medium of communication between God and the sinner. Sin had
having dominion over our ten or our five cities—acting as Jehovah's kings over all creation, and carrying out his purposes of righteousness throughout his far dominions. We serve when, throughout eternity, we administer under him the affairs of a blessed and holy universe. Thus do we serve in the kingdom, and, as kings upon the throne, do the will of him who has placed us there. The service which God is to get from us, is to be the service of crowned heads and sceptred hands. It is in "royal apparel" that we are to serve hereafter.
O the honour of being called to this kingly service!—to be God's vicegerents in carrying on everything relating to the coming kingdom!—to render service such as only kings can render—service befitting kings—service worthy of being rendered to the Great King himself! To convey his royal commands, or to execute his royal purposes in all parts of his infinite dominions—surely this is the very height of dignity, and power, and honour! May we not, with such a hope in view, welcome the Church's lowly estate in this evil age? May we not count all sorrow light, all poverty and low estate as nothing, all despiteful usage or down-treading as honourable badges? Is it worth our while to complain of anything we may suffer, or to be cast down because of disappointment, when we know that the kingdom is at hand, and that the blessedness of its service, even apart from the excellency of its glory, will make up for all?
4. It is priestly service.—The first end of priesthood is to provide a medium of communication between God and the sinner. Sin had broken up the direct intercourse, and an indirect one is established, by means of a middle party whose presence makes it safe for sinners to transact with God, and honourable for God to deal with sinners.
This was the truth which God taught Israel by means of their priestly ritual; and having graven this truth upon their hearts, and published it before the world, he took down the old fabric by means of which he had inculcated this truth, and substituted in its place the true medium of intercourse—his own Son, the High Priest of good things
to come. He, the Christ of God, has absorbed Israel's ritual into himself, so that it exists no more; and any attempt to imitate it is nothing short of unholy mimicry, founded on ignorance of the truth which that ceremonial embodied. All priesthood centres in him, and all the ends of priesthood meet and are fulfilled in him.
There is no priesthood upon earth now save the "royal priesthood" (1 Pet. 2:9), composed of those who have been made "kings and priests unto God" (Rev. 1:6). These are the "saints," the redeemed from among men, who have "been washed, and sanctified, and justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. 6:11). Other priests, whether growing up by apostolical succession, or fabricated by a new revelation, there are none upon the earth. The elect of God—they are the only priesthood. Priests of man's selection, or of man's anointing, or of self-appointment, God will not acknowledge. They are profane usurpers of an office to which none save Jehovah can set apart a man. Like the priests of Baal, they worship they know not what, and shall perish in the gainsaying of Korah.
Whatever claimants of the office or usurpers of the dignity there may be in any of the churches of Christ, there are no real priests save those whom the Father has chosen, and the Son has washed, and the Spirit has anointed for the office. The day is at hand, which shall judge between the man-chosen and the God-chosen—between the possessors of the Holy Ghost and the inheritors of a human fiction, the traders in a Satanic lie.
But the priesthood of these chosen ones is still in abeyance: it is not yet in actual exercise. They are priests-elect, as having received their priestly title; but they are no more. The "fair mitre" has not yet been set upon their head; nor the garments for glory and beauty put upon them. Their priesthood, like their kingship, is as yet a thing of faith, not to be actually entered on till the great High Priest come out from within the veil, whither he has gone to present the atoning blood. Yet their title is sure, and their claim is one which God will acknowledge
ere long. Their day of investiture and time of manifestation is at hand. Till that period arrive, they repudiate all priestly pretensions, and reject as profane usurpation the assumption of priestly honour or service, save in that sense in which the apostle says, "We beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable SERVICE" (Rom. 12:1); or in that sense in which he says, "By him let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name" (Heb. 13:15).
Our priesthood is after the order of Melchisedek. We look to the King of Salem and Priest of the Most High God as our type, or model. The Son of God himself is the true Melchisedek, and we, under him, lay claim to the name and dignity. Born from above, and unknown by the world as to our descent and parentage, we are the liker to Him who stands before us altogether without an ancestry. Our city is the New Jerusalem, even as his was the earthly Salem. Our abode is in a city of which it is said, "I saw no temple therein," even as he dwelt and held priestly office in a city without a temple. We are not of Israel, yet partakers of the same humanity, even as he was. Ours is like his, a "royal priesthood" of a far higher kind than what belonged to the earthly seed of Abraham.
As priests we are hereafter to conduct the intercourse between earth and heaven; for priesthood has ends in view beyond atonement and reconciliation. It is to secure a fitting medium of communication between God and his creatures; and hence, it may and shall exist after every stain has been washed out of creation, and every vestige of the curse swept away.
