ministry, having for its object the turning of the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers. This great Elijah ministry is, I believe, already acting in the heavenlies, influencing the spirits of all fathers, acting from the living centre of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, preparing great forces of fatherly intervention for, and influence upon, the children. And I look for the manifestation of this Elijah ministry upon earth in the return of the Jews to Palestine, and in the manifestation of lost Israel. And I see, already, much evidence of the operation of this Elijah ministry in the daily increasing longing for knowledge of the past, which so largely governs the intellectual energies of the present day.
\nThe object of this turning of the hearts of the fathers to the children, and of the children to their fathers, is, lest the Lord, coming to judgment, find not sufficient presence of the star of inalienable personal ties to save the earth from being smitten with a curse. By reason of this Elijah ministry the great and terrible day of the Lord will be no curse, but a making ready the place for the descent of the Bride. The Bride\u2019s visible descent upon earth will be upon the new creation effected by the unforsaking Father through the Son, and by the unforsaking Son and Brother for the Father, who desires to be All in All to the Spirits He has made.
\nThe Scripture revelation concerning this is clear, and it is in keeping with the witness of human analogy. No man willingly brings his bride into an enemy\u2019s country and into a revolted household. The Bride will be taken away from the earth until the great and exceeding high mountain of sacred civil power is ready to receive her.
\nTherefore I pay no heed to voices that say concerning the Bride, Lo here! or, Lo there!
\nThe taking away of the Bride is the source of hope for those that are left behind. That which is taken away is taken up higher, and passes into the region of causes, and becomes capable of pouring down influence. The company of the Bride becomes thus capable in a twofold way.
\nThere are five of the Bride\u2019s companions, who are found incapable of entering into her rapture, and are left behind. These serve in their desolation as media for the oil-fed light of this influence, as being themselves of the kingdom of the Heavens. These become media for preparing all flesh to become capable of the knowledge that He, whom they once rejected, is the Lovely among ten thousand. But besides this influence poured out upon, and through, those of like mind, the company of the Bride will be endowed with the powers of the risen flesh to break in upon the consciousness of even the carnal, and the fool, with the knowledge that Christ is the Son of God, and that He whom they despised is the Lamb of God. Thus even the fool\u2019s heart shall be brought to desire God. And when this baptism in the lake of fire has indeed kindled thirst for the living God, She, in whose streets the living waters flow, shall be revealed on earth, that likeness of mind concerning Her may pave the way of the return of outcasts to God. Then shall the nations walk in Her light, and the kings of the earth bring glory into Her, and they that desire healing shall seek unto Her trees of life, and Her multiple names shall be in the mouths of those who, having no righteousness of their own, shall call Her\u2014Jehovah Shamnah, the Lord is there; and, Jehovah Tsidkenu, the Lord our righteousness.
\nShe is the WORD, the REDEEMED.
\nHereafter, in the day of Her manifestation, She shall be revealed as united with the WORD, the REDEEMER. Only in that unity can She be manifested upon earth. But, even as the WORD the REDEEMER was, for many months, known of only by Mary, in whose person He was hidden, and was for many years unthought of beyond the Nazareth where He lived, so She who is the WORD, the REDEEMED, is known and is loved by some, while as yet not known to all, of the spirits of God, and while as yet in virgin separation.
\nThe time is full of signs that the day of Her being revealed in the Heavenlies, as ready for the marriage, is at hand. But a revelation in the Heavenlies is not a revelation to the world till after many destructions.
\nThe WORD, the REDEEMER, was born of the flesh\u2014\u2014born into the system of the things that are seen and temporal.
\nThe WORD, the REDEEMED, is being born of the Spirit\u2014born into the Heavenlies which are unseen and eternal.
\nThe WORD, the REDEEMER, revealed to the world the personal Father in the personal Man.
\nThe WORD, the REDEEMED, is a revelation to the principalities and powers in the Heavenlies of the manifold wisdom of God.
\nThe WORD, the REDEEMER, is holy, harmless, undefiled.
\nThe WORD, the REDEEMED, is such as needs to be washed, and cleansed, and clothed upon. In Her lives the Imrah, the Word, which is distilled and purified.
\nThe WORD, the REDEEMER, is to the world the manifestation and the power of the unforsaking Love, that seeks the lost, that comes to judge the lawless.
\nThe WORD, the REDEEMED, is called to come out from among the condemned, that nothing may hinder the scourge. Into her gates shall enter nothing that defileth.
\nThe WORD, the REDEEMER, sticketh closer than a brother.
