rupted, and He has been forced to remove the pure stream to other courses, ever intent upon the blessing of man; the channel having proved itself unworthy of the stream. In Eden it took its rise in the beginning when the dispensation proposed was one of earthly good, and it divided into four heads, to bear to the world the riches of such a dispensation. Soon, however, as we know, its channels became corrupted, and there was found no place for such blessing to flow, and so the sources were stopped, and channels obli terated by the waters of the flood.

Again, when Israel was redeemed, and God amongst them, the river took its rise in the rock which was smitten for His people in the wilderness. "They drank of that spiritual rock which followed them," during the forty years' journey, till they were safe in the land. Then, in the daily and yearly round of feasts and gatherings to Jehovah, the people was refreshed with the waters of Shiloah, which ran softly amongst them-of the river "the streams whereof made glad the city of God." (Psalm xlvi.) But again the channels were corrupted, so that when He, who was their source, came to visit that one family, whom He knew of all the families of the earth, (Amos iii. 2), and whom He had chosen to form the objects of the outflow of the river of God's blessing, and to be its channel to the Gentile world. He had found it had

so corrupted itself that He could not own it or permit it any longer to defile the stream; and so, again, the source was transferred to another place, and the world became fully, what it was to Him and what it has been ever since to His people, "a dry and thirsty land where no water is." (Psalm lxiii.)

The source was now to be the glorified Son of man in heaven; and the dispensation one of spiritual blessings in the heavenlies; and the channel of the blessing, His members on earth. We read in John vii., where the Lord passed by and could not own the channel (the yearly returning feasts), which had rendered itself unfit for the river of God's blessing: "In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive; for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)" Faithless as His people have proved themselves in this dispensation, and much hindered as the stream has become, still it flows on and will never be exhausted or dried up. "He (the Holy Ghost) shall abide with you for ever."

But the day is coming when it will be not only a dispensation of spiritual blessings in heavenly places,

but one of earthly good as well.

When there will be

one glory of the celestial and another of the terrestrial. When all things both which are in heaven and which are on earth, will be gathered together in Christ. When the Lord "will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth-and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil; and they shall hear Jezreel" (Hosea ii. 21, 22), the seed of God. The river of God's blessing will then have a twofold source -in heavenly and earthly blessing, its source in the heavenly glory will be the heavenly Jerusalem -the Church of the glorified: "The pure river of the water of life, clear as crystal, proceeds out of the throne of God and of

midst thereof." (Rev. xxii. 1.) (Rev. xxii. 1.)

the Lamb in the

And the source

of the earthly glory will be the sanctuary of the earthly Zion, when living waters shall flow out of the restored Jerusalem, for the blessing of the Gentiles and of the millennial earth. 'Behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward," &c. (Ezek. xlvii.; comp. also Joel iii. 18, Zech. xiv. 8.) And Christ will be true Melchisedec, a Priest on His throne; the link between the heavenly and the earthly glory. The true feast of Tabernacles will be kept both by Israel and the Gentiles, after the harvest or ingathering, and the vintage of judgment, at the end of this age. "And it shall come to pass that

every one that is left of all the nations which come up against Jerusalem, shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles." And the nations that refuse to go up, will not partake of the refreshing streams of the river of God. The Lord hasten the day in His time!

CHAPTER XI.

SATAN LOOSED FOR A LITTLE SEASON, THE GREAT WHITE THRONE, AND THE ETERNAL STATE: AND CONCLUSION.

AFTER the close of the kingdom, before Christ delivers up the kingdom to the Father, and God is "all in all," we find another testimony of man's ruin. Having beheld Christ, and having been set in the midst of, and surrounded by the blessings of the kingdom, still we learn that man is ever the same. We had the testimony of Scripture that all His people are righteous at the commencement of the kingdom. The inhabitants of the world had learned righteousness by the judgments which introduced it, but we have not the same testimony as to those who shall be born during its continuance. And the closing scene proves to us the fact that grace, and being born again, are as necessary then, as now, that man may be brought to God. It is clear from this, that there will be a declension during the continuance of the kingdom.

After the close of the kingdom, Satan is loosed for a little season, and goes out to the four corners of the earth (he never returns to the heavenlies), and the nations are thus tested for the last time, and the unrenewed fall, in numbers as the sand of the sea, into his