INTRODUCTORY ESSAY

ΤΟ

THE LIVING TEMPLE;

OR,

A GOOD MAN THE TEMPLE OF GOD.

BY THE REV. JOHN HOWE, A.M.

It is well remarked by the excellent JOHN HOWE, in the following Treatise, that the "Living Temple," or, as it is frequently styled in the New Testament the "Kingdom of Heaven," which God is setting up in the world, "is not established by might or by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord; who as the structure is spiritual, and to be situated and raised up in the mind or spirit of man -works, in order to it, in a way suitable thereto; that is, very much by soft and gentle insinuations, to which are subservient the self-recommending amiableness and comely aspect of religion, the discernible gracefulness and uniform course of such in whom it bears rule, and is a settled, living law. It is a structure to which there is a concurrence of truth and holiness; the former letting in a vital, directive, formative light-the latter, a heavenly, calm, and god-like frame of spirit." To the same import is the declaration of our Saviour, when, in answer to the Pharisees, who demanded of Him

when the kingdom of God should come, replied, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, lo, there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." We are thus given to understand, that the kingdom which God is establishing in the world, does not consist in external forms and observances— that it is not of a temporal, but of a spiritual character and that, unlike the establishment of earthly kingdoms, it cometh with none of those visible accompaniments which meet the eye of public observation.

The establishment of a new kingdom in the world carries much in it to strike the eye of an observer. There is a deal of visible movement accompanying the progress of such an event-the march of armies, and the bustle of conspiracies, and the exclamations of victories, and the triumph of processions, and the splendour of coronations. All these doings are performed upon a conspicuous theatre; and there is not an individual in the country, who, if not an actor, may not be at least an observer on the elevated stage of great and public revolutions. He can point his finger, and say, Lo, here! or, lo, there! to the symptoms of political change which are around him; and the clamorous discontent of one province, and the warlike turbulence of another, and the loud expressions of public sentiment at home, and the report of preparation abroad-all force themselves upon the notice of spectators; so that when a new kingdom is set up in the world, that kingdom cometh with observation.

The answer of our Saviour to the question of the Pharisees, may be looked upon as designed to correct their misconceptions respecting the nature of the kingdom which he was to establish. There is no doubt that they all looked for a deliverance from the yoke of Roman authority-that, in their eyes, the Captain of their Salvation was to be the leader of a mighty host, who, fighting under the special protection of God, would scatter dismay and overthrow among the oppressors of their country—that the din of war, and the pride of conquest, and the glories of a widely extended dominion, and all the visible parade of a supreme and triumphant monarchy, were to shed a lustre over their beloved land. And it must have been a sore mortification to them all, when they saw the pretensions of the Messiah associated with the poverty, and the meekness, and the humble, unambitious, and spiritual character of Jesus of Nazareth. We cannot

justify the tone of His persecutors; but we must perceive, at the same time, the historical consistency of all their malice, and bitterness, and irritated pride, with the splendour of those expectations on which they had been feasting for years, and which gave a secret elevation to their souls under the endurance of their country's bondage, and their country's wrongs. It marks-and it marks most strikingly-how the thoughts of God are not as the thoughts of man; that the actual fulfilment of those prophecies which related to the history of Judea, turned out so differently from the anticipations of the men who lived in it; and that Jerusalem, which, in point of expectation, was to sit as mistress over

a tributary world, was, in point of fact, torn up from its foundations, after the vial of God's wrath had been poured in a tide of unexampled misery over the heads of its wretched people. Now, what became all the while of those prophecies which respected the Messiah? What became of that kingdom of God which the Pharisees inquired about, and of which, however much they were in the wrong respecting its nature, they were certainly in the right respecting the time of its appearance ? Did it actually appear? Is it possible that it could be working its way, at the very time that every hope which man conceived of it was turned into the cruellest mockery? Is it possible that the truth of prophecy could be receiving its most splendid vindication, at the very time that every human interpreter was put to shame, and that all that happened was the reverse of all that was anticipated? Surely if any kingdom was formed at that time, when the besom of destruction passed through the land of Judea, and swept the whole fabric of its institutions away from it-surely if it was such a kingdom, as was to spread, through the seed of Abraham, the promised blessing among all the families of the earth, and that, too, when a cloud of ignominy was gathering upon the descendants of Abraham-surely if at the time when Pagans desolated the Land of Promise, and profaned the temple, and entered the holy place, and wantoned in barbarous levity among those sacred fourts where the service of the true God had been kept for many generations surely if at such a time and with such a burden of disgrace and

misery on the people of Israel, a kingdom was forming that was to be the glory of that people— then it is not to be wondered at that no earthly eye should see it under the gloom of that disastrous period, or that the kingdom of God, coming as it did in the midst of wars and rumours of wars, when men's eyes were looking at other things, and their hearts were failing them, should have eluded their observation.

In common language, a kingdom carries our thoughts to the country over which it is established. The kingdom of Sweden directs the eye of our mind to that part of Europe; and in the various places of the Bible where the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven are mentioned, this is one of the significations. But it has also other significations. It sometimes means, not the place over which the royal authority extends, but the royal authority itself. In the first sense, the kingdom of heaven carries our attention to heaven; but with this as the meaning, we could not understand what John the Baptist pointed to, when he said "the kingdom of heaven is at hand." But, in the second sense, it is quite intelligible, and means that the authority which subordinates all the families of heaven to the one Monarch who reigns there, was on the eve of being established with efficacy on earth; or, in other words, that the prayer was now beginning its accomplishment

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Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Hence it is that some translators, for the term kingdom, substitute the term reign; and make our Saviour say, that the reign of God cometh not