\nThe WORD, the REDEEMED, shall, in the day of Her rapture, leave companions forsaken in their tribulation.
\nThe WORD, the REDEEMER, is One, as God is One.
\nThe WORD, the REDEEMED, is multitudinous as is a city.
\nThe WORD, the REDEEMER, who is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, gives the flesh, into which He enters, for sacrificial use in death.
\nThe WORD, the REDEEMED, risen with Christ, is ordained to be the medium of bringing into the risen flesh such sacrificial use of the flesh as is in the marriage tie, which is not the use in death, but in life.
\nHere let us pause, to consider the meaning of the words \u201csacrificial use.\u201d
\nA sacrifice is a thing which is used by the love of one person for the good of another. It may be used by the love of God for man, or it may be used by the love of man for God.
\nThe sacrificial use of a Redeemer must be a use to express God\u2019s love for the sinner. The sacrificial use of the Redeemed will be to express the infinite joy in the Saviour.
\nA sacrifice, when used by God to express love for sinners, is given to bear sin, to become sin, to be taken captive by the barren, to be delivered unto death and Hades, that the sinner may revive and live saved from his sin. Every animal that dies, that we may live, is a sacrifice given by God to redeem our lives from destruction, though it be but for the passing day. These sacrifices are involuntary, and of that great sacrifice by which our lives are redeemed from destruction, it is also true that He involuntarily suffered in a body, of which it is significantly said, that it was fitted Him. Even He required to be made Flesh, as by some wondrous encompassing motherhood, whose powers secret and unknown fitted the body for sacrificial use by \u201cGod our Saviour, Who saved us \u2026 through Jesus Christ our Saviour.\u201d Even He did not suffice to materialise Himself in a body equal to the Father\u2019s sacrificial use. A perfect sacrifice involuntary in its conditions is voluntary in its desire. Voluntarily the WORD, the REDEEMER, offered Himself, to have \u201ca body fitted Him,\u201d \u201cto be made Flesh,\u201d that He might be used by the will of unforsaking Love, and \u201cbe driven\u201d into the involuntary suffering of temptation and death.
\nTo be tempted by any one is possible only in measure as we feel sympathy with him. When the Accuser tempted Jesus he strove to make Him ashamed of being like other men. Driven by that Spirit whose wings, like those of the Dove, hate uncleanness, Jesus \u201cknew what was in man,\u201d and, in contact with the Accuser, passed through the supreme temptation of seeing the unloveliness of those for whom He was delivered unto Death. Is there involuntary agony equal to seeing the unloveliness of the Beloved? Is there temptation equal to seeing the unworthiness of those for whom God would have us suffer? And who can measure what that temptation was, when, after being twice baffled in attempts to make the proof of Divine Sonship consist in separation from ordinary human life, the Accuser showed that even the glory of the world was delivered into his power! Oh! triumph of Love, when the Sacrifice, unshaken by the Accuser\u2019s sneer, thundered forth the Oath of God, that even that Accuser shall serve Him alone who is Saviour God.
\nIn the involuntary use of the Word, the Redeemer, His flesh was given to be the sacrificial third, the medium for the rushing together of the contrary natures of the Father\u2019s unforsaking yearning and the Accuser\u2019s awful requirements; and for the fusing into one result of the contrary purposes of God and of the world.
\nIn so far as we are members of that flesh into which Christ was born, we are, individually and collectively, made partakers in this awful sacrificial use of our bodies by the purpose of God.
\nBut, in so far as we are partakers of the Bride, and members of the sacrificial use of the redeemed, we are not sacrifices offered by God to reconcile the world unto Himself. We are sacrifices offered by the man Christ unto God; media used by the man Christ to make manifest before all principalities and powers the manifold Wisdom of God.
\nThe manifold lovers of God, who count suffering light, if suffering be by Him permitted; whose eyes Love blinds to all save God; for whom even the Accuser is not; by whom even the smitings by earthly tormentors are received as chastisements by the adored hand of God,\u2014these are the sacrifices offered by Divine Man unto God. Here is faith at which with Christ the very heavens \u201cmarvel.\u201d There is no limit to this glory which excelleth.
\nI believe that all flesh is under sacrificial use. But the mass of creatures in the flesh are like \u201cdumb, driven cattle.\u201d Some are as \u201cheroes in the strife.\u201d A few consciously suffer as sacrifices voluntarily come for involuntary sacrificial use, by the love of the Son for the Father, \u201cby death to glorify God.\u201d These, coming thus into unity with the Father and with the Son, are sealed unto the great sacrificial use of the living body, in that living use which is in the spousal tie.
