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"Though now ascended up on high,
He bends on earth a brother's eye:
Partaker of the human name,
He knows the frailty of our frame :
Our Fellow-sufferer yet retains
A fellow-feeling of our pains;

And still remembers, in the skies,
His tears, his agonies, and cries."

The assurance of triumphing over all temptation and all power of the enemy, is an important point in the preparation of the bride for her Lord, and is the necessary consequence of the recognition that all power is in his hands; that the trials are appointed by him; and that the power to overcome is derived from him, and not from any strength which we have in ourselves. Be thou faithful unto death, is the call of the Lord: all our sufficiency is from him. He will be faithful to all who continue faithful to him, and give them a crown of life: "To him that overcometh," saith He, "will I grant to sit with me on my throne ; even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne."

The bride is made up of all the generations of the faithful since the days of the Apostles, and not of the generation living at the second advent alone. The faith of the bride should be one, and her assurance the same, throughout all ages. The bride now must say, with the Apostle, I know in whom I have believed, and that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him unto the great day. Each of us should be able to say, before the coming of the Lord; I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith, I have finished my course: henceforth there remaineth for me a crown of glory, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give to me in that day; and not to me only, but to all them that love his appearing. We should feel an assurance as great as that attained by the Apostles, and enjoyed by those who sleep in Jesus, and rest from their labours; who all, as members of the bride, sympathize with our present sufferings, and expect their reward, as we do, at the coming of the Lord to change the living and raise the dead; when he shall accomplish the number of his elect, and set up his kingdom; that "we, together with all who have departed this life in the true faith of his holy name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss both in body and soul in his eternal and everlasting glory.'

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The idea which now so extensively prevails, of departed saints entering at once into glory, is a figment of modern times, unknown to or protested against by the Fathers and Reformers, and never put forth dogmatically till the time of the Westminster divines; who founded the narrowest, shallowest school of theology which has ever existed, though it has led by the ears the whole Church of Scotland, and nearly the whole body of Dissenters.

This modern notion was ably refuted by Burnet De Statu Mortuorum, a considerable portion of which was translated in an early Number of the Morning Watch. But to any one who holds the oneness of the bride, the body of Christ, a refutation is needless; the notion is utterly untenable and absurd. Few persons have followed out this notion into its consequences, or observed how this one error has in fact made void the doctrines of the resurrection, the coming of Christ, the judgment, the glory of Christ and his saints, and all the brightest hopes and prospects set before the church in the Apostolic Epistles. The house of many mansions, the city, the temple, the tabernacle, the throne and kingdom of our God, have all been swallowed up and lost in one vague undefined notion, which they call heaven; and they denounce as presumptuous any attempt to render it intelligible in time, place, or circumstances. The kingdom of heaven, in Scripture, is "the harvest at the end of the world" (Matt. xiii.); is "the coming of the Son of Man" (xxiv.); is "the manifestation of the sons of God" (Rom. viii.); is" the coming down of the New Jerusalem" (Rev. xix. xxi.); is the Lord's house established" (Isaiah ii.); is "the new creation" (Isaiah lxv.); is "the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ" (Rev. v. xi.); is "the greatness of the dominion under the whole heaven, given to the people of the saints of the Most High; whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him" (Dan. vii.)

As Christ now sympathizes with all his members, who constitute the bride, and as they all sympathize with each other, so filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ; it follows that the full fruition of Christ, or the fulness of joy in any one member, cannot be complete and perfect till the whole body is completed. The spirit of every departed saint is blessed in the spiritual communion with Christ, through the Holy Spirit ; but none of the departed saints enter into glory till the first resurrection, when they shall receive their glorified bodies together with us, and be for ever with the Lord. No one member has precedency of the rest: all the elect are gathered simultaneously; and the body, being completed and united to Christ its head, is incapable of any further addition, as may be demonstrated with the same certainty as that it can admit of no diminution or decay.

This great truth, of oneness in humiliation and suffering now, to be simultaneously glorified hereafter, is taught the church by a variety of other comparisons as well as by the bride and the body of Christ. He is called the Foundation and Topstone of the temple; his members, living stones: He is called the Lamb; his church, virgins following him: He is called the Shepherd;

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his church, the sheep that know his voice; and other suitable figures are employed to convey the same idea.

For each symbol of union a note of preparation is given, distinguishing the church from the world. The bride is prepared in fine linen, which is the righteousness of the saints: the members are quickened with the new life proceeding from the risen Head: the living stones are fashioned for their several places in the temple: the virgins are wise, and have oil in their vessels, their loins girt, their lamps burning bright: the sheep know the Good Shepherd's voice, follow him only, and flee from the voice of a stranger. And a mark or seal from God is also given, which reunites the various symbols, and brings the several truths taught by different symbols, into perfect oneness again. This mark is the seal of the living God upon the foreheads of his servants, like the plate of gold on Aaron's mitre inscribed “holiness to the Lord." In the kingdom of Christ, holiness to the Lord must be written on all things, even on the pots in Jerusalem, and the bridles of the horses (Zech. xiv. 20). And every one who is truly one with Christ now, will have holiness to the Lord written on all his actions, in preparation for his becoming a pillar in the temple of God, and receiving the name of God and of the city of God, and the new name of Christ (Rev. ii. 12). And such shall become integrant members of that New Jerusalem which cometh down out of heaven from God; which is itself a temple, "for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it," enshrining each of the members and radiating forth from them. "And the city shall have no need of the sun, nor of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God shall lighten it, and the Lamb shall be the light thereof" (Rev. xxi. 22).

