the Saviour to the question of the disciples, "Lord, how is it that thou wilt manifest thyself unto us, and not unto the world?" Yet, when he is truly manifest to us, the world will be likely to know something about it. Many there are whose hearts burn within them, but whose eyes as yet are holden. The world has taken kindly to, and often repeats, a quotation from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but almost always omits the line that contains the real lesson:

"Earth's crammed with heaven

And every common bush afire with God.

But only he who sees, takes off his shoes;

The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries."

Lightning comes from the clouds to the earth: it also goes from the earth to the clouds. It is said that we could, if we tried, accustom ourselves to see the lightning ascend instead of descend. The holy city is to ascend from earth and descend from heaven. Viewed in progress of construction, it seems ascending. Viewed historically or, as John saw it, in apocalyptic vision, it is more exact to speak of it as coming down from God out of heaven. It is even now ascending and descending. There is evidence of this in the collapse of atheism, and the substitute for it of agnosticism, with its altar to the unknown God. There is evidence of it in the earnest thought which men, in the church and out, now give to the consideration of spiritual questions once passed upon flippantly. There is evidence of it in the impatience of the age with doctrine whose bearing has no apparent relation to character. There is evidence of it in the extent to which Christian principles have come to be accepted as social and business laws. The ideal is far from realized, but an immense volume of our business suffers instant paralysis as soon as certain Christian principles cease to be believed in and expected. There is evidence of it in the eagerness of men of all schools, sometimes with injustice to the equally important truth of the atonement, to emphasize anew the vital truths

of the Incarnation, that Jesus as a real being may come into closer union with the lives of men. There is evidence of it in the study of biblical criticism: in this, as in all else, the pendulum may swing too far, but its present direction is making the Word of God more real and sacred, and is one of the signs of the Holy City's descent.

There is further evidence of the coming of the holy city. in the social movements of the time. Even the restless ebb and flow of social and industrial life, advancing and receding, with its waves now dashing in blind fury against the eternal rocks, and now chasing each other in swift retreat, leaving muddy shores and crawling things exposed to view, are, after all, evidences of a deep moral earnestness, a faith in a possible good not yet attained, and indicate the incoming of a mighty tide of righteousness in the relations of man with man. There is evidence of it in the sentiment which compels rich men to endow institutions for the public good, both in the increasing willingness of the men themselves so to do, and also in the public recognition of the obligation, and the scant courtesy with which press and people treat the memory of a man who has lived for himself, and bequeaths wealth to his immediate relatives, with no large benefactions. These are not of necessity to be taken as evidences of individual righteousness, but of an increasingly righteous sentiment. The extent to which the Church is grappling with social problems, in her institutional, her philanthropic, her charitable, her reformatory, her missionary work, even if much that is at present done is no more than wood, hay, and stubble, is still further evidence, and perhaps is one of the most hopeful signs, and shows at least the line of the real Foundation of the holy city.

We speak of this as a sceptical age. It is not so. It is an inquisitive age, an inquiring, challenging age. With more boldness than reverence it puts its finger into every historic nail-print, and not infrequently it grinds as "Nehushtan"

some sacred relic beneath its iconoclastic heel, when it ought rather to loose its shoes from off its feet. It has profound faith in the natural, and none too much in the supernatural: it needs to look less on the things that are seen, and believe more in the unseen as the eternal things. But, it may be questioned whether any age has had more genuine and rational faith, such as the Son of man in his progressive coming rejoices to find in the earth. With all its materialism and speculation, it still is foremost among the ages in which men have not seen, but yet have intelligently believed. And therein is a sign of the descent of the holy city.

There is no infidelity so dangerous as that which denies the power of good to triumph, by its own inherent, Godgiven power, over evil in the world. Satan felt, in his attack upon the character of Job, that, if he could prove human goodness rotten at the core, it would be the strongest possible arraignment of the divine goodness; and God accepted his challenge. What the city is in all the sum of its heavenly characteristics translated into earthly realities we do not know. We know in part, and prophesy in part only. But that which is perfect is coming. And even NOW abide some things, among which are the faith that goodness has power to triumph, the hope that increasingly it triumphs and is to triumph, and the love which is of God, nay which is God, working in humanity to make the triumph actual and complete.

