Clay and Stone: Babylon the Great and the New Jerusalem
Jane J. Leake
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Clay Pit and the Vessel of Clay
“The first man is of the earth, earthy." (1 Cor. 15:47).
Let us sit down together, and look at one of God's unseen realities.
There is a china vessel standing before me. It is a beautiful thing. Its shape is perfect; its substance is semi-transparent, and it is pure white—I was going to say as white as snow, but that would have been an exaggeration; a coat of arms is portrayed upon it in brilliant coloring; yet it is so fragile that the least blow would crush it to atoms. It is beautiful, and yet it is also useful, for it will hold anything I may choose to put into it. Perhaps if you looked at it you would say, "Yes, it is a pretty little jug, but I do not see anything very remarkable about it." No, I daresay not; but to me it is a talking jug. It has a voice all of its own, and it brings back to my mind, whenever I look at it, a lovely summer afternoon years ago.
I was staying for a few days in a village in the south of England. It was not a remarkably pretty village, though a range of hills bounded it on its north and west; but its ancient cottages were built of stone, and the few more modern houses of which it was composed were not very picturesque. These buildings had clustered round a large stone church, from whose gray tower, I have no doubt, the curfew bell had rung in days of yore. That which really gave the greatest interest to the place was the magnificent ruin of a castle, which covered one of the hills to the west of the village. It had once been a royal residence, and as I passed over its spacious courts, and climbed through its ruined portals, its stones were speaking to me of the uncertainty of all earthly glory.
Scenes of the past rose before me, and I saw in fancy the boy-king Edward ride through the spacious courtyard and up to that ancient gateway to receive a death-stab from a wicked woman, Elfrida; and then the dash of the startled horse down the court, through the outer gate before her servants could close it, over the sounding draw-bridge, and away and away round the castle hill, while the fainting boy clung to its mane in his vain attempt at escape. I heard the screams of the young brother, as he witnessed the murderous deed which placed a crown upon his youthful head.
There, in later days a captive princess, who should have been queen of England, had lived and pined and died. Those once gloomy dungeons, too, now open, to the light of day, had rung with the groans of starving men, barons of France, tortured to death by the wicked John. There on that ruined tower the royal standard of England had once floated, where now the cotton-grass and ivy waved in the flower-scented breeze.
But enough of the village and its castle, for you will ask, "What has that to do with your little china jug?" Not much. Yet it was there, in that quaint old village, that I first saw it; and the substance of which it is formed was lying quietly under one of those grass-grown hills, while all the terrible things I have named were happening above When first I took my rooms in the village, I had been greatly surprised to see all the men, when returning from their work in the evening, daubed from head to foot, with a sort of pure white mud. I could see that it was not chalk or lime that covered them, because the spots were greasy; but what it was I did not know, till one day I asked my hostess. "Those men work in the clay-pit," she answered. "Clay!" I replied, with a momentary surprise; for my eyes were only too well used to the sticky yellow stuff that is found near London. "Clay! What beautiful white clay!" "It is china-clay," continued my hostess; "there is a pit under one of the hills beside the castle, and the men of the place are employed in digging it out." "I shall go and see it," said I. "Go and see it!" cried the good woman, repeating my words with astonishment. "Why, you couldn't. It sticks to everything. Besides, there's nothing to see.”
I said no more, but the very next time I went out, I turned my steps towards the clay-pit. The road which led to the place was rather slimy, but I went on till I met a man daubed from head to foot with white.
He looked at me with very evident surprise, and stood still. "Is that the clay pit?" I asked, as I pointed to a tunnel in the side of the hill, where a railway car full of snow-white clay was standing. "Yes," he answered, "but you couldn't go no further!" I stood still, with my feet as white as his, and looked at the place with an interest which evidently perplexed him; but I had my own thoughts about it, of which he knew nothing.
So that was "the hole of the pit" whence my little jug had been "digged." Yes, centuries ago, while the royal standard of England was floating in its glory from the keep of the now ruined castle, the material of which my little jug had been formed had been lying quietly under the grass-grown hill; but now, when the proud castle was a ruin, that little piece of insignificant clay was a thing of beauty and of use. Why? Because it has been subjected to the skill of the potter, molded by his hand, made to his design, and then baked in the fire. Thus it has become a trophy of the potter's art.
But how came it out of the pit? A power not its own had brought it forth. How had it been changed from a helpless lump of plastic clay to its present form of beauty? A master mind had conceived its shape and master hands had molded it to that design. And how had it changed its fabric from the soft, sticky, plastic clay to the semi-transparent, solid material that could not be either bent or changed? The wisdom of the potter had subjected it to the fire, and, baked in the fire, it had changed its nature. Thus the thing that had been once only fit for the clay-pit was now formed to fill a place of honor in the house.
But that is not all that the little jug has to say to me. Indeed, if you will listen, it will talk to us all tonight. It will say, "Do not look upon me with contempt, as only a fragile little jug molded out of the clay. Are not all of ye vessels formed out of the clay? 'Look to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged' (Isa. 51:1). Did not a Power not your own bring ye forth? Did not a Master Mind conceive ye, and did not a Master Hand fashion ye out of the clay? Did not the Master Potter fit ye to hold the breath of life, and did not He breathe it into the vessel He had made, and hence ye became living souls?”
True, little jug, true is thy lesson; and we are even more fragile than thou art, for since first I gazed upon thy tiny frame many a loved friend has yielded up the breath that was in him, and has fallen shivered into the dust again. Over us thunders a fiat that belongs not to thee, "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.”
My young friends, do you think this is a gloomy thought? Well, it is at least true, and should be faced; but there may be more of brightness in our subject than you think at first sight. Let us see how it is that the vessel, man, framed by the Master Potter for a use so exalted as to hold "the breath of life," cannot retain it, but is become more fragile than the little white china jug now before us.
“She is very sorry ma'am—very sorry indeed," said a servant, as she displayed to her mistress a handful of broken china. "She is afraid to tell you herself, but she did not know that the picture rod was loose, and it fell upon this cup and smashed it to pieces.”
The mistress took the pieces ruefully in her hands, and did as everyone does who has broken anything—that is, slowly fitted piece to piece. What a change! Only a minute before and the fragile china cup which they called "Crown Derby," had been worth a guinea; yet now those broken pieces were of less account than the commonest earthenware vessel in the house. "They are of no good," she said sadly; "of no use at all. They must be thrown away.”
But could nothing be done to undo the mischief? Could not the pieces be put into a crucible, and melted down again? No; the fire could do nothing for the helpless sherds. Could they not be soaked in water till they should turn back again into plastic clay, and then be molded once more by the potter's art to a thing of use and beauty? No; the water could do nothing for the shattered sherds. Never again could they be welded into one piece. It is true they might be made a sham whole with cement, but the lines which all eyes could see would tell the truth that the glory of the cup was gone, that it was a broken vessel unfit for use. No power on earth could make it whole again. What! not all the skill of the scientists? No; the valuable cup was gone forever; the useless, worthless sherds alone remained.
Long ago, long ago, as our little talking jug has told us, a perfect vessel was formed out of the clay by the Master Hand. It was molded, and fashioned, and painted in perfect beauty, and was fitted and framed to hold "the breath of life." Never before had so wonderful a vessel been made out of clay, and when it was finished its Maker breathed into it the breath of life, "and man became a living soul" (Gen. 2:7). Where the trees waved their leafy branches in the glowing sunlight; where the loveliest of flowers carpeted the earth, and festooned the forests with garlands of crimson and gold; where the luscious fruits gave sustenance without labor; where the murmur of flowing waters sounded softly through the air,— there moved, and walked, and thought, and acted, this wonderful vessel made out of the clay.
Hark! What is this Voice of thunder that peals through the leafy shades of Eden? "Where art thou? What is this that thou hast done? Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
Broken is the goodly vessel—shattered the thing of beauty—spoiled is the Creator's work—and "dying thou shalt die" is the end of the potsherds of the earth. Man, the beautiful ideal of the great Master Potter, is gone: he can no longer hold that which he was formed to contain. The immortal soul must pass away, and death reigns grimly over the shattered sherds.
I remember reading, as a child, a story which deeply fascinated me. Some travelers, who were making researches in a faraway land, the name of which I forget, came upon a tomb hollowed out of the solid rock. It had been hermetically sealed, but as they burst open the long closed door a human body lay before them, on a stone table. It was perfect in shape and color, and clad in gorgeous robes of state. One moment they gazed entranced; the next, the whole body suddenly crumbled into dust—so suddenly that they could scarcely believe they had ever seen that which for one moment had met their sight. All that remained was a little heap of dust. "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return," peals over the vessels made out of the clay in which man lives.
But cannot the skill of man mend the broken vessel? Try it. Stand here by this bed of death. All that love can give, all that wealth can buy, is at your service. Send for the best of doctors. He comes; he has spent years in studying the marvelous mechanism of the vessel formed out of clay; he knows the use of drugs and their effect upon the human system; but he shakes his head sadly. "Mortal disease is here," he says. "I can alleviate, but I cannot cure.”
Send for the first of surgeons. He comes—steady-eyed and steady-handed keen and cool. He will underake the case. He will do all that he can to clear from the writhing frame the death that it holds. He draws back; he closes the wound he has made; he replaces his instruments. "I can do nothing," he says sadly, "the case is worse than I thought. She must die.”
Why do we die? Doctors will tell you that they do not see why the recuperative powers of the human body should fail. But surely enough they do. Alas! shattered is the goodly vessel, Man, and forfeited his human life. No; the potsherds of the earth cannot mend their fellow-potsherds.
But do not think that this is all. The ideal is gone, the sherds only remain. Do you ask, "What do you mean by the ideal?" I mean the perfect living creature which God made-morally perfect. Perhaps that word "morally" perplexes you? I mean, then, the perfect living creature which God made, the innocent soul which knew and reverenced its Creator, and in which there was no clash of self-will, or cruelty, or revenge, or hate. That lovely ideal character linked with, and belonging to, the vessel formed out of the clay has been lost.
Do you say, "Prove it"?
In a lecture-hall in one of the first hospitals in London, a professor of talent and renown stood addressing a large company of medical students. As he proceeded, his subject led him to refer to a part of the human body to which he could not assign any particular use. In the pride of his knowledge and of his skill he turned to his young hearers, and after expressing his doubt of the existence of a Creator, spoke of Him, "if He did exist," with a profanity which I dare not repeat here, ending with the words, "I could have done it better myself." There he stood, a dying man, in a dying human body formed out of the clay—a broken potsherd that could not retain life—his mind defiant, his heart hardened, pouring out from lips that must soon be stiff in death, epithets of scorn and contempt at the very idea of having had a Creator, and haughtily claiming greater intelligence than his Maker. And all the while, though he knew it not, from far away, "down the aisles of the ages" rang the song of the prophet-poet: "Their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us? Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding?" (Isa. 29:16).
From the heart that was formed to glow with the reverent love of its Creator, and with generous attachment to its fellows, well up bitter hatred and defiance to the one, and selfishness and cruelty to the other. From the mind that was formed to use, for the glory of its Creator, the wonderful mechanism of the vessel formed out of the clay, flashes out defiance and self-will to the one, and vices and passions that wreck the other. From the poor, wrecked body rises the wail of disease and suffering, the bitter fruits of sin and of mortality.
Need you any further proof that shattered is the goodly vessel formed out of the clay, forfeited the title to life, vanished the perfect ideal of the great Master Potter?
Whence came it all? Those only who use the Lamp of God can tell. A mighty power came in and broke what God had made out of the clay. He spoiled the work by poisoning the living soul, using the fiat of God to complete the wreck: "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
All that we were—our sins, our guilt,
Our death—was all our own;
All that we are we owe to Thee,
Thou God of grace alone.
Thy mercy found us in our sins,
And gave us to believe;
Then, in believing peace we found;
And in Thy Christ we live.
Chapter 2: The Nation of Clay
“Arise, go down to the potter's house.... Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hands of the potter; so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.... Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel." (Jer. 18:2-6).
One day long ago I stood watching two children at their play. Someone had given them a lump of plastic clay, and had told them that they could mold it into any form they liked; and then if they could not bring out of it the ideal vessel which their minds had formed, they could roll it down again into a shapeless lump, and begin the work again. It seemed an endless amusement to those two young potters. With eager eyes fixed on their work, and hands bedaubed with the plastic clay, they thought and planned, they formed and marred, and reformed, vessel after vessel.
Now, when God speaks of Israel as clay in His hand He does not only mean that their bodies were all made out of the dust, but that their moral state should have been like the plastic clay in the potter's hand. The nation should have been subject to His rule, pliable to His hand, willing to be formed into a holy people and a kindom of priests. He had His great ideal to work out; but, alas! the clay— that is, the moral nature of man— had been tampered with in Eden, and the chosen nation was ever a marred vessel.
You will easily understand by this that the clay does not only picture the feeble human body in which your spirit dwells, but also your moral nature. Do you pause and say, "What does 'moral' mean"? Let me try to explain it, for unless your mind thoroughly grasps its meaning you will not understand our present subject. When we speak of the heart being tender, we do not mean by the heart the great muscle which is pumping the blood through the body— that is material; but we mean the affections. The affections, and the passions, and the virtues are moral qualities. You cannot see, or touch, or hear, or taste, or smell a moral quality. It is a force which none of your five senses can detect. It is in a way your character. A cruel word may wound your affections; it does you a moral injury, just as a stone might do your body a material injury. Love and hatred are moral qualities. You cannot see or hear or touch them, yet they put matter in motion very often. The one may use a person's arms to caress you, the other may use the same arms to give you a blow. Law is a moral force. You cannot see, or feel, or taste, or smell, the law. None of your senses can detect it. It is in the mind of God; but when He speaks, you hear it, and the mysterious law comes into force.
I have a dim recollection, long years ago, of having been near a convict prison, and of having seen a number of men in chains a very sad sight for anyone to see. I was told that those men were convicts. They had broken the law. Now, if the law has no form or shape, and you cannot feel it, how could it be broken? You see, law is a moral force. It exists surely enough, and can bring terrible consequences on those who break it. Its force is over the "moral" part of man.
