1. For the height of it. A mountain is higher than the ordinary earth. The Church is high, it is above (Galatians 4:26), and they that be of the Church must carry high and regal minds. We must leave earth, and mount up in our affections into heaven; we must seek the things that be above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.

2. The Church is compared to a mountain: for the security of it.

3. For the difficulty of ascending to it. A man may not go up a high hill, but it must cost him pains, sweat and labour; so it is a laborious thing to get to heaven.

4. For the immobility of it. The Church is as Mount Zion that standeth fast for ever, and cannot be removed. Happy are they that be of the Church.

(W. Jones, D. D.)

(V. J. Charlesworth.)

1. Where the most glorious display of Divine wisdom appears, everything conducted with exquisite policy.

2. Where omnipotent goodness operates at large, and deals her favours with the richest profusion (Psalm 16:11).

3. Where the King of Glory Himself dwells, and everything declares His more immediate presence (Revelation 7:15).

4. Where the laws, manners, and employments of the inhabitants most resemble and are most worthy of God.

5. In fine, this is that city which is the first production of the grand Architect of nature, and whither we are at last conveyed; but not till duly prepared for it (Revelation 21:27; Revelation 22:14). See a fine description of this city (Revelation 21:10-22). And of this city, all real Christians are represented as members, even while they are in this world.

II. OUR ACCESSION OR RELATION TO IT. There is a certain figure made use of by our Saviour and His apostles, a figure that makes futurity present and realises the distant glories of immortality (Matthew 5:3; Ephesians 2:6). And the text says, "Ye are come"; — "already come," etc. The Christian religion suggests particular grounds for this sublime representation, such as no other system can exhibit. For example, we have —

1. The express promise of God to put every persevering Christian into the possession of Mount Zion above (Revelation 22:14; Revelation 2:7, 10).

2. It is farther ascertained from the mediation of Christ, the grand end of which see Hebrews 2:10.

3. The supreme power of the Redeemer (Matthew 28:18), which is equal to remove every difficulty, subdue every enemy, supply every necessity, and exalt to the highest dignity.

III. OUR RELATION TO THE HEAD AND TO THE MEMBERS OF THIS CITY.

1. Ye are come to God, the Judge of all, angels and men; the knowledge of God, His nature, unity, perfections, providence (Ephesians 5:8). The worship and service of God (1 Thessalonians 1:9). To His favour (Romans 5:1). His family and household (Galatians 4:6, 7). His presence; an event so certain that the apostle at once transports the Christian beyond the grave, to that Being who is the soul's portion, her centre and final happiness.

2. To Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant: in and through whom both parts of the covenant are reciprocally conveyed and transmitted. Blessings from God to man, through Christ; and duties from man to God, acceptable through Christ. Come to the Mediator, so as to be united to Him; participate a new nature through Him (2 Corinthians 5:17), rely on His sacrifice, obey His commandments, and, according to the aforementioned figure, to be taken by Him at last to the city of God (Revelation 3:21).

3. To an innumerable company of angels. Good men in this world have, indisputably, various connections with those superior beings; they are fellow-subjects and servants (Revelation 22:9). Protected by them (Psalm 34:7). Minister to them (Hebrews 1:14). Conduct them to heaven (Luke 16:22). As public heralds, proclaim their Lord's approach (Matthew 24:31). The apostle here anticipates our incorporation with those happy spirits in glory (Revelation 7:9-12).

4. To the spirits of just men made perfect. We are one community, of the same spirit and disposition, loving the same God, enjoying the same felicity, differing only in degree. They are got home, we are going; they have got the prize, we are wrestling for it.

5. To the general assembly and Church of the firstborn (Romans 8:29; Colossians 1:15-18). It may respect themselves; they are the chiefs the excellent ones, the firstborn. Written in heaven, alluding to the custom of ancient states, who enrolled their freemen; Christians enrolled in heaven (Luke 10:20), to signify that they have a right to all the high privileges of the city of God: and when all collected, compose the general assembly, &c. (Matthew 24:31; Revelation 7:9).Of this amazing corporation every Christian becomes a member at the moment of his conversion to God. Improvement:

1. Hence see the peculiar excellency of that religion which animates her proselytes with so glorious a hope.

2. Let our temper and conduct declare our kindred to those serene and happy intelligences.

3. Let the views of these glorious and animated prospects raise our souls to God in grateful adoration of His goodness and love (Psalm 31:21; Psalm 72:18, 19).

(J. Hannam.)

(D. L. Moody.)

(Mrs. Judge Russell.)

(M. E. Sangster.)

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

(Canon Furse.)

III. WE ARE COME TO THEM AS ATTENDANTS, whose care is to follow us through life. God's noblest creatures are His children's servants. "Such honour have all the saints."

III. WE ARE COME TO THEM AS WITNESSES, whose observations we are to reverence. It would be well for us to remember that we are always in sight. The eyes of our fellow-creatures are often upon us; and if they were always upon us, they would restrain us from a thousand sins. But invisible beings always behold us. There are cases in which two guilty individuals are implicated. They accuse each other; and no human being was privy to their wickedness. But angels saw Abel and Cain when they were alone together in the field. They can decide, in an intrigue, who was the seducer, and who the seduced. What a world of private wickedness will they develop!

IV. WE ARE COME TO THEM AS PATTERNS, whose example we are to imitate. To these models our Saviour Himself leads us in the form of devotion He gave to His disciples; in which He teaches us to pray, "Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven." And, even now, this prayer is accomplished. Between believers and angels there is a resemblance, though not an equality. Wherein does it appear?

1. It appears in the nature of their obedience. We are told that the angels, however great, find it their privilege to serve. Their obedience is ready, without delay; cheerful, without reluctance; constant, without intermission; and impartial, without choice. The reason is, they love God, and it is His will alone they regard. And whatever low idea you may form of a Christian, such is, and such must be, His leading desire, and His prevailing endeavour.

2. It appears in their union. These beings have various degrees among them. Yet these produce no contempt, no envy, no eagerness to dictate, no backwardness to co-operate. They perfectly harmonise. They have but one spirit, one wish. Shall I say that Christians do resemble all this? Alas 1 there is too little of it in our churches and assemblies.

3. It appears in the subject of their study. The angels are proverbial for knowledge; we read of being " wise as an angel of God." Had we heard only of such exalted beings, we should be anxious to know what things they deemed most worthy of their attention. But we are informed. They are "the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow — which things the angels desire to look into." Are you like-minded? Is this the most welcome subject to your hearts? The most important to your minds?

4. It appears in their worship. They adore the incarnate Redeemer. And is there a Christian upon earth that does not delight in the same praise?

V. WE ARE COME TO THEM AS ASSOCIATES, with whom we are to blend our future being, and from whom we shall derive no inconsiderable part of our happiness. It is not good for man to be alone. He is formed for social enjoyment; and it is a great source of his present pleasure. The representation of heaven meets this propensity. And there are two classes of beings that will contribute much to our satisfaction and improvement. The one is endearing. It takes in those you loved in life, with whom you took sweet counsel together, and went to the house of God in company, your pious friends and relations, who now sleep in Jesus. The other is dignifying. It comprehends patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs — angels. You shall be introduced to company of the very first sort. Angels are the flower of the creation; and the poorest, meanest believer shall enjoy it; and be prepared for it. Let us conclude with two questions.

1. How can it be said that "we are come to" this blessed assembly? By the certainty of the event. By promise — and " he Scripture cannot be broken." By hope-and "hope maketh not ashamed." By anticipation, by earnests, by foretastes of this exalted felicity.

2. To whom are you come?

(W. Jay.)

II. Lastly, as to THEIR ADORATION OF GOD IN HEAVEN. Worship is angels' work; and in the contemplation of their office here no room is left for difference or doubt. The Old Testament and the New conspire in holy emulation to reveal the heavenly vision in the noblest terms. Worship is the sum of the life in heaven; and what is the noblest work of our life on earth? The same. As among our natural passions and affections towards our fellows love is the highest, and has mightiest influence, so towards God is worship. Worship is love sublimated by the majesty of God. Think what the example of angels teaches us in this great portion of the Christian life.

1. First, that worship is only possible in the presence of God. Their worship in the Church above is only more perfect than that of saints in the Church below, because they are more near to God. The sight of Him is their joy; and such will be yours, if yours be the promise, "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." Meanwhile what sight is now to angels, and will hereafter be to you, is at the present time your faith.

2. Next this apprehension of the Divine Presence fills them with awe and reverence. The cherubim with his wings covers his face and his feet; the angels before the throne fall on their faces. Such a thought may give us a rule of conduct in our acts of worship. In all our public devotions, above all at Holy Communion, let our commonest actions be ruled by a tender spirit of reverence.

3. Again their worship exercises not only their affections, but their intelligence. They understand what they worship. The principle of all true worship is this — "I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also."

4. Above all with their praises and their prayers goes on the sweet accompaniment of an obedient will, a heart attuned to the love of God, sympathy with all His doings in judgment and in mercy, sympathy with His holiness and His vengeance against sin.