\nThe marriage of the Bride is with \u201cthe Lamb of God.\u201d The spousal union is with the Sacrifice. Many and unspeakable are the things that the Spirit here reveals, but all shall be gathered up in the coming day, when the living body of the Bride, the living Sacrifice, shall be sacrificially used by the Heavens and the Heaven of Heavens, by the Father, and by the Spirit, as the mediate third, to express and make manifest to Christ Himself, the delight wherewith God delights in Him; the Delight wherewith Wisdom rejoices in Him; the delight wherewith the world welcomes Him, the earth rejoices because of Him; nay, the very delight wherewith the serpents shall move out of their holes towards Him, and the dragons and all deeps shall praise Him. And though for such a sacrificial use the Bride must make Herself ready, yet it is a vital truth, upon which the Church of this day requires to dwell, that when the day and the hour of that sacrificial use comes, it must come upon her as from without, as with the force of a mighty wind, carrying her away, and by strong compulsion raising her to meet her Lord. For, of herself, the waiting Church is not capable of becoming thus the one voice of many a delight; the one voice of innumerable triumphs. Upon her must come, as came upon Jesus, the Spirit rushing from Heavens above, and other than hers, with power to raise her into meeting her Lord; with power to force upon her that mystic, inexpressible, inconceivable change, whereby, without death, the mortal shall put on immortality; or, raised from death, the corruptible shall arise incorruptible.
\nThe Bride, whose feet have pressed the step of the beatitude of the poor in spirit, knows that in herself she is incapable of such formative power over matter as shall suffice for a resurrection such as this, and she waits for the promise of the Father, and, so waiting, shall be caught into the manifestation of the power of God manifest in the flesh.
\nA bride knows the name of her bridegroom. This Bride knows that she is espoused to the Sacrifice, to the Lamb of God. She knows that her espousals are in sacrificial mystery. And in this truth lies the significance and the distinction of the Bride of Christ. By her the unity shall be effected of the dual spheres. Upon a people willing in the day of His power, the power shall rush as with a mighty rushing from without, and the coercive powers of the star of the inalienable personal ties shall thus subserve the free-will joys of the spousal mystery of those who are children of the Heavens.
\nThere have been two great revelations already of this sacrificial, spousal use.
\nI. In the lapsed chaos a Divine Womanhood, the feminine Spirit of Elohim, brooded over the face of the waters, and by Her overpowering influence made the wombs of the waters and of the earth capable of bringing forth at the quickening word, even as slaves may conceive by a master.
\nII. When the fulness of time was come, and the travail of the ages was at point to bring forth the Christ, the Divine Womanhood, the conceiving Holy Ghost, the power of the Highest, came upon the Virgin Mary, and made her capable of bringing forth the Son of God.
\nThis twofold mystery of a subject womanhood, involuntarily used to bring forth the Lamb of God, has made manifest the unforsaking God, but has brought forth a seed which the Lord killeth ere He makes alive.
\nNo son of the bondwoman inherits the kingdom, and Christ Himself must be born again of the barren womb of inexorable DEATH.
\nThe spousal mystery now in force, rushing first upon the Bridegroom, drove Him into triumphant conflict with all the powers of death and hell, and raised Him in the flesh to the throne of power, whence he could pour forth, as from without, the witness of Himself, the promise of the Father\u2014the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, to prepare and make ready a Womanhood capable of rising into free espousals with Himself; free as greatly desirous, overcome, and carried away as greatly poor in spirit, requiring to be clothed upon by God. Again, let me repeat, the consummation of the spousal mystery can be only by the strong overpowering of this prepared Womanhood, the Bride, and her company, by a Divine Womanhood, Who is with God and is God.
\nThe hour of this overpowering is at hand, and in that hour will be the first resurrection of the dead.
\nThe hope of the resurrection of the flesh can be precious only to those who know the unforsaking Love which cleanses the unclean and redeems the common, and who are also aware of the infinite requirements of the Wisdom of God.
\nI have a little touched upon that infinitude of God in whom is the mystery of natures which are contrary the one to the other. I have a little spoken of the hope of the resurrection of the flesh in relations between the just and the unjust, as the place of the fulfilment of hopes that belong to the priest. But the entrance into priestly function is later in time than the bridal rapture; and the consummation of priestly work in the universal resurrection of the unjust as well as of the just, is after the resurrection of them that sleep in Christ.
\nThere is, then, a significance in the resurrection of the flesh which is apart from the mutual interaction of the just and the unjust.
