testified there will be none - that is, among those symbolised by the typical ark-throne of Yahweh in the midst of Israel. There will be death and sacrifice among the subject populations during the thousand years' preliminary reign of reconciliation; but it is not the subject populations that are the subject of representation by any of the elements of the Holiest of all. Where, then, is the counterpart? In the history of the matter undoubtedly --preserved in vivid memory never to be forgotten. The saints who constitute the antitypical Holiest of all in the age to come will have attained to their position through the shed blood of Christ. This is prominent in their song in glory as heard by John in vision: "Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood, and hast made us unto our God Kings and priests" (Rev. v. 9-10). The blood-stains on the pure gold coverlid of the ark find their antitype in the memory of the shed blood of Christ in the immortal hearts and minds of those who shall have attained to the golden state through "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world." That this is no strained or unnatural interpretation will be apparent to all who can realise how essential an element in the joy of the perfect state-as regards both the Father, and Christ, and the Saints-must be the constant recollection and recognition of the means by which salvation has been accomplished. If the angels veil their faces in the presence of Eternal Glory, how much more an assembly of men and women, who, though their equals, have to remember with sense of humiliation, that they were originally sinners under condemnation, and that they owe it entirely to the arrangement of God's mercy in Christ that they stand there in the strength and honour and gladness of immortal life. If the object of the Father's methods now is that no flesh may glory in the Father's presence, we may be sure that that object will be attained to its fullest then, and that consequently thanksgiving only, in the memory of a humiliating past, will be the sentiment inspiring the bosoms of those who ascribe" Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving to Him that sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb for ever."

CHAPTER XIV.-OUTSIDE THE VEIL IN THE HOLY PLACE.

OT only a proclamation that "the way unto the holiest of all was not yet made manifest," and a prophecy of the method

by which that way was to be opened,-the secret chamber of the sanctuary and its furniture were also an actual meeting-point between God and Israel for the time being: "There I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony " (Ex. xxv. 22). This is a high suggestive fact, whether in type or antitype. It brings with it a truth which is lost sight of by natural thinkers and yet which is the true explanation of the weariness and futility which characterise all their efforts to search after God. They propose to discover God as a man discovers a new element, such as argon; or to manipulate him as a man manipulates electricity by adjusting apparatus to its physical laws; or to commune with him as a man communes with light and air by going out into them and opening himself to their full action.

It is a common thing with sentimental writers of this sort to speak of communing thus with God in nature, or to hear His voice in the rush of the breeze, the song of the birds, the rustle of the swaying trees, the murmur of the ocean, &c. All this is beautiful, but mistaken. God and His works are separate, though all His works are in Him. You may see the marks of His wisdom or the evidence of His power in the constitution of nature; but He himself is out of reach. He hides himself from sinful man. He is the highest object of search, and will be found at last by all the inhabitants of the earth, but not by any method of investigation which they can adopt. There is no communion with Him at present, in the true sense of the term. Communion is a mutual and reciprocal act as between two friends. not communion if all the talk or all the letter-writing is on one side. What men call communing with God in nature is only the contemplation of the greatness and the wisdom of His works--which is far from being a profitless exercise, but still it is not of the nature of communion, and is apt to be a vacuous and wearisome effort for mortal mind. What is wanted is response from God to what we say or think, like a father's answers to his children's prattle as they walk through the woods. This could be, for God is every where present in the fulness

It is

of His universe-filling spirit. It will be yet, for God has promised it. But it is not now, for reasons which man is slow to appreciate.

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THERE will I meet with thee" is a revelation, and a prophecy— not anywhere: not with wilful unhumbled man as he roams in his pride through the earth with a sense of misconceived rights-but there; over a blood-sprinkled ark, or through a God-vindicating slain lamb over an ark containing the God-written law on indelible stone, the miraculously budded rod, and the golden pot of manna; or through men in the profoundest submission to the authority of God: conforming, in punctilious and reverential affection to His appointments, and rejoicing in everlasting life received from His hand as the reward of faith and obedience.

The curse is removed when "the tabernacle of God is with men in the corporeal establishment of all these Mosaically-adumbrated realities of coming experience. Then will the angels of God be seen "ascending and descending upon the Son of Man" (Jno. i. 51). Then shall His servants "see His face, and His name shall be in their foreheads, and there shall be no night there" (Rev. xxii. 4). Then shall Israel hear a voice behind them, saying, “This is the way, walk ye in it" (Is. xxx. 21). Then shall they experience the blessedness of the communion promised. "Before they call, I will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will hear." Till then, communion is but half truth. We pray, and our prayers are known to ourselves, and they are known to God; but His thoughts or dispositions towards our prayers are not made known to us till the right time, and so we pray the prayer of faith in the darkness. It befits not His greatness or His holiness that He should speak familiarly in an age like this, when little less than perfect barbarism prevails in all the earth.