5. Again we little know how much we are affected by the example of numbers. The numbers on one side or the other decide the choice of waverers. We cast our lot into the heaviest scale. The broad way, though it lead to death, has its contented wayfarers, chiefly because it is so broad; the narrow way discourages so many, because there are so few that walk in it. Then, like Elisha's servant, open your eyes and see the hosts of angels serving God, exceeding in number the generation of men, whom you see afraid to confess Him here.

6. Lastly to think of their happiness! happiness, so rare a gift, that among friends it is but seldom named, and then under their breath, and in a tone almost of despair of finding it; each heart knowing its own bitterness; the stranger not intermeddling with it, the friend unable to hear it, so he must let that alone for ever! And then to read of angels' happiness, so perfect, so secure!

(Canon Furse.)

II. THE NATURE AND PRIVILEGES OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

1. Its unity.

2. Its glory. Judging by outward appearance, the Church of Christ may appear despicable; much that is ignoble and mean may be seen in its members. But is it so in reality? What I ignoble, when the city they belong to is the city of the great King; a city whose streets are of gold, whose gates are of pearls, and into which the glory and honour of the nations shall be brought! And then there is, not merely the city of the believer's habitation, but his associates and his friends. Talk of meanness, when myriads of angels, and the great multitude of the redeemed, are his companions [

3. Its spirituality. "But ye are come" — come to what? To things pre-eminently glorious; but they are at present invisible, being spiritual realities, objects of faith, and not of bodily vision.(1) Let the Christian seek to realise his true character and position. Where your treasure is, there let your heart be also.(2) That the only way in which we can become members of the heavenly commonwealth, is by a believing application to the Redeemer. Having an interest in Him, an interest in all the rest will follow.

(Expository Sermons.)

(T. Guthrie, D. D.)

II. There is A COMPARISON in our more central text. "We are come to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven." It is a comparison, not with anything Jewish, for that would not have been suitable, but with a Gentile festival, which more readily lent;itself to the apostle's great thought. In Greece, in her happier times, in order to preserve a national unity, the various states, kingdoms, or republics, which constituted Greece proper, held at the foot of Olympus a great gathering, to which none came as participators except citizens of the various Greek nationalities. The object of the gathering was that every part of the Greek nature might be educated and displayed, and the unity of the Greek race be remembered. How much I wish that we could look upon all the conflicts, sufferings, and troubles of this mortal life as occupations of the great festive gathering which is now being held in heaven and in earth around the city of our God. If we all understand that this period is not comparable to a battle, whereof the result hangs in the balance, but comparable to those deeds of prowess wherewith of old men celebrated a victory, then the face of things is altered, and our toils are transfigured. Angels come down, and poor men and women are lifted up, in patience triumphing, and giving pleasure to their Lord, and bringing honour to that favoured city which God has prepared for them. Oh, the bliss of feeling that even nosy heaven is begun below, and the sufferings of this present life are but a part of the glory of the Lord manifested in His people!

III. The third point is — A COMING TO BE ENJOYED. This is the essence of it all We are come unto this general assembly and Church of the firstborn. How then do we come? This festival is only for the firstborn, and you are not that by nature. You must first be born again, and become one of the firstborn. The Spirit of God must make you a new creature in Christ Jesus, and then the porter will open the wicket, and say, "Come in, and welcome." Which part are you going to take in this great gathering? Will you fight against sin? Will you wrestle against error? Will you run for the crown? Will you sing or speak? What will you do in this great congress of all the saints?

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

(Henry Bullinger.)

(J. Cumming, D. D.)

I. We come to that unseen and glorious company BY OUR KNOWLEDGE. We have far more actual knowledge of the invisible world than we vivify and use. We know, that when flitting like shadows here, from place to place, and ever nearer to the grave, there is a city which hath foundations, in the records of which our names may be enrolled. We know that when struggling and crowding here — striving for space and room, and particular standing — there is a house of many mansions, and a place prepared for each, large enough for the developments of the immortal life. Our knowledge is in some respects limited enough. We cannot see it; we cannot come to it in the flesh; flesh and blood shall not inherit it; no mortal hand can draw aside the veil, nor pierce it, although it sometimes seems so thin. Perhaps if we were better, purer, more saintly, we could safely be trusted with more light on the future, and it is certain that if we ask and look and wait we shall attain to more. We are like men gazing towards the land from the deck of a ship. A dim outline appears, like a cloud, at which they strain their sight; until by the movement of the vessel and the custom of the eye it becomes clearer and clearer still. The mountains gradually reveal their peaks; then the valleys show; then the corn; then the smoke of the cottage; the group by the cottage door; the apples on the tree; and then — the vessel is in port. So, by looking, heaven becomes clearer; as we look, it comes more near. To us as individuals, this revelation will be much or little, according to our personal realisation of it. Our knowledge may be a lamp unlighted as well as burning. It may be a map of a country on which we seldom look, or on which we trace with careful finger every mountain ridge, every river and plain. Central Africa is now opened, and to the world it can never be a blank any more. Some individuals may know very little of it, yet that knowledge is a possession to the race for ever. And so, to the world has been given the unalienable possession of the knowledge of the "better country, the heavenly," which is on the other side of death, in which the Saviour is, into which He has already gathered myriads of His friends, to which so many of our own friends have gone, and to which we ourselves are travelling.

II. We come to the invisible Church BY OUR FAITH. We come to it more by our faith than by our knowledge. Faith is knowledge glorified, and vitalised; it is, as the former chapter tells us, the " substance of things hoped for." It makes the objects of our cognition so real and vivid that we possess in our thought the very substance of them. We have such assured confidence in their existence that the removal of them from the realm of faith would be like taking away the solid world from our senses. "Faith is the evidence of things not seen." It proves them, and presents them so that the mind feels their presence; sees them; is solemnised by them; holds them fast! It redeems our humanity from its degradation to know that there are men, who, while living here, are also living yonder — who have a life hidden as well as visible " with Christ in God." We believe that He is. We believe that our friends are with Him; and if we can come to Him, and to them, in our daily faith — in the seekings, strivings, and settlings of our souls, then we are believers indeed. We may form what views we will on the time and nature of the resurrection — on the intermediate state, or on the physical characteristics of the life to come. If only we come to Him — our High Priest within the veil, and our forerunner there — we shall in due time stand rejoicing in His presence.

III. "We are come" to that invisible triumphant Church, IN OUR LOVE, as truly as in our knowledge and our faith. All heaven-born souls love the place of their birth. Born again, or born from above, is to have enrolment and citizenship there — it is to have our treasure there and our heart also.

IV. And all these comings, need we say? are presages of THE FINAL PERSONAL COMING BY DEATH into the "general assembly and Church of the firstborn in heaven." We speak often of death as a going away, and picture to ourselves the spirit passing into vast solitudes, friends and dear familiar scenes all left behind, as it looks out upon the first reaches and roundings of the everlasting journey. Some thoughtful writers have dwelt much on the loneliness of death, until one has felt intensely solitary in the prospect. They have fixed upon the fact that each of us must meet death alone, and, of course, that is true, at least as regards earthly companionships. But that even then we shall be absolutely alone is only conjecture; and if we must conjecture, I for one would rather take the other side, and believe that since God gives us company here from the moment of birth to the moment of death, He will have other company awaiting us there, so that we shall take no step in loneliness or dread, but enter at once and easily into the higher fellowships, and go forward with a cheerful confidence through the valley of transition.

(A. Raleigh, D. D.)

II. FAITH CARRIES US WHILE LIVING TO THE SOCIETY OF THE LIVING DEAD. "The Judge of all, and the spirits of just men made perfect." Immediately on the thought of God rising in the writer's mind there rises also the thought of the blessed company in the centre of whom He lives and reigns. "The spirits of... men made perfect." That is to say, they dwell freed from the incubus and limitations, and absolved from the activities, of a bodily organisation. Then, further, these spirits are "perfect." The writer has said, at the close of the preceding chapter, that the ancient saints "without us should not be made perfect." And here he employs the same word with distinct reference, as I suppose, to his previous declaration. From which I infer that Jesus Christ shot some rays of His victorious and all-reconciling power from His Cross into the regions of darkness, and brought thence those who were waiting for His coming through many a long age. A great painter has left on the walls of a little cell in his Florentine convent a picture of the victorious Christ, white-robed and banner-bearing, breaking down the iron gates that shut in the dark rocky cave; and flocking to Him, with outstretched hands of eager welcome, the whole long series from the first man downwards, hastening to rejoice in His light, and to participate in His redemption. So the ancient Church was "perfected" in Christ; but the words refer, not only to those Old Testament patriarchs and saints, but to all who, up to the time of the writer's composition of his letter, had " slept in Jesus." They have reached their goal in Him. But yet that " perfecting "does not exclude progress, continuous through all the ages; and especially it does not exclude one great step in advance which, as Scripture teaches us, will be taken when the resurrection of the body is granted. Corporeity is the perfecting of humanity. Body, soul, and spirit, these make the full-summed man in all his powers. And so the souls beneath the altar, clothed in white, and lapt in felicity, do yet wait for the adoption, even the redemption of the body. Mark, further, that these spirits perfected would not have been perfected there unless they had been made just here. That is the first step, without which nothing in death has any tendency to ennoble or exalt men. If we are ever to come to the perfecting of the heavens, we must begin with the justifying that takes place on earth. Let me point you to one other consideration bearing not so much on the condition as on the place of these perfected spirits. It is very significant that they should be closely associated in our text with " God the Judge of all." Is there any hint that men who have been redeemed, who, being unjust, have been made just, and have had experience of restoration and of the misery of departure, shall, in the ultimate order of things, stand nearer the throne than unfallen spirits, and teach angels?

