Now, no doubt the prophet was thinking of the literal Jerusalem; but
the city is ideal, as is shown by the bulwarks which defend, and by the
qualifications which permit entrance. And so we must pass beyond the
literalities of Palestine, and, as I think, must not apply the symbol
to any visible institution or organisation if we are to come to the
depth and greatness of the meaning of these words. No church which is
organised amongst men can be the New Testament representation of this
strong city. And if the explanation is to be looked for in that
direction at all, it can only be the invisible aggregate of ransomed
souls which is regarded as being the Zion of the prophecy.
But perhaps even that is too definite and hard. And we are rather to
think of the unseen but existent order of things or polity to which men
here on earth may belong, and which will one day, after shocks and
convulsions that shatter all which is merely institutional and human,
be manifested still more gloriously.
The central thought that was moving in the prophet's mind is that of
the indestructible vitality of the true Israel, and the order which it
represented, of which Jerusalem on its rock was but to him a symbol.
And thus for us the lesson is that, apart altogether from the existing
and visible order of things in which we dwell, there is a polity to
which we may belong, for 'ye are come unto Mount Zion, the city of the
living God,' and that that order is indestructible. Convulsions come,
every Babylon falls, all human institutions change and pass. 'The
kingdoms old' are 'cast into another mould.' But persistent through
them all, and at the last, high above them all, will stand the stable
polity of Heaven, '_the_ city which hath _the_ foundations.'
_There_ is a lesson for us, brethren, in times of fluctuation, of
change of opinion, of shaking of institutions, and of new social,
economical, and political questions, threatening day by day to
reorganise society. 'We have a strong city'; and whatever may come--and
much destructive will come, and much that is venerable and antique,
rooted in men's prejudices, and having survived through and oppressed
the centuries, will have to go; but God's polity, His form of human
society of which the perfect ideal and antitype, so to speak, lies
concealed in the heavens, is everlasting. Therefore, whatsoever
changes, whatsoever ancient and venerable things come to be regarded as
of no account, howsoever the nations, like clay in the hands of the
potter, may have to assume new forms, as certainly they will, yet the
foundation of God standeth sure. And for Christian men in revolutionary
epochs, whether these revolutions affect the forms in which truth is
grasped, or whether they affect the moulds into which society is run,
the only worthy temper is the calm, triumphant expectation that through
all the dust, contradiction, and distraction, the fair city of God will
be brought nearer and made more manifest to man. Isaiah, or whoever was
the writer of these great words of my text, stayed his own and his
people's hearts in a time of confusion and distress, by the thought
that it was only Babylon that could fall, and that Jerusalem was the
possessor of a charmed, immortal life.
This strong city, the order of human society which God has appointed,
and which exists, though it be hidden in the heavens, will be
manifested one day when, like the fair vision of the goddess rising
from amidst the ocean's foam, and shedding peace and beauty over the
charmed waves, there will emerge from all the wild confusion and
tossing billows of the sea of the peoples the fair form of the 'Bride,
the Lamb's wife.' There shall be an apocalypse of the city, and whether
the old words which catch up the spirit of my text, and speak of that
Holy City as 'descending from heaven' upon earth, at the close of the
history of the world, are to be taken, as perhaps they are, as
expressive of the truth that a renewed earth is to be the dwelling of
the ransomed or no, this at least is clear, that the city shall be
revealed, and when Babylon is swept away, Zion shall stand.
To this city--existent, immortal, and waiting to be revealed--you and I
may belong to-day. 'We _have_ a strong city.' You may lay hold of life
either by the side of it which is transient and trivial and
contemptible, or by the side of it which goes down through all the
mutable and is rooted in eternity. As in some seaweed, far out in the
depths of the ocean, the tiny frond that floats upon the billow goes
down and down and down, by filaments that bind it to the basal rock, so
the most insignificant act of our fleeting days has a hold upon
eternity, and life in all its moments may be knit to the permanent. We
may unite our lives with the surface of time or with the centre of
eternity. Though we dwell in tabernacles, we may still be 'come to
Mount Zion,' and all life be awful, noble, solemn, religions, because
it is all connected with the unseen city across the seas. It is for us
to determine to which of these orders--the perishable, noisy and
intrusive and persistent in its appeals, or the calm, silent, most
real, eternal order beyond the stars--our petty lives shall attach
themselves.