\nI can, perhaps, best make myself intelligible, if I here revert to the instance, which I gave before, of the boy whose momentary contact with me was very largely the means of awaking my own spirit to the hope of the resurrection of the flesh.
\nI feel that in the present body of the flesh that arbitrary juxtaposition was possible, which would be impossible in a purely spiritual sphere. I know that by means of this arbitrary bringing together of natures which were contrary to one another, my free-will was outraged, my sanctuary broken. I believe this was permitted by God, in foreordained sacrificial use, for some instrumental use in the effecting of His purpose to gather together all in one Saviour Anointed. I believe nothing occurs to any living creature, but has its significance in that sacrificial use. But, as shown in the typical sacrifices, sacrificial uses are multitudinous and infinitely varied. I have already indicated that my sacrificial use in that case may have been the use of taking that boy captive in judgment. In his terrible degradation he and his generations may require innumerable sacrifices to that end.
\nBut, let us now suppose that that boy has met with some servant of God arisen, even in the body of this flesh, into priestly function and power, capable of touching that soul, even now, with knowledge of the beauty of holiness.
\nSuch souls there are; and that boy may, by God\u2019s mercy, under their powers, have become a saint. He may have risen far above me. If I be a sharer in the first Resurrection, I may find him again beside me there. And if it so happens, his nature and mine will be as contrary the one to the other as they ever were. His reception of God will be from Heavens opposed to mine. I have required to be redeemed from a spirit of requirement of the ideal into knowledge of the cleansed. He has required to be redeemed from lusts of uncleanness into knowledge of the requirements of purity. I have been redeemed from the emptied void, he from the thronging herds.
\nWere natures thus contrary the one to the other, left to merely clothe themselves in spiritual bodies, their very knowledge of God would be mutually incompatible.
\nBut, the whole knowledge of every redeemed and sanctified lover of the Christ will be required for the expression of the infinite rejoicing of God, and of the heavens, and of all creation in the Saviour anointed.
\nIf I be raised into that supreme sacrificial use, I feel that I must be brought by power other than my own into a body fitted me, which body shall be capable, even as the body of the present flesh is capable, of arbitrary ties, and of mutual personal receptions other than those of creature spiritual affinities. By the one Spirit into which we are baptised, we shall be brought into the one body of the risen flesh, fitted for sacrificial use in living joys, even as the body of the present flesh is fitted for the Lamb\u2019s sacrificial use in involuntary deaths. This resurrection body of a nature other than the self-evolved, and self-expressing, spiritual body, is the indispensable marriage robe without which none can remain in the bridal chamber, even if they have attained in their own personal robes of the spiritual body to enter into knowledge of its halls.
\nMy sacrificial involuntary suffering under that boy\u2019s defiling speech may have its great reward in receiving from him hereafter, in renewed arbitrary juxtaposition, revelations of the Lamb\u2019s beauty such as never could otherwise enter into my conception at all, being adapted to visions of a nature contrary to mine.
\nWe have only to look upon the visible Church at any period of its existence, to become aware that unspeakable mutual sufferings have been caused to its members, by the bringing together within its limits of natures which are mutually incompatible. Yet, who shall dare to cast out either Roman Catholic or Protestant, either Ritualist or Quaker? Who will dare to say that the knowledge of the Infinite God requires not this vessel or that? Persecutor and martyr have both borne apparent fruits of the Spirit.
\nPersecutor and martyr will doubtless both arise in the resurrection of those that sleep in Christ, and in the renewed meeting find each other\u2019s knowledge of the living God equally required for that supreme sacrifice of sweet savour.
\nThe Bridegroom received the baptism of repentance from the Elijah of His day before He received the Spirit, which, cleaving the skies, drove Him into conflict for the sake of the Bride.
\nThe Church has, alike in dogmatic and in private utteranees, too greatly exalted the Spirit of her own spousal sphere of spiritual requirement, and too much ignored the parent sphere and its contrasted mysteries.
\nIs not the great cry of intellectual, and of spiritual, revolt from the standards of her teaching concerning the future of sinners, a call unto all who would be of the company of the Bride to come quickly to the Elijah of the latter days and to own the sacredness of the personal inalienable ties?
\nWill not such a humbling of herself before the Elijah ministry be for the Church the hour of her great cleansing?
\nLet us now concern ourselves with the practical question of the Bride\u2019s preparation.
\nThe Bride is a Virgin espoused to the Lord.
\nA virgin life is a hidden life. A virgin\u2019s preparation for espousals is secret, not displayed before the unsympathising, not concerned with an outer world, but intensely personal.
