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in good working; but they can only receive a certain ruder service, and when he pleases to send a finer and a fuller gift, they will, I fear, stand aloof and reject it; but he will not therefore cease from his purpose of giving, but shower his gifts where they are received with welcome. And if the consequence should be the breaking up of the frame-work, and the falling down of things into their original parts, there is little or no loss sustained. Still, however, as I said above, it is our part to reverence every form of love which we find existent, and not to violate it, but to maintain it while consistently with truth and love we can; and when we cannot, to press the better course of obeying God rather than man, and leave them to do their pleasure; bearing patiently to be put out of the synagogue, and to have our names cast out for the Lord's sake. Let us beware, therefore, lest we make too much of those names Church of England and Church of Scotland. I fear we are making too much of them already, to the entire forgetting of that unity and completeness which every church should feel and exemplify in itself. I feel that the dignity which is perceived by God to lie in each church under its angel, is transferred to one great structure of man's building; and, instead of having thousands of apostolic witnesses within the land, we have as it were but two. And instead of growing warm with love and holiness, contemplating and pursuing the completeness of Christ in every church, we are broken down and frittered away as if we were but a poor and helpless fragment in the one great whole, the Church of England or the Church of Scotland, which are wholes, not of God's making, but of man's making; while the whole of God's making, for exhibiting all the parts of a complete body, like the Corinthian church, doth in fact stand in every church constituted like my own under an angel with the elders and deacons, not in a bishop's see or in a presbytery, which are ecclesiastical units expedient for order, but not necessary for life, of man's making, and not of God's. I would have each flock to be prosecuting the completeness of the body of Christ within itself, and so I would be for raising up within the land, as many witnesses for God and for Christ, as there are ordained ministers with flocks over which they are ordained.

While I thus clear the question of churchmanship from great practical misconception, and restore the ministerial office to its dignity, and the flock over which he ministers to its importance, as together set for an example of the complete manifestation of the Spirit, the due subordination of the members of the body to Christ the Head, and the full effect of the one inworking God, I would not have it to be understood that I am advocating a schismatical and sectarian spirit, or undervaluing the advantages of communion among the churches of Christ; because the one of these I believe to be a mortal sin, the other to be the necessary condition of Christian charity. I am but preparing the church for another of those perilous conflicts with the rulers of the darkness of this world which I fear is beginning to arise. If the Church of Scotland should reject the truth of our Lord's flesh, God's universal love, or any other of the great truths for which she is now calling her faithful members into question, the brethren who cleave to the truth will be cast forth; and the question is, What are they to do? The same may happen in England also, though, from the learning and solidity of her church, it does not seem to be so near at hand. In such a case, the duty of the ejected ministers would be to preach as they did in the time of the Arian supremacy, and at the Reformation; as they did in the Church of England under the Commonwealth, and afterwards at the Restoration; as they did in Scotland at all times of the supremacy of prelacy. It is no new case. But they should be careful to give no provocation to the ruling powers, lest they should drive them headlong into error; to establish no principle of secession or dissent, but simply to build up the church of Christ in the land, and to call out witnesses in every city, who may patiently testify to the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, and wait for the Lord's coming. The ministers should preach only the more zealously the truth as it is in Jesus they should lift up their voice like a trumpet, and cry aloud, and spare not, like the prophets in the old time; but not by any means lead the people into any act of separation they should purify their faith and love, and cast them back into the mixture to purify it; thus infusing fresh life-blood into the veins of the church. When if the church should reject, and cast out as excommuni

cated persons, it is then their duty to call ministers, and form themselves into flocks, not as a sect, but as the true church of God within the land, knowing and acknowledging no name but the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. And in so doing they are following the example of the Lord and his Apostles, who did not separate from the Jewish church, but were cast out, and did not separate others, but permitted them to worship in the temple and the synagogue, and to observe all the ordinances of Moses, until the temple was laid low, and with it all the glory and order of the Levitical institution, which lies a ruin, a ruin to remain, until He come whose right it is to build it up again.

