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within the cloud upon the mercy-seat; that it consisted not in that which man offered, however rare, but in that which God gave—His own presence. It was left for our Lord to complete the lesson. Many another might have told his hearers that "neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem" should they "worship the Father." He alone could proclaim the fulness of the spiritual truth: from other lips it would have sounded cheerless, abstract, negative, the withdrawal of a covenanted privilege, of a long-possessed blessing: He could speak it, because He had brought wherewith to fill the place which He made empty. He who was God with men, whose Manhood was "this temple," which man would destroy, but Himself would build among men, who could promise that He would be always to the end with his people, so that where two or three were gathered in His name there would He be in the midst of them, who could send down the Spirit of God to make a living temple of the company of the faithful,—He and He alone could announce the end of the special worship on the "holy Hill of Zion" not as a loss, but as a gain, not as a withdrawal, but as a crowning blessing, not as negative and cheerless, but as an intensely positive and stimulating truth. The doctrine that God is a Spirit could be perfectly accepted when it came from the lips of God made man. The purest truth of spiritual worship could be endured when in the light of