\nA virgin preparing for espousals lives much before a mirror. Let us hear what the Scripture saith concerning the mirror. There are two mirrors in Scripture, and two manners of looking into the mirror. The one mirror is the Word; the other mirror is the perfect law of liberty. The one looking is an intermittent and casual looking; the other looking is a persistent, constant, and earnest gaze.
\nIn the one mirror a man sees only himself; in the other we behold the glory of the Lord.
\nSuch a mirror as the first is the Word of God, whether ministered in Scripture or written in our own hearts. It is common enough for a man to casually glance into this mirror, and looking into the Word written in his own conscience, and in the concurrent judgments of others\u2019 consciences, to see himself therein reflected as unbeautiful, and other than he would desire to be; to see himself therein reflected contrasted with an Ideal, which he acknowledges to be good, and to his good. Thus looking, a man knows a pang of self-depreciation, a stirring of aspiration, but no power of love is in the gaze. He gladly ceases to look, goes his way, and quickly forgets what manner of man he was.
\nSuch a mirror as the second is the perfect law of liberty.
\nThe perfect law of liberty is that which we see when the veil which obscured the face of the Lawgiver is removed, and we receive the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
\nWhat is the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ?
\nIt is that wondrous love which gave the only begotten Son unto death for our redemption, and raised Him up again for our justification.
\nThe mirror of the perfect law of liberty lies in the unveiled eyes of Jesus Christ.
\nThe Bridegroom\u2019s eyes are the mirrors in which the espoused Virgin sees herself.
\nLove, and love only, is the keeping of the law; therefore, love, and love only, is the law. Love, and love only, is perfect freedom; therefore, love, and love only, is that mirror which is the perfect law of liberty.
\nGazing into that mirror the Virgin sees herself indeed, but not her natural self; she sees herself as the Beloved of God in Christ. She sees herself as one in whom dwells the Spirit which witnesses of Christ. \u201cWhere the Spirit of the Lord is, there is perfect liberty.\u201d Whoever has gazed into such a mirror continues looking, and, looking, is changed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.
\nSuch a looking into the mirrors of earth is known by woman, as woman. No true, pure woman cares to dwell upon her own image in the mirror except as feeling herself to be, or as desiring to be, the object of some one\u2019s pure and perfect love. And, in proportion as her womanhood is thrilled with knowledge of eyes that love her, woman adorns herself as mirrored in those eyes, cleanses and adorns herself by and for the judgment of those eyes. Because every true woman is thus by nature true to the sign of the mirror, the laver for the priest\u2019s cleansings was, in the typical tabernacle, made of the women\u2019s mirrors.
\nThe Bride, looking into the perfect law of liberty, sees herself as the Beloved of the Lamb of God.
\nThere is little said concerning the Bridegroom, but that little brings Him before us as being in relation to the Bride the Lamb of God. Such a name as the title Lamb of God bears witness that the Bridegroom Christ is personally sunk in witness of God. The Bride sees herself as the Beloved of God in Christ. Therefore she knows of an Infinite Saviour. Where she fails, she knows of One who there succeeds. The love into whose law she gazes is a love, whose strength is made perfect in weakness.
\nThe God who sufficed to infuse the cause of His purpose into the darkest hour of sin\u2019s triumph, and to make the Cross of Christ the sign of the crucifiers\u2019 salvation; this is the God, to whose Sacrifice, to whose Lamb, she is wedded.
\nSin has no more dominion over her, for she knows of One who is faithful to forgive sins, and to cleanse from all unrighteousness. The consequences of her sins have no more terror for her, for she has passed into that intense and unbroken gaze into the perfect law of liberty, which gaze receives knowledge of One God, beside whom is no other. \u201cAgainst Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight.\u201d
\nThe love, in which she has believed, is a love which rushes after its own beloved, renewing all, and undertaking every need; therefore the supreme need of having the evil consequences of every failure obliterated is borne by Him, to whom the Bride is espoused.
\nTherefore the bitterness of her failures is ever being swallowed up in the manifestation of her Lord\u2019s glory, and she stands free of condemnation by Him who loves her. They who are thus instinct with the visions of God are possessed by the spirit of judgment, and have their rejoicing according to their works. The Bride, ever glorying in the unwearied and infinite love which rushes after her, all the more desires to become herself personally such as the Lord delights in. The joy of the Lord is great over His redeemed. He breaks forth over them into singing. But, if this be His joy over them, even when they are weak, how much greater His joy when they increase in strength! His joy is fullest where His glory can shine forth as His Beloved\u2019s own glory, and through her be made manifest, not only as Christ\u2019s righteousness, but as her own righteousness also.
