It is to be like the defenceless villages scattered up and down over
Israel. There is no need for bulwarks of stone. The wall of fire is
round about. The Prophet has a vision of a great city, of a type unknown
in those old times, though familiar to us in our more peaceful days,
where there was no hindrance to expansion by encircling ramparts, no
crowding together of the people because they needed to hide behind the
city walls; and where the growing community could spread out into the
outer suburbs, and have fresh air and ample space. That is the vision of
the manner of city that Jerusalem was to be. It did not come true, but
the ideal was this. It has not yet come true sufficiently in regard to
the churches of to-day, but it ought to be the goal to which they are
tending. The more a Christian community is independent of external
material supports and defences the better.
I am not going to talk about the policy or impolicy of Established
Churches, as they are called. But it seems to me that the principle that
is enshrined in this vision is their condemnation. Never mind about
stone and lime walls, trust in God and you will not need them, and you
will be strong and 'established' just in the proportion in which you are
cut loose from all dependence upon, and consequent subordination to, the
civil power.
But there is another thought that I might suggest, though I do not know
that it is directly in the line of the Prophet's vision; and that is--a
Christian Church should neither depend on, nor be cribbed and cramped
by, men-made defences of any kind. Luther tells us somewhere, in his
parabolic way, of people that wept because there were no visible pillars
to hold up the heavens, and were afraid that the sky would fall upon
their heads. No, no, there is no fear of that happening, for an unseen
hand holds them up. A church that hides behind the fortifications of
its grandfathers' erection has no room for expansion; and if it has no
room for expansion it will not long continue as large as it is. It must
either grow greater, or grow, and deserve to grow, less.
The same thing is true, dear brethren, about ourselves individually.
Zechariah's prophecy was never meant to prevent what he himself helped
to further, the building of the actual walls of the actual city. And our
dependence upon God is not to be so construed as that we are to waive
our own common-sense and our own effort. That is not faith; it is
fanaticism.
We have to build ourselves round, in this world, with other things than
the 'wall of fire,' but in all our building we have to say, 'Except the
Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Except the Lord
keep the city, the watchers watch in vain.' But yet neither Jerusalem
nor the Church, nor the earthly state of that believer who lives most
fully the life of faith, exhausts this promise. It waits for the day
when the city shall descend, 'like a bride adorned for her husband,
having no need of the sun nor of the moon, for the glory ... lightens
it.' Having walls, indeed, but for splendour, not for defence; and
having gates, which have only one of the functions of a gate--to stand
wide open, to the east and the west, and the north and the south, for
the nations to enter in; and never needing to be barred against enemies
by day, 'for there shall be no night there.'