it may have suggested the metaphor of my text. The song fits our lips
quite as closely as it did the lips from which it first sprang,
thrilling with triumph: 'We have a strong city; salvation will God
appoint for walls and bulwarks. Open ye the gates, that the righteous
nation which keepeth the truth may enter in.'

There are three things, then, here: the city, its defences, its
citizens.

I. The City.

Now, no doubt the prophet was thinking of the literal Jerusalem; but the
city is ideal, as is shown by the bulwarks which defend, and by the
qualifications which permit entrance. And so we must pass beyond the
literalities of Palestine, and, as I think, must not apply the symbol to
any visible institution or organisation if we are to come to the depth
and greatness of the meaning of these words. No church which is
organised amongst men can be the New Testament representation of this
strong city. And if the explanation is to be looked for in that
direction at all, it can only be the invisible aggregate of ransomed
souls which is regarded as being the Zion of the prophecy.

But perhaps even that is too definite and hard. And we are rather to
think of the unseen but existent order of things or polity to which men
here on earth may belong, and which will one day, after shocks and
convulsions that shatter all which is merely institutional and human, be
manifested still more gloriously.

The central thought that was moving in the prophet's mind is that of the
indestructible vitality of the true Israel, and the order which it