A man hates another man, which is a moral force, and it causes him to throw a stone at the other man, which kills him. That is murder. The law "Thou shalt not kill" has been broken, and the law puts judgment in force, and the man is executed. But suppose a stone rolls off the top of a cliff and falls on a man on the beach, and kills him. The stone is not guilty; there is no moral force in the stone. It is simply a material substance; it kills the man by accident, as we say. A man may kill another by accident. God set up the cities of refuge in His land, in which such persons could take refuge. They were not morally guilty.
It is over the moral part of man, alas! that Satan has got power. He has made him a sinful creature, and sin has brought in the judgment of God upon the body and soul, which is death.
We learn from the Word of God that all that happened to Israel as a nation is recorded for our instruction and our warning. Jehovah brought this nation out of Egypt with a strong arm and great miracles; He delivered them from the power of Pharaoh and set them free from slavery; and all He asked in return was that they should cease to be idolators like all the other nations of the earth, and should love Him and trust Him. Instead of this they murmured and complained all the way He led them. Why was this? To understand it we must look back at what had happened in Eden, and remember that the nation was formed of thousands of men and women formed out of the clay, vessels marred by the Power of Evil, who had possessed himself of the affections and the confidence of the race God had created. Thus the will of man had been corrupted and the heart of man had been set upon himself, and the doubt and distrust of God which Satan had planted in Eve was in the heart of each dweller upon earth. The earth was still the Lord's. The world, as the moral sphere within man, had become Satan's.
Jehovah loved His nation; He knew well why they doubted Him, and He bore with their murmurings and loaded blessings upon them. But grace could do nothing with the clay nation; it was always a marred vessel; so Jehovah asked them, if they had His law, would they keep it? That pleased the self-esteem which they had inherited from Eve. "Yes," they said; "we will stand or fall by the law." Well, in the end the holy law smashed the clay vessel all to pieces, as we shall see, for it brought in the judgment of Jehovah upon it. God tried prophets, and judges, and kings, but all to no purpose. No form of government could mold that nation into a holy nation, or into a kingdom of priests, a vessel meet for the Master's use. Satan reigned as prince over Man's moral nature, and whatever God sought to make of His nation, he marred it.
So this clay nation kept on rebelling against Jehovah, hating Him and doubting Him, till one day Jehovah said to His prophet Jeremiah, "Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there will I cause thee to hear My words." Jehovah was going to give His servant what we call an "object lesson." He was to learn by a picture what God thought of His clay nation. "Then I went down to the potter's house," writes the prophet, "and behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.”
Little thought that potter, as his work went wrong that day, and he had to roll his plastic clay into a lump again, and mold another vessel from it little thought he that you and I, over two thousand years afterward, should read of his misfortune, and learn that he made another vessel from that same lump of clay. He pleased himself that potter, for the clay was his, and the skill was his, and the ideal was his. He re-made the marred vessel as he pleased to make it. Little thought he, as the grief-scarred prophet stood and watched him, that the eyes of Jehovah, too, were on the working of his busy hands. But a voice from another sphere spoke to the listening prophet. "O house of Israel," it cried, "cannot I do with you as this potter? Behold, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are ye in my hand, O house of Israel. At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation.... turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.... If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit them." The prophet gave the message, but the people answered. "We will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart.”
Alas! for the clay nation, the self-will of Eve was in it. It had been molded under judges, remolded under prophets, remolded under kings; but still the vessel had been marred in the hands of the great Potter. He had given His people their own land, their own city, their wondrous temple; but all had been in vain. A kingdom of priests and a holy nation was not to be formed out of clay. The clay was His; but the great Adversary caused the work to be marred in His hands, and alas, the once plastic clay was growing stiff and hard in the great Potter's hands, and every time He remolded it, it grew stiffer and harder. Vainly He cried to it by priest and prophet, "Harden not your hearts." It refused His pleadings, it stoned His messengers, it slew His prophets, and at length refused all impress from His hands. And what happened then? We shall see.
One day not so very long ago there sat down in my drawing-room an elderly man. His face was wrinkled, his hair was gray; his eye, dark and keen, flashed full of eager greed as he discussed business matters with me. But the gold once within the grip of that trembling and wrinkled hand, his whole being seemed to change. He became instantly another man. His features relaxed, his eye softened, and his conversation became interesting. There was something about him that drew out your interest, in spite of yourself. The conversation turned upon serious matters, upon the future of the soul; and I shall not soon forget the expression of that face, as, turning from my gaze with drooping head, the words, "Dark, dark— all dark beyond!" came from his quivering lips.
“Dark, dark— all dark beyond!" How often have those words rung in my ears since then. And why do I tell you of him now? Because he was a sherd of the clay nation which is the subject before us.
“A sherd of the clay nation?" do you ask? Yes; he was of the house of Israel, the nation composed of men and women made out of the dust, of whom Jehovah said He could once form them as the potter molded his clay. There he sat, a stranger in a strange land— without a city, without a temple, without a land. I spoke of Israel's hope—a glory-crowned Messiah. He raised his head, and his eyes flashed— not now with greed, but with a strange, earnest look in them. "HE WILL COME," he said; "MESSIAH will surely, surely come." I spoke of Christ, the Passover Lamb of God's providing. His head dropped again, his face grew sad; he shook his hoary head slowly. "Impossible," he said, "that a Victim chargeable with the offense could bear the sin of man.”
Poor old man! He has left his golden thousands since then, and he has passed into the darkness of which he wailed; unless, indeed, in the infinite mercy of Jehovah, a ray of light from a risen and glorified Messiah reached his poor soul ere it passed away. And why was he, like thousands more of his race, a stranger in a strange land, with a desolate heart, and with a golden idol ever before him?— unbendable, unchangeable, a broken sherd, that could not be made whole again? What had happened that Jehovah no longer cared for His nation, no longer molded and remolded the willful, distrustful people? How is it that the people are no longer one lump, so to speak, but that hard sherds are scattered about amidst all the nations of the earth?
Jeremiah's second object-lesson will explain everything to us. Look at him—that much afflicted prophet! His face haggard and scarred with suffering, his eyes swollen with weeping, his gaunt form emaciated with fasting. Look at him; he has gathered around him a few of the elders of Israel, the ancients of the people. By no word of mouth does he answer their queries as to Jehovah's frown or favors— the time for that has passed; but silently he leads the way through the gates of the royal city of Jerusalem, down the rugged mountain slopes, and into the vile valley of Tophet. No weapon is in his hand, no mystic scroll, no symbol of his prophetic mission, but he carries with him a "potter's earthen vessel.”
In that foul valley which they enter, fires are burning, for there refuse of the great city is consumed. It is a valley of destruction, and of purification by fire. The dust crumbles under their feet, charred fragments lie on every hand, smoke-wreaths darken the air; and there, in that foul Gehenna, the prophet pauses, and with quivering features, that tell out but half the anguish of his heart, he casts from his hand with desperate force that "potter's earthen vessel." It is hard, it is brittle, that bottle; its character has changed from the soft, plastic clay which once it was, into that hard brittle substance, for in an instant a hundred fragments are flying hither and thither, and ere the sound of the crash has died away, the voice of the mournful prophet rings out amidst the wreck, crying. "Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaketh a potter's vessel, that cannot be made whole again; and they shall bury them in Tophet, till there be no place to bury" (Jer. 19). The marred clay nation was to be destroyed once and forever. There was to be no more remolding, for the hearts had grown too hard, the wills too defiant and the law which they had accepted, and had broken, would bring down judgment upon them.
These are solemn words—"cannot be made whole again." They are God's words. Does it not look as if Satan had triumphed forever, and that not only man as man is ruined, but also God's own special nation?
Yes; it does. But, Oh! let it speak to us! Let us own how by nature our wills are defiant to God, how our hearts are cold towards Him, that we are far more ready to listen, like Eve, to the suggestion of the enemy, than to trust and honor our Creator. How can you account for sin and death if something has not gone wrong between man and his Creator? What should we know about it were it not for the inspired volume which our God has had written for our learning? We know what misery sin has brought in its train. A holy and loving Creator never formed such a world of woe.
And then look! look at the sherds of the clay nation. They are to be found in every land. The broken clay nation cannot be made whole again. Its moan goes up from ruined homes, from secret torture-chambers, from bloody pogroms— still hard, still unbendable, still refusing its murdered Messiah. If the Bible is not to be believed, how do you account for all this?
The Lord Jesus is speaking to us from heaven today. "How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?" (Heb. 2:3). "Today, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts" (Heb. 4:7). His right it is to rule in those affections of yours. His right it is to be trusted and worshipped. His power, if you turn to Him, will displace the tempter from his throne within, and will place Himself there for your salvation.
And if these words are reaching one who has been like backsliding Israel, ever refusing to bow to God's chastening discipline, revolting again and again, listen afresh, I entreat you, to the Great Master Potter's words: "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in Me is thine help." (Hos. 13:9).
The Nation of Clay (Poem)
When Israel by divine command
The pathless desert trod,
They found throughout the barren land
A sure resource in God.
A cloudy pillar marked the road,
And screened them from the heat;
From the hard rock the water flowed,
And manna was their meat.
Like them, we have a rest in view,
Secure from hostile powers;
Like them we pass a desert too,
But Israel's God is ours.
Chapter 3: The City of Clay
“Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." (Gen. 11:3, 4).
“A CLAY CITY"— that is our subject, and I quite expect that the first thing that comes into your mind when you hear it, is a collection of round mud huts, such as savages use. But no, something far more imposing has to come before our view. But first please follow me along a pleasant country road and over several stiles, more or less dilapidated— across these open fields, and through these sunny meadows, where the larks are singing overhead, and the wild flowers are blooming beneath your feet— till we come to a rickety plank bridge over a little stream, and then find ourselves among a few humble cottages built beside a brick field. Summer and winter, wet or fine, through dust or mud or snow, as the case might be, my feet have trodden that path for years, and I want you to see now with my eyes, as it were, the work going on in that out-of-the-way corner of the earth.
Good "brick earth", as they call it, has been found in that quiet meadow, and piles of clay have been dug out of it, and you can see it now molded into the size and shape of bricks, and these bricks are built up into heaps around burning matter. The smoke is ever rising from those piles of bricks, for they are burning them thoroughly, so that the clay shall lose its plastic character and become hard and brittle; and when they are finished they are carted away, and sold for building purposes. I have brought you to this brickfield in fancy, that you may realize that bricks are formed out of the clay just as much as the little china jug whose lesson we have already had.
And now please come with me up the stream of time a little further. Yes; all the way back to the time when I was a little child. A great day has come for us country-bred youngsters. It is my eldest brother's birthday, and we— the three or four elders of a large family— are to keep it by going to see the wonders of a great clay city. Perhaps you have never thought of London as a clay city before, and that is why I asked you to first visit the brickfield. London is built of bricks, and each brick comes out of the clay-pit. When we reach London, and see the long gay streets, we wonder where the end can be. But we can little judge of its size while we wander about its streets, or through its beautiful parks, and therefore our father has arranged that today we are to climb to the very highest possible point on the dome of its great cathedral. Even our young feet ache as we go up stair after stair; and after amusing ourselves in the whispering gallery, we climb again till we find ourselves on a carefully protected pinnacle, from which we can gaze north, south, east and west, over the roofs of the great clay city. It is said to be the largest city on earth, the metropolis of our land.
Here we can see endless blocks of brick-built houses, factories, churches, and docks. The river Thames slowly wends its way through all this. Our father points out to us various points of interest, as far away as the smoke and mist will allow. We are full of pride as we think of this great city, and that it is the capital of our country, and that it boasts of being perhaps the greatest city in the world. But we must hasten onward.
Soon we are in the British Museum. Those were the days when Layard had recently startled the world with his discoveries in Asia Minor. He has found out that beneath the huge mounds where wild things live, there are great cities buried. We children had gazed with wonder at pictures of the great winged bulls, and other figures he has recovered, but now our own eyes see them, as they stand before us in all their silent grandeur: strangers to our great Western clay-built city.
Let us stay a while with these great strange creatures around us, as they bear silent witness to the realities of a by-gone age, and let us listen to the voice of the Bible, and gaze by its light on what has happened even before these great cities were built. There come the tribes journeying from the East, the descendants of the clay vessels ruined in lovely Eden. They have reached the great plain in the Land of Shinar, and there they have found clay: and floating on the waters of the river Iss they find slime. What do they want more? "Go to," they cry; "let us make brick and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar." That is the first great brickfield, and there the fire is hardening the plastic clay: hardening it thoroughly. Man, of the "earth earthy," is building now, and he is preparing clay for his work. Listen, they are talking together. They have a grand ideal before them. "Go to," they say; "let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
There, look at them! Busy as ants, and small as ants, in comparison with the great works they are making, these men are using the knowledge and wisdom stolen in Eden to claim the earth for themselves, and to raise a mighty, clay-built city—to their own honor and glory; and more—they are building a stupendous tower temple, by which they purpose to find their way back to communion with the heaven they have lost. We get just a glimpse of this busy scene, and no more, for the Bible shines, not to give us chronology or history, but to teach us great moral lessons. We see man making himself a name in the earth; we see man making, as he thinks, a metropolis for himself on the earth; we see him rearing a great temple by which he hopes to raise himself to heaven, and all is of clay. Who rules his self-will? Who directs his building? For whose worship is that mighty tower?
And as we sit here in the midst of this great modern clay city, let us listen, for out of the dust of ages gone by these tablets of Ninevah whisper to our ears of the great city of bricks and of slime which had been reared on the plain of Shinar, called by its haughty builders "The Lady of Kingdoms," and of its mighty tower temple rising in seven stages of mystic meaning, called "The Gate of Heaven," where its builders "went to sin wickedly"; and closes its narrative with one word thrice repeated—"Overturned—overturned—overturned.”