It was not my intention to have gone into these details; but simply to have pointed out the connection which is established between a minister and his people, and the one common discipline of good or evil, of reward or punishment, to which they are subjected, to the end, that men might well consider with what congregation they cast in their lot, when they have the power of making a choice. The anticipation of the perplexities with which we are about to be set around, hath led me out further than I should have gone in the midst of a lecture: and yet I can see a purpose of the Spirit in it, to instruct the Philadelphian sons of the church, how they may preserve the love of the brethren, in the midst of those trials and persecutions which are about to come upon them; while they cease nothing, but are more earnest than others, in their testimony for the truth. I feared lest the names Church of Scotland and Church of England, might, from their venerable antiquity and many benefits, stun and stupify the witnesses of the truth, should they come to be used against them, lest their voice might be silenced altogether, or they might flee into other lands. May the Lord bless this short digression to the end of love and unity! and with this prayer I return again to the proper subject of lecture.

The promise of the Spirit to this church, and therewith to all the churches, and to every one who hath an ear to hear, is as usual expressed in terms corresponding to the two other parts of the epistle; to wit, the superscription and the charge; as possessing the key of David, he hath a right to open every door of David's house, and every gate

of David's city; and so he promiseth to the faithful, that they shall have their abode in the temple of his God, and in the New Jerusalem, the city of his God, which cometh down out of heaven. To these poor and weak brethren he promiseth the seal of his Father's name upon their forehead, that they may be delivered out of the midst of the judgments which are to come upon the earth. And to these faithful and true disciples, who were not backward to enter into the door opened on earth, he openeth the door of the temple in heaven, that they may enter in thereat, and for ever glorify the Lord. To those bold confessors who kept his word and had not denied his name, he promiseth the honour of many names; the name of his God, the name of the New Jerusalem, the city of his God, and his own new name. But the peculiar adaptation of the promise, to the circumstances of the church, will more clearly appear, as we proceed with the exposition of this most inclusive promise, "Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out and I will write upon him the name of my. God, and the name of the city of my God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God; and I will write upon him my new name" (iii. 12).

The two pillars in the temple were named, the one' Jachin, that is, He will establish; the other Boaz, that is, In it strength: to sustain and strengthen, being their character and use. And the expression" to be pillars," is applied by the Apostle Paul to the chief men of the church of Jerusalem (Gal. ii. 9), "James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars." And in a certain Psalm, it is thus spoken of Christ: "The earth and all the inhabitants thereof are dissolved: I bear up the pillars of it." And unto the Prophet Jeremiah it is thus spoken by the Lord (i. 18, 19): Behold, I have made thee this day a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brazen walls against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, against the princes thereof, against the priests thereof, and against the people of the land. And they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee: for I am with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee." These passages of Scripture serve to shew us that the meaning conveyed by the word "pillar," is, support and stedfastness. But to the com

plete interpretation of the expression, it will be necessary to examine what is meant by "the temple of my God."

When Moses had charge given him to construct the tabernacle, it was in these words: "See thou make all things according to the pattern shewn thee in the mount." For Moses and his house were only for a testimony of the Prophet like unto Moses and his house: "Moses verily was faithful in all his house as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after: but Christ as a Son over his own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end" (Heb. iii. 5, 6). The antitype of the tabernacle of Moses is therefore the church, as it doth at present exist, unfixed to place, wandering about and having no rest in the wilderness of the nations. This is clear from the passage just quoted out of the Epistle to the Hebrews, as also from the whole contents of the viiith and ixth chapters. But to me it is still more beautifully manifest from the lxviiith Psalm, where, in the 17th verse, Christ's ascension into heaven is compared to Moses going up to Mount Sinai: "The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the Lord is among them as in Sinai, in the holy place." And the end of his ascension into heaven is, in the verse following, declared to be for the very same end of building upon the earth a dwelling-place for God. Being literally rendered, it is, "Thou hast ascended on high, thou hast led captivity captive; thou hast received gifts in man, yea rebels also, for a dwelling-place of the Lord God." Which being interpreted by the Epistle to the Ephesians, in chapters ii. and iv., where it is quoted, doth yield this great truth, That Jesus having in his flesh destroyed the enmity between Jew and Gentile, and received the rebels and aliens as well as the children of promise for his gift, [" It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob,' and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the ends of the earth" (Isa. xlix. 6),] did with the Holy Ghost, which for this purpose he also received, ["Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the

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