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

1. The majesty and glory of the great God makes it awful conversing with Him.

2. God's omniscience is another thing which makes it solemn conversing with God as Judge of all (Hebrews 4:13).

3. The purity and holiness of God make it a solemn thing for polluted sinners to have any converse with Him.

4. The strictness of God's law, which is the rule of judgment, makes it a solemn thing to converse with this great and glorious Judge. God judges of all my thoughts and actions by the same law now that sentence is to be passed by in the great day of accounts.Use

1. Is it so solemn a thing for believers in Christ to come to God the Judge of all; how or "where then must the sinner and the ungodly appear"?

2. Is it so solemn a thing to converse with God the Judge of all? Then, believer, how seldom art thou in a right frame for duty. You know with what solemnity and preparation they of old attended on God when giving the law. The people were sanctified to-day and to-morrow, and washed their clothes to be in readiness against the third day (Exodus 19:10). Is there less call for preparation and solemnity under the gospel? are trifling frames and a worldly spirit any part of that liberty we have in Christ? Dare we go to holy ordinances drowned in the cares of this life, reeking in the filth of some unsubdued lust?

3. Learn from what has been said, the only way to think of future judgment with pleasure and comfort. It is by coming to God the Judge of all, now.

4. What a blessed gospel is that which reveals the only righteousness wherein a poor guilty sinner may appear before God with comfort!

II. How Is IT THAT SUCH A CONVERSE IS BEGUN BETWEEN A HOLY GOD AND POOR SINNERS?

1. It is begun in the conviction or sensibleness a soul has that he is a guilty lost sinner.

2. In order to a poor sinner's comfortably conversing with God the Judge of all, there must be a free confession of all sin and a subscribing to the rights of His justice. This is called an accepting of the punishment of one's iniquity (Leviticus 26:41) and a clearing and justifying God when we are judged (Psalm 51:4).

3. In order to a poor sinner's comfortable converse with God the Judge of all, there must be an absolute renouncing all righteousness of his own.

4. The way to have comfortable converse with God the Judge of all is to come before Him in the Mediator's righteousness and to plead it with Him as thy justifying righteousness.Use: 1. If there be no coming to God as Judge of all with comfort but by confessing sin, their state must be sad who seek comfort by hiding or lessening sin.

2. Must a soul be brought to submit to the rights of God's justice in order to a comfortable converse with Him as Judge of all? then woe to all such as quarrel with God's judgment.

3. Must all self-righteousness be renounced in order to a comfortable converse with God the Judge of all? How contrary is that doctrine which sets up the creature's sincere obedience as a part of our gospel-righteousness!

III. IN WHAT INSTANCES AND BY WHAT METHODS THIS CONVERSE WHICH BELIEVERS HAVE WITH GOD THE JUDGE OF ALL IS MAINTAINED AND CARRIED ON.

1. I am to give some instances wherein believers have comfortable converse with God the Judge of all, through the whole of their gospel profession and walk. The apostle speaks of it as a privilege attending their state, not a blessing peculiar to some extraordinary frames. It is a believer's settled mercy and daily duty to converse with God the Judge of all.(1) A great part of this comfortable converse with God lies in those high and honourable thoughts which believers have of His righteousness as Judge of all.(2) Another instance wherein believers have comfortable converse with God lies in their pleading justification before God upon the footing of righteousness.(3) Another instance wherein believers have comfortable converse with God the Judge of all lies in their referring themselves to His righteous judgment with respect to their state, their frames, and all their actions.(4) Another instance wherein believers have comfortably con versed with God the Judge of all lies in a hearty approval of all providential dispensations to themselves and others.(5) Another instance of this comfortable converse which believers have with God the Judge of all is in a Way of anticipating, or antedating as it were, that sentence of absolution which shall be openly pronounced upon them at the last day.

2. How or by what special methods this comfortable converse with God is promoted and maintained.(1) By looking often to the everlasting settlements and grace of the covenant; what God does in time is by virtue of covenant-agreement with His Christ and our Surety in eternity (Psalm 98:3).(2) This comfortable converse with God is promoted and maintained by the soul's daily faith on the person of Christ as God-man.(3) This comfortable converse with God is promoted and maintained by earnest endeavours after conformity to God in righteousness and true holiness (1 Peter 1:16).(4) A believer's converse with God the Judge of all is promoted and maintained by his coming often to the blood of sprinkling.(5) This comfortable converse with God as Judge of all is promoted by the believer's application to God as a Father in Christ (Ephesians 2:18).(6) This comfortable converse with God as Judge of all is promoted and maintained by direct acts of faith on the promises of the covenant.(7) A daily application to the Spirit as the glorifier of the Father and of Christ. All the glory of the Father's provision for lost sinners in the person and blood of Christ, and in the grace of the covenant, depends upon the Spirit's revelation of it to and in the soul (Galatians 1:15, 16). It is His work as well to convince of sin as of righteousness (John 16:8).

3. By what means this comfortable converse with God as Judge of all is prevented and interrupted?(1) This comfortable converse with God is greatly obstructed when it is apprehended that only the benefits and effects of Christ's righteousness are communicated to believers, and not the very righteousness itself.(2) This comfortable converse is interrupted by supposing that the great God has put all His creatures, believers as well as others, into a state of probation or trial, and that a man cannot be fully persuaded of the safety of his state till the day of his death.(3) Believers' comfortable converse with God is further prevented or interrupted by a changing or shifting the foundation of our faith and hope. Some that have begun in the spirit think to be made perfect by the flesh (Galatians 3:3).Use: 1. Surely a believer's converse with God must be very precious when Satan finds out so many ways to prevent and interrupt it. Were it then, the office of faith in regard of this continuous judgment which God is exercising upon us because He loves us is, first of all, to open our hearts to it by confession, by frank communion, by referring all our actions to Him to court that investigation. And then, further, remember that this judgment is one that demands our thankful acceptance of the discipline which it puts in force. If we knew ourselves we should bless God for our sorrows. These are His special means of drawing His children away from their evil.

II. FAITH CARRIES US WHILE LIVING TO THE SOCIETY OF THE LIVING DEAD. "The Judge of all, and the spirits of just men made perfect." Immediately on the thought of God rising in the writer's mind there rises also the thought of the blessed company in the centre of whom He lives and reigns. "The spirits of... men made perfect." That is to say, they dwell freed from the incubus and limitations, and absolved from the activities, of a bodily organisation. Then, further, these spirits are " perfect." The writer has said, at the close of the preceding chapter, that the ancient saints " without us should not be made perfect." And here he employs the same word with distinct reference, as I suppose, to his previous declaration. From which I infer that Jesus Christ shot some rays of His victorious and all-reconciling power from His Cross into the regions of darkness, and brought thence those who were waiting for His coming through many a long age. A great painter has left on the walls of a little cell in his Florentine convent a picture of the victorious Christ, white-robed and banner-bearing, breaking down the iron gates that shut in the dark rocky cave; and flocking to Him, with outstretched hands of eager welcome, the whole long series from the first man downwards, hastening to rejoice in His light, and to participate in His redemption. So the ancient Church was "perfected" in Christ; but the words refer, not only to those Old Testament patriarchs and saints, but to all who, up to the time of the writer's composition of his letter, had "slept in Jesus." They have reached their goal in Him. But yet that "perfecting" does not exclude progress, continuous through all the ages; and especially it does not exclude one great step in advance which, as Scripture teaches us, will be taken when the resurrection of the body is granted. Corporeity is the perfecting of humanity. Body, soul, and spirit, these make the full-summed man in all his powers. And so the souls beneath the altar, clothed in white, and lapt in felicity, do yet wait for the adoption, even the redemption of the body. Mark, further, that these spirits perfected would not have been perfected there unless they had been made just here. That is the first step, without which nothing in death has any tendency to ennoble or exalt men. If we are ever to come to the perfecting of the heavens, we must begin with the justifying that takes place on earth. Let me point you to one other consideration bearing not so much on the condition as on the place of these perfected spirits. It is very significant that they should be closely associated in our text with " God the Judge of all." Is there any hint that men who have been redeemed, who, being unjust, have been made just, and have had experience of restoration and of the misery of departure, shall, in the ultimate order of things, stand nearer the throne than unfallen spirits, and teach angels?

