(3) Let us look at chap. xxi. 27, where we read, "And there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean, or he that doeth an abomination and a lie." These words distinctly intimate that the time for final separation had not yet come. Persons of the wicked character described must be supposed to be alive upon the earth after the new Jerusalem has appeared. 5. Another consideration on the point under discussion may be noticed, which will have weight with those who admit the existence of that principle of structure in St. John's writings upon which it rests. Alike in the Gospel and in the Apocalypse the Apostle is marked by a tendency to return at the close of a section to what he had said at the beginning, and to shut up, as it were, between the two statements all he had to say. So here. In chap. i. 3 he introduces his Apocalypse with the words, "For the time is at hand." In chap. xxii. 10, immediately after closing it, he returns to the thought, "Seal not up the words of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand;" that is, the whole intervening revelation is enclosed between these two statements. All of it precedes the "time" spoken of. The new Jerusalem comes before the end. In the new Jerusalem, therefore, we have essentially a picture, not of the future, but of the present; of the ideal condition of Christ's true people, of His "little flock" on earth, in every age. The picture may not yet be realized in fulness; but every blessing lined in upon its canvas is in principle the believer's now, and will be more and more his in actual experience as he opens his eyes to see and his heart to receive. We have been wrong in transferring the picture of the new Jerusalem to the future alone. It belongs also to the past and to the present. It is the heritage of the children of God at the very time when they are struggling with the world; and the thought of it ought to stimulate them to exertion and to console them under suffering. FOOTNOTES: [561] Trench, _Synonyms_, second series, p. 39. [562] Comp. pp. 227, 357. [563] Chap. iv. 3. [564] Matt. v. 14. [565] Ps. xxxi. 21; Isa. xxvi. 1. [566] Ps. xci. 11. [567] Comp. Ezek. xlviii. 31. [568] Comp. Ezek. xl. 2, 3. [569] Chap. xxi. 9. [570] Ezek. xl. 1, 2. [571] Ezek. xliii. 2. [572] Ezek. xliv. 1-3. [573] _The Apocalypse_, p. 438. [574] Rom. i. 7; 1 Cor. i. 2; Col. i. 2. [575] Col. i. 27; 1 Cor. i. 30; Phil. iii. 9. [576] Eph. v. 25-27. [577] Eph. i. 3. [578] Phil. iii. 20. [579] Heb. xii. 22, 23. [580] John xiv. 20. [581] John xvii. 22. [582] 1 Pet. i. 8. [583] Comp. Foxley, _Hulsean Lectures_, Lect. i. [584] Commentary in _Clark's Foreign Theological Library_, _in loc._ CHAPTER XVIII. _THE EPILOGUE._ REV. xxii. 6-21.