Yes; they call their clay city "The Lady of Kingdoms," and their tower temple, "The Gate of Heaven," and know not that a mighty Visitor has come down to view the work of their hands, and has written across it, in letters of fire, "Babel." A veil hangs over the terrific judgment that destroyed man's first great effort at combination, his first attempt to find his own way to a heaven of his own conception. Short is the inspired record: "And they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel" (that is, `confusion'), "because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth" (Gen. 11:9).
But was this the end of the great clay city? No, indeed! It was no more the end of Babel than it was the end of the pride and lawlessness of man. Here as we sit with these strange, silent witnesses to the glory of past ages standing around us, let us pause to muse on that past history of our race. Those stony eyes stare vacantly at the wondering Westerners who throng around them; those mighty wings, symbols of departed power, remain in motionless grandeur; those huge mouths are closed and silent, yet from their earthen tomb of three thousand years duration they whisper, as from the dust, of the might and grandeur of the East, and of the mutability of all things human. The name Nimrod, the mighty hunter, sounds in our ears, and from the Bible we learn that the Babel whose end we have seen was the beginning of his kingdom, and that Ninevah herself was younger than Babel. And now out of the mists and gloom of a long antiquity "The Lady of Kingdoms" and "The Gate of Heaven" once more loom upon our sight. Not now as the Babel of the inspired story, but as the "Babylon the Great" of both inspired and profane lore.
And hush! for just as we have been standing on the pinnacle of the chief cathedral of our great metropolis, beholding it with pride, so now, the mightiest monarch of the then mightiest nation of the earth walks upon the top of his huge palace, and boasts to himself of the glory of his capital.
“Is not this great Babylon," he cries, "which I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?”
And what a city he gazes upon! There she sits, "a Lady of Kingdoms" in very truth, fifteen miles square, built to rule and measure, lying four-square, bestriding the wide and rapid river which flows through her toward "the Sea of the Sunrise." Her fifty streets, intersecting each other at right angles, and crossing the river by splendid bridges which are six hundred feet long, and thirty feet broad, and ending in one hundred brazen gates—twenty-five to the north, twenty-five to the south, twenty-five to the east, and to the west. Her mighty walls, sixty miles long and three hundred and fifty feet high and eighty-seven feet thick, are surmounted by two hundred and fifty towers, and beyond them lies a moat, as deep and as broad as the walls are high. He looks down on the six hundred and seventy-six squares within the shelter of those stupendous walls, all built to rule and measure, the houses three stories high, the land richly cultivated to supply the inhabitants in case of siege—the vast river flowing from north to south through brazen gates, shut in by inner quays and walls, with brazen gates leading into the city from the water, and spanned by those twenty-five splendid bridges. Each half of the city thus divided contains a large building—the one the palace on which the king stands, lost in pride and self-admiration, with its wide inner wall, its brazen gates, flashing in the sunlight, its hanging gardens—the wonder of the world; and the other half holds a building more marvelous still, with its solid temple tower, rising in eight separate stories of mystic meaning, tower upon tower, gleaming with silver and gold, painted in gorgeous colors, and surrounded by a circling stair. This is the temple of the great city, and here, with rites and mysteries such as we dare not name, these men and women, formed out of the clay, worship the foul divinity of Zeus Belus.
We cannot wonder that that poor mortal heart throbs with pride as he gazes on such a metropolis as this—man's masterpiece in the way of a city. He knows not, poor heathen that he was, whence came his glory; that the prophet of Jehovah had seen in vision an eagle, "long-winged and full of feathers, and of divers colors," pluck the topmost twig from the lordly cedar of Lebanon, and fly with this insignia of imperial power, and plant it beside the many water-courses and irrigation works of his lordly city. There it was to grow, a tree of low stature, but for all that it meant that the imperial power of the world had been taken from the idolatrous house of Israel, and had been given to the idolatrous Gentile. He has seen himself as the head of gold in his heaven-sent vision—he has seen himself as the great tree cut down in judgment, yet spared to learn that a mightier than Zeus Belus overrules the affairs of earth.
Hush! What Voice is this that comes from heaven crying, "O King Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken; the kingdom is departed from thee, and they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and they shall make thee to eat grass like the oxen! and seven times shall pass over thee, until thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will!”
It is the Voice of the great Unknown, and this poor heathen king bows his proud head to the just punishment of his sins, and tells us in his own words, how that, at the end of those days of chastisement, "I Nebuchadnezzar, lifted up mine eyes unto heaven, and mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the Most High; and I praised and honored Him that liveth forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom from generation to generation—and none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest thou? Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of Heaven, all whose works are truth, and His ways judgment: and those that walk in pride He is able to abase." Wonderful words are these, echoing from far off ages to us boastful Westerners, while the Israel of His choice cries, "He hath no hands," and "We will do according to our own wills.”
But pass on. We have to gaze again at this splendid clay city, Babylon the Great, "the Hammer of the whole earth." It is a day of festival, a day of great rejoicing for her victorious armies are marching homeward, across that fertile plain of Shinar. They have been fighting in far-off Judaea, whose coasts are washed by the great sea of the sunset. The rebellious Hebrew king has broken the oath, sworn in the Name of Jehovah, to serve the great Nebuchadnezzar's son; and the Chaldean armies have once more taken and destroyed rock-built Jerusalem. They have burnt the temple, they have burnt her palaces, they have cast down her walls, and they come now laden with the residue of the treasures of that far-off land—leading a wretched band of foot-sore captives, and a blinded and manacled king.
Oh, gaze at him! A son of great David's royal line, an heir of the promises of Israel's great Jehovah, thus dragged in chains to end his wretched life a captive in the great clay city! Look at them all; they are sherds of the clay nation whose doom we have seen foreshadowed: no longer plastic clay, but fragments of the Potter's earthen vessel "that cannot be made whole again." Over the wide plain they march, past the vast irrigation works, over the fertile fields; the great brazen gates swing open to receive them, the spacious streets are ringing with the acclamations of their haughty conquerors. But he, the guilty king, sees not the lordly grandeur of his captors; he gazes not at the stupendous walls, at bridge or river, at brazen gates or towering temple, or kingly palace; he has looked his last at all earthly scenes, and has closed his view with that of the dying agonies of his own tortured children.
But it is over—this day of speechless shame and sorrow. The fiery sun has rolled down into the far west; the taunts and the scorn of the victors are hushed. The moon rides high over the great plain, the flowing river, the lordly palace, and gleams coldly on the towering temple, the walls, the towers, the moat, the sleeping city.
The heart-sore captives of high degree may rest their fettered limbs, and forget, we may trust, in sleep, the misery of the past, and the greater misery of a hopeless future; but the captives of low degree are free to earn their living within the city walls, and they creep with shame-bowed heads, and tearful eyes, to those of their race who have long been exiles in the great clay city. All too late they weep when they remember Zion. Refusing Jehovah's rule, they now must bow to Nebuchadnezzar's. Practicing idolatry, and loving idols, they now are crouching in corners of an idolatrous city, and sheltering under the shadow of the great tower of Zeus Belus.
Does no eye see their tears? no ear hear their moans? Is there no hope for the broken sherds of the once great clay nation? Has their Jehovah forgotten forever His tender mercies? Will He pardon no more? Crouching together in the quiet night-time, look at them, those travel-worn weeping exiles. They that wasted them have departed; they that required of them mirth have listened awestruck to their mournful melody, as they sat down by the rivers of Babylon, and have left them now to mourn alone.
Suddenly a prince "of quiet mien" rises from their midst, and draws forth a scroll. He has brought them a message from their forsaken Jehovah in this their hour of woe. Let us listen. It is the wild, free song of His inspired but ill requited prophet. Their drooping heads are raised. There is new hope in their tear-stained eyes, strange scenes pass before them, strange sounds rise on their ears. Jehovah has not forgotten them utterly. When they seek Him He will yet hear them. He will yet arise for their help. Stupendous clay walls, and brazen gates, and towers, and armed men, and Zeus Belus himself are nothing to Jehovah, when once He rises up to their succor. Listen! He calls to the nations: "Put yourselves in array against Babylon." He "opens His armories," for the day of His vengeance is come.
What sounds are these that rise on ears so recently filled with the scorn and ridicule of foes? Is it the rolling waves of their loved sea of the sunset? or whence comes this dull roar, ever growing louder, ever growing nearer? What means this excitement around, this furbishing of weapons, this swinging-to of these great brazen gates, this unfurling of the standard on the broad outer walls, this watch being made strong? What means it all? Babylon the Great, the Hammer of the whole Earth, is besieged. None can go out or come in. Listen to her scornful song: "I am: and there is none else; I shall never be moved. I sit a Queen forever." She laughs behind her moat, her walls, her gates, at the utmost that her foes can do; and within she opens her store-houses, and feasts with drunken revelry.
The night is dark, the watch is strong, the siege has lasted long, the hopes of the foe have sunk low before the spreading moat, unscalable walls, and gates of brass; when, listen the drunken king calls in the madness of his folly for the sacred vessels of Jehovah's rock-built temple, that he and his wives and his concubines and all that heathen crowd, may sip the sparkling wine from their golden rims. The mighty walls stand firm around, the brazen gates are fast, but look! look at the river! There is "a drought upon the waters" Lower and lower sinks the stream. The river, the mighty river, is dry! The reeds are on fire, and foemen, fierce and destructive, swarm into the river-bed, and, like lions rushing up from the bed of Jordan, they swarm into the streets of the startled city, they rush over the bridges. The houses are blazing; post gallops to meet post, and one messenger to meet another, to tell the feasting king that his lordly city is taken from end to end.
“The mighty men of Babylon are affrighted, they have forborne to fight, they have remained in their holds, their might hath failed.... the king of Babylon hath heard report of them, and his hands waxed feeble; anguish took hold upon him—pangs as of a woman in travail."—"A sound of a cry from Babylon.... because Jehovah hath spoiled Babylon.... for the Lord God of recompenses shall surely requite. The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken, and her high gates shall be burned with fire: and the people shall labor in vain, and the folk in the fire, and they shall be weary.”
It goes on and on, that wondrous song, one moment full of Jehovah's pitying love, telling out that the iniquity of His people shall be sought for and not found; the next ringing with the roar of coming judgment on the foes who had exceeded the punishment He had decreed for them. The heathen king is but His battle-ax, the nations are His weapons of war, and then there is the sound of captives escaping from Babylon: "Ye that have escaped the sword, go away, stand not still: remember Jehovah afar off, and let Jerusalem come into your mind." "My people, go ye out of the midst of her, and deliver ye every man his soul from the fierce anger of the Lord." The wild prophetic cadence rises and falls upon their ears, till they forget that they are captives, till the mighty walls, the splendid palaces, the temples, the broad streets, the brazen gates of their prison-city fade from their view, and dragons dwell, and owls hoot, and satyrs dance amidst the crumbling ruins.
But it closes, that strange prophetic song, and once more they see around them the walls, the towers, the brazen gates of the city of their captivity. Then see, he steps forth—that "quiet prince," that messenger of Jehovah's comfort—and bids them follow him through the silent streets, where the moonlight rests on the storied houses—on till he reaches the quay of the swiftly flowing Euphrates. Then see, he picks up a stone, and binds it firmly to that priceless scroll. Then swift as thought he flings it far out into the silent, sullen waters. A sudden splash, a momentary circle of moonlight ripples, a few floating bubbles, and a solitary voice cries through the silence of the night: "Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her, and they shall be weary."—It is done; the doom of the great clay city is sealed forever. There, under the waters on which she proudly sits and sings, "I am, and there is none else. I sit a lady forever." There, where no human eye can see it, where no human hand can reach it, lies the mystic scroll of the fate of Babylon.
And where is the great clay city now? A few years ago that question would have been asked in vain. None knew. But now let us look around us with strange awe, as we gaze at these huge trophies, disentombed from the Birs Nemroud, dug out of vast mounds of sand and rubbish, and brought here to this Western clay city to be the gazing-stocks of men who once even doubted if the existence of the "Lady of Kingdoms," "the Gate of Heaven," "the Hammer of the whole earth," had not been a myth!
Yes, out of the sand-heaps and the mounds on the plain of Shinar, low out of the dust, rises a whispering voice: "Here lies Babylon the Great,"—"O thou that dwellest upon many waters, abundant in treasures, thine end is come." (Jer. 51:13).
The night is far spent, and the day is at hand;
No sign to be looked for; the star's in the sky.
Rejoice then, ye saints, 'tis your Lord's
own command,
Rejoice, for the coming of Jesus draws nigh.
What is loss in this world, when compared to that day,
To the glory that then will from heaven be revealed?
“The Savior is coming," His people may say;
“The Lord whom we look for, our Sun and our Shield.”
O pardon us, Lord! that our love to Thy name
Is so faint, with so much our affection to move!
Our coldness might fill us with grief and with shame,
So much to be loved, and so little to love.
O kindle within us a holy desire,
Like that which was found in Thy people of old,
Who tasted Thy love, and whose hearts were on fire,
While they waited, in patience, Thy face to behold.
Chapter 4: Babylon the Great and Her Temple Tower
“And upon her forehead a name was written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT." (Rev. 17:5).
It is not with the far past that we are now going to be occupied, but with the present and future. If we have gazed on the great clay city, the Babylon of long ago; if we have listened to the prophecy of her doom, uttered when as yet she was at the zenith of her glory; if we have seen that doom fall upon her so that for centuries her very existence had been doubted it is not for mere amusement or interest that we have gazed, but because she is a figure of God's choosing. Be sure that, if God chooses a figure, He chooses a correct one, and therefore be sure that no more splendid clay city than ancient Babylon has ever been built.
But what will you say to me when I tell you that you and I are even now dwelling in the Babylon the Great of which the ancient clay city was but the picture? The material city has long since crumbled into dust, under God's sweeping judgment; but the great moral Babylon is still building around us, and you and I are either citizens of it, of captives in it. Are you puzzled? I think myself that Babylon the Great is God's name for the great world-system in which we are all living. "The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof"; and so is the "world" in the aspect of creation; but the world— the moral sphere where men's minds act, and where they build up their plans, and carry out their wills— this present evil world, is Satan's. It is his great metropolis on earth; and is the sphere where he rules, and where he is worshipped as Zeus Belus was in ancient Babylon.
