possible. The soul is a word that cannot be unspoken-a leaf

It is the desire of God that all whom I now address should rise and share in the hallowed hospitalities of the Lamb. He has spread before every eye the sacred page from which remonstrant flashes, like the flame-sword of the cherubim, warn us from the paths of ruin. Every week he sends us the Sabbath, like a messenger from the skies, to reveal afresh the sanctuary, the ordinances of the gospel, the message of love, the means of grace, the hopes of glory; there is no speech where its voice is not. heard; its line is gone out through all the world; it bids you prepare for the marriage-supper of the Lamb.

God's providential dealings incessantly impress the same truth. He awakens the sleeping judgments which he has in store, and charges them to strike that they may stir us up to reflection and forethought. Sickness and bereavement, the shrouds of our

babes and the graves of our fathers, the arrow by day and the pestilence by night, the surges of a nation's wrath and the ripples of an individual's sorrow, are the trumpets of God sounding in our ears our growing responsibilities, and urging on us piercing motives to arise and make ready, for "Behold, the Bridegroom cometh."

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LECTURE X.

THE APOCALYPTIC TEMPLE.

"And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty, and the Lamb, are the temple of it."-Revelation xxi. 22.

THIS Sounds like a discord in the harmony of heaven-it looks as if it were the projected shadow of "No God!"—it seems out of place. "No tears," one can easily admit as an Eden feature, and joyfully anticipate as a blessed fact; but "no temple" seems a gap in the landscape-a stain on the glory-a cloud on the bright sky. Take away the house of prayer, and our peaceful Sabbath, and our public ordinances, and our village spires, and the chimes of Sabbath bells, and the hill of Zion, the ascending crowds of solemn worshippers, and the songs of praise, and the rich, deep calm that still overflows, as with the light and love of the better land, our Sundays, even in England,—and you seem to me to despoil earth of half its beauty, time of its most brilliant gems, and humanity of its sweetest and most precious birthright. This negative, too, seems to contradict other Apocalyptic sketches. We read in one place, "The temple of God was opened;" in another, "The temple was filled with smoke;" and in another, "They serve Him in his temple." In these passages it seems to be intimated that the wide earth shall then be one glorious temple; but in the passage under consideration, it appears to be thought that the millennial age shall have no temple at all. There is no contradiction-there is real harmony between these statements, if we will only listen; a little reflection and discrimination will bring it out.

It will be granted by every Christian, that during the coming era, when the gospel shall universally prevail in its highest, deepest, and purest influence, there will be no skeptic, infidel, or Socialist temple. Such are and have been in this dispensation; but in the New Jerusalem, law, order, and love shall be the ir

and sunshine of all space: wild and sensual dreams shall have passed away like exhausted clouds; unbelief shall have perished from the earth; skepticism, that airy, cold, and unsubstantial frostwork that Iceland of negations-shall have been utterly dissolved under the sun of light; one trace, fragment, or memorial of it shall not remain.

There shall be no Socinian temple there, nor shall there be any one holding Socinian sentiments in the New Jerusalem. I listen to the fore-heard echoes of its song, and I hear none disowning or leaving out, but all proclaiming clearly and perpetually the essential deity of the Son of God.

In Rev. v. 12, it is written that "ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, say, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever." And again, in Rev. vii. 9, "After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands, and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb." The atonement thus gives colouring to their songs, and emphasis to their gratitude. The deity of Jesus is there universally felt, acknowledged, glorified. He is the object of universal worship.

Here "the man of

There will be no Romish temple there. sin sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God;" but there Christ is the only high-priest, and his praise the censer of ever-burning incense. The Virgin Mary is there, not a goddess on the altar, or a queen, but a worshipper before the throne; and the apostles, and martyrs, and saints receive no religious service, but give ceaseless adoration, and thanksgiving, and glory, and honour, "to Him that loved them, and washed them too from their sins in his own blood, and made them kings and priests unto God."

There shall be there no Turkish mosque or temple-the Crescent has then and there waned and disappeared before the Cross; the channels of the Euphrates have been filled with the streams of that "river that makes glad the city of our God;" the minaret is buried in the decay of past ages; the fallen firmamental star has no orbit in the millennial sky, the locusts of Egypt no admission into the New Jerusalem, and the Koran is unknown, and the cave of Mecca is merged in the bottomless pit for ever.

There shall be no denominational temple there. Those distinctions which have crept into the worship of God in the lapse of years, shall all melt away in that flood of light and glory that lights up with everlasting splendour our new Jerusalem; the names and distinctions of Episcopacy, Presbytery, Independency, and Wesleyanism, with their peculiar crotchets, parties, quarrels, and framework, shall all be swept away; and the name which was first pronounced in scorn at Antioch, shall alone be heard in the choirs of the redeemed, and gloried in as their noblest distinction. Names so musical now will then be heard no more at all; glories so radiant now, will be quenched, or rather superseded then. Christ shall be all and in all, and man shall be glorious only in his glory.

There will be no material or local temple there. No place will be sequestered and set apart for the special worship of God; the scaffolding comes down when the edifice is complete; the discipline which is temporary, gives way to the communion of saints which is eternal; the canonized urn is gone, for the fountain and river of living waters are disclosed. The whole earth shall be holiness to the Lord; the hand of the great High-Priest shall wave consecration over it, and Christ himself shall be the temple of the universe.

The absence of a material temple is, in short, the expressive symbol of the departure and decay of all those auxiliary means and ordinances which are of so great value here; there will then be no sacraments, as the great substance of them, the Son of God, will be present. "Till I come," is the close of the eucharist; "in remembrance of me," cannot be said of one actually and bodily present; these, therefore, are both left behind, as the calyx or corolla when the fruit is ripe.nd, as the There will be then no stated weekly Sabbath, becaus