\nThe Bride must stand on the level of her bridegroom. Her desires are as His desires.
\nGod has sworn, by Himself, that His glory shall cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea. God has revealed, by the Cross of Christ, that His all potent good-will can through death overcome death, and abolish the works of the Accuser. Therefore, the Bride can rejoice, though offences abound, knowing that where sin abounds, grace doth much more abound. But this assurance can never satisfy a daughter\u2019s heart, a bride\u2019s yearning.
\nShe requires, not to be used as an instrument, merely, of Her Father\u2019s will. She desires to be the embodiment of that will. She desires that her own righteousness should be brought forth as the noonday.
\nIn measure as she knows that nothing can alienate her Bridegroom\u2019s love, or baffle His God\u2019s purpose, in that measure does sin agonise her, and personal failure make her long for self\u2019s perfecting.
\nIn measure as the Bride knows that the providence of her father God works by her failures as well as by her success, in measure as she has appropriated that strength which is perfected in weakness; in measure as she realises that whether she lives or dies she is the Lord\u2019s; in that measure does she desire to be freed from stain, to be separated from death: prays, \u201clead us not into temptation pants to be herself \u201call glorious.\u201d
\nThe Bride, instinct with such desires, urges towards that self-perfection which can be realised only in relation to the unjust, as well as to the just.
\nShe rejoices in tribulation, rejoices even when wounded in the house of friends, for she desires to be perfect. Perfect, even as God is perfect. Perfect, as having wrought out in, and through, and by her, by the over-mastering energy of God\u2019s sacrificial purpose, in her own individual relationships, that uninjurable Life and Love, which alone can rob the grave of victory.
\nBut the Bride, thus gazing into the perfect law of liberty, bringing herself a living sacrifice, becomes under perfecting increasingly aware of the mirror eyes, as eyes of a Lamb as it had been slain. She becomes more and more aware of that involuntary sacrifice, by which she lives. That Lamb of God, who came to take away the sins of the world, came indeed to do the Father\u2019s will, but He came to manifest the crossed heart of the Father; He came to show us the God upon the Cross. How could such manifestation be perfected except through involuntary suffering? The cry of the sufferer at Gethsemane, \u201cFather, let this hour pass from Me,\u201d echoes ever in the heart of Her, who, gazing into the mirror of the law of perfect liberty, sees Herself as the espoused of \u201cthe Lamb as it had been slain.\u201d She, who was unwilling herself to continue in sin that grace should abound, is unwilling also for the brethren to continue in sin as instruments for Her own perfecting. She learns to suffer with Christ, and with Christ to cry out for the passing away of the hour of the power of evil. She becomes instinct with the desires of the Father, and learns to urge that high desire to be clothed upon with the righteousness of others, through which She becomes ready for the marriage. That desire is the strong touch upon the harp of many strings in the Bride\u2019s heart, under which all the lesser beatitudes, of blessings connected with persecutions, and other\u2019s sins and failures, \u201ctrembling pass in music out of sight.\u201d
\nThus gazing and thus learning, the Bride knows herself to be Virgin. A virgin life is an imperfect life, a life waiting to be perfected. She waits to be perfected by accomplished unity with the Lamb of God, when of her it shall be said that her name is Jehovah Shanmah, the Lord is there; that her name is Jehovah Tsidkenu, the Lord our righteousness.
\nHer portion is the Infinite God, for she knows not Christ after the flesh, but lives by Him, as by \u201cthe little Lamb of God.\u201d She meets, in that sacrifice by which she lives, the Infinite God who gave the Lamb. Therefore her treasures are never changed into burdens, nor her walls into prison bonds. Nor is her individuality lost in the infinite, for her tie with the Lamb is figured under the intensely individualising symbols of life by food. No one eats for another. Each one assimilates for himself. If she knows not Christ after the flesh, she has entered into that large place by first knowing Him as the crucified Man. If she gives glory unto God, it is by adoring the man, as did the healed leper whom Jesus praised. Doubtless the nine, who went on their way rejoicing in their renewed cleanness, thought that the Omnipresent God could be praised anywhere, but not so thought He who manifests the Father. He said of the man who returned to the personal healer, that he only had given glory to God.
\nThis wondrous uniting of all antagonisms, of the One and the many, of the localised and the infinite, is in the Bride. Therefore by Her is given return from all destructions. This is shown us by many delicate touches of Scripture symbolism.
\nShe is the Walled City.
