ther hath
bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God"; and the
best reading continues--"and we are so"; it continues with "purifieth
himself as He is pure," and "he that abideth in Him sinneth not."

Finally, does it seem a contradiction in terms to talk of becoming a
child? it is indeed hard to turn the streams of life backward and make
them return to their source: a long way back, too, for some of us;
again we take comfort from the Scripture, and remember that "when he
was yet a great way off, his father ran and fell on his neck and kissed
him."

III

GLEAMING AS CRYSTAL

"And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, gleaming as crystal,
proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb."--REV. xxii. 1.

If we are to understand the New Jerusalem properly, we almost need to
have been citizens of the _Old_. On this subject, even more than in
the general interpretation of the Scriptures, we are entitled to answer
the question--"What advantage then hath the Jew?" with an unhesitating
expression of "much every way"; for unto them pertained the city of
God. For example, when we read, in Galatians, the passage in which St.
Paul speaks of the old Covenant, under the terms "Agar" and "Mount
Sinai in Arabia," who but those who had felt the galling of a foreign
yoke, and the insolence and exaction of Roman tyranny, could have
realised the pathos of the words "and correspondeth to Jerusalem, which
now is, and is in bondage with her children"; and what citizen of the
New and Spiritual City, who had not also dwelt within the ancient and
outward walls, could have felt the full contrast expressed in the
triumphant thanksgiving that "Jerusalem, which is above, is free"? In
the same way, if one would understand the magnificent passage in which
the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews describes the New Jerusalem,
one would need to have worshipped within the courts of the Old. How
else can one see the lines traced in the picture, and mark the analogy
between the multitude of white-robed priests and the innumerable
company of angels; or see the general assembly of folk gathered for
festival from all parts of the land? here, too, are the consecrated
eldest-born, and here the rolls in which their names are entered; and,
passing within the veil, even in ancient days, one might say, in some
sense, "We are come to God the Judge of all, and to Jesus the Mediator
of the covenant, and to the Blood of sprink