God rides on a cherub and does fly. But it is to this same spiritual life that Christ, the Redeemer, when he comes in the flesh, invested with the reality of that which the cherubim prefigures, points in all the lessons and parables which he teaches, in the sacrament which he instituted, and in his bloody death and glorious resurrection. To this second Eden he points the soul of man, and he seals his title to it.

The redemption-work extends the significance of the symbol. It passes from a general to a specific sense. In the Revelation of Jesus Christ made to his servant John after his ascension, the Living-creatures appear in the foreground of the first vision no longer as emblems of spiritual life in the general, but of the saints invested with spiritual life, for the Redeemer has come, washed his people from their sins, and endued them with spiritual life. That emblem of spiritual life which had been placed to guard the gates of Paradise, which illustrated the tabernacle and the temple service, which bore the beaming throne of the Almighty when he appeared in vision to the prophets, and which bears it still as he appears to the eye of John, becomes the emblem of the redeemed saints clothed and invested with the life which it prefigures. They are the US whom Christ washed from sin, ch. v. 9. What an attestation is this to the glory. of the redemption-work! The emblem of that spiritual vitality which is associated with God himself becomes the symbol of His redeemed saints.

But they represent the dominion of the saints, for they are four in number, and they prefigure in the

prophecy, as is evident from their application throughout the book, the triumph of God's kingdom still in the future.

In this specific sense they herald to John the mighty contest the church militant on earth has still to wage when, with their solemn "come and see," they point to the four combatants of the first four seals, of which combatants the church is the victor. It is with the same significancy that one of them gives unto the seven angels, "having the seven plagues," the vials of the wrath of God who liveth forever, vials of judgment discharged on the enemies of the church, which deliver her from thraldom and procure her victory.

But the symbol undergoes another and a more momentous change. When the heavenly Canaan is reached, when Paradise is restored, and man is redeemed, this symbol, like the types of the Mosaic system, evanishes; for why? the substance, the reality, is attained, and the emblem has no farther significance. When the work of redemption is completed, the Living-creatures which guarded Eden, which overshadowed the Mosaic ritual, which bore the throne of God to man in his intercourse with Him when man was far off, and which predict, in the first vision of the Revelation, his near approach to the divine presence, have neither office nor significance more. They can no longer guard the gates of Paradise, for the saints are within the walls of the New Jerusalem. They cannot guard the tree of life against man, for man can pluck its twelve manner of fruits

which are given for "the healing of the nations;" they can no longer bear the throne of God to men, for this throne is stationary in the midst of them, while forth from it flows the pure river of water of life, clear as crystal; it is impossible they can prefigure the triumph of the saints, for it is a reality and it is present. Accordingly, in the pictures of the new heavens and the new earth and of the great city, New Jerusalem, as they appear in chs. xxi. and xxii. of the Revelation, the cherubim have no place. This exclusion from the representation is in perfect accordance with the sense of the symbol. They are solely emblems and officebearers in a system of things which has then terminated. When that which they foreshadowed is realized, they naturally become extinct. The cherubim, which guarded Eden against fallen man, but which still were agents in effecting its restitution to him through a Redeemer, when the Redeemer's work is done, these sublime symbols lift their mighty and rustling wings and flee away into nonentity. They vanish like the types and symbols of the Mosaic ritual, but they preserve their existence longer, inasmuch as they comprehend both dispensations. Their wings stretch from Eden lost to Eden regained.

Such is the symbolic end which the living-creatures serve. They connect the first dawn of the redemption-work with its close, and they thus beautifully evidence that unity of design which marks the whole of God's revelation to man. In the Revelation naturally they concern themselves with the closing scenes of this great redemption-work.

They prefigure, in the opening vision, its successful issue; they call the prophet's attention in the first four seals to the conflict, which is to end in victory, and one of them gives unto the seven angels the vials which are to secure it.

The Four and Twenty Elders form the second member of the compound symbol, which we are now contemplating and discussing. This compound symbol, as ch. v. 9 shows, prefigures the kingdom of God triumphant. The two members of the symbol, however, have evidently a distinctive sense. A consideration of the following distinction which prevails throughout the book, will enable us not only to ascertain the true symbolic meaning of the Elders, but also to affix the distinctive sense to each member of the compound symbol.

It can hardly be doubted, that the same distinction is here expressed, which maintains throughout the book of dominion, into temporal and ecclesiastic. This distinction is very plainly developed when the saints are said to be made kings and priests unto God, chs. i. 6; v. 10. It pervades the representations, as well of the conquering power, as of the conquered dominions. The former appears now as an armed horseman, ch. vi. 2, the symbol of a temporal power, and now of a feeble but pure woman, ch xii., the bride, the Lamb's wife, ch. xxi. 9, and the glorious city, New Jerusalem, the two last of which are symbols of a pure spiritual dominion. It pervades also the representations of the conquered dominions, one of which always appears under symbols which stand

for an ecclesiastical power, which are, the False Prophet, the impure Whore, and the doomed city, Babylon. The two others are represented by symbols expressive of temporal powers. There is thus running through the book a distinction of dominion into the temporal and the spiritual. It is evident, then, that as there is a distinction made of the dominion of the saints by the compound symbol, it must, on the ground of unity of design, be that which prevails in the book. The character of the symbols also responds to the above distinction of dominion. The four living-creatures naturally represent the kingdom of God temporally; the four and twenty elders ecclesiastically. The one represents the saints, then, as kings; the other, as priests unto God. This distinction, however, does not appear in the New Jerusalem, in which there are neither Cherubim nor Elders, nor any other symbols which are capable of representing it. But it is a distinction here expressed, although it is evidently part of the old economy which passes away. Indeed, the statement that the saints are to be made kings and priests unto God, expresses a union of the civil and ecclesiastical powers in their persons, for the meaning plainly is, that each saint, in his individual capacity, is to be made a king and priest unto God, which is irreconcilable with any independent existence of the one power apart from the other. The distinction drawn of the temporal and spiritual dominion of the saints, must be held to be one made principally, if not entirely, for the purpose of conveying a perfect representation