L I B R_ARY 
 
 OF THE 
 U N 1 VERS ITY 
 or 1 LLl NOIS

 
 THE HOLY CITY 
 
 ITS LIGHT AND ITS GLORY 
 
 A SEEMON 
 
 PREACHED IN ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL 
 
 ON THE OCCASION OF THE 
 
 199tD ilnniDcrsarp Scruicc 
 
 OF THE 
 
 SOCIETY FOR THE PROPAGATION OF THE GOSPEL 
 IN FOREIGN PARTS 
 
 BY THE 
 
 RIGHT EEV. J. W. FESTING, D.D. 
 
 LORD BISHOP OF ST ALBANS 
 
 printed for tbe Socfets 
 
 BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE & CO., NEW- STREET SQUARE, LONDON 
 
 1900 
 
 Price 2d. 
 
 >
 
 SERMON. 
 
 " The nations shall walk amid the light thereof : and the kings of the 
 earth do bring their glory into it." — Rkv. xxi. 24 (Revised Version). 
 
 ri'^HE Apostle is speaking of the Holy City, New Jeru- 
 X salem, which he saw in vision coming down out of 
 heaven from God. 
 
 He had seen in vision the destruction of the great 
 world city Babylon, and the former things had passed 
 away and a new heaven and a new earth were shown 
 him, and, in this new state of existence, the true 
 city, the city of God, not of man's foundation, nor man's 
 building, nor man's planning. Its form, its arrangement, 
 its defences, its life is of God. It is a vast city, a large 
 tract of country, reaching away beyond the limits of 
 man's natural vision — there is room there for the great 
 multitude that are to be gathered into it ; it is very 
 glorious, having the glory of God, and in it and through it 
 the tabernacle of God is with men and He shall dwell with 
 them. Christ's promise to the faithful soul is fulfilled : 
 "We will come unto him and make our abode with him." 
 And so the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are 
 the temple of that city, for the people of God who are 
 that city dwell in Christ and in God. "And the glory 
 
 ^-
 
 of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb." 
 He, the Lamb, in His character, His office, His work, 
 declares God, shows forth the glory of God, and so is the 
 " lamp " that lightens this Holy City. 
 
 It is the vision of the Chm*ch of Gud that is be- 
 fore us, not the vision only of that which shall be, the 
 vision of the Church glorified, but the vision of the 
 Church now in her spiritual condition. The city is seen 
 in the vision in the process of coming down out of 
 heaven from God, though it is seen in its perfect form 
 and glory ; it is in the process of being formed even 
 while its form is determined. It is the purpose of God 
 that is presented to us, that purpose which will indeed 
 be complete and established for ever at the end, but 
 which even now exists complete, for it is the purpose of 
 God, while its accomplishment is being wrought out in the 
 course of the years of man's life on earth. So it is that 
 in this vision there is presented to us the Divine idea of 
 the Church, certain marks of the Church are set before 
 us which we are to bear in mind as we think of the 
 Church, its place, its office in the world, its relation 
 to the world, its destiny, its true ambition in its work, 
 its hopes. 
 
 In this figure of the Holy City, as in other figures in 
 the Bible, notably in that used by St. Paul in his Epistle 
 to the Ephesians, the rising up of a building, built upon 
 the foundation of apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ 
 being the chief Corner Stone, which groweth unto a holy 
 temple in the Lord, there is a blending of metaphor. 
 The figure expresses two truths. The people of God are the 
 city, the stones of the building, and yet they are the 
 citizens who dwell in the city. The Church consists of 
 the believers in Christ, but is also the home of the faith- 
 ful. They form the Church, and at the same time the 
 Church is something which contains them ; it is in a
 
 way outside them, it teaches them, it ministers to them, 
 it provides for them the means through which spiritual 
 Hfe comes to them, and is sustained and developed. 
 
 " The nations do walk amid the light of the city of God : 
 and the kings of the earth do bring their glory into it." 
 
 The Holy City manifests in the world the gloiy of God 
 and of the Lamb, and there is that which can illumine 
 and inspire, and direct and purify, and ennoble the ways, 
 the life of the nations of the earth. That is part of the 
 glory of that city, and then the kings of the earth, 
 the great ones, the rulers of men, the leaders in thought 
 and action, those to whom men look up, those whom 
 they reverence and honour, and follow and obey, bring 
 their glory into it. And so the glory of the city is in a 
 way enhanced. The glory is indeed of God, but God's 
 glory is manifested in the devotion of that which is best 
 in man to the service of God, and this service of man 
 blesses the life of his fellow-men, and promotes its true 
 happiness and its real glory. 
 
 The continued work of the formation of the city and 
 the diversities of life that are brought together in the 
 city are alike set before us. 
 