When the clay vessel was ruined in Eden, the great enemy set Self before man, in the place of his Creator; and that Self Satan has dominated ever since. He dominated his will; and took possession of his mental faculties, and he made self-exaltation, self-improvement, and self-gratification his objects. Do not think that he blazed before his victim gross and revolting moral evils.
No; he came as "an angel of light," and made self-advancement, and so-called improvement man's great object. He bade him claim the earth for himself. He filled him with "the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." Turn the light of God's lamp on the world today, and its fogs and mists will take shape before you, and the walls, the towers, the markets, the colleges, the parliaments of Satan's great clay-built city will rise before your eyes— and more, the great temple tower which men are building higher than ever Babylon rose will loom upon your sight.
Potsherds of the earth, formed out of the clay, dwelling in houses of clay, have wrought with their busy minds to build up a system that is for human exaltation and improvement. Her foundations and walls are laid deep in the clay of human wisdom. Imagination is her busy architect; independence has planned her government; Pride has piled up her towers; Selfishness controls her gates. She claimeth still to be "the Lady of Kingdoms," for the world-system is over every land. She still calleth her temple tower "the Gate of Heaven," for all religions are gathered within its many stories.
It must be plain to all that a great moral force that could never have sprung from a holy Creator is at work in the world today; and because it is the sphere in which we all dwell, I believe God describes it as a city, and calls it Babylon the Great. Babel means "confusion," as you know; and if we take ever so short a stroll through this human-built city, I think we shall see how very aptly it is named.
Let us begin at its market-place. Here every nation offers its produce, but every nation protects itself, shutting out the produce of other lands as far as it can. Take care of yourself, get all you can, and give as little as you can, is the maxim of the World's market. Long, long ago it began, when Eve "saw the tree that it was good for food.”
Come now to its schools of art. All that is lovely of human structure is here— sculptures, paintings, architecture, gorgeous fabrics, exquisite colorings, all that in which the eye delights. Eve first entered it when she saw that the tree was "pleasant to the eyes.”
And now come to its great universities, its colleges, its schools. "Knowledge is power" is the motto over its gates. So Eve thought when she saw that it was "a tree to be desired to make one wise," and took of the fruit thereof.
Self-seeking began in Eden, and lawlessness began there too. Independence is the principle of the city's government, and this it would achieve by association, and thus it creates the most bitter tyranny. Man is doing now in government as he began to do at Babel, attempting confederacy. The masses rule and try to keep order, but confusion increases on every side. Huge companies carry on trade; yet trade becomes more trying and more hazardous every day. Nation talks of joining nation to prevent war; yet armies grow larger, navies more numerous, weapons of war more deadly. Even now men meet in solemn conclave to settle how to kill each other by rule of order; how to take each other's goods honorably, and to decide how they shall use the air, as well as the land and water, as the medium for destroying one another. Great "Trade Unions" become more and more powerful, and more and more avaricious. And business becomes more and more and more difficult.
I ask you, was ever "confusion" more truly descriptive of anything than it is of Satan's World? And now they are planning a confederacy of religions. They want one religion: one great temple tower, by which man is supposed to climb back to communion with the Unseen World, and raise himself to Heaven. Yet amidst all the so-called progress, men's hearts are failing them for fear of those things which are coming on the earth, and they know not that across all their efforts to exalt themselves, and to spurn all authority, God has written as of old, "BABEL.”
It is not, however, with this great world-system as a city that we have to be occupied so much as with its temple tower. It seems to me that, just as Babylon's great temple was of old built out of the clay, so this great conglomerate of religions is built up of men and women formed out of the clay. They are the bricks, so to speak, of which it is composed. The great Enemy has blinded their minds and hardened their hearts against their Creator, and has surreptitiously placed himself before them that he may rule as prince and god of this world. It is good for man, so he says, to be religious, and every kind of idolatry has been set before him. We know that idolatry is demon worship; we know also that it was idolatry and Spiritism which brought the flood upon the world that then was. The same sins wrecked the clay nation later on; and we have but to glance through the religions of our day to see that the same sins, in more refined dress, are around us on every hand.
When Israel failed, God's counsels began to unfold, for He loved this wrecked and sinful race, and a heavenly Stranger entered the world by human birth. He came to undo the works of the Prince of this World: to refute the cruel lie with which he had blinded the minds of men, and to manifest God's love. In the great clay city He was, but never of it; weak as to His manhood, but the Son of God with power as to His person. Thrice He met the great Enemy on the earth in mortal combat, and thrice refused his insidious moral temptations.
There He stood, a solitary Stranger on God's earth. The citizens of the great city "knew Him not." His own nation "received Him not." He stood in weakness and hunger as to His manhood, yet refusing "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." Of royal birth as to His earthly pedigree, Divine as to His person, yet with a will perfectly plastic to His Father's mind, there was no moral flaw in that perfect Vessel, and the baffled Tempter fled from before Him.
You know the history well; you have heard the cry of "Crucify! Crucify!" pealing down the ages; you know that the great Enemy who could not corrupt Him 'determined to turn Him off His own earth; that he turned Him out of His great clay city, and left Him with only a grave. Israel did not want a king who would reign in righteousness. Man did not want a Being perfectly plastic to God's holy will. Such a Person was accounted unfit to live in Satan's world-sphere. They cried, "Away with Him," and they hanged Him on a tree, and buried Him out of their sight. They never saw Him again. The Enemy had apparently triumphed once more. He had cast God out of the moral sphere of the world, and now he had cast Him off His own earth. Men were but Satan's ready instruments. In pleasing themselves they wrought his will. He desired, and kept, their worship. What an awful moment was that for both world and earth! Have you considered it? The god of this world triumphant, the Creator of this fair earth in the grave!— death lying upon everything. It was God's just judgment upon the sin which Satan had originated. It was the very strength of his position. He had quenched the strange moral light that for a few short years had shone in his great metropolis, condemning by its heavenly purity the laws, the skill, the religion of his city.
Now man could build according to his will stage after stage of the great temple-tower: every brick of it a human idea of a divine reality; every portion of it an imitation of the truth; and all for the honor and glory of man himself. Stair after stair fitted to raise him in his own conceit. Every creed could be accommodated beneath its tower, and he gave it, as of yore, the proud title of "The Gate of Heaven." The busy builders have been master-thinkers in every age, and, generation after generation, they have reared fresh stories in the one huge temple, even asserting that mind can excel the matter from which it springs, and that out of the broken earthen vessel which cannot retain life, can come forth of itself a perfect being— in short, that the creature may in time hope to turn creator, and evolve life out of death.
So much for the tower in that day. But just at that very moment when Satan's triumph seemed complete, a new and wonderful thing came into view on the earth. A small company of people said that the One crucified and buried was alive again from the dead; and that they had not only seen Him, but had talked with Him, and eaten with Him, and that they had all seen Him ascend in bodily form to the sphere from which He had come, blessing them as He departed. But this was not all. They said that with the rushing noise of wind, and the gleam of fire, God the Holy Spirit had come down to earth, that He indwelt their bodies, that He had welded them together into one body, that He had set up a kingdom on the earth which owned no prince but the One crucified and buried, who was now living and crowned at God's right hand.
The citizens of the clay city might laugh at first at the story, but they were soon dumb with amazement, for all the forces of nature gave way before these feeble men at the mention of the Name of their crucified Prince: the lame walked, the dead were raised, the sick were healed. They said, "We have nothing to do with your great clay city; we cannot build it up or admire it; and as for your temple tower, we cannot enter it or worship in it, or acknowledge in any way the rule of the god of this world." "This will never do," cried the greater than Zeus Belus. "This will never do," echoed his citizens; and straight upon this little company of men and women they rushed with fury and scorn, with fire and sword. "We will soon annihilate it," they cried. "We will stamp it out, we will bury it out of sight," but in vain. Prison gates opened at dead of night. Mad persecutors became mighty evangelists. Where one martyr bled and died, a score of believers swelled the broken ranks; where hundreds fell, thousands rose up and stood. "The gates of Hades" could not prevail against that wondrous company.
Then was formed the masterpiece of Satanic wisdom. It is this great Western dome of his temple tower. Fire and sword, torture and wrong, had been worse than powerless. He changed his tactics. He came as an "angel of light.”
In the dead of night, when all was still and hushed in the camp of a soldier-emperor, who lay slumbering amidst his oft-defeated host, the man started from his sleep to behold a vision of the night standing before him, and in its hand it held the figure of a cross. "In this sign conquer," it cried, and vanished from his sight. Up on the banner of that mighty man of war went the once despised symbol of the Cross, and there it rode above the hosts of men, where clarions sounded, where arms clashed, where the dying gasped their last, where the wounded moaned as the chariots crushed them to the earth. There, high above all, it rode, and the warriors hailed it victorious, and the foemen fled in terror from its mystic power, "The Cross! The Cross!" was their cry. "In this sign we conquer." Oh, awful parody! Oh, hideous deceit! Would they believe it, that little torture-worn company? They whispered in wonder, for the great Emperor, the victorious warrior, had bowed his proud head beneath the waters of baptism, and boasted in the name of the One crucified on the Cross.
“You have triumphed," whispered the great Enemy to this suffering company. "You can look for defense to this strong arm of flesh. You shall have the gold, the silver, the glory of my great metropolis to enrich you. We will worship the apostles and prophets whom we ignorantly slew. We will deify that holy woman who bore on to this earth the One whom we murdered. As for the army of martyrs, we will kneel before it. Only accept our contrition; only be one with us.”
What a change was this, from shame and suffering and agony to honor and ease and wealth. Alas for the little company, it fell before the wiles of him whose force it had withstood! "The world has become Christian," it cried, and it sat down in ease in the clay city, while up on the dome of that Western cathedral went the figure of a cross. He decked the wondrous palace within and without with the taste and the skill, the wisdom and the intellect and the oratory of the vessels formed out of the clay. With pealing organs, solemn chants, gorgeous robes, rarest incense, he bade them worship the One murdered on the Cross and buried out of sight. Everything that could appeal to the human senses was to be there, and woe to them who bowed not before the sculptured forms that stood beside the altars! For he had triumphed once more, and idolatry was there. The sacred scroll written by the apostle and prophet was cased in jeweled caskets, and splendidly robed priests turned the key upon it. The little company—where was that? The great Deceiver laughed to see his dupes rearing in the name of Another, the great temple tower where he ruled. He called her the Church, the spouse of Christ! He arrayed her "in purple," the regal power of the world, and scarlet color, the sacerdotal power; he decked her with "gold and precious stones and pearls," the riches and glory of the great world-city; and he taught her to cry in her heart, like Babylon of old, "I sit a queen and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow." Alas! Alas! she hath forgotten that He whom her lips call "Lord, Lord" went out of the world by way of the Cross and the Grave, and she hath turned as an unfaithful spouse to the wealth of the great city for support; to its power for protection; to its wit and learning for advancement; to its glory for adornment; yet all the while, strange but true, she weareth the Cross upon her brazen brow.
There is room beneath that tower for everyone.
Do you ask, Has the little company then been utterly lost to view? To man's view, yes. Yet has it always been seen and known by Him who suffered on that Cross of shame; and ever and anon from the pomp and glory of the city's magnificence an overcomer has stood up, and has raised his voice in protest against the grand imitation tower claiming ever to be "The Gate of Heaven." Then down upon his devoted head fell the thunder of sacerdotal power, and she who once had been the persecuted, turned into a savage persecutor. From dungeon gates, from the stakes of martyrdom, from the chains of slavery, the overcomer bore witness to the triumph of Satan's wiles. Reformers rose, and strong in confidence in human power, and claiming succor from human swords and human wealth, sank deep into the miry clay of independence, and split to a thousand broken sections.
Do you gaze aghast at the gruesome picture of what should have been so unworldly, so unearthly, so chaste, so spiritual? Do you mourn bitterly that you are with the rest captive in Babylon? that from a human point of view the enemy's triumph has been complete once more? and that evil doctrines, wood, hay, and stubble have ruined that which should have expressed Christ? Does the tempter taunt you with the ruin? Does he not boldly flaunt abroad doubts as to the Divine origin of such a confused muddle of sects, of such an utter failure? I am sure he does. No thinking mind in earnest quest for truth but must stand bewildered at all it sees, and hears, and reads, put forth under the name of Christ today. It is to help you, if I can, that I draw this sad but true picture.
I know that many young Christians are looking round at the present time for that which is "the Church," for something that shall unmistakably be of God. Staggered by the babel of voices around them, they forget that confusion is Satan's triumph, and that he is the prince of this world, not Christ; that the doctrine that the One who is the rightful Lord and King is not rejected, is his deception; that the "winds of doctrine" that blow on every hand, are from him.; that imitation of truth is his masterpiece. So once I looked and longed myself. So once I sought amidst the babel of the clay temple tower for that which should be an God's one foundation, for something which should satisfy my soul. Churches, chapels, conference halls, meeting-rooms saw me by turns, but still I sought in vain. I had been reared to despise Rome and its teachings, yet it offered an external unity, and lives of seclusion and devotion. Should I believe all that I had heard, or should I see for myself? I would see for myself.