Priesthood shall exist in the ages to come, both in the person of Christ and of his redeemed ones—the members of his body. It shall be the living link between the upper and the lower world—between heaven and earth—between the Creator and the created. Christ and his risen saints,—his royal priesthood,—shall be the channel of communication between God and his universe. They shall be the
leaders of creation's choir;—gathering up from all realms and stars throughout space the various songs of praise, and carrying them to the throne of the Everlasting King. Through them worship shall go on, and supplication go up, and allegiance be presented, from all orders of the subjects of Jehovah throughout his illimitable dominions.
Our priesthood is everlasting; and the ages to come, when sin has passed away, shall widen instead of narrowing its range. And just as Christ's human nature is the great bond that links together the finite and the infinite, and the foundation on which the universe is to stand immovably, so the priesthood of Christ, carried on in that very body which was nailed to the cross, shall be the great medium of communication and communion, in all service and worship between the eternal Jehovah and the creatures whom he has made to glorify him, in all places of his universal dominion, far off or near.
Such is the "service" of the ages to come! It is blessed, and honourable, and holy service. It is not merely service compatible with freedom—but it is free—nay, it is liberty; and in that eternal service there is the enjoyment of an eternal liberty. And then, over all is spread the calm of an endless Sabbath. It is Sabbath service. It is service such as becomes the rest (or sabbatism) which remaineth for the people of God. For this Sabbath service we have waited long. Of it all our earthly Sabbaths were a type. They pointed forward to that time in which these two apparently discordant things shall be blessedly combined, service and rest;—service such as we cannot render here; rest such as has never been enjoyed on this side of the inheritance. Then that shall come to pass which is written—"They serve him day and night in his temple;" and again, "His servants shall serve him." True service, and true rest;—service without any intermingling hardship, or privation, or toil—rest without weariness or sloth; rest with God, and in God; rest throughout the ages of ages —rest which no devil shall mar, and of which no sin shall rob us.
CHAPTER IX
THE CITY OF THE AGES TO COME
LET us take our idea of a city, and of a city life, from the Bible—not from man's books. It may, in that case, differ somewhat from current conceptions, but it will not on that account be less true.
God does not think so meanly of a city as man does; nor has he taught us to associate little else save evil, and sin, and toil, with its name. God does not speak of cities as smoky prisons, hateful to look upon, and fit only to be swept away as so many Sodoms; nor does he represent innocence as dwelling in green solitudes, far from "the busy haunts of men." It is easy to glance at the bright side of the lonely village in the quiet glen, and, comparing it with the dark side of the crowded town, utter idle sentiment, and set it to song; but is such a picture true, or is it like the idea which God gives us of a city?
Rush into some city with the midnight train, and then pass along its streets, from which the crowds of day have just retired; or, better still, look down upon it from some height when its myriad lights are twinkling, and the smoke of the evening fires is going calmly up; and think of all that is contained in that narrow circle on which your eye rests. Try to count up the hopes, the joys, the loves, the sympathies, the fears, the cares, the sighs, the sorrows, the throbbings, the tremblings, that at that moment are flowing or reflowing in tens of thousands of hearts; and then ask, what must that place be where so many immortal pulses are beating, where so many thoughts are in motion, where so many energies are stirring, where so many lives are unfolding themselves, where so many hearts are giving forth their priceless treasures, and where so many eternities are ripening? In spite of din, and crime, and suffering, there are wondrous things seen, and heard, and spoken, and felt, and done in it, which fling
over it an intensity of strange and profound interest, such as no other spot can claim.
So it is with a city that God has connected the unfolding of his purposes in the past, and it is with a city that he connects these in the time to come. What is there in all Scripture story, or divine truth, that is not either more or less closely linked with Jerusalem? There is Bethany, and Bethlehem, and Emmaus, calm retreats, and full of fondest memories; yet, after all, it is round Jerusalem that the truest interest gathers; it was Jerusalem of which David sung; it was over Jerusalem that Jesus wept. And what is there in the visions of future glory which does not point to a city as the centre of its radiance—the terrestrial glory flowing out from the Jerusalem below, the celestial glory from the Jerusalem above? It was "a city" to which God pointed the eye of the patriarchs, when as yet they dwelt in tents; for of Abraham it is written, "He looked for a CITY which hath foundations;" and the apostle, in expressing his own hope, writes, "Here have we no continuing CITY, but we seek one to come."
All our hopes centre in A CITY. Nay, even paradise itself, as it shall be in the day when all things are made new, is connected with a city; for the "tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God," springs up along the banks of that river which flows through the streets of the heavenly city (Rev. 22:2.) In the ancient paradise, on the banks of that river which "went out of Eden to water the garden" (Gen. 2:10), there was no city nor dwelling for the first Adam and his spouse; but, in the centre of the future paradise, which is watered by the "pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb" (Rev. 22:1), there appears a city of surpassing magnificence, where is not only the dwelling but the throne and palace of the Second Adam and his bride. Jerusalem and paradise, which had of old been separate, have now become one; and as Solomon of old aimed at surrounding his own Jerusalem with a paradise, "planting vineyards, and making himself gardens, and orchards, and pools of water" (Eccles. 2:4, 5), so shall the true