 In St. Paul's idea of the gradual building of the 
 temple as in this idea of the city we have not only the 
 idea of continuous work but of variety. A building and 
 a city are composed of various materials, and have various 
 parts. As this spiritual building goes forward men of 
 different times and of different countries are brought 
 into it. The great men of successive generations, the 
 great men of nations differing very much in life and 
 character, bring their glory into it. No one generation, 
 no one nation, exhausts the possibilities of human life 
 and character. And in our own time and generation and 
 nation what infinite diversity of life and character exists, all 
 of it possible of sanctification without losing the diversity. 
 
 u.uc^
 
 This difference between men, not only of different 
 nations, but between men of different generations in 
 the same country, is very striking. It is not only the 
 difference in life from the difference of surroundings 
 that strikes us, not only the difference such as — to take 
 striking examples — there is between the life of the 
 Christian when persecution was rife and our life now, 
 or between the life of the ordinary Christian amid the 
 ignorance and the commotions of the middle ages and 
 ours now, but the differences which arise from what 
 may almost be called fashions of thought about religious 
 matters which prevail for a time. How many words 
 there are which provoked deep anxious thought and 
 were the watchwords of passionate controversy in years 
 that are past that stir no deep feelings now ! Who now is 
 stirred as men once were by the words predestination, 
 election, final assurance, and so forth ? 
 
 The generations as they pass by are affected differently 
 by some truth or aspect of truth, as well as by the out- 
 ward circumstances of life, and so their faith is subjected 
 to tests peculiar to their time, and a variety of power, of 
 heart, of mind, a variety of character is developed, and 
 so each age has its own particular characteristics. All 
 excellence does not belong to our .own time. We at our 
 best bring into the city of God but part of that which, 
 taken altogether, constitutes its glory. 
 
 And so with the differences that exist between men 
 of different nations. How different are nations of the 
 East from us here in the West. Shall we say that their 
 subtlety of imagination and thought, their natural delight 
 in what is gorgeous in colour or metaphorical in expres- 
 sion, their exuberant expression of their feelings by their 
 acts which astonishes us with our cold phlegmatic dis- 
 position, is all mere weakness of character ? 
 
 They have a greatness of their own which is not
 
 after our pattern, but it has its place in the Divine scheme 
 of the Holy City. So it is that the Holy City stands in 
 the vision with its gates open all day (there is no night 
 there), and the gates face all the quarters of the world, and 
 they shall bring the glory and the honour of the nations 
 into it. 
 
 The gates bore the names of the twelve tribes of 
 Israel. The entrance into the Church of God was at first 
 through the chosen nation, but the nation, while it was 
 one nation, yet consisted of tribes, of communities, with 
 their varied characters and their varied history. The true 
 Israel, the spiritual Israel, is one, but the entrance into 
 the Holy City is through the communities which form 
 the one true Israel, and they too vary in their character 
 and their history. 
 
 This continued gathering in within the walls of the 
 Holy City of lives and characters varied and imperfect and 
 yet with that peculiar excellence and glory which is theirs 
 through the presence of God with them in His Church, is 
 what we have to keep before ourselves as we look back on 
 the history of the Church's past life or as we regard the 
 work which the Church has to do in this our day. 
 
 " The nations shall walk amid the light thereof : and the 
 kings of the earth do bring their glory into it." 
 
 It is God's purpose for His Church. It is the great 
 idea which the Church in her work here on earth is to 
 hold up before herself as that to which she is to attain. 
 She is to be the means through which the light of God's 
 truth as manifested in Jesus Christ is to be set forth 
 before men, that they may see it and live in it and by it. 
 There is the great promise for men in their communities, 
 in their nationalities as well as in their individual lives, 
 that life in its highest, freest, truest form, in its activities, 
 in its enjoyment of existence, in its ordered ways, is theirs 
 as they walk amidst the light with which the Holy City
 
 is radiant. This is the high purpose and outcome of the 
 Church's work. This is the purpose of the Church's 
 work as it estabHshes the work in the old places or looks 
 out on the world and sees new work before it. 
 
 It is a promise, but the promise is to those mIio 
 realise its terms and rise to its loftiness, and enter into 
 its spirit and strive to attain to it ; it is a promise which 
 is an incentive to work, prescribing its aim and showing 
 the heavenly pattern of the mode of accomplishing that 
 aim. 
 
 It is the promise to, and the pattern of, all Church 
 work, and so of such work as that which is especially 
 before us this morning in the work of the great Church 
 Society, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. 
 
 The aim of that Society always has been and is to 
 plant the Church in its fulness in every part of the British 
 Empire, and then onwards beyond the limits of that 
 Empire as opportunities of doing this present themselves. 
 
 This it is that is before us, to go forward as God calls 
 us to set before men the Holy City of God, that the nations 
 may walk amid the light thereof and the kings of the 
 earth may bring their glory into it. 
 
 It is the glory of God that lightens it and the Lamb 
 is the lamp thereof. And we have to pray that that 
 glory may be our one and true aim, and that we so hold 
 fast to that which is revealed to us in Jesus Christ, that 
 the Lamb is indeed the lamp in whose light we walk. He 
 is the lantern unto our feet and the light unto our paths. 
 Our first great care is that we look to God for the light 
 of His truth and that we hold fast the faith once delivered 
 unto the saints. It is from above. The Holy City with 
 its Divine light cometh down from heaven. It does not 
 grow up through man's device and labour. It is not a 
 transformed and purified Babylon. It is not of earth, but 
 from God.
 
