

xin. THE GATES OF PEARL. 227 



most charitable and hopeful picture to themselves is a 

 miserably little one. We need, indeed, the vision of 

 the vast heavenly city with its twelve gates pointing 

 to every part of the compass, and its multitude, which 

 no man can number, out of every nation to correct 

 our narrow, selfish judgments of men, and to enlarge 

 our hopes of the destiny of the race. 



That vision is the highest illustration of the teaching 

 of Scripture by precept and example, that God is no 

 respecter of persons. It confirms what the Word of 

 God uniformly declares, that the True Light lighteth 

 every man that cometh into the world, and makes Him- 

 self known even in the midst of the most profound 

 moral darkness, and keeps hold of the most unlikely 

 human hearts by cords of a man unknown to us. God 

 has everywhere, even in the vilest dens of ignorance 

 and sin, heaven-sunned natures ; men and women 

 who keep by some blind love or instinct a portion 

 -of heaven in the midst of all that shrouds and 

 shuts out heaven, who have some good thing towards 

 God in their hearts, some gentle thing towards men 

 in their conduct, by means of which God is purify- 

 ing and drawing them to Himself. And we know that 

 there are men and women who develop even from an 

 unsound creed and corrupt circumstances a beautiful 

 faith and a fragrant life as the pure lily grows out of 

 the vile mud, or the exquisite blossoms of a tropical 

 orchid spring from roots adhering to the rotten trunk 

 of a fallen tree. Christ proclaimed to the Jews, what 

 He is still proclaiming to Christians, "Other sheep I 