It is not necessary to go into the imagery of John's description in hope of making it correspond exactly with observable conditions. The picture becomes incongruous as

1 No more sound or sensible words have been written on the figura. tive language of this section of the Apocalypse than those of the late Dr. Israel P. Warren, in his Exposition of the Book of Revelation (pp. 290, 291):

"After long study of it, we can only repeat what we have said before, that it seems to us to be an ideal sketch of the church of God in its highest and most perfect state; that which is marked out for her in the

soon as we lay down the binoculars and take the microscope. A wall 216 feet high, and houses 1500 miles high, are not dimensions that, in their relation to each other, will bear exact analysis. Nothing would have seemed more illogical to John than that it should be attempted. A cube was his idea. of symmetry, therefore the city was a cube. It was large, and its walls high and beautiful, and its gates and pavement plans of her founder, and which she is one day to attain on earth. And because no terms known to John or his readers in that age would have been sufficient for the description in plain prosaic verity, the phraseology was derived from what was the most sacred and glorious object known to them, the temple at Jerusalem. Not that the church was to be literally a building, or a city, or a beautiful woman, the bride of Christ, but that these objects, all centering in Jerusalem and the temple, so dear to all pious hearts, were sources of language with which to set forth in the most lively manner what, literally, would have been inconceivable.

'Suppose the little band of the Pilgrims in that first terrible winter at Plymouth, when one-half their number perished from cold and disease, and were buried on Cole's Hill, their graves being carefully smoothed down to conceal their fate from the Indians, had, to cheer their despondency and nerve them to new fortitude, received, through angelic revelation to their beloved Elder Brewster, a vision of what the nation they were founding would be in 1885,--more than twenty-six decades from that time. No literal terms would have been sufficient for the description. Republic, States, Union, Congress, President,-much more, railroads, telegraphs, coal, petroleum, cotton, the press, and many others, would have been words without meaning. Even figures would have been to their view as absurd as a city 1,500 miles high,-three and a half millions of square miles of territory, fifty millions of people, an annual bread crop of 2,500 millions of bushels, a national debt of 2,500 millions of dollars, etc., etc. Instead of this, let the language have been derived from some object known and dear to them in the beloved England from which they were exiled, let the great city of London, the palace of St. James, Westminster Hall, the renowned seat of justice, the venerable Abbey where her kings were entombed, the universities where her divines had studied, and the like, all have been laid under contribution to furnish ideals for the magnificent vision. Then let these have been grouped with the skill of a divine artist, and let it be named a "New England," and there might have been thus conveyed to the minds of the poor exiles some conceptions of the National Edifice God was about to build, and the foundations of which they were laying in their sufferings and tears. How bright the vision! How blessed the comfort!"

45 were splendid. Read for its general effect, the description is of entrancing beauty, and it is thus that it should be read.

The city will not be discovered by one who follows slavishly the imagery rather than the spirit of the description. The New Jerusalem will have many names,-Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Jonesville. It will not be located alone on the Mediterranean, but on the Mississippi and the Orinoco and the Yang-tse-kiang. It will include ocean and forest and prairie. If there is no more sea, it may be because of the perfection of submarine cables and pneumatic tubes and aërial navigation. The monument in Boston Public Garden to commemorate the discovery of anæsthetics may have a suggestion of the correct interpretation of one of the prophecies,— "Neither shall there be any more pain." If there is no night there, it may be because of the glory of the electric lights: for "the Lord God giveth them light." Men will leave earth and go to heaven, but they will live longer and better, and death will have lost its sting, so that it may be said that there shall be no more death. There will be meeting-houses, but the real temple will be the heart of each man and woman, and this will make a temple of all the earth. The Psalmist (Ps. xxix. 9) had the thought when, looking out on the earth after the storm, and conceiving of the universe as one sublime holy of holies, he echoed the praise of every rain-slaked pool and dripping leaf, and said, “And in his temple everything saith, Glory." So, while there will be need of meetinghouses, the real temple will be recognized. The church edifices will be temples after a sort, and so will the state capitols and court-houses, made so by godly legislation and faithful administration of justice. The church-spire will point men to heaven, and so will the smoke-stack of the factory.

The New Jerusalem is coming down from God, but not as the image of Diana fell in Athens. The city will be builded of boards and brick and stone and iron, but the spirit will be according to the pattern shown in the Mount. There will be