Chin Tong came into the mission school a raw, uncouth, un- responsive Chinaman. Unlike most of his fellows, he was in his person very unclean and unsavory. The teacher to whom he was
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assigned worked with him month after month without making upon him the least apparent impression. One Sunday the text, " If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness," was marked in his New Testament and assigned for the next lesson. When he turned up the following Sabbath the verse was almost obliterated from the page by the incessant movement of his finger back and forth over the lines. One word alone puzzled him, the word "cleanse." However, this was easily explained to one whose daily work was over tubs and ironing-boards. During the next week a young man called twice at the teacher's home, but would not leave his name. When the hour for the Chinese school came round again, the teacher took her seat in the accustomed place. Presently a man in Occidental dress entered and sat down beside her. It was Chin Tong, but so changed as not to be recognizable. His cue was off, his hair shingled, his long finger-nails pared, his face clean as a new coin, his clothes new and well cared for. The text had done its work. " Jesus Christ make me clean inside and outside," he explained. Heart, mind, and person had been transformed.^
II.
Their Privileges.
Their privileges are two : Eight to come to the Tree of Life and Entrance into the City. Now the Tree of Life is in the midst of the Paradise of God, and the Paradise is in the centre of the City of God. So we come first through the gates into the City.
i. Entrance into the City.
The city is the society of the redeemed. In relation to Christ it is spoken of as a bride. In relation to the followers of Christ themselves as a city, the city in which they dwell together. In the old world the whole power and splendour of great kingdoms was gathered in their capitals, Babylon and Nineveh in the past, Kome in the present. To St. John the forces of evil were all concentrated in that city on the Seven Hills. To him the antagonistic forces which were the hope of the world were all concentrated in the real ideal city which he expected to come down from heaven — the New Jerusalem.
^ A. J. Gordon: A Biography, 341.
388 THE PRIVILEGES OF THE BLESSED
What are the characteristics of this city of God into which the blessed of the last Beatitude enter ?
1. It is a city of social activities. — Genesis began with a garden ; man's sin sent him out of the garden. God out of evil evolves good, and for the lost garden comes the better thing, the found city. " Then comes the statelier Eden back to man." For surely it is better that men should live in the activities of the city than in the sweetness and indolence of the garden; and manifold and miserable as are the sins and the sorrows of great cities, the opprobria of our modern so-called civilization, yet still the aggre- gation of great masses of men for worthy objects generates a form of character, and sets loose energies and activities, which no other kind of life could have produced.
^ Why do our citizens appear to care less for London than their citizens care for Florence, or Venice, or Eome, or Pisa ? Is it because we are interested mainly in a few famous thoroughfares and buildings and have never yet begotten a civic patriotism enlightened and powerful enough to care for the back streets and obscure houses ? Are we satisfied if our millionaires are richly housed in Park Lane, that their destitute neighbours should be rack-rented for the use of a cellar in St. Pancras or Soho ? It is the old story. We perish for lack of vision. The cure is to breed citizens who shall be penetrated with the civic ideal. No man with the New Testament in his hand can complain of lack of guidance in the matter of citizenship. Here is Paul, the hero of the Apostolic age, boasting his local patriotism to the city of Tarsus, proud of its commercial and educational traditions ; glory- ing, secondly, in his imperial citizenship, and looking beyond the narrow boundaries of Tarsus to the frontiers of the Eoman Empire to whose civilization and citizenship he was free-born ; and, finally, claiming the supreme privilege of his citizenship to the Kingdom of God, his membership of a society that acknowledges no limitations of race, or tongue, or land, but exists to create a universal brother- hood on the basis of a universal righteousness. There are still thousands of excellent Christians who admire and extol Paul's devotion to the Kingdom of God, who have no use for his local patriotism or his imperial citizenship. Yet the lesser flags do not challenge the supremacy of the august Standard that is the symbol of Christ's universal rule.^
^ In a speech he delivered at the opening of the Manchester
^ C. Silvester Home, Pulpit, Platform and Parliament, 182.
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