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

1. The majesty and glory of the great God makes it awful conversing with Him.

2. God's omniscience is another thing which makes it solemn conversing with God as Judge of all (Hebrews 4:13).

3. The purity and holiness of God make it a solemn thing for polluted sinners to have any converse with Him.

4. The strictness of God's law, which is the rule of judgment, makes it a solemn thing to converse with this great and glorious Judge. God judges of all my thoughts and actions by the same law now that sentence is to be passed by in the great day of accounts.Use: 1. Is it so solemn a thing for believers in Christ to come to God the Judge of all; how or "where then must the sinner and the ungodly appear"?

2. Is it so solemn a thing to converse with God the Judge of all? Then, believer, how seldom art thou in a right frame for duty. You know with what solemnity and preparation they of old attended on God when giving the law. The people were sanctified to-day and to-morrow, and washed their clothes to be in readiness against the third day (Exodus 19:10). Is there less call for preparation and solemnity under the gospel? are trifling frames and a worldly spirit any part of that liberty we have in Christ? Dare we go to holy ordinances drowned in the cares of this life, reeking in the filth of some unsubdued lust?

3. Learn from what has been said, the only way to think of future judgment with pleasure and comfort. It is by coming to God the Judge of all, now.

4. What a blessed gospel is that which reveals the only righteousness wherein a poor guilty sinner may appear before God with comfort!

II. How Is IT THAT SUCH A CONVERSE IS BEGUN BETWEEN A HOLY GOD AND POOR SINNERS?

1. It is begun in the conviction or sensibleness a soul has that he is a guilty lost sinner.

2. In order to a poor sinner's comfortably conversing with God the Judge of all, there must be a free confession of all sin and a subscribing to the rights of His justice. This is called an accepting of the punishment of one's iniquity (Leviticus 26:41) and a clearing and justifying God when we are judged (Psalm 51:4).

3. In order to a poor sinner's comfortable converse with God the Judge of all, there must be an absolute renouncing all righteousness of his own.

4. The way to have comfortable converse with God the Judge of all is to come before Him in the Mediator's righteousness and to plead it with Him as thy justifying righteousness.Use: 1. If there be no coming to God as Judge of all with comfort but by confessing sin, their state must be sad who seek comfort by hiding or lessening sin.

2. Must a soul be brought to submit to the rights of God's justice in order to a comfortable converse with Him as Judge of all? then woe to all such as quarrel with God's judgment.

3. Must all self-righteousness be renounced in order to a comfortable converse with God the Judge of all? How contrary is that doctrine which sets up the creature's sincere obedience as a part of our gospel-righteousness!

III. IN WHAT INSTANCES AND BY WHAT METHODS THIS CONVERSE WHICH BELIEVERS HAVE WITH GOD THE JUDGE OF ALL IS MAINTAINED AND CARRIED ON.

1. I am to give some instances wherein believers have comfortable converse with God the Judge of all, through the whole of their gospel profession and walk. The apostle speaks of it as a privilege attending their state, not a blessing peculiar to some extraordinary frames. It is a believer's settled mercy and daily duty to converse with God the Judge of all.(1) A great part of this comfortable converse with God lies in those high and honourable thoughts which believers have of His righteousness as Judge of all.(2) Another instance wherein believers have comfortable converse with God lies in their pleading justification before God upon the footing of righteousness.(3) Another instance wherein believers have comfortable converse with God the Judge of all lies in their referring themselves to His righteous judgment with respect to their state, their frames, and all their actions.(4) Another instance wherein believers have comfortably conversed with God the Judge of all lies in a hearty approval of all providential dispensations to themselves and others.(5) Another instance of this comfortable converse which believers have with God the Judge of all is in a way of anticipating, or antedating as it were, that sentence of absolution which shall be openly pronounced upon them at the last day.

2. How or by what special methods this comfortable converse with God is promoted and maintained.(1) By looking often to the everlasting settlements and grace of the covenant; what God does in time is by virtue of covenant-agreement with His Christ and our Surety in eternity (Psalm 98:3).(2) This comfortable converse with God is promoted and maintained by the soul's daily faith on the person of Christ as God-man.(3) This comfortable converse with God is promoted and maintained by earnest endeavours after conformity to God in righteousness and true holiness (1 Peter 1:16).(4) A believer's converse with God the Judge of all is promoted and maintained by his coming often to the blood of sprinkling.(5) This comfortable converse with God as Judge of all is promoted by the believer's application to God as a Father in Christ (Ephesians 2:18).(6) This comfortable converse with God as Judge of all is promoted and maintained by direct acts of faith on the promises of the covenant.(7) A daily application to the Spirit as the glorifier of the Father and of Christ. All the glory of the Father's provision for lost sinners in the person and blood of Christ, and in the grace of the covenant, depends upon the Spirit's revelation of it to and in the soul (Galatians 1:15, 16). It is His work as well to convince of sin as of righteousness (John 16:8),

3. By what means this comfortable converse with God as Judge of all is prevented and interrupted?(1) This comfortable converse with God is greatly obstructed when it is apprehended that only the benefits and effects of Christ's righteousness are communicated to believers, and not the very righteousness itself.(2) This comfortable converse is interrupted by supposing that the great God has put all His creatures, believers as well as others, into a state of probation or trial, and that a man cannot be fully persuaded of the safety of his state till the day of his death.(3) Believers' comfortable converse with God is further prevented or interrupted by a changing or shifting the foundation of our faith and hope. Some that have begun in the spirit think to be made perfect by the flesh (Galatians 3:3).Use: 1. Surely a believer's converse with God must be very precious when Satan finds out so many ways to prevent and interrupt it. Were it not a great privilege, it would be less envied, less obstructed.

2. How needful is a doctrinal clearness in the business of a sinner's justification in the sight of God! Confusion in the mind and judgment makes confusion in the soul's comfort.

3. To show what a blessed privilege such a comfortable converse is in the whole of believers' course heavenwards. Wherein the privilege of such a converse does consist.(1) This blessed converse makes all other comforts blessings.(2) This comfortable converse which believers have with God sweetens all their afflictions and crosses. No trial befals thee but it was put into the covenant. It comes from the hand of God as a reconciled Father for thy profit and purging; not from His hand as a sin-revenging Judge for thy punishment.(3) This comfortable converse with God makes duties and ordinances sweet; why should there be terror and fear where there is no enmity, no distance?(4) This comfortable converse with God makes all reproaches we receive from men sit easy upon us (Psalm 31:14, 15).(5) This comfortable converse with God secures against the threats, the wiles, and hellish designs of Satan.(6) This comfortable converse with God makes death and judgment without terror. Doth the law acquit thee now? it will never condemn thee then. A serpent without a sting may affright, but it cannot injure.

(John Hill.)

(C. Stanford, D. D.)

2. The contemplation of departed saints is calculated to preserve us from despondency under a consciousness of guilt and imperfection. As this may be occasioned by a deep sense of guilt and depravity, so a means of preventing it may be found in contemplating the spirits of just men made perfect. Though they were created anew in Christ Jesus unto good works, and were studying to die unto sin and live unto righteousness; yet they had reason to complain of the little progress which they made in the way of holiness. Though they all delighted in the law of the Lord after the inward man, and in some measure accounted it as their meat and drink to do the will of God; yet they were at times neglectful of their duty, and, through inadvertence or the strength of temptation, were stepping aside from the path of rectitude. There was not one of them that always did good and never sinned. Why, then, should Christians despond while they recollect what these objects of their contemplation once were, and attend to what they now are. These once struggled against the corruption of nature, but they have obtained the victory. Instead of being excluded from the beatific presence of Jehovah, and falling under the condemnation of the Almighty, they are now reaping the honours and the felicity of the righteous. Yes, they are "the spirits of just men made perfect": their guilt is wholly cancelled, and their depravity is completely done away.

3. The contemplation of departed saints is calculated to support and comfort us under all our trials and afflictions. The saints in heaven have been made perfect as in holiness, so also in blessedness: they have entered into glory; they have removed from a world of trial and suffering to the land of eternal rest, where there is no more sorrow nor sighing, no more sickness nor death.

4. The contemplation of departed saints is calculated to animate us in the discharge of duty, and to make us persevere in the practice of holiness. Methinks I now see them holding forth the ensigns of royalty, and hear them saying to us who profess to be the disciples of Jesus: "These are the rewards which God hath given, Be not weary, then, in well-doing, for you will at length reap if you faint not."

5. The contemplation of departed saints is calculated to console our minds while mourning on account of the death of our Christian friends. Though they are absent from the body, yet they are present with the Lord. Though the frail house of their earthly tabernacle is dissolved, yet they have obtained the building of God, "the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

(John Ralston, M. A.)

2. Again, let us consider, that if we are indeed faithful servants of Christ Jesus, then we are members of that Comumnion of Saints, that mystical body, whereof He is the Head. Then we are entitled to a place among patriarchs, prophets, saints, and martyrs. Then the glory to which we shall be admitted at last is as much above the glory of the greatest prince or potentate on earth, as heaven itself is above this world. Such, and so great, is the dignity of the true Christian.