\nIsrael, set forth as an example among the nations, had a jubilee appointed her, when God, to whom the land belonged, shewed Himself to be the God of persons, the God who upheld individual possession in the land. The jubilee, or trumpet of the law, (for the word is the same as that used for the trumpets of Sinai), held personal possession as sacred, but that jubilee declared in type that, while the free gift of the land by God was inalienable, there might be forfeiture of man-built possessions in the walled city. Word of fear to all, who have conceived hopes of personal reward and of personal share in the walled city, which is the Bride. Yet word of hope, for the priest\u2019s possessions, even in the walled city, are inalienable; and the city of the priest, \u201cpoor Anathoth,\u201d is set by its son, the prophet Jeremiah, as a sign that all cities shall be rebuilt, and all possessions be restored.
\nThe name Anathoth means answers to prayers. It was a city of the priests in Benjamin. It was the refuge of the outcast priest in the person of Abiathar, descendant of Eli. It was among the first of the cities that fell before the Assyrian. It was Jeremiah\u2019s own city, and evil was to come upon the men of Anathoth because they rejected him. But, even as the dishonoured father, though innocent, suffers in the cutting short of the days of the rebellious son, so the righteous prophet\u2014nay, even the God of that prophet\u2014is involved in the destruction of those who sinned against Him. His heritage is laid waste, His house in Anathoth given to the enemy.
\nThe unity of loss ensures the unity of gain. For His own name\u2019s sake God will redeem, and will bring His people back again. Therefore the prophet spends money, and takes pains to redeem his possession in Anathoth, \u201cthough the city is given into the hand of the Chaldeans,\u201d for he foresees the great jubilee of the Lord, when the possessions of the sons of Aaron must return to them, even in the walled city. All the work of men\u2019s hands within the walls of that city, whose foundation is Christ, is tried by fire, and it is possible to know a final loss of all possession there, unless our personal standing is in the royal priesthood, in the Bride\u2019s own covenant. But the Levite was the representative of the firstborn; the priest in Israel was taken from among men to be the firstfruits unto the Lord of \u201ca kingdom of priests,\u201d of \u201ca holy nation.\u201d Thus, whatever concerns the life of the priest is prophetic of the life of the people; and this is shown us by the prophet Jeremiah, who tells us that his own certainty of possessions in Anathoth is a guarantee of repossession of all cities by the children of Israel, though the land be given into the hand of the Chaldeans, In like manner, because there is a city, whose relationship to the Lamb of God is inalienable, and not to be destroyed by any fire, there is hope for individual appearance, with individual gifts, within the walled city of God\u2019s delight, even for the man who has no abiding place therein, for that city\u2019s walls are salvation, and her gates are praise.
\nOh, wondrous wall! exceeding great and high. Even according to the measure of the angel, who is the bearer of wrath, who holds the filling up of the wrath of God, is the height of that wall.
\nThe likeness of that wall is as of jasper, even according to the likeness of Him who sits upon the throne. He is our salvation. Her walls are salvation. Salvation according to the measure of the filling up of wrath.
\nEvery stone that the high priest in the typical temple bore in his breastplate she has in her foundations, for the heart of Him of whom the type spoke is her resting place. And she has the added glory of the pearl, not found in the earthly shadow.
\nThe pearl is a product of the disease of the oyster. The oyster is a creature of the deep of judgments, very low in the scale of organised life. Spiritually read, the oyster is a creature in such decadence, as to have lost to an enormous degree the attributes of individuality, while it has at the same time become isolated in hardness. The pearl is witness of the marvels wrought by God even in the diseased state of such an one. This witness of God\u2019s redeeming wonders, even in the disease of those, who have farthest lapsed from individual relation to the Divine, has been torn out of that great deep, which is symbol alike of turbid evil wills, and of the judgments of God. He, who has descended below the raging waves of tumultuous wills, and into the still darkness of ultimate judgments, takes the pearl to be gate of entrance into the city of individual living relation to the living God.
\nWondrous gates! In these the unsealed Dan finds a place. Through these pass the glory and honour of the nations, and all that thus passes through the gate witnesses that, though without those gates are dogs and sorcerers, yet these unclean ones are not the only ones outside that city\u2019s gates, for from outside those gates come the honour and the glory of kings and nations, and many come who seek the leaves of healing.
\nThus shall it be in that not \u201cfar off event to which the ages move.\u201d
\nAnd, in the present day, who shall measure the value of Her presence, whose desire is unto the Father, for the appearing of the Lord from Heaven?
