244 



THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



the altars, the sacrifices, the festivals, the Hebrew Chris- 

 tians could still enjoy all that was most precious and 

 enduring in the possessions of their race. In losing the 

 temple and its services, they lost only the visible symbols 

 of the true atonement for sin and of spiritual access to 

 God ; and they found in the Christian Church a more 

 satisfying communion with eternal things than their 

 fathers had ever found in the tabernacle and temple. 

 And the modification in the old form which the 

 Apostle beheld was itself full of significance. The single 

 candlestick of pure gold, whose light illumined the holy 

 place which was the pattern of the Church upon earth, 

 appeared before John in the darkness and loneliness of 

 his exile, multiplied into seven distinct candlesticks, as 

 if each branch of the prototype had become a separate 

 candlestick ; in token that the original Jewish Church, 

 which was one the Church of a single people had 

 differentiated into the Christia'n Church, which while one 

 as to its unity of faith and love, is also many as regards 

 its organization and individual life, the Church of all 

 nations and peoples and tribes and tongues. The in- 

 crease of lights, seven being the number of mystical 

 completeness, indicated the enlargement of the concep- 

 tion of the Church, the removal of the narrow boundaries 

 and restrictions which so long confined God's revelation 

 to one people and one country. And the fact that the 

 seven candlesticks were seen in vision, not in the holy 

 place of the temple where the Jewish candlestick stood, 

 not confined within the walls of the Jewish sanctuary, 

 but in the open air, under the broad heavens and sur- 