I was away from home, and free, and I sought and obtained permission to visit a convent in the city where I was staying. On the day appointed I stepped up to that convent door. I heard keys jangle, and bolts withdrawn, before I stood face to face with a nun, who bade me enter, and showed me into a barely-furnished room, with sacred pictures on the white walls, and closely barred windows. There I waited alone for some minutes till a pleasant-looking nun appeared, and told me that the Superior had directed that I should be shown over the building. I remember that we went through many passages, and peered into small bare rooms, with tiny couches, prie-Dieux , for to my shame I say it—
and crucifixes on the walls; that we looked at a little square garden, or court, completely enclosed by the building itself, where the few living green things gave one the sense of the strange contrast they presented to the barren coldness within. Then we visited several rooms where nuns were teaching young ladies in classes; and in one of these I paused behind my retreating guide—paused to look, not at the bare walls, not at the barred window, not at the young scholars in the bloom of youth and beauty, but at the face of the teacher. It rests with me still. Never shall I forget it; ghastly white, with sunken eyes swollen with weeping, the frail frame trembling visibly, she stood teaching those young girls, when the most casual observer would have considered her fit for a hospital and a nurse. She avoided my pitying glance. I dared not speak, and I turned and left her. Was the rule so strict that compassion had no place? How strange it seemed!
Then we ascended a circular staircase, lighted by a skylight, from which the light streamed full upon the life-size figure of a woman. It was clad in gaudy drapery, and on its head was a golden crown. In an instant my guide dropped upon her knees before the figure, and then rising, she hastily signaled me to kneel, and passed on by herself, and disappeared through a door at the far end of the corridor. I ever wonder at myself, for to my shame I say it—for a moment my knee was bending in obedience; the next I straightened it, and the Word of God came to my succor: "Thou shalt not make to thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above.... Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them." (Ex. 20). What then did all this mean? I knew that decorated figure was meant for the image of the most blessed and honored woman who had ever lived or ever would live upon this earth. I knew she was now in heaven; but the direction to worship before her statue in direct violation of God's holy law— whence came that? A sudden revulsion of feeling seized me: I gazed on the figure with disgust, and turned quickly to meet my returning guide, who now beckoned me to enter the door from which she had just reappeared.
It was a darkened chamber, so dark that for a moment I could scarcely see anything but a richly draped altar, on which candles were burning before a small crucifix. Then gradually I saw that I was in a little chapel, and that the black forms of kneeling nuns were before me. Their white bands glimmered in the dim light, and they seemed lost in silent prayer. Again signaling me to kneel beside her, my guide dropped on her knees, and busily told her beads. Alas! it was all so like what Sunday by Sunday I had lately seen in the Church of my fathers; and knowing that He who was supposed to be worshipped there had the deepest right to my adoration, I knelt beside her, while my eyes turned to the crucifix and the altar. A few seconds, and the beads were told, and we were again on our way, leaving the veiled figures still kneeling in the gloom. "It is perpetual adoration," whispered my guide. "Night and day nuns are kneeling there in worship.”
What a beautiful idea! I thought. Prayer and praise always ascending from that roof: one batch of nuns relieving another as exhausted nature required rest or food. With my young mind freshly awakened to think on eternal things; full of dislike for the cold formalism that I saw in the Church of my fathers; tired of the objectless existence of a young lady's life; longing for a vocation that should wholly engross me, I was for the moment fascinated. Naturally full of a passion for the ideal, and fully susceptible to the wondrous charm of sacred rite and mystic symbol, I might have fallen an easy prey to that seductive will-worship in the great clay temple tower, had it not been for the startling fact that I would have had to pass by the worship of a woman's image to enter the sacred precincts where stood the crucifix. If I desired, as I did, to fly from the babel of conflicting voices in which I had been reared, I had been too well taught the letter of the Word to approach a life of devotion through the worship of an idol.
On we went, my guide and I, till we reached an outer door. Again there was a portress, again keys jangled and locks and bolts grated, as that door opened. Then we passed a narrow court, and found ourselves in a large hall, where some scores of children of the poor were receiving their education. As we entered, an aged nun approached me. Her bearing was dignified, her features were clearly cut and beautiful, her silvery hair could just be seen under her hood. There she stood, looking pure and calm and happy, and the quiet command in her voice and mien told me at once that I was in the presence of the Mother Superior of the convent. A sweet smile played over her face as she asked, “Would you like to hear the children sing?" "Indeed I should," I answered; and in a moment, at a signal from her, the lessons ceased, the children rose, and in sweet tones they sang. Sang what? "we Maria" was their song. A sadness fell upon my spirit. The melody ceased, the children resumed their seats and their studies, and I turned to leave. I thanked the Superior for her kindness in allowing me to view the convent, and told her how I liked the thought of a devoted life such as hers; but I was not true enough to tell her what barred the way to me. Incidentally I mentioned something of the news of the outside world, and I was quite startled at the eager interest which both she and my guide evinced in what was going on. It was plain that, though they were shut out by their vows from the news of the outer world, the enforced seclusion had not destroyed their interest in such things. I told them all I could, and then returned to the convent door, and passing once more through the unlocking of doors, found myself outside the bars and bolts of that secluded domicile.
“Why," I asked myself, "why, if a life of devotion is so sweet, why those jangling keys, why those fast-locked doors, those closely-barred windows?" It was plain that vows, however sincerely made, could not satisfy the longing soul. The broken, sinful, clay vessel cannot mend itself. Vows and bars and bolts cannot shut out self and sin. Man's effort to elevate himself was here, to fit himself for God by devotion and mortification; beautiful enough it looked at the outset, but well was it for me that my eyes were rudely opened to the idolatry practiced in that section of the great clay temple tower.
Unknown to me, amidst the dreadful chaos of the so-called Christian World, One who loved me drew me on till I found myself a stranger in Babylon, and sat down to weep with those who remembered Zion, who looked for a city whose builder and maker is God; and I heard a voice from heaven crying: "What concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore, come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty" (2 Cor. 6:15-18).
Come out! But how? Fly! But where? That had yet to be learned. "This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubabel (stranger in Babylon). Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts" (Zech. 4:6).
Do you remember how we saw the Jewish captives in Babylon, mourning as they remembered Zion? They were each of them sherds of the great clay nation which had turned from Jehovah to Egypt for help, which had worshipped idols, and despised His covenant. They mourned the failure, but they had to suffer for it. They hung their harps upon the willows, and wept when they remembered Zion. Did Jehovah overlook them and forget them? No. He sent them that glorious prophetic song of future deliverance. So now, if you, young Christian, are with those who sigh and who cry for the abominations that are done in this great moral Babylon, and long after the temple of your God, and look for a city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God-if thus you mourn and trust, there comes for you, as for them, a grand prophetic song. Listen. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.... “(Rev. 18:4).
And now ye who sigh and who cry over the moral ruin which has been wrought on that Church which still bears the name of Christ, and who mourn in the midst of the babel of human creeds, and shudder to find idolatry and Spiritism on every side of you, remember the captives of old in the material Babylon of long ago, and behold the future doom of the great world-system and its religion, wherein the little company of long ago has been so disastrously merged. "And a mighty angel took up a stone like a millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall the great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all." (Rev. 18:21). Thus, as of yore, deep under the waters, where no human eye can see it, where no human hand can reach it, lies the doom of the mystic Babylon the Great.
The great world-system around us today must perish forever, the greatest ideals of man are but of clay and must crumble, like their originator, into dust, and even now is sounding from heaven the cry, "Deliver thyself, O Zion, that dwelleth with the daughter of Babylon." (Zech. 2:7).
Our God is our salvation, our refuge in distress,
What earthly tribulation can shake our
steadfast peace?
The ground of our profession is Jesus and
His blood;
He gives us the possession of everlasting good.
We know no condemnation; no law that
speaks despair;
And Satan's accusation, with Christ
we need not fear.
For us there is provided a city fair and new,
To it we shall be guided—Jerusalem's in view.
Chapter 5: The Quarry
“A sepulcher that was hewn in stone, wherein never man before was laid."—Luke 23:53.
“Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste." (Isa. 28:15-16).
WHAT a sudden change of subject! Yes; it is sudden indeed, for there is nothing in common betwixt the clay and the stone. Do what you will, you cannot evolve stone out of clay. There must be a new source for the stone, just as there must be a new source for that which in Scripture is morally likened to the stone.
We, like those sad captives of old, have just heard the prophetic song of the inspired apostle as he tells us of the end of the great boastful clay city, and of its temple tower. The roar of its awful judgment is still ringing in our ears. "Overturned—overturned—overturned," is thus written athwart all the boasted power and wealth and glory of the great modern Babylon. But if we thus have gazed on the prophetic end of the clay building in man's sight, let us now see where its glory ended long ago in God's sight. Let us see how, when all apparently was victory for the great Enemy, God gave up the clay and began building in stone. And as we thus take up the new figure which He is pleased to use of His new creation, let us first gaze at it as we find it, as a material substance on the earth.
It was summer weather, glorious summer weather, when I was fortunate enough to find myself far from the crowd and bustle and dust of London, on a wild and rugged coast in the South of England. There were no smooth golden sands on which to walk at low tide, no shingle slopes to make a pleasant music under the breaking waves; but the water dashed itself incessantly, whether the tide was high or low, on towering rocks. I loved to sit on the top of this firm breastwork, and watch the great rollers come one after the other, like a charging host, and rush with a cry of battle on to the stony ramparts, only to stagger back seaward, white with foam, confusing, in the turmoil of their defeat, the advancing ranks behind them. So clear was the water that you could gaze down through its sheen of blue and green on to the seaweed, stones, and fish far beneath:
“For there beneath those waves entombed
A rainbow-tinted garden bloomed.”
White sea-birds winged their way athwart the dark blue sky, uttering their shrill cries; wild flowers clustered in every sheltered nook around; and
“Lovely things, on painted wings,
Kept flitting to and fro.”
On I went, luxuriating in the loveliness of our God's wonderful creation— the fair earth that came from His hands so "very good.”
Presently I observed a narrow path lying before me, which led down the face of the cliff. It had been cut out of the solid rock, and I gladly scrambled down its rugged footway till I suddenly found myself in a cave. It was not a natural cavern, formed by the upheaving of volcanic rocks, nor had it been hollowed out by the ceaseless rush of wave and storm, but it was an old quarry. Great stones had been wrenched from its sides and roof, by blasting with guncotton, and these stones, after being roughly shaped by the quarrymen's tools, had been lowered on to the decks of small vessels, which had carried them away for use. Houses, churches, dockyards, and all sorts of buildings had been formed out of them; and those hills had been honeycombed for miles inland with passages from which that strong, hard stone had been quarried. That quarry cave was a very different kind of place from the clay pit. I could sit down on the stones, I could lean against the walls, or climb about over hard masses still lying within it. Clean and dry and hard, you felt it might be a place of refuge from storm or wind, and that no rushing wave could ever shake it. How firm and hard the rock was! and every piece chipped off the parent rock was firm and hard too, and partook of its strength and character.
What wonderful and beautiful pictures God does use to make us understand His secret things! We are like little children learning in a kindergarten school, and our present lesson book is hard, solid rock. Do you think it will be a very dull lesson? I hope not, and I am sure, if our souls are hungering to know more of Christ, it will be a very useful one.
All was still as death in that quarry cave. No blasts thundered there, no busy tools chipped and squared the debris. The work had been finished; the workmen had deserted it; and I sat me down alone, with the cry of the sea-birds above me, and the moan of the waters below me. I sat me down to think, and my thoughts ran on the wide difference betwixt clay and stone.
But come away with me now to the granite hills of Sweden. Who that has ever seen that rugged, storm-swept coast can ever forget the rounded billows of stone that form its western boundary? Rising out of the clear blue waters of the gulf, they dot the surface of the sea with innumerable islands— some of them formed of sparkling granite, some of cold gray stone, but most of them flecked here and there with patches of vegetation of the brightest green. It is a lovely sight. They stand like sentinels to guard the mainland, and as the steamboat threads her way warily along the tortuous channels between them, you gaze with delight on the ever-varying prospect.
At Stromstad, the border town between Sweden and Norway, those billowy hills are of granite, and lie around the quaint little town like mighty waves turned into stone. It was while wandering among those hills that I came across another quarry. Whenever I paused, I heard from afar the "chick, chick, chick" of tools falling upon stone, alternating with the heavier thud of a hammer; and, attracted by the sounds, I climbed a hill, and looked around me for the busy quarryman. I saw him at last about half a mile away from me, far too busy at his work to notice the stranger who slowly approached him. On the bare bosom of the rugged hills, open to sun and storm, that solitary workman toiled, chipping and shaping with patient care the great boulder-stones that lay about him. I stood and watched the work of his busy hands, as he wrought with pain and travail to fit each one for its suited place. Its place! Where? To lie there on the wild hillside? No; to form part of a snug little house that was to be built down in the valley yonder, by the rushing ström. I could see the stones and the quarry-man, but not his ideal. The shape and form of the sweet little home to be, was not for me. He had his own ideal, and with chisel and mallet and hammer he wrought on the stones before him.
As I watched him, I stood and pondered, for my thoughts were even then running on God's wonderful object-lessons and the wide difference between the clay-pit and the quarry. The fresh, free air from sea and hill fanned my cheek, the lake lay shining below me, and from it the little river babbled over its rocky bed through the stone-built town, under the shady lime trees, and out into the clear blue waters of the gulf. There, to seaward, as far as eye could reach, stood the white sentinel islands— some green, some bare, but all bathed in the golden sunshine of a glorious summer day. Yet still— apparently unconscious of all the beauties around him, with but one object before him— there toiled that man, and the chick of his tools ceased only when he laid stone after stone aside, ready to be carted to the place chosen for his house. No two stones were exactly alike; they could not be pressed into a mold like the plastic clay; they required no fire to harden them for use, yet each bore a resemblance to its neighbor, each had to be hewn out of the parent rock, and was intrinsically of the same substance with it; each one had to receive individual care and shaping to fit it for the special post which it was destined to fill in the house below— walls, doorsteps, window-sills, coping-stones, as the case might be. So the diligent quarryman worked steadily upon stone after stone, chipping, squaring, measuring one after the other to fit them to the purpose of his mind's ideal.