3. Another thing to be considered is, of the deep, sincere, and thorough humility which must be expected of those who think to be admitted into the blessed society of " the spirits of just men made perfect." Indeed, the true dignity of the Christian consists in his humility: — "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted." How can we in reason expect to be " numbered with God's saints in glory everlasting," if it be not our constant study to follow them as they followed Christ, "in all lowliness and meekness, in long-suffering and loving forbearance"? And these considerations will be still further heightened in proportion as we remember, on the one side, our own worthlessness even at the best; and on the other, the vastness of that mercy, the boundlessness of those promises which are held out to us. For to a mind which is at all well disposed, nothing can be more touching, nothing more humbling, than to receive kindnesses from one whom we have injured. What, then, must be our feelings when we contemplate our behaviour to God, and how He has requited us! " What heart can think of these things worthily?" or how can we sufficiently bow ourselves down with humility?

4. Let me, in conclusion, call to your thoughts what comfort and encouragement there is in this heavenly doctrine of " the spirits of just men made perfect," to be received into the eternal joy of their Lord. Comfort and encouragement in respect of ourselves, in making us patient, cheerful, and thankful; and in our conduct towards others, in making us brotherly and kind, and still looking forward to a happier meeting in a world where neither sin nor sorrow can enter.

(Plain Sermons by Contributors to " Tracts for the Times. ")

I. "WHO ARE THEY? WHENCE CAME THEY?" They are not the natives of heaven. They have no proper birthright in it. They belong to a very different sphere. They are men. They have been prepared, while on the "earth which was given to them," for their present abode. They have been brought hither by an act utterly independent of their original constitution. It is a state altogether strange and new. They constitute the just. Only the just can be in a condition of safety and favour, only the just can be endued with a nature of sanctity and love. Theirs is a true sense of right, of duty, the firm habit of fidelity.

II. THESE "JUST MEN" ARE NOT ANY LONGER IN OUR PRESENT SPHERE, OR KIND, OF EXISTENCE. We are summoned to meditate them in a new condition. The image of the earth is effaced. They are no more seen in a compound nature. They are "spirits." All beside is left in the grave. Nothing material cleaves to them. But it is the higher essence — the intellect the consciousness — the self — which this disembodiment must suppose. How may this state of spiritualism be conceived? It is described as subsisting in intimate union with the Saviour. It is to " depart and to be with Christ." It is to "be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord." He "receives" them. This is the great distinctiveness of their present condition. Their inward nature, drawn forth from the outward, is in a relationship; in an access to the Blessed Redeemer far different from any enjoyment of His presence, or communion with His person, known on earth. In addition to this immediate presence of the Redeemer-God, that light in which they see light, the light of the Lamb -the spirits of just men are "made perfect." This is a discovery of their state which greatly explains itself. This spirit is matured in its powers and consummated in its joys. According to its capacities it is complete. All its true aims are unfolded. It is wrought out into its fullest development. It is a condition of pure spiritualism. Certain facts suggest themselves as the necessary accompaniments of such a condition.

1. The consciousness must be very distinct. The self revolves upon its own centre, ever substantiating what it really is, ever enjoying its proper exercises of understanding and emotion. This "hidden man" lives in his own light. Nothing is attached to the spirit which can divert this concentrated impression.

2. The inward life must be very strong. The whole soul, all that is within it, is absorbed in that deep and holy sense.

3. The intellectual faculty must be very clear. It still " follows on to know the Lord," it still "follows hard after God."

4. The meditative abstraction must be very intent.

5. The adoring gratitude must be very earnest.

6. Its awaiting aspiration must be very glad. The disembodied saint ascertains the future stage to which it constantly approaches, which is the last of all, and which is only wanted to complete his entire being. He understands its nature. He is assured of its certainty. Oh, the transition, the passage of the spirit, escaped from earth, released from mortality, to this glorious state! Spirit! — which hast long walked in darkness, brooded in sorrow, pined in weariness — spirit! which wast long tossed with tempest, harassed by hostility, vexed with care — spirit! which didst long groan within thyself — spirit! long bound to sense and chained to infirmity spirit! long lacerated and bruised with inward wounds — spirit! the shadow of whose guilt hitherto lay upon thee though forgiven, the effort of whose depravity until now struggled in thee though subdued — Christian soul depart! Go forth to rest and home!

III. THESE SEPARATED SPIRITS ARE REPRESENTED TO US AS IN A STATE OF EXALTED ADVANCEMENT, DEPENDING UPON THEIR DISEMBODIMENT. This doctrine of immediate happiness was not entirely concealed from the ancient saints. Their language occasionally leads us to think that they had some conception of it (Psalm 16:10; Psalm 73:24; Psalm 49:15; Isaiah 57:2). Christ was the Conqueror. "He spoiled principalities and powers." Of Him it was declared that He should "swallow up death in victory." He ascends! He is "received up into glory!" There are not only the angels and the chariots in their thousands of thousands — there is another train! All holy spirits follow Him who had appeared a spirit to them in their place of keeping. They now forsake that place for "things above." And, therefore, it is said in the text: "Ye are come to the spirits of just men made perfect." But this is asserted as a privilege unknown before. It arises from the new covenant in contradistinction from the old. It is explained: "God having provided some better things for us" (than for those who died before the rising of Christ) "that they without us" (without living until our time and under our dispensation) "should not be made perfect." But they are now made perfect, in common with us. This "perfection " is bestowed upon all past, as well as for all future, time, and "ye are come to the spirits of just men made perfect!"

1. The spirits of just men will be made perfect in holiness.

2. Such spirits are raised to the perfection of wisdom.

3. These souls of the departed are perfectly secure.

4. A fulness of beatitude must be contained in their perfection.They can know no want: yet are they full of holy desires, ever waking only to be satisfied, ever longing only to be fulfilled. The vessel at each moment overflows: but at every moment it also is enlarged. There are pleasures for evermore. The source of all is in the Infinite Plenitude. The river of life proceedeth out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

IV. THERE ARE RELATIONS WHICH UNITE THE JUST ON EARTH, AND THE SPIRITS OF THE JUST IN HEAVEN, NOTWITHSTANDING THE DISPARITY OF THEIR RESPECTIVE CONDITIONS. Certain affinities may be discovered between mind and mind in this world, which are not restricted to personal intercourse, which operate as in defiance of the laws of space. And the announcement of the text is but the enlargement of such mental affinities. It is not said that we shall come to the spirits of just men made perfect, but that we are.

1. There is unity. To impress this upon our minds the Church is shadowed by various figures, all of which have respect to its indivisibility. It is a city, a corporate community, but all, who are enrolled in it, partake of common immunities, and are "fellow-citizens with the saints." It is a household. It is a household of faith and of God. They of this household are all they who are the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. "Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named." Its distribution in these different abodes affects not its identity. It shall find even in heaven many mansions. It is a body. "For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ." This, then, is no fiction nor ideal. It is based on our union with Christ. We are all one in Him. We are joined to the Lord, and are one spirit. It is, therefore, declared to have been the design of God in redemption, to bind, in communion and identification, all His people, however scattered abroad on earth, or however raised to the glories of a higher existence. "That in the dispensation of the fulness of times, He might gather together in one, all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in Him." "And having made peace through the blood of his Cross, by Him to reconcile," or to unite, "all things unto Himself; by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in heaven." These are the links which separation cannot weaken, and which death cannot dissolve.

2. There is resemblance. Heaven is doubtless a place. But we must rather conceive of it as a state of mind. The heaven of perfect spirits must be chiefly this. This state of mind — far transcending all present attainment of knowledge, sanctity, and joy — consists not in estrangement and extreme. It is not alien from what is now experienced. There is no principle, no companionship, no employment, no rapture, of that region, but has in the Christian on earth its foretaste and counterpart. He "hath the Father and the Son." "The Spirit dwelleth in Him." "He hath eternal life." He is a "partaker of the glory that shall be revealed." The heaven which he enters and enjoys is but the expansion of principles and emotions he long has known. He has been changed already into the image of the Divine glory, "from glory to glory." He wanted but this consummation. The last of dying triumph, and the first of empyrean rapture, may thus easily and naturally blend: and in the yearnings of a kindred mind, we now come to the spirits of just men made perfect. Do we not know it? Have we not found it? Are now our affections set on things above? Does not the holy city come down from God out of heaven? Is not our conversation in heaven?

3. There is endearment. A holy affinity unites us to the spirits of just men made perfect. They are the Church of the first-born: they are our elder brethren. Our desire is to them. Are they weaned from us? Are we forgotten? Is all sympathy withdrawn? Hearts grow not selfish in heaven. Spirits made perfect can abandon no love which it was ever their right to form, their duty to maintain, their benefit to exercise: their perfection is the pledge that each holy attachment is raised to that perfection.

4. There is appropriation. We already have obtained a portion in heaven. "Joint-heirs with Christ Jesus," He has claimed it for us. He is our Forerunner. "He has for us entered." He "now appears in the presence of God for us." We "come to the spirits of just men made perfect," for they inhabit our country, they dwell ill our home. They have preceded us, but "things to come are ours," and their title is no surer than our own.

(R. W. Hamilton, D. D.)