\nThe serpent eye of the Accuser\u2019s desire of creature perfection availed to call forth the personal God, in a body subject unto death. Shall not the desire of those who love His appearing again avail to call forth the King in His glory?
\nWho can measure what that quickening, ever quickening desire is effecting? how greatly it has already availed to hasten that appearing?
\nI have seen a picture of wonderful beauty, ministered by those who are unseen witnesses around us, as a sign to the lovers of the Lord.
\nIt is a picture of Wisdom instructing the Bride.
\nUpon a hill where clustering trees make lovely shade, and with branches, fruit-laden, half conceal the window of a sanctuary, a woman sits crowned with fruit. Upon her bosom leans a slender girl who stands beside her. The mother\u2019s head is bowed on the child\u2019s head, and the mother\u2019s eyes are full of great foreknowledge. With one hand the mother places in the child\u2019s hand a mystic cup. Upon the cover of this cup is the figure of a man, who, kneeling, receives with rapture a woman descending into his embrace. This is the cup of spousal mystery. With the other arm outstretched, the mother arches her fingers over the fingers of the child\u2019s outstretched hand, and instructs the girl how to perform the mesmeric pass.
\nWith sweet unconsciousness of aught save the mother\u2019s hand, the child, with intense effort, strives to learn.
\nOh! may Wisdom thus instruct the Church, and prepare her to exercise the strong magnetism of desire to call forth yet once more Him, who is at the right hand of God!
\nThe action which Wisdom teaches the girl to perform is the mesmeric pass. She is teaching the budding womanhood secrets of Divine attraction, mysteries of a spell to compel the God. \u201cDraw nigh! Draw nigh, Emanuel!\u201d
\nThe girl learns, and knows not that she is entering into the place of creature freedom, where, near her, is the hideous rout of the lawless, sensual woman. In the background, and separated by only a leafy screen from the holy place where Wisdom teaches spousal mysteries, is the lawless woman. She drives many men before her, and, never satisfied, she still turns, and, with mesmeric action of her hand, still calls.
\nMany are they that follow her, and know not into what a doom. Behind the leafy screen many unclean ones press to look through upon the Church\u2019s central mystery. Are they not even breaking through to gaze upon the Holy of Holies? Is not the hour even now upon us, when the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet is approaching to the holy place, to enthrone himself there, and show himself as God?
\nThe girl on Wisdom\u2019s bosom knows nothing of this terrific neighbourhood; but Wisdom knows. Her face, as she leans her fruit-crowned head on the child\u2019s head, is full of that suppressed knowledge, as well as of yearning love. She knows the full urgency of the call she teaches.<\/p>\n
\u201cDraw nigh! oh Jesse\u2019s Rod, draw nigh,
\nTo free us from the Enemy;
\nFrom Hell\u2019s infernal pit to save,
\nAnd give us victory o\u2019er the grave.<\/p>\n
\u201cDraw nigh, thou Dayspring who shalt cheer
\nAnd comfort by thine advent here;
\nAnd banish far the brooding gloom
\nOf sinful night, and endless doom.<\/p>\n
\u201cDraw nigh, draw nigh, oh David\u2019s key,
\nThe Heavenly gate will ope to Thee;
\nMake safe the way that leads on high,
\nAnd close the path to Misery.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes, this picture is a true picture of that which now is.
\nThe Bride is being thus instructed to cast forth that spell of power which brings the Lover. And, in frightful truth, the abomination of desolation is thus pressing round the holy place, and preparing to desecrate the sanctuary.
\nBlessed be God! there are voices heard from trumpet heights which cry\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cRejoice! Rejoice! Emanuel
\nShall come to thee, oh! Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the moment when that abomination breaks through, and the Bride utters the cry of woman awakened to knowledge of peril, in that moment shall He, for whom the Bride exerts powers of Divine attraction, arise in His might.
\nIn the moment when the Adversary shall boast over the holy place, in the hearing of the Bride, as once over the world in the hearing of the Bridegroom, \u201cAll this is delivered unto me;\u201d in that moment shall he hear the thunder of the oath of God.
\nWhen once woman calls upon her God, tremble ye who desecrate her shrine.
\nAs chaff before the whirlwind, as stubble before the fire, shall ye be in the day when Adonahy arises in His beauty!<\/p>\n
title The Parables of Judgment
\npublisher= Elliot Stock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PART I CHAPTER I The Two Spheres of Love We shall be the better able to read parables of judgment if we first have some general knowledge of the Revelation of which they form a part. That Revelation is of a God, who is Love; therefore it can be spiritually received only by the spirit … <\/p>\n