I left him at his patient toil, and I have no doubt that long ere this a comfortable house near the river has formed a shelter for himself, his wife and family. I left him; but as I walked away my thoughts quitted the hills and rocks, the sea and town, in that northern clime, and centered on a garden under a sultry Eastern sky. There olives grew and palm trees waved, and there in that garden was a cave hewn out of the solid rock. It was a grave—a grave wherein never before had man lain; and there I saw, far back through the ages, a few men and women who, with tearstained eyes, and tender touch, and silent haste, laid a form to rest—a Form wrapped closely in snow-white grave-clothes. I watched as they rolled, with stress and strain, a great boulder stone over the cave's mouth, hiding the dead from view. I watched till the men passed silently away, and two women only stood weeping in bitter anguish beside the mighty stone.
Then away flew my thoughts to the pageantry of a soldier's funeral, where with blast of trumpet and roll of muffled drum, where with waving plumes and booming guns, a great earthly sovereign had lately been laid to rest, while a mighty nation stood by and wept. But this funeral, done in such secrecy, with so much haste, yet so tenderly—with the waving palms for plumes, the moan of the evening breeze for requiem, the dark cypress and the budding olive for spectators, the full moon and the glittering stars for torches— this funeral was the grandest that had ever been on earth. Creation held its breath in silent awe; angels wondered, and demons of the air rejoiced, as the Creator was laid by that handful of His trembling creatures in that rocky grave.
What was being done? I will tell you. God had done with the feeble clay. The One only perfect vessel, never tainted by sin, had allowed Himself to be laid low by the Enemy. At that moment there was no Temple of God upon His own earth. All He had was a grave. The Son of God most high had been committed to that prison cave of His creatures' great enemy— Death.
“The quarry— the quarry!" I murmured, as I stood still to wonder. "Surely that grave wherein never before was man laid was God's wonderful quarry?" The first man was "of the earth, earthy"; the clay-pit was the place of his start. "The second Adam is the Lord from heaven" (1 Cor. 15:47). Surely there and then, unknown to man, unsuspected by the Zeus Belus of the great city of clay, at the very climax of his supposed triumph, the Voice of God most high was crying, "Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone— a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation." From that grim cave of death, that awful prison-house, the feeble clay had never escaped; but He, the Son of God most high, He rose, "the Living Stone," that there out of Himself, the Rock, might be quarried living stones of Him, like Him, for Him. And for what purpose? For the building of a glorious temple on earth, where God should dwell; every whit of which should utter His praise; and more, for the forming of a mighty kingdom of stone, that should crush the great clay Babylon and her temple tower to atoms, and grow till it should fill the whole earth. And more, for the rearing of a holy city of stones most precious, that, gleaming with gold and shining with light divine, should one day form God's grand metropolis over all redeemed creation.
And I heard as from afar the grand resurrection song: "I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength in whom I will trust; my buckler and the horn of my salvation, my high tower.... The sorrows of hell compassed me about; the snares of death prevented me. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto my God: He heard my voice out of His temple, and my cry came before Him, into His ears. Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations of the hills moved and were shaken, because He was wroth.... He boWed the heavens also, and came down: and darkness was under His feet.... The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the highest gave His voice; hailstones and coals of fire.... He sent from above; He took me, He drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy; He brought me forth also into a large place; He delivered me, because He delighted in me" (Psa. 18).
That triumphant song was accomplished when, in the quiet hush of the early morning, as the first streaks of gray light shot over those eastern hills, a mighty angel rolled back the great boulder stone from that empty grave, whence Jesus, the Son of God, had come forth in resurrection life, with the keys of death and of hell in His conquering hand. I saw Him stand, with the weeping but now rejoicing Mary falling at His feet. I heard Him say: "Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My Father and your Father; and to My God and your God" (John 20:17). And then again, later on: "I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death" (Rev. 1:18).
My reverie was over, and, filled with wonder and with awe, I wandered back into the little stone-built town. I went under the shady lime-trees, along by the babbling stream, to the house where I was staying. But often and often since then I have pondered over the thought of the wonderful work that had been done by the bursting open of that grave, hewn out of the solid rock, "wherein never man before was laid." Angels rejoiced and demons of the air trembled, as the Conqueror came forth, a Man, yet victorious. From henceforth the grave was His, and through death He had destroyed "him that had the power of death, that is, the devil" (Heb. 2:14). There, lies open the way of escape from Babylon's confusion, Babylon's doom. There, risen with Christ in spirit, the believer is free from the bondage of will-worship, from the doom of the broken law which hangs over man in the flesh. Clouds and darkness, thunders and lightnings one side; peace and joy and light and song the other side of that strange gateway.
But there is more than this. Have you ever seen the foundation-stone of a great public building laid? A large and perfect stone is chosen; it is placed in a suitable position to be lowered by machinery to its resting-place. Then the sovereign of the land approaches with all the pomp and show of earthly glory, and with golden trowel spreads the mortar that is to form the bed of the honored stone. A touch, and down it goes to its place, while banners wave, and trumpets blow, and bells ring, and men say, "The foundation-stone is laid; the building is to rise upon it.”
God does things differently from men. He does great things very quietly. In the still calm of the night He laid the greatest Foundation-stone that ever has been or that ever can be laid. He chose Zion as the place where He would lay it. Do you know what Zion means? It means Grace, and grace means "free, unmerited favor." Satan had marred the clay vessel in Eden, had broken up the clay nation, had commenced building his grand clay city and tower on the earth; he ruled the world and was its prince and god, and the strength of his position was God's own fiat, that death and judgment must fall on sin. Satan thought he had man fast forever, now that he had hardened the clay against God, and made it defiant to its Creator's will.
The One Perfect Vessel, the Son of man, sinless, bore the judgment due to the world's sin, and put that out of the way; then He was laid in the grave, and came forth "the Living Stone," and so put death out of the way. So that the once prison-house has become the gate of deliverance— the very quarry from whence living stones should be drawn for God's wondrous building. Wonderful to say, that great Foundation-stone was laid in a place where the god of this world could never reach it, for it was laid in Zion, bedded down, so to speak, in the solid Rock of all that God is, laid in grace—free, unmerited favor for lawless and willful man. Death and judgment were left on the other side of that grave, and it had become the gateway, so to speak, out of the great world-system which is under moral darkness", and where Satan tries in vain to rule its wild confusion; into the region of heavenly light and the quiet calm and perfect harmony of divine order.
Do not tell me that this is mysticism. Ponder the scene around you to-day; look at the upheaval of the masses, the materializing of every form of religion, the proud assumption of the creature, the inextricable confusion of all efforts at government. In short, study the Babylon in which you dwell, and from which you must own there is no human way of escape. How is it all to end? Do you say, as so many have said, "I hope it will last my time"; "I hope the great smash will not come in my day"? Better by far listen to the Voice that is calling from heaven: "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues; for her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.”
Do you ask, "But how can we escape?" Only by God's way, only by coming to Him Who cries, "I am the way." He will teach you of the wonders done on Calvary's Cross, and show you the way through His death to life. But more: He will work a miracle on you, giving you His Holy Spirit, thus changing, so to speak, your moral substance from the hardened clay to the solid stone. Will the Lord Jesus ever fail you, if you come to Him? Never. God says He is "a tried stone." All the fire of Divine wrath against man's sin could not change Him. Nothing could even shake Him. Perfectly subject as Son of man, He was strong as stone as Son of God— the One, the only One, who could resist all the Enemy's power, and on Whom God could build in the midst of that enemy's sphere a Temple untouchable, unpollutable, for His own dwelling-place on earth.
“A Precious Stone!" Ah, "to you which believe He is precious" (1 Peter 2:7). Who, like those who know Him, can say how precious! Precious to God, and precious, unspeakably precious, to every believing soul. And to the feeblest believer God cries, “A sure foundation: he that believeth on Him shall not be confounded" (1 Peter 2:6).
His be "the Victor's name,”
Who fought the fight alone;
Triumphant saints no honor claim,
His conquest was their own.
By weakness and defeat
He won the meed and crown;
Trod all our foes beneath His feet,
By being trodden down.
He Satan's power laid low;
Made sin, sin's reign o'erthrew;
Bow'd to the Grave, destroyed it so,
And Death by dying slew.
Bless, bless the Conqueror slain,
Slain in His victory;
Who lived, Who died, Who lives again—
For thee, His church, for thee.
Chapter 6: The Temple of Stone
“In Whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in Whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit." (Eph. 2:21, 22).
I REMEMBER going years ago to see a large cathedral. We had to pass over bridges which spanned a river laden with ships. We had to travel through narrow streets crowded with vehicles of every description. On the pavements busy men and women jostled each other, as they pressed along on their various intents. The constant roar of wheels and hoofs and tramping feet and screaming engines echoed and reechoed on every side. Suddenly I stepped into the precincts of the mighty edifice, and all was hush and stillness. I could scarcely hear the roll of the traffic, or feel its ceaseless throb. The change was as welcome as it was sudden, and I gazed, in the dim light, on quiet graves, and cold, sculptured forms, and Gothic arches, and heard the low, sweet tones of sacred music swelling plaintively around me.
So now the soul that has entered by faith into the value of Christ's death and resurrection can leave the confusion of Babylon, and enter in spirit the precincts of a building that groweth day by day unto a "holy temple in the Lord.”
Have you found this quiet spot where the roar of the great Babylon's disorder cannot reach you? Have you discovered, as you mourned over the outward ruin of the house of God, that should have been so fair, that there is a secret way out of all the confusion around? Have you been drawn on by the mighty power of the Spirit of God within you— on, till you viewed the completeness of the work wrought in the death of Christ; that you, of the "earth, earthy," have ended in that grave in God's sight, and now, clear through His death of all that you were, have risen with Him, in a new condition a—living stone? "To Whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 2:4, 5).
I want you to see that, just as man is building his great temple tower on the earth today, formed of human beings of the "earth, earthy," so God is building a Temple on the earth formed of persons who have been created anew in Christ Jesus, and have thus become "living stones." Of Christ the Rock they are; to Christ in resurrection they are being drawn; and "as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly" (1 Cor. 15:4-8). You pass through that solemn portal alone, but the moment you emerge you find yourself in company knit together by a living Power, living stone clinging to living stone, as loadstone clings to loadstone. No mortar, no cement, no concrete, is needed in this wondrous building; it is held together by indwelling Power.
I am not doubting that in God's sight you are a costly stone in His holy Temple upon earth today; but I am asking, Do you know the place? Have you in your soul's experience tasted the calm, holy hush of that wondrous living building? It hath no concord with Babylon's wit, and Babylon's might, and Babylon's wealth. Nothing of the clay can enter there; all is living all is spiritual; it groweth day by day unto "a holy temple in the Lord." The priests are there, the holy vessels are there; the incense is there, the altar is there. The service is one of perpetual adoration. Do you know the place? It lies on the other side of death. The grave of Christ, where all human cult is lost, is its strange portal. "If ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances, after the commandments and doctrines of men?... If ye be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above" (Col. 2). Death, the death of Christ, lies between those who consciously enter there, and all human energy and organization. Death separates. How well do we all know this!
Only the other day, I saw a funeral procession pass slowly to the cemetery of a country town. It was bearing to the grave the body of a young lady whose stay on earth was over. I watched the hearse as it passed silently before me, smothered in masses of lovely flowers, decked with symbol of cross and crown. I could not help wondering at the sight. What was it all to her? They laid the coffin low, with the solemn words, "Dust to dust, and ashes to ashes." She was gone all that was left of her was gone. The flowers were laid upon the grave to wither there. Death had rolled in between her and those who loved her between her and this scene forever.
Death separates. We are baptized unto the death of Christ. Does His death lie between us and this present evil world? Are we strangers in Babylon, owning no allegiance to the prince of this world? or are we believing Satan's lie that Christ is ruling over the wretched scene of wild confusion which he has made? But if we know and believe from God's Word that there is a great spiritual Temple on the earth to-day, where God the Holy Spirit dwells, let us not rest till we each find our way consciously into its hallowed precincts, till we live here as those who are part of the spiritual house that is unseen by mortal eye.
Do you ask, "Has God given us an object-lesson as to this spiritual house?" Yes, He has. Let us look at it together. Come away, then, up the stream of time till David the king is before us. He is aged and feeble, and drawing near to the time of his departure. He has sent for his young son Solomon; he has called together his princes and his nobles and he tells them that Jehovah has given him by His Spirit "in writing" the ideal of an exceedingly "magnifical" temple to be built at Jerusalem. He tells them that he had wished to build it himself, but Jehovah had refused his request because he had been a great warrior, and had shed much blood. But he goes on to say that in the time of his trouble he had set masons to hew wrought stones for the work, and that he had prepared "with all his might gold, silver, brass, iron, cedar-wood, onyx stones, glistering stones, stones of divers colors, all manner of precious stones, and marble stones in abundance" (1 Chron. 29). During his long reign of trial and trouble this great ideal had been ever before him, and while fighting with enemies without, and subduing sedition within, the chipping of the chisel, the grinding of the saw, the whirr of the polishing tools, had constantly been heard, so that now all was ready for the great and glorious work that his son Solomon was to accomplish.
Soon after this, full of years, the brave old king passes to his fathers and at Solomon's command they bring the "great stones, costly stones, hewed stones" that he had prepared to lay the foundation of Jehovah's temple on earth. But what a strange hush is over the busy scene! "And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone, made ready before it was brought thither; so that there was neither hammer, nor ax, nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was in building" (1 Kings 6:7). How could the work be done thus silently? Because of all that preparation in the days of David's rejection, in the time of his wars and sufferings— the quarrying, the squaring, the shaping, and the polishing had been carried on then. He had seen his great ideal before him— carved and wrought and piled in its splendor; he had seen it blazing with gold and sparkling with gems. He had seen its priests in garments of glory and beauty, its white-robed Levites at their solemn service, its porters at its gates. He had heard the anthems of his own inspired songs pealing through its sacred courts. All had been ordered before him "exceeding magnifical," when as yet there was none of it.