II. THEY CONSCIOUSLY LIVE IN A MORALLY PERFECT STATE.

III. THEY CONSCIOUSLY LIVE IN A GLORIOUSLY SOCIAL STATE.

IV. THEY CONSCIOUSLY LIVE IN A SPIRITUALLY ACCESSIBLE STATE.

1. We come to them in a loving memory of their histories.

2. We come to them by appropriating their principles of action.

3. We come to them by a participation of the sources of their joy.

4. We come to them in earnest hope.Lessons:

1. The worthlessness of all worldly and adventitious distinctions.

2. The paltriness of religious sectarianism.

3. The infinite value of Christ's office.

4. The blessedness of death to the good.

(Homilist.)

1. The first and least thing here said — itself great and glorious too — is the union of the Christian living with the Christian dead in their faith and in their example. It is a thought not without comfort, that, as Christians, we have an ancestry and a pedigree. The continuity is not broken. The Church of all time is one. Then disgrace not your family. Bring no blot upon your escutcheon. You are come to the spirits of the perfect. You join on to them in the genealogical tree. Be followers, be imitators of them, as they once, in their day and generation, were of Christ.

2. Ye are come to the spirits and souls of the righteous in their sympathy. There is a living as well as a memorial sympathy between the Church on earth and the Church in heaven. All the glimpses given us in Holy Scripture of the mind and life of Paradise seem to point this way. It was of no sleeping soul that Christ spoke on the Cross to the malefactor beside Him. It is no bathing in Lethe, for the obliteration of earth's memories and the annihilation of human affections, which the gospel opens to us as the prize of the race to him that overcometh. "Rest with us" is something different from this selfish, this isolated, this drowsy repose. Even nature demands something different. There is an instinct as well as a revelation of this advent of the living to the departed. We want it for comfort, we want it for admonition. God has knit together His elect in one communion and fellowship. There is a communion of saints as well as a Catholic Church; the militant and the perfected are not two societies, they are one. Have any of as a friend in the happy land — father or mother, sister or wife, friend closer than a brother? Remember then, remember for use as well as for consolation, that you "are come" to that other — come, by an advent such as there is none between the living. The stripping off of this carcase gives a sympathy, gives a contact, gives an intuition of love such as cannot be had here. You are come to the dead, as you cannot come to the living. See then that you give joy, only joy, to the inhabitants of that world.

3. "Ye are come to the spirits of the righteous" in their single, their engrossing devotion to Christ their Lord. It is said, I scarcely care to ask whether in history or fiction, that there was one from whom had been taken away by the stroke of death " the desire of his eyes," the wife of his youth. He had laid her in the earth; yet night after night she visited him in his chamber, herself yet not herself, the same but a thousandfold more beautiful — and in that periodical converse, making night day for him and darkness light, he half forgot his bereavement and his desolation. One night she came, and he could not repress an exclamation upon her peculiar beauty. "I never saw you," he said, "so lovely." She said, "It is my last visit to you: to-morrow I am to see Him, and after that sight I shall have no eye for aught else." He saw her no more. Is not this, perhaps, the answer to those questions so often agitated by the mourner as to the future sight and recognition of friends? Be sure that nothing shall be denied thee in that world, which could give thee solace or satisfaction. If thou desirest there thy friend's face or voice or hand, be sure thou shalt have it. Nevertheless, when thou shalt have been there but a little while; when, if so it be, after a season of preparation, as it were of purifying and anointing for "the day of the espousals," thou shalt actually have seen the King in His beauty — I say not that thou shalt be debarred then from other sight or other converse; but this I say — the desire for aught else will have left thee; all other love, not destroyed, not diminished, rather ten thousandfold enhanced, will yet be absorbed and swallowed up in that; thy loved one, and thou, will be so wrapped up in another love and higher, that the selfish love will be gone, and only the Divine love will continue.

(Dean Vaughan.)

II. JESUS CHRIST IS THE EXECUTOR OF THIS COVENANT. The depth of the thought is only reached when we recognise His divinity and His humanity. He is the ladder with its foot on earth and its top in heaven. Because God dwells in Him, and the Word became flesh, He is able to lay His hand upon both, and to bring God to man, and man to God. He brings God to man by the declaration of His nature incarnate in humanity. And, on the other hand, He brings man to God; for He stands to each of us as our true Brother, and united to us by such close and real bonds as that all which He has been and done may be ours if we join ourselves to Him by faith. And He brings men to God, because in Him only do we find the drawings that incline wayward and wandering hearts to the Father. And He seals for us that great covenant in His own Person and work, in so far as what He in manhood has done has made it possible that such promises should be given to us. And, still further, He is the Mediator of the covenant, in so far as He Himself possesses in His humanity all the blessings which manhood is capable of deriving from the Father, and He has them all in order that He may give them all. There is the great Reservoir from which all men may fill their tiny cups.

III. NOTE THE SPRINKLING OF THE BLOOD WHICH SEALS THE COVENANT. The blood shed establishes the covenant; and the blood sprinkled brings us into it. If Jesus had not died there would have been no promises for us, beginning with forgiveness and ending in wills delighting in God's law. It is "the new covenant in His blood." The death of Christ is ever present to the Divine mind and determines the Divine action. Further, that sprinkling, which introduced technically and formally these people into that covenant, represents for us the personal application to ourselves of the power of His death and of His life, by which we may make all God's promises our own, and be cleansed from all sin. It is "sprinkled." Then it is capable of division into indefinitely small portions, and of the closest contact with individuals.

(A. Maclaren, D. D.)

1. Christ's person in two natures.

2. His two natures in one person.

II. Consider Christ, our Mediator, in His GRACES: these are the sweet savour of His ointments that make the virgins love Him. Christ, our blessed Mediator, is said to be, "full of grace and truth." He had the anointing of the Spirit without measure. Grace in Christ is after a more eminent and glorious manner than it is in any of the saints.

1. Jesus Christ, our Mediator, hath perfection in every grace. He is a panoply, magazine, and storehouse of all heavenly treasure, all fulness.

2. There is a never-failing fulness of grace in Christ.

3. Grace in Christ is communicative, His grace is for us; the holy oil of the Spirit was poured on the head of this blessed Aaron that it might run down upon us. Use

1. Admire the glory of this Mediator; He is God-man, He is co-essentially glorious with the Father.

2. If Christ be God-man in one person, then look unto Jesus Christ alone for salvation.

3. Is Jesus Christ God and man in one person? This, as it shows the dignity of believers, that they are nearly related to one of the greatest persons that is," in Him dwells the fulness of the Godhead bodily," so it is of unspeakable comfort. Christ's two natures being married together, the Divine and human, all that Christ in either of His natures can do for believers, He will do.

(T. Watson.)

1. But more particularly, in our serious attention to this subject, our urgent need of Him, in this great capacity, may first naturally occur to our thoughts. What man could not do, God hath effected. Our help is laid upon One who is mighty and able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God through Him.

2. For it is to be observed that Jesus Christ is constituted and appointed by the Father Himself to this great office, to be Mediator of the new covenant.

3. But further. The Mediator of the new covenant is fully qualified to discharge this great office, to sustain this high character. The Redeemer of man is the Sea of God. Hence the infinite value and efficacy of His meritorious sufferings, and prevailing mediation

4. But He is the Mediator of the new covenant, through whom, and in virtue of whose atonement for sin, and satisfaction to Divine justice, the covenant is established and ratified, and all its benefits purchased. In a word, the full pardon of sin; established peace with God; the adoption of children; the grace of His Spirit; victory over sin and death; and a state of eternal happiness in the world to come.

5. But further, as Mediator of this covenant, He acts with God for man, that we may be brought to a compliance with the terms of the covenant, be reconciled in our hearts unto God, and live as the ransomed of the Lord. This is evidently necessary, in order to our receiving the blessings of this covenant. This work of mediation is carried on by His Word, by His servants speaking in His name, by the ordinances of the gospel, and by the influences of His Spirit.

6. He is the Mediator of the new covenant, who carrieth on the blessed work of mediation for us, now in His exalted state, and will continue to do so, until all its purposes shall be finally accomplished.

II. Consider WHAT IS IMPLIED IN THE EXPRESSIONS " WE ARE COME TO HIM." Ye believe in Him as the Mediator of the new covenant. Ye see His excellency and all-sufficiency. Ye have received Him to be your Redeemer; ye have assented to the terms of His covenant on your part, and have yielded yourselves unto the Lord through this Mediator. Ye are spiritually united to Him. Ye live in a state of union and friendship with Him. Ye abide in Him by faith and love, and ere long shall ye be for ever with Him. That communion is now begun, which shall be hereafter perfected; because He liveth ye shall live for ever also.

(J. Williamson.)

(C. Stanford, D. D.)

