The stirring prophecy which contains these words presents to us, as does many another prophecy, the Divine ideal of the Church of God. It shows us what that Church would be, even here in "the progress of time, while, living by faith, she sojourns" in a world lying in wickedness, had not man's folly and sin marred that Divine ideal. It points us forward to the day when "in the stability of that eternal seat which--now she patiently awaits, she shall attain the final victory and the perfect peace." [Footnote: St. Augustine, _De Civitate Dei._, Lib. i., Preface.] The entire prophecy, as it runs through the several chapters from the first of which the text is taken, finds its two horizons, so to speak, in the First and Second Advents of our Lord. Its theme is the period that lies between them. That period it describes as one long year of Jubilee, the period of the new creation redressing the confusions and desolations of the older one, in the power and abiding presence of the same Holy Spirit That once moved "upon the face of the waters," and is now, "by the washing of regeneration" and in His own renewing life, "shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour." As the story of that older creation began with the fiat "Let there be light," so the prophecy of this new one begins with the words, "Arise, shine, for thy light is come." As that creation found its consummation in the Paradise wherein grew "every tree pleasant to the sight and good for food," and in which unfallen man was placed, so this finds its consummation in the new Paradise "in the midst" of which stands the tree of life whose "leaves are for the healing of the nations"; the dwellers in which are "trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord"; while itself is called "sought out, a city not forsaken." So much for the whole prophecy; and time forbids me to say more, if indeed more were needed. Let us turn to that integral portion which the text contains; and I venture, for the moment, to reverse the order of its wording and to speak of its last clause first.