the world. The moment of highest perfection was evermore the moment of commencing decay. How deeply tragic, though in different ways, the histories of Greece and of Rome! "The paths of glory lead but to the grave;" they had led these, both the one and the other, though by diverse ways, to the grave of their moral and spiritual independence; the intellectual conquests of the one and the worldly triumphs of the other, however diverse, yet having agreed in this, that they alike left the victors enslaved, degraded, and debased—the Greek a scorn to the Roman,* and the Roman to himself. And now the fresh creative energy of an earlier time had all departed and disappeared: and that springing hope, which contemplated its objects, if not as attained, yet at least as attainable, was no more. The world had outlived itself and its attractions;+ saddest of all, it had outlived even its hopes; the very springs of those hopes seemed to be dried up for ever. was not this all without its purpose and its blessing. It was something to be shut in to the one remedy, all other having proved of no value: it was something to have come thus to the husks; for nothing short of this would have sent back the prodigal of heathenism to claim anew his share in the rich provision of his father's house. This was the emptiness, of which Christ's coming should be the answering fulness. In all this agony, this mighty yearning of

Yet

* See such passages as Cicero, Pro Flacco, 4; Juvenal, Sat. iii. 58-113; x. 174.

Augustine: 'Mundus tantâ rerum labe contritus, ut etiam speciem seductionis amiserit.'

souls, the gates of the world were being made high and lifted up, that the King of Glory might come in. Only in such an utter despair, in such a sense of decrepitude, of death already begun, would the world have welcomed aright the Prince of Life, who came to make all things young, and out of the wreck and fragments of an old and perishing world, to build up a fairer and a new.

And such He built up indeed. "They went astray in the wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in: hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. So they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation." And this city of habitation, this kingdom, was all which they had asked for, or could ask. It was a free fellowship, the constraining bands of it being bands of love and not of force; and He that founded it fulfilling the idea of the true spiritual conqueror of men, who should subdue all hearts not by force or by flattery, but by the mighty magic of love-as some of old had been reaching out after this, when they dreamed of Osiris, that he went forth to conquer the world not with chariots and with horses, but with music; for so had they felt that the power which truly wins must be a spiritual one, an appeal to the latent harmonies in every man—that in a kingdom of heaven law must be swallowed up in love,-not repealed, but glorified and transfigured, its hard outline scarcely visible any more in the blaze of light with which it is surrounded.

It was a large fellowship-larger than the largest which the heart of man had conceived; for it should leave out none, it should trample upon none: He that was its Head should "be favourable to the simple and needy, and preserve the souls of the poor." Nay, it should be larger than this, for it should embrace heaven and earth. That whereof the great Italian sage had caught a glimpse, that pıλía,* that amity or reconciliation of all things, whether they be things in heaven or things on earth, had found its fulfilment. Henceforward heaven and earth, angels and men, constituted one kingdom, "his body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all."

It was a righteous fellowship. If ought of unrighteousness was within it, it was there only as a contradiction to the law of that kingdom, and presently to be separated off: even as all unrighteousness that was against it, was in due time to be taken out of the way; for it in its weakness was yet stronger than the strongest. It was only weak as the staff of Moses was weak; which being one, and an instrument of peace, did yet break in shivers all weapons of war, the ten thousand spears of Pharaoh and his captains.

And being this righteous kingdom, it was also an eternal kingdom, having in it no seeds of decay, a kingdom not to be moved, which should endure as

Porphyrius (De Vita Pythag.) : Φιλίαν [κατέδειξε] πάντων πρὸς ἅπαντας, εἴτε Θεῶν πρὸς ἄνθρωπους—εἴτε δογμάτων πρὸς ἄλληλα—εἴτε ἀνθρώπων πρὸς ἀλλήλους. See Baur's Apollonius von Tyana und Christus, p. 194.

long as the sun and moon endureth, of the increase of which there should be no end.

To this city, brethren, ye are come-the city of which such glorious things are spoken, the city of our God. Not only prophet and king of Israel, but sage and seer of every land, have desired to see the things which we see, and have not seen them—so truly are they the best things which man can conceive, or God can give. And what do they require of us but a walk corresponding? Citizens of no mean city, whose citizenship is in heaven, we must not show ourselves unworthy of so high an honour. It is the very aggravation of the sinner's sin that he deals frowardly in the land of uprightness; and because he does so, it is declared that he shall not see the majesty of the Lord. (Isai. xxvi. 10.) We baptized men are in this "land of uprightness," in this kingdom of the truth. For it is not that we shall come, but in the sure word of Scripture we are come unto Mount Sion, unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to all the glorious company which is there.

And surely the apostle's argument which he drew from this, ought to stand strong for us, his exhortation to find place in our hearts; "Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear." (Heb. xii. 28.)

LECTURE VIII.

CONCLUDING LECTURE.

1 THESSALONIANS V. 21.

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

IT needs not, I trust, to remind you, brethren, that in these lectures which are now concluding, we have been engaged in seeking to discern the prophecy of Christianity, which has run through all history. I have traced in them, so far as under the conditions and limitations of such discourses I might, the manner in which the whole world was in many ways blindly struggling to be that better thing which yet it never could truly be, except by the free grace and gift of God,-to come to that new birth, which yet it could not attain unto, till power for this mighty change was given it from on high. We have asked ourselves whether we could not discern an evident tending of men's thoughts and feelings and desires in one direction, and that direction the cross of Christ,-a great spiritual undercurrent, which has been strongly and constantly setting that way; so that this bringing forth of his kingdom into open manifestation, if in one sense a