"These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth" (Heb. 11:13).

Blessed and precious it is to behold this company of pilgrims and strangers on earth-the long line of those who, through faith, obtained a good report. They are witnesses to us of having sought a country undefiled, and a city whose builder and maker God is.

The details about these early saints are very scanty, but in the brief words given we see a heavenly character shining through them. From the earliest days of Genesis the saints of God are seen apart from the world; the work of faith and the patience of hope was in them. Cain's family may have their city, their arts- and music, while Seth's family are without a place or a name-the earth knew them not.

The Lord had set a mark on Cain, that no one finding him should slay him. The blood of Abel is to remain unavenged, and the family of Seth are observant of this; no attempt is made by them to answer the cry of innocent blood. They know it has come to the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, and vengeance does not belong to them. Express charge had been given in this, and theirs was simple obedience. If the earth be not cleansed, the elect are to be strangers in it, with a heavenly calling, and this is observed in the family of Seth.

True and beautiful in the mind of God is all this. It is the way of God, and was apprehended by these saints in the light of God's perfect ways, more than with many of us, beloved, who have been so much instructed in the fuller revelations of this present age. But it is not the schooling only, but the capacity to sit at the lesson that we need.

The Lord began, in Adam, to claim and display His rights on the earth. The man in the garden was to own the sovereignty of God, and the earth was the rest and the delight of the Lord, and the place of His glory. But sin entering and polluting all, and the pollution being left uncleansed, in Seth God called a people away from the earth to an inheritance in heaven. Then in Noah the Lord God re-asserted His rights here, and took up the earth as the place where His elect might find a home, and His own presence be known again. But corruption having come in again, Abraham is separated from kindred, and from country, and from father's house, to be a-heavenly stranger on the earth, with his altar and his tent, looking for a city whose builder and maker was God.

Israel, in their day, then take up this mystic tale of the heavens and the earth, and in the land of Canaan become the witness of the scene of God's sovereignty. The ark passes over the river as "the ark of the covenant of the Lord of all the earth." But after Joshua and the elders that had known the works of the Lord had passed away, the apostasy soon followed, and the remnant became strangers among the nation, looking for redemption in Israel.

And now the Church is set for the full testimony of heavenly mysteries again; and strangership here
is the divine idea, till our being taken to meet the Lord in the air.
Now let me observe, that whenever God arises in this progress of His counsels to assert title to the earth, He begins by judging and cleansing it, because, the scene of His purposed glory and presence being corrupted, He must take the offence away, for His presence could not brook defilement. Noah's lordship of the earth was, accordingly, preceded by the flood carrying away the world of the ungodly. Israel's inheritance of Canaan under Jehovah, as the God of all earth, was prepared by the judgment of the Amorites and the sword of Joshua. And the future millennial kingdom, when the earth is to be the place of the glory again, is (as all Scripture tells us) to be ushered in by that great action called "the day of the Lord," with a clearing out of all that offend, and all that do iniquity.

But the call of God is quite of another character. It proceeds on the principle that God Himself is apart from the earth, and is not seeking to have it as the home of His glory, or the place of His presence ; but seeking a people out of it, to be His, away from it, and above it.

This was exhibited in Abraham. Abraham was the object of the call of God, and accordingly the Canaanites find no rival in him. He does not dispute with them the title or possession of the soil. He finds them, and he leaves them, lords of it. He desires only to pitch his tent and raise his altar on it for a season; and then to have his bones laid in the bowels of it for another season.

So with the Church in this age. She is likewise under the call of God. But her call leaves the Gentiles in power, as it found them. "Let every soul be subject to the higher powers." The saints have only to obey them unreluctantly, or to suffer from them patiently, according as the demand made of them is or is not consistent with their subjection to Christ and the call of God. They are not to strive with the potsherds of the earth.

I own, beloved, that I greatly admire this fine expression of the mind of Christ in these earliest saints. They take the only way which the holiness of God could sanction. They are " partakers of His holiness." The light they walked in was God's; the holiness they partook of was God's. It is the light of heavenly strangership in a polluted world. It is a light which reproves the course of this world, and makes manifest other principles and hopes altogether.

After this pattern the Lord would have us:in the world, but not of it; of heaven, though not as yet in it. Paul, in the Holy Ghost, would so have us, taking example from those whose "conversation is in heaven." Peter, in the same Spirit, would so have vis, "as strangers and pilgrims" abstaining from fleshly lusts. James summons us, in the same Spirit, to know that "the friendship of the world is enmity with God." And John separates us as by a" stroke:"We are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness."

It is for the Church, beloved, to walk in this elevation and separateness. What is according to the call of God, and what worthy of heavenly hopes, but this ? We breathe but feebly, and glow but faintly, in company with those and like witnesses.

What a temper of soul, it has just struck me, we get in such a chapter as Phil. 4! What a glow is felt throughout it ! What depth and fervency of affection! What a shout of triumph the Spirit raises! What elevation in the midst of changes, perplexities, and depressions! The apostle's whole temper of soul throughout that chapter is uncommon. But, if one may speak for others, it is to us little more than the tale of a distant land, or the warmth and brilliancy of other climes reported to our souls by travelers.

Lead us, Lord, we pray thee! Teach us indeed to sing-

" We're bound for yonder land,
Where Jesus reigns supreme;
We leave the shore at His command,
Forsaking all for Him.

'It were easy, did we choose,
Again to reach the shore-
But that is what our souls refuse,
We'll never touch it more."

But surely it is one thing to be the advocate of Christianity, and another to be the disciple of it. And though it may sound strange at first, far easier is it to teach its lessons than to learn them. J. G. B.