That is God's great object-lesson for us to-day. That was a temple built of material stones, and laid upon an earthly rock; but it is a picture of the great spiritual temple where God the Holy Ghost dwells on earth to-day. The Lord Jesus when on earth, speaking of His body, said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it again" (John 2:19), so now His Church is looked at as His body on the earth, and also as the temple of God on the earth. "For ye are the temple of the living God" (2 Cor. 6:16).
What! amidst all the uproar and confusion around us, the babel of tongues as to creeds and forms and modes of worship, as to incense and garments and priests and musical instruments— is there— can there, be but one great Temple Church holy unto the Lord? I answer, the Light of God's Word shows but one. Noiselessly it rises amidst all the hubbub of Babylon— not a particle of clay about it; formed as of yore of hewn stones, of costly stones, of precious stones, but all of them living stones. True believers indwelt by the holy Spirit are these costly stones. But oh, how many know nothing of the great and holy building of which in God's sight they each form a part! How many are bewildered in the wild confusion of Satan's masterpiece, the imitation temple, the tower of Babylon the Great. How many have overlooked the Apostle's warning: "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.... Wherefore if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances.... after the commandments and doctrines of men?" (Col. 2:8 and 20).
Only yesterday, as I sat on a pleasant balcony with two young Christians, the bitter cry went up: "Look at the confusion around us. One person says this is right; another that! Which are you to believe?" I ventured a word as to the authority of the Word of God. "But," said they, "everyone claims to find his special creed in the Word of God." Then one of them supposed "all were a little right"; and the other shrugged her shoulders and grew silent. Could I tell them which was right? No. Can I tell you? No; the little company of long ago has for many a century been merged in the great world-system of the usurper. Those Christians who try to better it, only fail one after the other, only increase the dire confusion. The Church in man's hand has failed; she is ruined. When you own the ruin, and mourn the ruin, as the captives of Israel mourned their nation's failure in Babylon, then you are getting near to the only way of escape. For remember, amidst all, God sees His spiritual Temple rising built of costly stones, precious stones, glistering stones. It is only when weary of all human efforts at improvement, all human efforts at reconstruction, that the believer finds out that death separates, and that "the grave wherein never man before was laid" is the portal out of confusion and shame into order and reality. It is the Quarry whence "living stones" are drawn to the Living Stone Himself— i.e. Christ in resurrection. "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God" (Col. 3:1).
Do you cry, "Make it plain to us," I cannot. Only when you are content to leave the clay in its worst and its best forms as ended in the grave of Christ will you get the anointed eye that sees the holy Temple of God upon the earth to-day, and slide consciously by divine power into your proper place therein—the place which in God's sight has ever been yours, and for which His discipline has been fitting you. Christ in resurrection like a mighty load-stone draws every living stone unto Himself.
Oh, wonderful transition! Oh, marvelous new creation! The moral weakness that is typified by the clay, left behind in death, and the moral firmness and durability typified by the stone wrought into the new being by the Spirit of God. There is no mending of the broken clay vessel. God Himself says, "That cannot be made whole again"; but there are the "living stones," of Christ and from Christ, a new moral creation, each one to be fitted and shaped to fill its own place in the Temple to-day, and in the great imperial city, the New Jerusalem, which is God's ideal for the future.
Do you often wonder why those whom you know to be true Christians seem to be more stricken in body and tried in circumstances than other people? I used to wonder, and to say to myself that they seemed worse off here, instead of better off. I know why it is so now. Each living stone has to be chiselled and shaped and polished for its own particular place in the Temple of God. Some need much more chipping than others, not because the material is worse, for the material is all of Christ, but because they are wanted, in the purpose of God, for some special place in His Temple or His city.
Do you ask, "Where is the altar in this Temple?" Christ is the only altar; He is a living altar; on Him alone the worshipping priests lay their living sacrifices. Perpetual incense rises to God from that altar, in living prayer and heartfelt praise. Do you ask, "Where are the priests and the singers?" I answer that in ill-appointed garrets, on beds of pain and suffering, in hospitals, in workhouses, in mansions, in cottages, in palaces perchance, in the dens and slums of great cities, in the wastes of deserts, in ships upon the wild oceans, the priests and the singers of this holy Temple are found. A white-robed company are they, stainless in the clear light of God most high, sanctified and set apart for priestly service by the blood of God's Lamb, by the anointing oil of God's Spirit. Their service is one of perpetual adoration; and prayers and songs of praise are rising night and day from the precincts of that holy Temple, while one long roll of melody goes up into God's most holy ear, Christ the leader of the singing, Christ the sweet perfume, Christ the song, Christ the theme. "In His temple doth every whit speak of His glory" (Psa. 29:9).
It is lovely to contemplate it, is it not? to know that in the very midst of this great Babylon world, with all its forms of manmade religion, there is one great Temple all of Christ, in which God the Holy Ghost still dwells upon the earth, refusing all the wealth and pomp and mind and culture of man, and ever forming for His building living stones out of Christ the Rock.
How many young Christians are looking round, at the present time, for that which is the Church. It exists. It exists. Let the Great Builder have His way with you, and you will know it. Only I entreat you to remember that all true worship is as risen with Christ; sin and death are, so to speak, behind those worshipping priests. "For by one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified" (Heb. 10:14).
Do not confuse things. I am not talking of your life in the world in bodies of clay. I am talking of God's holy Temple, God's one place of worship on the earth. All this is in the Spirit. The death of Christ is the portal; Christ in resurrection is the gathering center; and the Holy Spirit is the living Power.
Close to the house where I lived as a child ran a large river. In the midst of the rapid current stood a post. What it was for I do not know; some said it was to mark the depth of the waters, some that it was for the mooring of boats. I always saw it standing alone in the rushing stream; and when the great river was swollen by floods and the arches of the fine old bridge had nearly disappeared, and the lock gates stood wide open, powerless to resist the racing torrent, still that solitary pillar stood out in the swirling stream, unmoved, unmovable.
So now the flood-tide of evil has set in around us, the old gates that held it back of yore are useless; higher and higher rises the awful tide, but amidst it all the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal: "The Lord knoweth them that are His." And, "Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity" (2 Tim. 2:19). Perilous times are upon us; the Lord wants "vessels to honor, meet for the Master's use.”
Do you know how the molten vessels for Solomon's temple were prepared? They were cast in clay molds, down by the river Jordan, hard by the spot where Israel crossed its waveless stream, when they first entered the land. Vessels to honor cast in clay molds! The clay molds had to be broken and cast away; the clay did not get into the temple. But the treasure was fitted and shaped in the earthen vessel, and the more the earthen mold was broken the more of the vessel to honor could be seen.
So now we have the treasure of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ; but we hold these glorious truths "in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us" (2 Cor. 4:7). Fear not for the breaking of the clay mold. If you are going to purge yourself from the vessels to dishonor, much breaking and sorrow and loss will be yours.
But hush! There is a cry, a loud prophetic cry. "Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain; and He shall bring forth the headstone with shoutings. Grace, grace unto it" (Zech. 4:7). When the night is darkest, the dawn is nearest. Stand, young Christians, stand for Christ and for His truth. The Headstone of the Corner shall suddenly come down to crown and complete the holy Temple; and in a moment rising saints and changed saints—costly stones, precious stones, glistering stones, living stones,—founded on the Living Stone, crowned by the Head Stone, shall stand complete, a holy Temple unto the Lord. One instant on the earth, the next rising to meet Him as the glorious Bride, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing (1 Thess. 4:15-18).
From Great Babel's wild confusion,
From her tower of strange delusion,
From her thousand voices crying,
And her questions and replying,
From the winds of doctrine blowing
Through her lofty tower upgoing—
Turn ye, turn ye, weary seeker,
God Himself would be your keeper.
Lofty walls she hath around ye,
Brazen gates whose strength confounds ye,
Human wisdom, cult, and notion,
Ancient custom, will devotion,
Taste and skill and emulation,
Human means for exaltation—
Hast thou found no way of flying?
Pause, O seeker, cease thy trying,
To an unseen Lord confide ye;
Comes His "still small voice" to guide ye.
“Follow Me," to all it crieth.
If 'tis "Yea, Lord," thou repliest,
Strangely drawn by Power divine,
Lo, an "open door" is thine.
Low—so low the entrance lying—
Thou must whisper "this is dying":
Dying, to all human scheming,
Human method, power, or dreaming.
For by cross and grave He goeth,
This the only way He showeth.
Wilt thou follow trembling wondering?
Endeth here the Law's stern thundering,
Endeth here proud Babel's clamor,
Endeth here her fatal glamor.
Adam's sin hath found its dooming
In the Cross above thee looming;
Adam's race hath found its ending
In this grave thou art descending.
Endeth here thine own past history,
Riseth thence thy soul in victory,
Riseth with the One once risen,
Living Lord of Death's dread prison.
Riseth knowing Him Who calls thee,
Whose most tender love enthralls thee,
Draws thee, living stone, to place thee,
Where a thousand glories grace thee,
In His temple fair, uprising
Where thine opened eyes surprising,
Thou beholdest all who own
Christ Himself the Living Stone.
Oh that wondrous living fane,
Free from taint of mortal stain!
Hast thou found it? joined the singing,
Where each echoing stone is ringing
With one tense and deep laudation,
With perpetual adoration
Of the Father from Whose loving
Spring the joys that all are proving?
Hast thou found it where no beaming
Sun or moon or star is gleaming?
Where the day no ending bringeth?
Where the light no shadow flingeth?
Hast thou found it? Living— living—
“Every whit" with praises ringing!
Christ Himself the living Psalter,
Living Priest and living Altar,
Christ the incense, prayers and praising
For the Father's joyance raising;
Christ Who son on son is bringing
Day by day to join His singing?
Priests they are of royal degree;
Heavenly is their pedigree;
Thus by blood and oil anointed
Come they each to place appointed:
Some in garrets cold and dreary,
Singing praises bright and cheery;
Some o'er dark Siberia roaming,
Singing through its winter gloaming;
Some in prisons— tortured groaning—
Singing still o'er Nature's moaning;
Some from ocean's wildest heaving
Their glad song of praises weaving;
Some in palace, house, or cot,
Where or when it matter'th not—
Precious, costly, glistering stones,
Each and all that Builder owns.
Precious— Yes; 'twas Love that sought them;
Costly— Yes; 'twas blood that bought them;
Glistering—Yes; 'twas Power that wrought them;
Christ to God the Father brought them.
Chapter 7: The Kingdom of Stone
“Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces.... And the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth."— Dan. 2:34,35.
“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth." Luke 11:2.
“THY kingdom come." In the splendid cathedral the words are intoned; in the old parish church, gray with the storms of centuries, the words are oft repeated. The old man bows his silvered head and murmurs them as his father murmured them before him, and his father's father, and many a bygone generation. The aged woman whispers them, as in her childhood she whispered them beside her mother's knee. The little child lisps them, with wandering eye and smiling lips, beside its bed. Thousands of times a day the "Pater Noster" rises from those who know less of the words they utter than the infant who prattles them forth as its first lesson in prayer.
How many ever pause to think what that solemn prayer does mean? It means that Christ is coming to reign over the world, as Satan rules now; that the kingdom pictured by the great stone in Nebuchadnezzar's vision will be set up, and will fill the whole earth. Christ will come suddenly, and the earth will be swept with judgment, and cleared of all man's independence and lawlessness. Satan, who is now the usurper, will be dethroned and cast into the lake of fire. People too often think that the world is getting better, but that is Satan's deception. The kingdom is at present like the spiritual Temple, unseen to the natural eye. Every living stone that is quarried from the grave of Christ forms part of it. "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation" or outward show, said our Lord. "The kingdom of God is within you.”
We were talking about the meaning of that word "moral." The kingdom of God is a moral force; it is set up by the Holy Spirit over the minds and hearts and bodies of believers. "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (John 3:3-5). Said our Lord, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit." "How can these things be?" cried the astonished ruler. He knew not that clay and stone could have nothing in common. He knew not that the ancient scriptures cried, "Look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged" (Isa. 51:1). He knew not the lowly door of death typified by the water, or the wondrous resurrection life, brought in by the power of the Spirit. He could not, with all his learning, see unseen things. He could understand an outward ritual of meats and drinks and washings, the observing of days and weeks and months; but he could not grasp the fact that "the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost" (Rom. 14:17).
And how did we who are true believers find that strait gate and narrow way into that blessed but unseen dominion? Listen; for, strange but true, no sooner is the kingdom of God in power within you, than you find you have yourself been translated! How can that have happened to us? Enoch was translated. Yes, "He walked with God, and God took him"; and every soul that has part in the death and resurrection of Christ has had a wonderful moral translation. "Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness"— the domain of Satan— "and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love" (Col. 1:13).
Christ is in heaven now, refused by the world of which Satan is prince. And now comes the test to us. Are we going to be faithful soldiers of the absent One who is our Lord? We shall have to stand in the very midst of the enemy's city, and obey no sovereign but the world-rejected One. It will not be easy; it may cost us much suffering and loss. It has ever been so in earthly history. Those who have been true to their oaths of allegiance to the kings of this world have often had to suffer bitterly for it.
I remember, long ago, when I was still a child, my father took me to see some of the scenes of his own childhood. We drove far out into the country in Oxfordshire, and at last we reached a lonely farmhouse, where we alighted. His mind was full of his own young days, and his eyes were seeing forms and faces unknown to me, and he was hearing voices that I had never heard. I was interested in all he said, but my eyes wandered incessantly from the gray stone house to some ancient stone ruins that rose, gaunt and bare, from the rough garden around me. "What are those ruins?" I cried eagerly. "That is all that is left of the old minster," he replied; and then came the story, which has been indelibly graven on my memory.
