Still further, “The building of the wall of it was of jasper.” Christ crucified is the defense and the bulwark of the kingdom. The atonement of Christ is the most powerful argument the Church can use and constitutes its strongest claim upon the reason and heart of men. It is “the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” It is Christ crucified that makes the separation between the kingdom and the circumjacent world. It is not in its ethics that the distinguishing peculiarity of Christianity lies, but in the preaching of the cross. In the opinion of John any other definition of Christianity throws down Christianity’s only wall of safety and separation. Yet there is no exclusiveness about the kingdom. The city has three gates on each of its four sides, facing the four quarters of the globe, that all men may find ready access. “Every several gate is of one pearl”――that pearl of great price which Christ said a man should be willing to sell all that he has to buy, becoming eternally rich by the exchange. Nor is there any narrowness. Its length and breadth and height exceed even those large measurements which Ezekiel thought to be ample enough for the ideal temple he saw. “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise”――all these things belong legitimately to the kingdom. The kings of the earth may “bring their glory and honor into it;” only that which “defileth” or “worketh abomination” or “maketh a lie” is excluded. When once a man in the center of his being is rightly adjusted to the Lamb of God, the center of all being, he may unfold all his powers and give exercise to every faculty of his renewed nature safely, wisely, completely, without fear of infringement upon any other being or of going astray from his Creator. 3. _Negative Characteristics._――Not less remarkable is the negative side of the kingdom, the absence from it of many things with which we are familiar. When an ideal has been attained much that was necessary in the process of attainment falls away as obsolete; the scaffolding which is used in the erection of a building is removed when the building is completed. There is a noticeable avoidance in the closing chapters of the Apocalypse of any reference to the sacraments, to ritual, or to such like means of grace. John saw “no temple therein; for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.” “When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.” When the consummation of the kingdom has been reached the relation of the soul to its Creator shall not be through intermediate agencies, but direct and intuitive.