How lovely! how perfectly beautiful! Oh that its antitype were more faithfully exhibited amongst us! Where are those streams of refreshing which ought to flow from the Church of God? where those unblotted epistles of Christ known and read of all men? where can we see a practical exhibition of Christ in the ways of His people--something to which we could point and say, There is true Christianity? Oh, may the Spirit of God stir up our hearts to a more intense desire after conformity to the image of Christ, in all things! May He clothe with His own mighty power the Word of God, which we have in our hands and in our homes, that it may speak to our hearts and consciences, and lead us to judge ourselves, our ways, and our associations by its heavenly light, so that there may be a thoroughly devoted band of witnesses gathered out to His name, to wait for His appearing. Will the reader join us in asking for this? We shall now turn for a moment to the lovely institution of the feast of tabernacles, which gives such remarkable completeness to the range of truth presented in our chapter. "Thou shalt observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine; and thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man-servant, and thy maid-servant, and the Levite, the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are within thy gates. Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto the Lord thy God _in the place which the Lord_ shall choose; because the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thine hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice. Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the Lord thy God _in the place which He shall choose_; in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles; and they shall not appear before the Lord empty; every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord thy God which He hath given thee." (Ver. 13-17.) Here, then, we have the striking and beautiful type of Israel's future. The feast of tabernacles has not yet had its antitype. The passover and Pentecost have had their fulfillment in the precious death of Christ and the descent of the Holy Ghost, but the third great solemnity points forward to the times of the restitution of all things, which God has spoken of by the mouth of all His holy prophets which have been since the world began. And let the reader note particularly the time of the celebration of this feast. It was to be "after thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine;" in other words, it was after the harvest and the vintage. Now, there is a very marked distinction between these two things. The one speaks of grace, the other of judgment. At the end of the age, God will gather His wheat into His garner, and then will come the treading of the wine-press, in awful judgment.