When that ruin had been a splendid mansion, annexed, no doubt, to the minster, the last of its rightful owners had ridden to the fatal field of Worcester at the call of his rightful king. True to his oath of allegiance, he had thrown his influence, his wealth, his sword, into the service of the unhappy Charles. The battle was lost, as you know, and the usurper's dominion was established. Back to the old minster rode the last of the Lovels. He entered his house, but there he disappeared. No trace of him could ever be found. The soldiers of Cromwell came to the place, and lived there, but no one ever saw the rightful owner again. The Government seized the house and dismantled it, and all forgot the last of the Lovels and his loyalty to his deposed sovereign. But what had become of him? When that old farmhouse had been built, as the workmen toiled at its foundations the mystery was suddenly solved. They had come on a secret chamber which had lain beneath the old minster, and there they found a table with a crumbling Psalter open upon it, a chair, and the skeleton of a man lying beside it. He must have fled to that under-ground room, been forgotten by his servants, and, unable to escape, had perished in that living tomb— true to his oath, true to his king to the last.
Many and many a soldier of the Cross has been called to esteem "the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt"— stoned, sawn asunder, slain with the sword; destitute, afflicted, tormented; true to their deposed King; refusing the rule of the usurper, and by faith "receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved" (Heb. 12:28). If men of the world can suffer so much for a feeble, failing, earthly sovereign, shall we shrink from bearing the Cross of Christ; shall we forget that we are in His kingdom now— His unseen kingdom, which ere long He shall bring to light, and which shall fill the whole earth with righteous rule? "If we suffer we shall also reign with Him," cries the apostle; suffering now and reigning hereafter always go together in the Scriptures. "He that overcometh, and keepeth My words unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to pieces," cries the Son of God, Whose eyes are like unto a flame of fire, and His feet like unto fine brass (Rev. 2:26, 27).
“Overcometh!" What does that mean? It means that in this day of wild confusion, of the form of godliness, and the denying of the power of it (the Holy Spirit)— this day when the rightful Sovereign of this world has been sent into "a far country"— you, young Christian, strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, stand for the absent King. Will it be easy? No; it will bring down upon you scorn and scaith and actual loss here. "Occupy till I come," cries the absent Lord; and when He comes, what then? "Because thou hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten cities, or five cities," as the case may be. Do you realize that you yourself will have part in that coming kingdom— actually helping the rightful King to govern this very earth? Just in the measure in which the kingdom of God reigns within you now, so then will you reign with Christ, when that great stone, cut out without hand, crushes the kingdoms of this world to powder, and fills the whole earth. It is not my idea; you will find it everywhere in the Word of God. In all ages, in all phases of the professing Church, Christ has had His over-comers.
And now, ere we close this slight glimpse at the great Kingdom of Stone which shall come from heaven suddenly, unaided by any mortal hand, and fill the whole earth, let us all gaze at one who, like a brave soldier of Jesus Christ, faced shame and loss and death itself for "the hope that was set before him"— one who has long rested in Christ, but will surely reign with Him ere long.
Why this crowd in the streets of this capital city of France? Why this eager multitude that collects, with bated breath, before the gates of this gloomy prison? They have gathered to behold a peer of France go forth to the court of his Sovereign lord. The sun rides high over the fair city. It is exactly noon when those great gates swing open, and the procession slowly enters the streets. Six hundred bowmen surround the chariot, and on it sits Berguin, the peer of France, the man of letters, the friend of King Francis I. That chariot is a wretched tumbril; that escort guards a prisoner. For has he not fearlessly proclaimed the Gospel of his absent Lord? Is he not a valiant soldier of the Cross? Robed in a cloak of velvet, a doublet of satin and damask, and golden hose, he appears before the expectant crowd with a look of triumph on his countenance. "For am I not," says he, "to be this day presented at court—not at that of Francis, but at that of the Monarch of the Universe?”
With wonder and astonishment the crowd gazes on that man. "How bravely he is arrayed!" cries one. "He is more like one who is going to a bridal banquet than one who is going to be burned!" cries another. And yet again they whisper as they gaze upon his serene face, his calm, unruffled mien, "He is like one who sitteth in a temple and meditateth on holy things." Ah! right they are. The peer of France seated on that wretched tumbril, which slowly bears him through the crowded streets, is a living stone in a Temple that their eyes see not; yea, a worshipping priest from whose heart ascend praises to God most high censed only with the holy Name of Jesus Christ. He will mix naught in that incense of man's construction—no human name, however blessed. Those knees of his will bow to no image of wood or stone. That proud voice of his has declared, in the very center of the great Babylonish temple even then building, that there is only One Name given under heaven whereby men may be saved.
But the figure of the cross stands high upon the Temple tower? Yes. But the crucifix is on the splendid altar before which the candles burn? Yes. But the organs peal with the sacred name of Christ? Yes. Then why this scene? Why this cry of "To the fire with the heretic"? He hath found the lowly door of His Lord's grave. He hath been quarried and shaped and fitted by the great Unseen Builder for his place in the Temple of living stones. The imitation thing will not do for him. Cast out like his Lord, he who has so often ridden to the brilliant court of Francis, rideth now on that wretched tumbril to take his place amidst the noble army of martyrs around their world-rejected King. The most radiant face in that crowd is his. Words of pity do not move him; hoots of scorn do not ruffle him, for had not both followed his Lord and King as His citizens led Him to the Cross on Calvary? "Marvel not that the world hates you," rings in his opened ears. "Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake. Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy; for, behold, your reward is great in heaven" (Luke 6:22, 23).
It is a lovely April day; the spring is clothing the sunny land of his fathers with luxurious verdure; the birds are building their nests amidst the fresh foliage of the trees, and the flowers are bursting into bloom. From all the fair scene on earth, from his noble name, his titles, his wealth, his loved books, he is going in the heyday of his manhood to the martyr's stake. It is in loyalty to His unseen King. To his earthly sovereign he had ever been true, and thrice before that king who loved him had stretched across him the scepter of his mercy. Thrice he had stepped betwixt the Church of Christ and the fearless overcomer, who loved not his life unto the death for the truth which she had belied. But now the hour has come, and Berguin is to die. The place is reached; he alights from the tumbril, and steps to the stake. He places himself against it, and while they bind him there, he turns to the crowd to tell them the cause for which he gladly suffers. But those around will have none of it. With clashing arms and rolling drums and yells and shouts they drown the martyr's parting words. The smoke and flame soon wrap him in their dread embrace, and his spirit passes to the waiting throng on high.
And what then? The priests in the great temple tower scatter the martyr's dust to the four winds of heaven, with the foolish hope that Berguin the heretic shall never rise again. And what then? A pale-faced, delicate youth turns from that scene of the martyr's triumph—turns from the presence of that overcomer's departure, with his eye ablaze with fire, his heart throbbing with earnest desire to tread in such steps as that, and if need be to have a last end like Berguin's. It was John Calvin who caught the martyr's mantle as it fell—John Calvin who passed into the unseen kingdom that day—a hero who was to rescue many a weary wanderer from the vain will-worship of the temple tower.
“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Then Berguin and Calvin, and you and I, and thousands more, shall reign with Christ in glory.
“Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach. For here have we no continuing CITY, but we seek one to come" (Heb. 13:13, 14).
“Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, LORD Jesus" (Rev. 22:20).
Hail to the Lord's anointed,
Great David's greater Son!
When to the time appointed
The rolling years shall run.
He comes to break oppression,
To set the captive free;
To take away transgression,
And rule in equity.
The heavens—which now conceal
Him In counsels deep and wise—
In glory shall reveal Him
To our rejoicing eyes;
He Who with hands uplifted
Went from the earth below,
Shall come again all gifted,
His blessing to bestow.
Kings shall fall down before Him,
And gold and incense bring;
All nations shall adore Him,
His praise all people sing.
Outstretched His wide dominion
O'er river, sea, and shore,
Far as the eagle's pinion
Or dove's light wing can soar.
Chapter 8: The City of Stone
“And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like jasper stone clear as crystal.... And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it."—Rev. 21:10-22.
WE finished off last evening with those solemn words: "Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach. For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come." Are you on the quest? Have you turned your back on the great clay city Babylon, refusing its principles, its glory, and its religion? Do you want to find the city for which Abraham looked? He did not want Babel. He wanted a city that had foundations. He did not want a man-built city; he looked for one whose builder and maker is God. When he looked for it he left country and kindred, and wandered about homeless in the very land which he was to inherit.
Did he ever find it? No. But by faith he saw it, and he will find it, he will see it really. If you want to find it, you will have to seek it as he did. If you want a glimpse of it by faith now, if you want something of the joy of it now in your soul, you must go outside the gate—outside the camp of all that Babylon typifies, escaping, as I have told you, by the death and grave of Christ, coming in spirit to Him where He now is. There outside the city you have found the Temple of Stone— Worship; there you have entered the Kingdom of Stone Rule; and there you will find the City of Stone— dwelling. For the name of the city you will find is "The New Jerusalem"—"Behold, the Tabernacle of God with men.”
Will you be in it now? No, but its name will be written on you now. To the overcomer in the dark closing days of the ruined Church's history the Lord says, "I will make him a pillar in the Temple of my God"— that is now— "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 from heaven from my God; and my new name" (Rev. 3:12). All that is now in the Spirit. The Temple of Stone will be finished, as we have seen, when Christ descends into the air, as the Head Stone— and viewed as the Bride it will rise to meet Him. The Church must go up into heaven before it can come out as the City of Stone, the Holy Jerusalem.
The Apostle Paul says in his Epistle to the Galatians, "Jerusalem that now is, is in bondage with her children." Yes; captive in Babylon, unable to escape, bearing the doom of the broken law, trying to live by ordinances, trying to be justified by the works of the law, trying to improve the great clay city, and coming under the shadow of its doom. Her walls broken down, her gates destroyed, her temple left unto her desolate, a ruin; and the goodly stones, the goodly stones, scattered amidst much rubbish. That is all that is left on man's side. Christ is not there.
Do you say, "But I am young, and the earth is fair, and the world is full of prospects and countless pleasures for me; and to reckon that the death of Christ lies betwixt me and all the glories and joys of the great clay city is such a gloomy idea! Must I turn away from it all for a vision of the far future?" Have you ever been in the Lord's company? Have you ever known the joy of communion with Him? Is there anything— anything— on earth like the joy of that? Is not your heart weary and sick and joyless if you have lost His company? Young Christian, the New Jerusalem is your birthright. Do not despise it. You cannot have both. You must leave the clay city through the death and grave of Christ if you would dwell with Him in resurrection in the City of Stone. "Jerusalem which is above is free." All is of the Spirit there; all is living.
And you whose joy it is to serve Christ now in this day of His rejection— do you ever think what it will be to serve Him in the day of His reign? No weak, failing bodies of clay then; no hindering sin within, no lethargy, no self-conceit, no lack of wisdom. The New Jerusalem comes to reign over the world to come, comes to reign with Christ. You and I may not be counted worthy to rule ten cities or five, but, depend upon it, there will be someone for whom to care, someone to watch over for the King.
And is that all? No; service could never satisfy the heart. The secret new name will be yours— close, deep, perpetual communion with the One Who once loved you unto blood.
Do you think God is content to let this lovely earth of His be forever groaning under the thrall of evil? Do you think that He is going to leave this world alone till it destroys itself in the delirium of evil? No; the King of kings is coming to reign in righteousness, and Babylon's doom is fixed.
Will it be no joy to you to see the Lord Jesus, once scorned and crucified, owned as Lord and King by the whole world? Will it be no joy to you to be with Him in His kingdom, to execute His righteous decrees, to see all the confusion and ruin and lawlessness ended, and "the knowledge of the Lord covering the earth, as the waters cover the sea"? Will it be no joy to you to minister to a bright, happy, rejoicing world, where there are no armies, no navies, no prisons, no hospitals, no cemeteries? Think of it; and you and I are really going to be with Christ, and enter into His joy over all this. That is what it means to be part of the City of the great King— the City of Stone— God's metropolis over the earth.
This is much; but there is more. The reign of righteousness will come to a close; the tempter will escape from his prison-house; and a dim cloud of storm and tempest closes the happy period. Then rises before us the great White Throne, and the earth and heaven flee from the Face of Him Who sits thereon. And then there looms upon the sight a new heaven and a new earth. And what is there for you and me then? Why, then, in that new scene, where righteousness reigns no more, but dwells, there shall the name written on the overcomer on earth in the darkest days of great Babylon's power come into view; for the holy city, the new Jerusalem, comes down from heaven, while a great voice out of heaven cries: "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, their God" (Rev. 21:3).
If our eyes are on Christ, our hearts set upon Him, His interests will be dear to our souls; and while He leads our priestly service of adoration to the Father in the unseen Temple of living stones, we shall gladly come forth as Levites to hold forth "the word of life," to "be blameless and harmless, the children of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation" (Phil. 2:15, 16) or as porters to "bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ" (Gal. 6:2); worshipping in spirit and in truth in the unseen Temple; serving in faithfulness and love in the unseen kingdom; and looking for and seeking the unseen city which God hath prepared for them that love Him.
Farewell, young Christian reader. These object-lessons from God's Word are over. May you and I be preserved unto the Lord's "heavenly kingdom" like the apostle of old, and find our places for eternity in the holy city, the New Jerusalem.
O bright and blessed scenes,
Where sin can never come,
Whose sight our longing spirit weans
From earth where yet we roam.
And can we call our home
Our Father's house on high,
The rest of God our rest to come,
Our place of liberty?
Yes! in that light unstained
Our stainless souls shall live,
Our heart's deep longings more than gained,
When God His rest shall give.
His presence there, my soul
Its rest, its joy untold
Shall find, while endless ages roll
And time shall ne'er grow old.
Our God the center is;
His presence fills that land;
And countless myriads owned as His
Round Him adoring stand.
Our God Whom we have known,
Well known in Jesu's love,
Rests in the blessing of His own,
Before Himself above.
Glory supreme is there,
Glory that shines through all;
More precious still that love to share
As those that love did call.
Like Jesus in that place
Of light and love supreme,
Once Man of Sorrows full of grace,
Heaven's blest and endless theme.
Like Him! O grace supreme!
Like Him before Thy face,
Like Him to know that glory beam
Unhindered face to face.
O love supreme and bright,
Good to the feeblest heart,
That gives us now as heavenly light
What soon shall be our part.