All this may well account for the place which Jerusalem holds in the thoughts of the Spirit. His prophets, those who spake as they were moved by Him, address her again and again as the bride, the queen, and the mother, in the days of the approaching glory. But what shall we say of Him, who has thus decked her with all beauty and dignity, and given her such relationship to Himself? Is it not wondrous and happy to see the circle of human sympathies thus seating itself in the divine mind? Is _friendship_ only human? How can I say so, when I see Jesus and the disciple whom He loved walking in company? Are the affections of _kindred_ merely human? How can I say so, when I think of Christ and the Church, and a thousand witnesses from Scripture? Is the heart’s fond delight in _home_ a divine as well as a human joy? How can I doubt it, when I thus see the Lord and Jerusalem? Surely the divine mind is the seat of all the pure and righteous sensibilities of the heart, and "the Man Christ Jesus" tells me so. The Lord God of Israel has known, and will know again, the affection that lingers round the homestead of many a family recollection and joy. Such will be Jerusalem, and such the earth itself, the nations, and Israel, in the promised days of the presence and power of the Lord. Faintly traced by the hand, more feebly responded to by the heart. But "yet true," though "surpassing fable." All Scripture, however, shows us that such joy cannot be had on earth, or in the circumstances and history of the world, in their _present_ state, nor till the earth is made the scene of righteousness; and such it is not to be, till the Lord have ridded it of all that offends, and all that does iniquity. _The sword of judgment_ must go before _the throne of glory_. The earth must be cleared of its corruptions, ere it can be a garden of holy, divine delights again. The Gospel is not producing a happy world, or spreading out a garden of Eden. It proposes no such thing, but to take out of the world a people, a heavenly people, for Christ. But the presence of the Lord will make a happy world by-and-by, when that presence can righteously return to it. The close of the Psalms shows us this. Beautiful close! All praise—-untiring, satisfying fruit of lips uttering the joy of a filled heart, and owning the undivided glory of the Blessed One! But this had been preceded by the sorrows of the righteous in an evil world, and then the judgment of that world. For that Book gives the cries of the righteous in an evil world, the joys of the Spirit in the midst of that evil, the varied exercises of the soul by the way, and the end of the righteous in the joy of praise. All, however, forbids the heart from entertaining the thought of joy _in the_ _earth_ till the judgment have cleansed it; the _rest_ is to be prepared for _Solomon_ by the _sword_ of _David_.