II. Now we will remember that THE BLOOD OF JESUS SPEAKS BETTER THINGS TO GOD than the blood of Abel did. The blood of Abel cried in the ears of the Lord, for thus He said to Cain, "The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto Me from the ground." That cry did not go round to seek a mediator, but went directly to the judgment-seat of God, and laid an accusation against the murderer. Can you stand at Calvary now and view the flowing of the Saviour's blood from hands, and feet, and side? What are your own reflections as to what that blood says to God? That blood crieth with a loud voice to God, and what doth it say? Does it not say this? "O God, this time it is not merely a creature which bleeds, but though the body that hangs upon the Cross is the creature of Thy Holy Spirit, it is Thine own Son who now pours out His soul unto death. O God, wilt Thou despise the cries and the tears, the blood of Thine own Son?" Then, moreover, the voice would plead, "It is not only Thy Son, but Thy perfectly innocent Son, in whom was no necessity for dying, because He had no original sin which would have brought corruption on Him, who had moreover no actual sin, who throughout life had done nothing worthy of death or of bonds. Canst Thou see it, Thou God of all, canst Thou see the infinite holy and just Son of Thy heart led here to die, and not feel the force of the blood as it cries to Thee?" Was there not added to this fact that our Lord died to vindicate the honour of His Father? "For Thee, O God, for Thee He dies! If Thou wert content to stain Thine honour or to restrain Thy mercy, there were no need that He should give Himself." Is there not power in this voice? Yet over and above this the blood must have pleaded thus with God: — "O God, the blood which is now being shed, thus honourable and glorious in itself, is being poured out with a motive which is Divinely gracious. O God, it is a chain for God in heaven which binds the victim to the horns of the altar, a chain of everlasting love, of illimitable goodness." Now you and I could not see a man suffer out of pure benevolence without being moved by his sufferings, and shall God be unmoved? the perfectly holy and gracious God?

III. Furthermore, JESUS' BLOOD SPEAKS BETTER THINGS TO US IN OUR OWN HEARTS than the blood of Abel. When the sinner looks to Jesus slain, he may well say, "If I did not know that all this blood was shed for me as well as by me, my fears would multiply a thousandfold; but when I think that that precious blood is shed instead of mine, when I think that that is the blood of God's own dear Son, whom He has smitten instead of smiting me, making Him bear the whole of His wrath that I might not bear it, O nay God, what comforts come streaming from this blessed fountain!" Just in proportion as thought of murder would make Cain wretched, in the same proportion ought faith to make you happy as you think upon Jesus Christ slain; for the blood of Christ must have a more powerful voice than that of Abel, and it cries therefore more powerfully for you than the blood of Abel cried against his brother Cain.

IV. JESUS' BLOOD, EVEN IN MY TEXT, SPEAKS BETTER THINGS THAN THAT OF ABEL. It speaks the same things but in a better sense. Did you notice the first text? God said unto Cain, "What hast thou done?" Now that is what Christ's blood says to you: "What hast thou done?" Ah! Lord, done enough to make me weep for ever if it were not that Thou hast wept for me. What I want mainly to indicate is this. If you notice in the second text, this blood is called "the blood of sprinkling." Whether Abel's blood sprinkled Cain or not I cannot say, but if it did, it must have added to his horror to have had the blood actually upon him. But this adds to the joy in our case, for the blood of Jesus is of little value to us until it is sprinkled upon us. Faith dips the hyssop in the atoning blood and sprinkles it upon the soul, and the soul is clean. The application of the blood of Jesus is the true ground of joy, and the sure source of Christian comfort; the application of the blood of Abel must have been horror, but the application of the blood of Jesus is the root and ground of all delight. There is another matter in the text with which I conclude. The apostle says, "We are come to the blood of sprinkling." Now, from the blood of Abel every reasonable man would flee away. He that has murdered his fellow desires to put a wide distance between himself and the accusing corpse. But we come to the blood of Jesus. It is a topic in which we delight as our contemplations bring us nearer and nearer to it.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

1. The blood of sprinkling is the centre of the Divine manifestation under the gospel. Observe its innermost place in the passage before us.

2. I next ask you to look at the text and observe that this sprinkling of the blood, as mentioned by the Holy Ghost in this passage, is absolutely identical with Jesus Himself. If you have done with the blood of sprinkling, you have done with Jesus altogether; He will never part with His mediatorial glory as our sacrifice, neither can we come to Him if we ignore that character.

3. Observe that this "blood of sprinkling" is put in close contact with "the new covenant." To us Jesus in His atonement is Alpha and Omega, in Him the covenant begins and ends.

4. But I want you to notice that according to the text the blood is the voice of the new dispensation. Observe that on Sinai there was "the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they heard that entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more." You look, therefore, under the new dispensation, for a voice, and you do not come to any till you reach the last object in the list, and there see" the blood of sprinkling that speaketh." Here, then, is the voice of the gospel; it is not the voice of a trumpet, nor the voice of words spoken in terrible majesty; but the blood speaks, and assuredly there is no sound more piercing, more potent, more prevailing.

5. Observe, that this voice is identical with the voice of the Lord Jesus.

6. This blood is always speaking. It always remains a plea with God, and a testimony to men.

7. This precious blood speaks " better things than that of Abel." It saith, "There is redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace." "He His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes we were healed." "He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." The voice of the blood is this, "For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin."

II. WHERE ARE WE? I have to explain what is meant by the expression which is found in the twenty-second verse of the chapter, "Ye are come." Link the twenty-second verse with this twenty-fourth, and read, "Ye are come to the blood of sprinkling."

1. Well, first, ye are come to the hearing of the gospel of the atoning sacrifice. You are come to hear, not of your sin and its doom, not of the last judgment and the swift destruction of the enemies of God, but of love to the guilty, pity for the miserable, mercy for the wicked.

2. In a better sense, going a little further, we have not only come to the blood of sprinkling by hearing about it, but we have come to it because the great God now deals with us upon methods which are founded and grounded upon the atoning sacrifice of Christ.

3. Further, there is a far more effectual way of coming to the blood of sprinkling than this — when by faith that blood is sprinkled upon our souls. This is absolutely needed: the blood shed must become to each one of us the blood sprinkled.

4. Further, to come to this blood of sprinkling means thankfully to enjoy all that comes to us through the blood of sprinkling.

5. I think, once more, that this coming to the blood of sprinkling means also that we feel the full effect of it in our lives. The man who knows that Jesus shed His blood for him, and has had that blood applied to his conscience, becomes a sin-hating man, consecrated to Him who has cleansed him.

III. WHAT THEN?

1. Do not refuse the voice of Jesus by cold indifference.

2. When you resolve to study the doctrine, do not approach it with prejudice through misapprehension.

3. Do not refuse the voice of the Lord Jesus by rejecting the principle of expiation.

4. Do not refuse this voice of mercy by preferring your own way of salvation.

(C. H. Spurgeon.)

     1310   God, as judge
     4195   spirits
     5063   spirit, nature of
     5358   judges
     5688   firstborn
     5701   heir
     8322   perfection, human
     9110   after-life
     9240   last judgment

Hebrews 12:18-24

     5194   touch
     6606   access to God

Hebrews 12:18-29

     4269   Sinai, Mount

Hebrews 12:22-23

     1680   types
     5062   spirit
     5705   inheritance, spiritual
     7024   church, nature of
     9414   heaven, community of redeemed

Hebrews 12:22-24

     4966   present, the
     6511   salvation
     8289   joy, of church

Hebrews 12:22-27

     1444   revelation, NT

March 3. "Now no Chastening for the Present Seemeth to be Joyous but Grievous; Nevertheless Afterward" (Heb. xii. 11).
"Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous; nevertheless afterward" (Heb. xii. 11). God seems to love to work by paradoxes and contraries. In the transformations of grace, the bitter is the base of the sweet, night is the mother of day, and death is the gate of life. Many people are wanting power. Now, how is power produced? The other day we passed the great works where the trolley engines are supplied with electricity. We heard the hum and roar of countless wheels, and …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

December 2. "Looking Diligently Lest any Man Fail" (Heb. xii. 15).
"Looking diligently lest any man fail" (Heb. xii. 15). It is not losing all, but coming short we are to fear. We may not lose our souls, but we may lose something more precious than life--His full approval, His highest choice, and our incorruptible and star-gemmed crown. It is the one degree more that counts, and makes all the difference between hot water--powerless in the boiler--and steam--all alive with power, and bearing its precious freight across the continent. I want, in this short life of …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

March 26. "Jesus, the Author and Finisher of Our Faith" (Heb. xii. 2).
"Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith" (Heb. xii. 2). Add to your faith--do not add to yourself. This is where we make the mistake. We must not only enter by faith, but we must advance by faith each step of the way. At every new stage we shall find ourselves as incompetent and unequal for the pressure as before, and we must take the grace and the victory simply by faith. Is it courage? We shall find ourselves lacking in the needed courage; we must claim it by faith. Is it love? Our own love …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

June 4. "Looking unto Jesus" (Heb. xii. 2).
"Looking unto Jesus" (Heb. xii. 2). There must be a constant looking unto Jesus, or, as the German Bible gives it, an off-looking upon Jesus; that is, looking off from the evil, refusing to see it, not letting the mind dwell upon it for a second. We should have mental eyelashes as well as physical ones, which can be used like shields, and let no evil thing in; or, like a stockade camp in the woods, which repels the first assault of the enemy. This is the use of the fringes to our eyes, and so it …
Rev. A. B. Simpson—Days of Heaven Upon Earth