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It would be refreshing, as no language can describe, to have His response to our advances. He will guide our affairs in answer to our requests; but this is a silent answer, and all the answer suitable to a state of things described by a David as a dry and thirsty land." The day of "streams in the desert "is coming. The tabernacle is a prophecy of it, but it is also a prophecy of the days of drought that now prevail, when men, as foretold, "run to and fro and seek the word of the Lord and find it not" (Amos viii. 12). A recognition of these things is of great value to us while the time of silence lasts. They save us from the destructive disappointment that awaits the anticipations universally fostered by a false theory of God's relation to man.

We have now to look at that portion of the tabernacle which was divided off from the holiest of all by the veil which concealed the ark from outside view. The veil itself challenges our attention first. Why

was it there? As a literal element of the tabernacle, we know why it was there, viz., to provide a concealed recess for the symbols of the divine presence in Israel's midst; but the question now concerns the significance of the veil as part of the Mosaic shadow. Why was there a veil? We see the answer when we ascertain what it represents. This we ascertain from the circumstance recorded by Matthew, that when Jesus died, "the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the

top to the bottom " (Matt. xxvii. 51); considered in connection with the exegetical remark of Paul in Heb. x. 20, that there is a new and living way which Jesus hath consecrated for us through the veil, that IS TO SAY, HIS FLESH. The veil, then, stands for the flesh of present mortal nature, as possessed by Christ in his natural days. This nature veils off or stands between us and the glorious realities signified by the golden ark-throne in the holiest of all. It was natural, therefore, that in a structural prophecy of good things to come, there should be a counterpart to this time of waiting and preparation. The veil divided the two apartments: the veil of the flesh divides the two

states.

The veil had to be torn asunder that we might enter from the one to the other. This was done in Christ. It could not be done in any other; for while any man could have been crucified, any man could not, under the law of sin and death, have risen to glory, honour and immortality. Any one could have died; but mere death was not passing through the veil. The inner side of the veil was the immortal state, and this is not entered except by resurrection. If Christ had

not risen, his death would have been in vain, as Paul teaches (1 Cor. xv. 17). A successful rupturing of the veil required the righteousness of a perfectly obedient man, which existed only in Christ. Therefore the veil, while standing for the flesh-nature, stood particularly for the Christ form of that nature-through which only could the new and living way be opened.

The concurrence of the rending of the Temple veil with the death of Christ might seem to indicate death simply as the rending; and so it might be considered in the case of Christ, in which it was the completion of a perfect course of obedience. The resurrection sequel was ensured, and was only a question of a few days. He could exclaim "It is finished," though resurrection and many other things remained to complete the glorious programme of the divine work in him, because all was secured by the course completed in his death. So the rending of the Temple veil could proclaim the opening of the new and living way, though resurrection had to follow crucifixion before the opening was actually achieved.

H

Popular religion easily adjusts itself to the figure of the veil in so far as it attempts any elucidation of the Mosaic significance. It finds the counterpart of the veil in the "body," and the counterpart of the interior of the Holy of Holies in the Spirit (or, in their language, the disembodied) state, "whither the forerunner is for us entered." This is neat enough as a matter of plausible exposition, but it is in conflict with many elements of the truth, and notably with the most proximate fact in the case, viz. :-That it was not as a so-called "disembodied spirit" that Christ entered the holiest (state) as our forerunner," but as a glorified body which the apostles handled, and which they afterwards saw visibly ascend out of their sight.

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The veil was a composite fabric. It was not a simple sheet of linen or of any other woven stuff: it was composed of various materials and various colours, "blue, purple and scarlet and fine-twined linen of cunning work" (that is, clever, complicated needlework), and it was embroidered with cherubic figures. Where are we to look for the significance of this complexity? Looking at Christ (who "opened the new and living way through the veil, that is to say HIS FLESH,”") we readily get the answer. The veil did not stand for the flesh merely, but for the form of it provided in Christ, who blended in himself all the elements foreshadowed by the different materials of the symbolic veil. If it had been a prophecy of the flesh merely, a red cloth would have sufficed. But such a prophecy and such an appointment were impossible, as we readily discern when all the truth involved is seen. Fine-twined linen" is a speaking part of the symbolism. Linen always stands as a figure for righteousness, as illustrated in the bridal array at the marriage supper of the Lamb, which it was explained to John represented the righteousness of the saints (Rev. xix. 8); and also in the wedding garment, for lack of which the speechless guest was expelled from the marriage feast (Matt. xxii. 11-12). Hence we easily read righteousness in the fine-twined linen of the veil; and that a special righteousness, a perfect righteousness deftly wrought, as signified by fineness of the twining or working. It is the prophecy of a perfectly righteous man who should be no product of accident, but the express provision of divine workmanship, as exampled in the begettal of Jesus by the Spirit (Matt. i. 20; Luke i. 35), giving point to the apostolic declaration that "he of (or by) God is made unto us righteousness, sanctification, wisdom and redemption " (1 Cor. i. 30). Mere flesh and Adamic generation would have lacked this element of the veil. A mere son of Adam would have been fit for killing, but not for raising to immortal life, because a mere son of Adam would have been, as he is everywhere, a mere sinner. It was needful that