SUNDAY COLUMN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 51, 1 March 1913, Page 7

SUNDAY COLUMN.

THE CITY WITH TWELVE GATES. “And he carried me away in the spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, Inning twelve gates, on the east w ere three gates, and on the north three gates, and on the soutJi three gates, and on the west three gates.”—Kev. 21:1U-12. The twelve gates suggest to me this truth, that men enter the Kingdom hy different ways. All roads lead to London, we say. There are scores of ways into the metropolis. You may enter it from any number of different points. So these twelve gates suggest that there are many ways into the city. Starting from various points these roads converge on the heavenly Zion and meet there. Men may travel different ways and reach the same destination at the fast. This is a truth we are apt to forget.We are prone to think our way is the only way. But there are twelve gates to the city, and men who have not travelled an inch of road together may meet at the throne. I. .Men find Christ by different expel iences. The spiritual history of no two people is exactly alike. If the spiritual history of all Christian people could be set down for us to sec, what infinite variety of religious experience there w r ould appear. In what a multitude of ways, it would be discovered, wo had been brought to Christ! But the danger we are always in is that of making one type of experience the rule, and thinking that no one who has not been can bo truly and soundly converted. For instance, a great many men’s religious life has begun with an overwhelming and subduing conviction of sin. In the great Evangelical Revival, John Wesley made a point of beginning his sermons with what the Scotch would call “Law-work.” He preached sin and its penalty and exhorted his hearers to ffce from the wrath to come. Speaking to an England that was sunk in gross vice and sin, John Wesley’s ministry was an urgent and vehement call to repentence. He invited his congregations to come to Christ via the penitent form, and thousands and tens of thousands did so and found life to their souls. But we have no right to say that the penitent form is the only way into the kingdom. Indeed, I will make bold to say there are many who ought not to enter the kingdom in that way! We. have a right to expect heart-breaking penitence, a convulsion of the nature, from the kind of people to whom John Wesley preached, men who had fallen lowin vice and sin; but surely we have no'right to expect it from children of Christian homes who have been brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Conversion is one way to the city. You see the point I am trying to make. Men may get hold of the same boon by different methods. “With a great price bought I this freedom,” said Claudius Lysias to Paul about his Roman citizenship. “But I,” answered the Apostle, “was free born.” They enjoyed the same privilege, but the one had received it by purchase and the other by inheritance. And it may be like that with the kingdom. Our Lord Himself has said so. He has told us in His parables of the treasure and the pearl that one man may only find salvation after long and painful search; another may, so to speak, stumble across it and find it without difficulty of any kind. There are men who only find their peace and rest after passing through seas of trouble and dark nights of doubt—men like F. W. Robertson and G. J. Romanes. They enter by the northern gate. There are others who are, as Mr Gladstone said of Arthur Hallam, “naturally Christian.” They enter by the eastern or southern gate. Paul found Christ through that blinding lightning flash that laid him low on the way to Damascus. Timothy found his way into the kingdom through the teaching of his mother and grandmother. There is no one stereotyped method of findipg salvation. There are diversities of operation hut the same spirit. As Christina Rossetti puts it;—

Home by different ways. Yet all Homeward bound thro’ prayer and praise, Young and old and great and small, Home by different ways. For the city of God has twelve gates, on the oast three gates, and on the north three gates, and on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. IT. And may I add as a kindred and almost parallel thought that men come into the kingdom, not only Indifferent experiences, but out of man - churches. We believe that in every communion there are those who love the Lord Jesus Christ, and that out cv every church men will find their way to the City. Let no one deceive yo,. into believing there is only one gate into the city—whether that gate lathe Roman gate, or the Anglican gate, or the Plymouth Brethren gate. Ther are twelve gates. There is no one divinely appointed church which is tin sole channel of grace. Out of all the churches God’s redeemed will c" ic. It may be mingled with a little she. nc —the joy of heaven—that we did not recognise one another as ieibnv ctizens down here. But it will he one of the joys of heaven, reve: Knl. s. that we shall meet in the < ity men who travelled Ity other ways. We all meet Bernard and Francis and a Kenpis and Xavier. We shall meet Gnc:;g Herbert and Bishop Andrews, and i,il Hum Law and Bishop Ken. V> e anal; meet John Knox and Samuel Rutncr ford, John Bunyan and Richard Bn), tor. They travelled hy different way: They entered by different gates, but

we shall all meet before the throne. Hear fellow citizens they greet Of every age, of every clime; For dwellers in one city meet, Strange voices raise one song sublime. The communion of saints is marred and broken here on earth by sectarian divisions and narrowness. But th_e remembrance of the twelve gates will preserve us from intolerance and uncharitableness. Romanists, Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists —we may travel by different ways, but we shall sit together in the Kingdom of God.