 8 
 
 But with holding fast the faith we have also to learn 
 how to gather in all that is greatest and best in the world, 
 all that is highest in intellect and in character. 
 
 " He hath shown His people the power of His works in 
 giving them the heritage of the heathen." We have to be 
 ready to accept the differences, the variations of life and 
 character which stand below the unalterable truths of 
 revelation, and to learn how to tolerate them, a,ye, how 
 to welcome them, for they have their part in the glory of 
 the Holy City. 
 
 And this we must say about the direction in which 
 our work is to advance. 
 
 If the nations are to walk in the light of the city, 
 surely our first care must be that our own nation can do 
 this. This is our first responsibility. And our nation is 
 not confined within the limits of these islands ; it is not 
 bounded by the limits of the endowments which the 
 devotion of past ages have provided within these islands. 
 The Church's responsibility that the nation may walk in 
 its light stretches out wherever the nation has gone. 
 
 This is the primary work of the Society for the Pro- 
 pagation of the Gospel. 
 
 And then again, if we would gather in the best, we 
 must give our best in that work. We must as individuals 
 give our best ; we must as a Church give our best men to 
 the work ; so do we bring our glory into the Holy City. 
 
 The vision of the Holy City in which we trust that 
 we, each of us, have a place, and whose glories thrill our 
 hearts, is a vision of responsibility as well as of glory. 
 
 How are we meeting our responsibility? There is 
 much which we have to lament, much of which we need 
 be ashamed, if we look back on the history of the past 
 or regard the feebleness of too much of our work in 
 the present. Men indeed have worked and are working 
 in many a field of labour, true to the faith, examples of
 
 9 
 
 all that is good, giving their very best, and not stopping 
 short of the gift of their life ; but the labourers are few. 
 England has not risen to the realisation of the v^^ork that 
 it is possible to do for Christ and at His bidding in the 
 world at large, and the glory of that work. Yet with all 
 this let us not forget to acknowledge those signs which 
 God gives us that His good hand is with us in our work. 
 You have but to read the summary of the extension of 
 the Society's work during the last fifty years in that 
 valuable little work, " The Spiritual Expansion of the 
 Empire," to' see that the Church is being set as a light 
 to hghten the nations in all parts of the world. "God, 
 even our own God, is giving us His blessing." 
 
 The present is a marked year for the Society. Its 
 entrance upon its fourth Jubilee suggests much, it 
 appeals strongly to all to help on a work with so great 
 an idea before it, so great a promise assured to it. 
 
 And while there is much in the prospect of work to 
 encourage us, there is also not a little at the present 
 moment which in a special way appeals to our sym- 
 pathies. For sympathy ought to be aroused by the trials 
 that befall good work and threaten to arrest its progress. 
 And the power of sympathy is given us by God to help 
 us in acting. 
 
 We have this striking summary in this year's 
 Eeport : — 
 
 " With the exception of North America, it may be 
 said that in every part of the Empire, and beyond its 
 limits, the work of the Church has been hindered in the 
 past year by disasters and visitations which no human 
 foresight could have reckoned with. In Australia there 
 has been a severe visitation of drought. In the West 
 Indies a series of misfortunes have been crowned by 
 another disastrous hurricane which has swept away 
 churches, schools, parsonages, and of course other
 
 10 
 
 buildings, leaving those islands still poorer than they 
 were. China has suffered from political helplessness, 
 and is the prey of factions and seditions. India has 
 suffered, and is suffering, from cholera and plague, and 
 is further suffering from a terrible famine. While South 
 Africa, for eighty years one of the most fruitful portions 
 of the Society's work, is the scene of a war, the effects 
 of which must be felt, and felt sorely, for a long time to 
 come, not only in the material loss which the Church 
 there must be sustaining, but in the troubles and the 
 trials which it brings into the family life and so into the 
 spiritual life of so many." 
 
 There is a call to us, and a deep call, in all this to 
 show in our lives that we who live in the Holy City have 
 been so illumined by its glories that we walk letting our 
 light so shine before men that they may see our good 
 works and glorify our Father in heaven, that we show 
 that we, who profess to follow the Lamb, Who in His 
 pity for man gave Himself for man, can sympathise with 
 others, can endure self-sacrifice, can bring of our best 
 into the Holy City and give it for its building and its 
 advancement. 
 
 Pray we to God that the vision of the Holy City may 
 ever be before us as members of this Society, inspiring us 
 with a sense of the greatness of our work, its Divine glory, 
 and its deep and unceasing responsibilities, and that we 
 ourselves in all our doings may walk in the light of that 
 city, and (enabled by the grace of God) have the courage 
 and the devotion and the zeal to bring into it the best 
 that by God's mercy we have to give. .