A last thought here is that the divine remembrance works all things, to realise a great ideal end, as yet unreached.
Thy walls are continually before Me.' When this prophecy was uttered the Israelites were in captivity, and the city was a wilderness, the holy and beautiful House '--as this very book says--where the fathers praised Thee was burned with fire,' the walls were broken down, rubbish and solitude were there. Yet on the palms of God's hands were inscribed the walls which were nowhere else! They were before Him,' though Jerusalem was a ruin. What does that mean? It means that that divine remembrance sees things that are not, as though they were.' In the midst of the imperfect reality of the present condition of the Church as a whole, and of us, its actual components, it sees the ideal, the perfect vision of the perfect future, and all the wonder that shall be.' Zion may be desolate, but before Him' stands what will one day stand on the earth before all men, the new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven,' having walls great and high, and its foundations garnished with all manner of precious stones. Thy walls are before Me,' though the ruins are there before men.
So, brethren, the most radiant optimism is the only fitting attitude for Christian people in looking into the future, either of the Church as a whole, or of themselves as individual members of it. God's hand is working for Zion and for me. It is guided by love that does not lose the individual in the mass, nor ever forgets any of its children, and it works towards the attainment of unattained perfection. This Man' does not begin to build and prove not able to finish.'
So let us be sure that, if only we keep ourselves in the love, and continue in the grace of God, He will not slack nor stay His hand on which Zion is graven, until it has perfected that which concerneth us,' and fulfilled to each of us that which He has spoken to us of.'
I said at the beginning of these remarks that God did what He bids us do. God bids us do what He does. His name should be on our hands; that is to say, memory of Him, love of Him, regard to Him, confidence in Him should mould and guide all our activity, and the aim that we shall be builded up for a habitation of God through the Spirit should be the conscious aim of our lives, as it is the aim which He has in view in all His dealings with us. Our names on His hand; His name on our hands; so shall we be blessed.
