real and divine blessings, but restricted to a given and earthly sphere, and to definite facts.
Could the Church confine itself to this sphere? or, are such its apprehensions created by the testimony of a new heavens and a new earth? Clearly not. The mind of God—the glory of Christ—the deliverance of the whole groaning creation of which (in the marvellous love of God, and the power of that worthiness which makes it due to Christ, according to the counsel of grace and glory which unites them to Him) the Church is a fellow-heir with Christ—the being like Him, and seeing Him as He is, displayed in the same love of the Father in which He is, that the world may know it—the savour of that love which can delight not only in its own blessing, but, by its Divine nature, in the blessing of others—and the filling of all things with the Divine glory, first mediatorially, and then directly—these are the thoughts (with the blessing of banished sin, perfected holiness, and the restoration of all things) which would occupy the mind of the Church as having the Spirit.
Whoever, then, would set about to present the contents of the Revelations with the same confinedness of interpretation as Old Testament prophecy, at once puts the Church out of her
