: save upon the principle suggested above, that these living creatures denote the spiritual form of the church which hath come into being since the day of Pentecost; and not the saints before that, who, I think, are represented in the elders as indeed they are expressly named by St. Paul, For by it the elders obtained a good report" (Heb. xi. 2); and referred to by Isaiah, under the name ancients, in that passage, "Then the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when the Lord of hosts shall reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his ancients gloriously (Isai. xxiv. 23). According to this idea, the cherubim in Ezekiel are properly represented as under the firmament of the throne of God, not manifested, not yet in being otherwise than as a purpose; but in the time of John they were in real being, and therefore properly represented as above the firmament. Whatever this change denotes, it certainly is no mean thing; and I confess myself utterly unable to say what it is, save upon the supposition given above. This also accounts for the elders coming in as a new element in the celestial vision. Till Christ came they were not perfected; they waited for their perfection, and could not receive it until that better thing provided for us had come (Heb. xi. 40). As the spirits of just men made perfect, they take their place in the celestial assembly (Heb. xii. 23). These are deep things, and I treat them with cautious reverence. Knocking at the door, that God in his own good time may open it unto me.-(3) There is another characteristic difference between Ezekiel and John's visions; which is, that in the former the four faces inhere in the same form; but in the latter, each form hath only one face. Ezekiel's cherubim have each all the four faces; John's have only one each. This is very deep: I cannot attain unto it. I quote the following account of this matter from a passage in the third Number of the Morning Watch, by my learned friend Mr. Tudor: "In Ezekiel the four faces are united in each of the cherubim, because all the several aspects of the church were exhibited in the same body of people, the nation of Israel: in the Apocalypse they have four separate forms, shewing, that there the several aspects of the church would be exhibited in different bodies of people and different nations" (Morning Watch, No. III. p. 311). My view therefore of the four living creatures which John saw within the limits of the throne is, that they represent the peculiar honour and privilege and nearness to Christ, and intimate communion with his person, which is reserved in the age to come for the least in the kingdom of heaven, greater in degree than John the Baptist, one of the most advanced, if not the most advanced of the Old-Testament saints. To us who are baptized out of the carnal altogether, in the bondage of which the Jews were fast bound, to us who are spiritual through the baptism of the Holy Ghost; to us who are baptized into the fellowship of Christ's suffering weakness; to us who are members of his body by regeneration, is the honour received of entering by the gates into that city which is the throne of God, of sitting with him on that throne which he shall set up on the earth, of being in the liberty and activity and power and glory of the spiritual being, and indwelling in that city which is the Holy of Holies of creation, the heavenly things purified with Christ's blood, the inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and imperishable, about to be revealed; while to the elders who were trained under the carnal ordinances, and enabled to resist and overcome natural wickedness through faith; to deny themselves to things seen and temporal in the foreview of a better inheritance, who were trained under ordinance of law and kingdom,-to these elders it is reserved to exercise the government and occupy the thrones, and minister at the altars, and fulfil all the royal priestly offices over the nations in existence during the Millennium, thus receiving that heirship of the world, and that power to bless all nations, in the faith, in the hope, of which they were contented to endure all things: while they look forward in the fulness of time to be translated into that spiritual state into which we are now baptized, of which we are now the expectants, and which we shall then certainly enjoy. This is an idea of so much importance, and so liable to misrepresentation, that I ask my reader's patience while I open it a little, and shew its harmoniousness with all the purposes and revelations of God. When God permitted mankind to come under the power and dominion of Satan by the Fall, he shewed forth from the beginning the glory of his power in enabling a chosen people to withstand, in fallen sinful nature, the power fallen sinful nature, through faith in his word; men w preferred a word of God to all things visible and sensible; who forsook home and inheritance and every thing at his call. The words which he uttered to these men were promises of a better flesh than that which they now crucified, of a better world than that which they now forsock; of being the heirs, the inheritors, the kings and the priests of the world in the fulness of the times of God. When these men believed God, they were enabled and they were called on to endure all things, as is set forth at large in the xith chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. But there was no mention made to them of regeneration, nor of union with Christ, nor of the membership of his body, nor of the baptism of the Holy Ghost, nor of being risen with Christ, nor of being seated with him in the heavenly