'Thou shalt call thy walls Salvation, and thy gates Praise'--ISAIAH lx.
18.
The prophet reaches the height of eloquence in his magnificent picture
of the restored Jerusalem, 'the city of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy
One of Israel.' To him the city stands for the embodiment of the
nation, and his vision of the future is moulded by his knowledge of the
past. Israel and Jerusalem were to him the embodiments of the divine
idea of God's dwelling with men, and of a society founded on the
presence of God in its midst. We are not forcing meanings on his words
which they will not bear, when we see in the society of men redeemed by
Christ the perfect embodiment of his vision. Nor is the prophet of the
New Testament doing so when he casts his vision of the future which is
to follow Resurrection and Judgment into a like form, and shows us the
new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven.
The end of the world's history is to be, not a garden but a city, a
visible community, bound together because God dwells in it, and yet not
having lost the blessed characteristics of the Garden from which man
set out on his long and devious march.
The Christian form of the prophet's vision is the Christian Society,
and in that society, each individual member possesses his own portion
of the common blessings, so that the great words of this text have a
personal as well as a general application. We shall best bring out
their rich contents by simply taking them as they stand, and
considering what is promised by the two eloquent metaphors, which liken
salvation to the walls and praise to the gates of the City of God.