Note F. Note from Bengel on Rom. I. 4.
According to the Spirit of Holiness. The word hagios, holy, when God is spoken of, not only denotes the blameless rectitude in action, but the very Godhead, or to speak more properly, the divinity, or excellence of the Divine nature. Hence hagiosune (the word here used) has a kind of middle sense between hagiotes, holiness, and hagiasmos, sanctification. Comp. Heb. xii. 10 (hagiotes or holiness), v. 14 (hagiasmos or sanctification). So that there are, as it were, three degrees: sanctification, …
Andrew Murray—Holy in Christ

Twenty-Ninth Day. Holiness and Chastisement.
He chasteneth us for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Follow after sanctification, without which no man shall see the Lord.'--Heb. xii. 10, 14. There is perhaps no part of God's word which sheds such Divine light upon suffering as the Epistle to the Hebrews. It does this because it teaches us what suffering was to the Son of God. It perfected His humanity. It so fitted Him for His work as the Compassionate High Priest. It proved that He, who had fulfilled God's will in …
Andrew Murray—Holy in Christ

Thanksgiving after Chastisement.
(Preached on the Cessation of Cholera, Feb. 1832). TEXT: HEB. xii. 11, 12. MY devout friends, the terrific form of the devastating -L-l- disease which has so long been raging in this great city has now left us, though we cannot feel entire confidence that it will not return; for it would not be the first instance if it appeared a second time, in a place so densely populated, to repeat its devastations. But are we right in availing ourselves of the apparent cessation which has been granted to us through …
Friedrich Schleiermacher—Selected Sermons of Schleiermacher

Chastisement
Peradventure this morning I may have some within these walls who are passing under the chastising hand of God. It is to them that I shall have to speak. You are not all of you in trial, I know no father chastises his whole family at once. It is so seldom that God afflicts people, after all, compared with their faults, that we must not expect to find in this congregation, perhaps, one-half of the children of God passing under the rod of the covenant; but if you are not under it now, you will have …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 1: 1855

The Blood of Sprinkling
Our apostle next tells us what we are come to. I suppose he speaks of all the saints after the death and resurrection of our Lord and the descent of the Holy Ghost. He refers to the whole church, in the midst of which the Holy Spirit now dwells. We are come to a more joyous sight than Sinai, and the mountain burning with fire. The Hebrew worshipper, apart from his sacrifices, lived continually beneath the shadow of the darkness of a broken law; he was startled often by the tremendous note of the …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 32: 1886

The Blood of Sprinkling (Second Sermon. )
The doctrinal portion of our meditation was greatly blest to our hearts, for God the Holy Ghost refreshed us thereby: may he now fulfill his sacred office with equal power, by revealing the things of Christ to us in a way which shall cause self-examination, and arouse us to give more earnest heed than ever to the voice of him that speaketh from heaven. No theme can excel in value and excellence that of the precious blood of Jesus. Unless the Holy Spirit shall prepare our hearts, even with such a …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 32: 1886

The Voice of the Blood of Christ
Now, we have in our text "blood" mentioned--two-fold blood. We have the blood of murdered Abel, and the blood of murdered Jesus. We have also two things in the text:--a comparison between the blood of sprinkling, and the blood of Abel; and then a certain condition mentioned. Rather, if we read the whole verse in order to get its meaning, we find that the righteous are spoken of as coming to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than the blood of Abel; so that the condition which will …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 4: 1858

The Shameful Sufferer
"O love, thou fathomless abyss!" for this love of Christ is indeed measureless and fathomless. None of us can attain unto it. In speaking thereof we feel our own weakness, we cast ourselves upon the strength of the Spirit, but, even then, we feel that we can never attain unto the majesty of this subject. Before we can ever get a right idea of the love of Jesus, we must understand his previous glory in its height of majesty, and his incarnation upon the earth in all its depths of shame. Now, who can …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 5: 1859

Holiness Demanded
"Holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord."--Hebrews 12:14. ONE feels most happy when blowing the trumpet of jubilee, proclaiming peace to broken hearts, freedom to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. But God's watchman has another trumpet, which he must sometimes blow; for thus saith the Lord unto him, "Blow the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain." Times there are when we must ring the tocsin; men must be startled from their sleep, they …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 50: 1904

God's Word not to be Refused
"See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven."--Hebrews 12:25. WE ARE NOT a cowering multitude gathered in trembling fear around the smoking mount of Horeb; we have come where the great central figure is the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. We have gathered virtually in the outer circle of which the saints above and holy angels make the inner ring. And now tonight …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 61: 1915

Fourteenth Day. Endurance in Contradiction.
"Who endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself."-- Heb. xii. 3. What endurance was this! Perfect truth in the midst of error; perfect love in the midst of ingratitude and coldness; perfect rectitude in the midst of perjury, violence, fraud; perfect constancy in the midst of contumely and desertion; perfect innocence, confronting every debased form of depravity and guilt; perfect patience, encountering every species of gross provocation--"oppressed and afflicted, He opened not His mouth!" …
John R. Macduff—The Mind of Jesus

"But it is Good for Me to Draw Near to God: I have Put My Trust in the Lord God, that I May Declare all Thy
Psal. lxxiii. 28.--"But it is good for me to draw near to God: I have put my trust in the Lord God, that I may declare all thy works." After man's first transgression, he was shut out from the tree of life, and cast out of the garden, by which was signified his seclusion and sequestration from the presence of God, and communion with him: and this was in a manner the extermination of all mankind in one, when Adam was driven out of paradise. Now, this had been an eternal separation for any thing that …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

The Consuming Fire.
Our God is a consuming fire.--HEBREWS xii. 29 Nothing is inexorable but love. Love which will yield to prayer is imperfect and poor. Nor is it then the love that yields, but its alloy. For if at the voice of entreaty love conquers displeasure, it is love asserting itself, not love yielding its claims. It is not love that grants a boon unwillingly; still less is it love that answers a prayer to the wrong and hurt of him who prays. Love is one, and love is changeless. For love loves unto purity. …
George MacDonald—Unspoken Sermons

Of Bearing Injuries, and who Shall be Approved as Truly Patient
"What sayest thou, My Son? Cease to complain; consider My suffering and that of My saints. Thou hast not yet resisted unto blood.(1) It is little which thou sufferest in comparison with those who have suffered so many things, have been so strongly tempted, so grievously troubled, so manywise proved and tried. Thou oughtest therefore to call to mind the more grievous sufferings of others that thou mightest bear thy lesser ones more easily, and if they seem not to thee little, see that it is not …
Thomas A Kempis—Imitation of Christ

Meditations on the Hindrances which Keep Back a Sinner from the Practice of Piety.
Those hindrances are chiefly seven:-- I. An ignorant mistaking of the true meaning of certain places of the holy Scriptures, and some other chief grounds of Christian religion. The Scriptures mistaken are these: 1. Ezek. xxxiii. 14, 16, "At what time soever a sinner repenteth him of his sin, I will blot out all," &c. Hence the carnal Christian gathers, that he may repent when he will. It is true, whensoever a sinner does repent, God will forgive; but the text saith not, that a sinner may repent whensoever …
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety

The Pietist and the Perfectionist.
"He chastens us for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness."--Heb. xii. 10. Sanctification is a gracious work of God, whereby in a supernatural way He gradually divests from sin the inclinations and dispositions of the regenerate and clothes them with holiness. Here we meet a serious objection which deserves our careful attention. To the superficial observer, the spiritual experience of God's children seems diametrically opposed to this professed gift of sanctification. One says: …
Abraham Kuyper—The Work of the Holy Spirit

Christ the Mediator of the Covenant
'Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant,' &c. Heb 12:24. Jesus Christ is the sum and quintessence of the gospel; the wonder of angels; the joy and triumph of saints. The name of Christ is sweet, it is as music in the ear, honey in the mouth, and a cordial at the heart. I shall waive the context, and only speak of that which concerns our present purpose. Having discoursed of the covenant of grace, I shall speak now of the Mediator of the covenant, and the restorer of lapsed sinners, Jesus the Mediator …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

Arrived
"Ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem."--Heb. xii. 22. T. S. M. tr., Emma Frances Bevan, 1899 We are come unto Mount Zion, On Thy holy hill we stand, The crusaders whose march is ended, The risen and the ascended, All hail! Immanuel's land! We are come unto the City, Where our living God art Thou; Thou Who barest our sin and sorrow, Who comest in joy to-morrow, Thou communest with us now-- To Jerusalem the golden, To the Gates of Praise we come, …
Frances Bevan—Hymns of Ter Steegen and Others (Second Series)

Esau Gen 25:34; Heb 12:16
ESAU Gen 25:34; Heb 12:16 Poor Esau repented too late That once he his birth-right despised; And sold, for a morsel of meat, What could not too highly be prized: How great was his anguish when told, The blessing he sought to obtain, Was gone with the birth-right he sold, And none could recall it again! He stands as a warning to all, Wherever the gospel shall come; O Hasten and yield to the call, While yet for repentance there's room! Your season will quickly be past, Then hear and obey it today; …
John Newton—Olney Hymns