"

Ver. 12. And by the river, on the bank, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be consumed: it shall bring forth new fruit according to its months, because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary: and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine."

Thus, as in the "heavenly places" there is that which appears as a symbol of life, flowing like a river from the throne of God and the Lamb, or "of God, even the Lamb,"-" rivers of pleasure at his right hand for evermore;" so, on the earthly land of promise, there flows a fountain of water from the holy temple of God, of such virtue to sustain vegetable and animal life, "that every thing that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live." And I look upon it, that the paradisaical state of these happy countries will owe its origin in a great measure to these salubrious streams. And as, again, in the heavenly country is the tree of life bearing fruit perpetually, and "leaves for the healing of the nations,”—emblem of the sustenance of the spiritual life, and of the spiritual benefits that flow from the New Jerusalem, to those nations that walk in her light; so, on the rich carpet of the earth spread out below, for the sustenance and recruiting of animal life, we read of fruits and trees of paradise, to which the present creation produces nothing similar or like. "The whole land is as the garden of Eden;" and this, I think, is the "plant,' or "plantation of renown," spoken of in a former chapter of the same prophet.

T

SECTION THE FIFTEENTH.

ON THE DIFFERENT INHABITANTS OF THE UNITED MANSIONS OF THIS HOLY CITY.

The elect and risen Church, inhabiters of the New Jerusalem, as it comes down from God out of heaven, shewn by various symbols in the Revelation of St. John-As distinguished from these, the restored Israelites at the head of the redeemed nations in the flesh are also clearly shewn in the symbols of the same vision, and in other prophetic scriptures-The feast of tabernacles, and the other annual festivals of the Old Testament.

THE measures of the heavenly Jerusalem, which are shewn to St. John,*-the "twelve thousand furlongs" of the city, and the "hundred and forty-four cubits" of the wall, may, indeed, be susceptible of a literal interpretation; but, upon the whole, I conclude them to be mystical, denoting that the dimensions of the heavenly city will be commensurate with the increase of the mystical body of Christ, through the receiving, by the Holy Ghost, of those doctrines which the twelve apostles of the Lamb were sent to preach. As St. Paul addresses the believing Ephesians :

* Revelation xxi. 15.

ii. 19. Now, therefore, ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone. In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”

The symbol of the holy city, the heavenly Jerusalem, shews us the consummation of "all the elect people of God whom the Holy Ghost doth sanctify;" and, therefore, includes, or shows the perfecting of every other symbol, that has been previously used to designate that same favoured people. The "four beasts," or "living creatures," with "the four and twenty crowned elders," which appear in the vision of the throne in the fourth and fifth chapters, are a prophetic symbol of that future glorifying of his people, when "He that dwelleth between the Cherubim" shall take unto himself his kingdom, and shall reign. They acknowledge, in their "new song" unto the Lamb, "for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, out of every kindred and tongue, and people and nation, and hast made us unto our God kings and priests; and we shall reign upon the earth.”* When the thrones are placed, at the first resurrection, and the New Jerusalem descends from God out of heaven, this their hope of reigning with Christ upon earth is accomplished.

Some of them are shewn, in chapter vi. 9, in the state of separate spirits, who had suffered martyrdom

* Ver. 9, 10.

White robes are given

for the testimony of Jesus. them, but they are told that "they must rest for a little season, until their fellow servants also, and their brethren that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled." Then will God "judge and avenge their blood on them that dwell on the earth."

The whole body of these, as contemplated in the seventh chapter, in the midst of a world to be visited by the awful judgments of God for its iniquity, are described as the "servants of God," "sealed on their foreheads," as those that are to be spared "when God maketh up his jewels." That their sealing is not without reference to them during their earthly pilgrimage, is plain from the judgment of the fifth trumpet. In this visitation they are exempted from all injury. The symbolical locusts are to hurt "only those men which have not the seal of God on their foreheads."* These sealed ones are represented under the mystical number, of "a hundred and forty and four thousand," of all the tribes of the children of Israel,-they are "the Israel of God."

The same mystical sealed number are seen, in the fourteenth chapter, as standing with the Lamb on Mount Sion: uncontaminated with the corruptions of the Apostate Churches in which they have lived; they are pronounced virgins.

"These are they that follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the first fruits unto God and the Lamb," &c. †

ix. 4.

It has been objected from this passage, that the hundred and fortyfour thousand sealed ones are in this part of the vision, represented as

As St. James, designating the common characteristic of the faithful, observes: "of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures." * The same elect church, and holy fellowship of saints, I believe to be again designated in the fifteenth chapter:

“And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, or had come victorious from' standing on, or near,' the sea of glass."

This crystal laver, whose water is mingled with fire, is an emblem, I conceive, both of the new birth by water and the Spirit, and of the consummation of this new birth by the Holy Ghost and by fire, when in the resurrection the earthly is changed into the heavenly. They have the harps of God, and they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, the new song which they had learned from the harpers, as represented in the fourteenth chapter, &c.

We distinguish the same "holy and blessed

distinct from the four living creatures and the crowned elders-that their place is "before the throne," not upon it. But I think the distinction is of the same kind, as in a former chapter, between "Him that sitteth upon the throne," and the Lamb that had been slain, he entered not into his glory before he was crucified, so these his followers, though their names are written in heaven, first carry the cross, and pass holy and undefiled through a corrupted world below, then learn the triumphant songs of heaven, and sit down with him upon his throne. The reading in the fifth verse, 'before the throne of God," Griesbach has absolutely rejected as spurious.

Chap. i. 18.