The preparation for this exceeding great and eternal weight of glory, such as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive-the preparation begins now, in the secret workings of the Holy Spirit; unseen in his workings, known only in the effects of holiness to the Lord in the members of Jesus. The time of its manifestation to the saints shall be also hidden from the world; for it shall be at the coming of the Lord as the Morning Star, and he so comes only to those who, from heeding the word of prophecy, have had light dawning in a dark place, and the day star rising in their hearts (2 Pet. i. 19). To the rest of the world the sign of the Son of Man will be either unheeded, or an object of terror, from which they will call upon the rocks and the mountains to fall and hide them: the expecting saints alone will lift up their heads with joy, knowing that their redemption draweth nigh. The time of the manifestation of the glory to the world, is the end of that day of the Lord which the morning star and the

translation of the saints usher in. During that day, and before its close, Antichrist and his followers shall be destroyed; and at the close, the holy city, the New Jerusalem, shall descend from heaven on the purified and regenerated earth; wherein Christ and his saints shall dwell for evermore, dispensing righteous government and blessings manifold to the universe, and receiving its allegiance as heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ Jesus.

The present preparation, of holiness to the Lord, is only to be attained, and may only be sought for, in following the footsteps of Jesus. It is a sorrowful, a blood-sprinkled path; cheered only by the unseen consolations of the Spirit; enlightened only by the glory beaming from the heavenly goal in prospect, as reflected in the sure word of prophecy, whereunto we are commanded to take heed, as unto a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in our hearts.

This holiness is not to be sought by seclusion from the world, but by separation from the evil which sin has introduced; not by flying from the enemy, but by conquering him. Christ's holiness was shewn in rejecting the temptations of Satan, and in making every circumstance of life an occasion for glorifying his Father. His delight lay in doing the will of God: he sought out for those who were most destitute of holiness, and called sinners to repentance, saying, "They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick;" manifesting perfect holiness even where he was tauntingly reproached as "the friend of publicans and sinners.”

Still less is this holiness to be sought or expected by forsaking our lawful business and ordinary occupations; for holiness is the calling of all Christians, and of all alike: if, therefore, all are called to holiness, it is a calling compatible with the occupations of all the busy are called to make their business holiness to the Lord; the studious, to glorify God thereby ; and all, in the lowest as well as in the highest stations of life, whether they eat or drink, or whatsoever they do, to do all to the glory of God.

But holiness must be discerned by the understanding before it can be exhibited in the life; and this discernment comes from the teaching of the Comforter, who taketh of the things of Christ and sheweth them to the soul; who revealeth the holiness of the law of God, and its perfect exemplification in the life of Christ, And when holiness is thus discerned, it can only be attained and ensued by continual faith in Jesus. Faith in the blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin, and giveth the believer a holy standing; and faith in the power of the risen Christ will enable the believer to walk in holiness for the time to come, and to glorify God with the body and the spirit, which are his. The

very ground and preliminary of holiness, is the assurance that Christ hath reconciled us to God, and that he is able to keep us holy; these being the indispensable conditions of salvation, of escape from hell and of entrance into heaven, of deliverance from the final abode of unholiness, and of an eternal standing of joy in the Most Holy God; that Christ is able to do that Now which we all profess to believe that he will do in the WORLD

TO COME.

ON THE PROPHETICAL ASPECT OF ALL GOD'S WORKS

AND WAYS.

By the Rev. EDWARD IRVING, A. M.

1. The Creation of Man.

Ir is my purpose, in the strength of God, to shew from the holy Scriptures, that the great end of all creation, and especially of the creation of man; of the constitution of the world, and especially of this earth; is to bring into manifestation the Son of God in the creature form of the risen God-man, in which to abide and act the will of God for ever, to reveal unto all creatures the invisible and infinite substance of the Godhead, sustain all elect creatures in himself as the Head, repress all reprobate creatures from their activity of evil, and so become the heir and inheritor of all things, under the Father; according as we are taught in these two passages of Scripture: Eph. i. 10, "The mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself, that in the dispensation of the fulness of the time he might gather together in one (head up or recapitulate) all things in Christ;" and 1 Cor. xv. 24, " Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power." The only kind of proof which this great proposition admitteth of is the proof a posteriori, as it is called; that is to say, from something posterior to the purpose. No human intelligence can break the seal of God's purpose, which it is the prerogative of the Word to open; and which the Word openeth not by words merely, but by acts producing things outwardly existent; to every one of which acts the Holy Spirit is a necessary co-operator. Therefore it is vain to think to get at the purpose of God otherwise than of God otherwise than by searching into the acts of God outwardly manifested in things. For, if you search your own ideas, of the fitness and order of things which no doubt is a great means of coming at the knowledge of God's purpose, what is it that you are doing but searching into a work of God, which is the reason and being of man? And if again you look at creation, or providence, or the incarnation of the Word, or the church; what is it all but a work of God that you are study

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