Numerical Bible Notes

The city then is the natural product of this need; but while it is almost necessarily thus the product of man's thought, there is in it a divine meaning which eternity itself will recognize in the fullest way. Yet man anticipated God as to it, and such an anticipation is ever found to be without God, and to have, therefore, all the terrible characteristics of this. Those who would not scatter, when that was God's mind, remained but to build up Babel. Yet man finds the help he seeks. "As iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." The bringing of men together favors this; and even the more diverse such men are, the more may this help be manifested — struck out, as one may say, even from the collision of contrasted attributes. Thus in the city we find, as a rule, the ripest fruits of man's efforts, and always, perhaps, his ripest wisdom, but in evil as well as good. And, alas, with man such as he is, selfish ends dominate too largely to make the coming together wholly good. Rather is there oftentimes, as we know, the most manifest and fullest debasement in this way. What spectacles are men's cities of vice and poverty, as, on the other hand, of man's achievements! Cain builds his city; and his posterity show the aptitudes which are developed in such combinations as the city manifests. But it is plain that morally the development is but a degeneration. On the other hand, in the final future, the city will manifest God's hand in it — God's hand in our individual necessities themselves; in our various adaptation to one another; in our various ability to help one another. Love is the spirit of help, and, where true, manifests the divine nature. How blessed to know that His own ministry of love to us all is to be reflected in our ways with one another. The city of God stands over against the city of man, contrasted, yet resembling. Jerusalem here gives us, in a sense, both sides of this — city of God, as in His thought and desire city of man, as he but too surely makes it. Jerusalem, then, is but Israel herself in full development.