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(Mal. iv. 6.) And when He came near, He beheld the city and wept over it; He went into the temple, and cast out the buyers and the sellers and the money changers, as a type and signal of that still more fearful clearing of His Temple, when He laid Jerusalem even with the ground, and her children within her, and gave the privileges of His chosen to the Gentile world. Such fearful vengeance was taken of those who "refused Him that spake on earth;" how then "shall we escape if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven?"—we, who have "received the kingdom which cannot be moved;" who are come not to Horeb, but unto Mount Sion, "unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jernsalem." Surely it becomes us to listen to the affectionate warnings of the Church, as she awakens us from our slumber, and recounts our high duties and our inestimable privileges.
2. In the services of the Second Sunday we have the first great privilege of the Church brought before us, viz. that in the Church we have preserved to us those Holy Scriptures, in which is set before us "the blessed hope of everlasting life." "The promises made to the fathers" have now been fulfilled; and as they "through patience and comfort of the Scriptures" had "hope" of Christ's first coming, and through Him of life and immortality, so we, having the same sure word of prophecy, may look onward to the day of the Church's final redemption, and anticipating that coming of Christ's kingdom for which we daily pray, and that "life everlasting," in which we daily profess our belief, may "abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost." Meanwhile the influence which Holy Scripture is intended to have upon the Christian Church, is strikingly put before us in the context of the Epistle. St. Paul has been enforcing the duty of mutual forbearance by the argument of Christ's example; "for even Christ pleased not Himself.… Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be like-minded one towards another, according to Christ Jesus; that ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Wherefore receive 'ye one another, as Christ also received us, to the glory of God.'" The faith of the Holy Catholic Church, grounded upon God's "Holy Word," is the bond of unity; a link which so binds together the congregation of the faithful every where, that there is but "one