places, nor of any other of the spiritual mysteries of the Christian faith. They had an ordinance which signified the cutting off of the filth of the flesh; and they had a law an old commandment, as old as Cain and Abel, which is, to love one another: but they had not the ordinance signifying the resurrection in the spiritual body, nor the new commandment which is only true in Christ and in us, because "the darkness is past, and the true light shineth." This new commandment is to love one another as Christ hath loved us. It was a dispensation of a lower kind than that into which Christ introduced us by the gift of the Spirit both from the same one Disposer, but in the proportion which seemed good to him; both communicated by word of promise and sealing sacraments; and both made ours by faith, but that faith having in the one case a fuller object than in the other. Now each of these degrees of promise will be fulfilled to the believer, not failing a jot or a tittle; and therefore, as there have been two different stages or modes of faith, so must there be two different stages or modes of fulfilment. One of these, I think, is the condition represented by the crowned enthroned elders around the throne; the other is the condition represented by the four living creatures within the throne;-the one raised to the rule and government of all without the city, as it were in the holy place; the other dwelling with Christ within the most holy place, and sharing the spi ritual rule and government along with him. But I pause ain, and I do not press this; I see there is a diversity: but whether it be a two fold office to which each of us shall be called, or some to one, and some to another; whether we shall all be raised alike, and called both to sit as elders and to dwell within the throne as cherubim, or whether some shall be raised to the most honourable degree, and the others to a degree still more honourable, I do not dare positively to affirm. Sometimes my mind inclines the one way, and sometimes it sways the other: and many things I cannot express in such evil-thoughted times, to such a word-watching and word-wresting generation; and sometimes I am tempted to write no more, because my words are such a stumbling block to many. God himself direct me to what is wisest and best, and most for his glory, most for the good of his church, and most for my own advancement in his kingdom. There remain but two other features of the living ones; their wings and their eyes; but these of the greatest im-portance, and well worthy to occupy the remainder of this Lecture, which is as it were but the first part of the exposition of this great vision. "And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within." This carries us as if by a direct quotation to the vith chapter of the Prophet Isaiah, which hath the same relation to his after-prophecies that the vision of Ezekiel, from which we are now called away, hath to his. What else are we to understand by these sudden transitions from one prophet to another, than a solemn call of the Holy Ghost? As if he had said, Come and study them also, if thou wouldest know perfectly the mystery of the throne of God. And ought we not to reply, Yea, O Spirit of truth, lead thou us into all truth? Isaiah's vision is contained in these words: "In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke" (Isa. vi. 1-4). Isaiah, upon witness ing this glorious vision, expresseth in these words both knowledge of what he had seen and his fears on account of it. These fears were nurtured in the breast of a Jew by the impossibility of any man's seeing the glory of God but the High Priest, and that only once a year, and not without blood. Ver. 5: " Then said I, Wo is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." To this vision which Isaiah calls the vision of the King, Jehovah of hosts, the Evangelist John referring, chap. xii. 41, calls it a vision of the glory of Jesus: "These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory and spake of him." Which proveth that Jehovah, under the Old Testament, is only Jesus in his predestinative form of risen man, which he took unto himself before the world was, and which he realized in creature-form at his resurrection, when the body was prepared for him, in the appearance of which he had so oft shewn himself to the fathers. This confirms, yea sanctions with Divine authority our conclusion, that the Person presented to us upon the throne in the heavens is no other than Jesus in his glorified flesh for this vision is identified with Isaiah's, and Isaiah's is declared by John the Evangelist to be a vision or foreshewing, of the glory of Jesus. Let us then give ourselves to study it in subordination to, and illustration of, the subject of our present Lecture. Jehovah, that is, Jesus glorified, is represented sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and his train (marg. the skirts thereof) filled the temple. In the temple there might be none but priests, and his train therefore consisted of those who were priests, answering to the elders who present bowls full of incense: the number twenty-four being, as we shewed, the complete compliment of the priesthood in David's time, twenty-four courses. But the seraphim, he saith, stood above it; that is, not around the skirts of the throne, but above, upon the throne itself, in the midst of it and within the circumference of it: having a more exalted and honourable place than the rest. Then cometh the description of their persons and their ascription of holiness: this identifies it with the vision of our text, which borrows from Isaiah the feature of their six : |