some glorious way to be manifested. The earnest expectation of the creature (creation) waiteth for the event. The towers and battlements, the courts and chambers, the sacrifices and lustrations of the visioned temple of Ezekiel are earnests and figures, in their divine architecture, of the spiritual glories of the new and final dispensation. All shall be completed at last, and all, we know, shall be as great as it is good, and as true as it is beautiful, for over all shall be placed the mystic stone of the everlasting presence and dwelling of God, Jehovah Shammah, "The Lord is there "."

So closes the prophecy of Ezekiel. He began it by the banks of the river Chebar, and by the banks of the river Chebar he concluded it. He was surrounded by his countrymen, but their presence was his greatest trial. He had to prophesy before them while they refused to believe. He was set between them and the land from which they were exiles, and their beloved city which they believed to be impregnable, and he had to tell them first of the coming woe in its de" Ezek. xlviii. 35.

t Rom. viii. 19.

struction, and afterwards of its restoration and their return. In the midst of all these revelations he was to mingle lessons of holy morality, warnings against spiritual adultery, and declarations of divorce for idolatrous unbelief.

Finally, as the prophetic volume goes on, it enters more largely into future restoration through the overthrow of the hostile power of Gog and the building again of the ruins of the Holy City.

It is thus that into the mantle of his darkest visitations God ever weaves in the golden threads of hope, and terminates a mission of rebuke in a promise of glory.

Tracts for the Christian Seasons.

SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

НЕ

THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH.

HE who reads the Word of God with any degree of attention will find therein two streams of truth running side by side. Sometimes these streams run parallel to one another; sometimes they appear to cross one another, and so coalesce for a season, and form one line; sometimes they appear to diverge, so that one vanishes for a little space, but only for a little space, for soon again they are both in view, and run on together.

The two fountains from which these streams flow, the two principles from which these lines of thought take their beginning, are these:

1st. That God saves each soul one by one. 2nd. That He saves

No. 69. THIRD SERIES.

souls by joining

them together in a fellowship, or body, which is the Church of Jesus Christ.

Each soul is saved by God singly, by itself; just as if there was no other being in existence. Just as each man is born alone into the world, and has an inner world within him known only to God, and has his own separate share in the corruption derived from Adam, and is accountable for his own sin, so each one must himself repent, and himself look to Jesus with his own eye of faith, and lean for himself on the supporting arm of Christ, and follow singly the footsteps of his Saviour; and each one must die alone, and stand in his own individuality before the Judge, and be acquitted or condemned as if there existed no other soul in the universe.

This is the "individual" view of salvation, if I may use such a term.

But side by side with this, from almost the beginning to the very end of the Scriptures, we have the fact that God does not save men merely as individuals, but that for the highest purposes of salvation He gathers men into a body, or fellowship, or Church.

Entrance into this fellowship, and continuance in this fellowship, are made needful to salvation; the very forgiveness of our individual sins is in many places made in a sense dependent upon our abiding in ita.

Reader, I ask your serious and prayerful attention to the proof of this from the Word of God, which I am now about to bring before you.

Let us begin with the Old Testament. When God says, in the Book of Proverbs,

My son, give Me thine heart," He appears to speak to each person singly, putting quite out of the question any religious or ecclesiastical connection which the man may have entered into with his fellow Jews or fellow men.

We find a similar way of speaking in the first Psalm: "Blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, and hath not sat in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in His law will he exercise himself day and

Ephes. v. 26; 1 John i. 7.