When we put together all the various passages of Scripture that speak of the Bride of Christ, of that company who are to make up His Bride, we find the teaching to be that they are a chosen company of souls, of both Jews and Gentiles, united in one body of true spiritual Israelites, in whom there is no guile, and also that this elect company is taken out from the great body of the saved of mankind, and is not the entire body, and also it is a company who have special marks upon them of Christlikeness, and who are conformed to Jesus in various points more than the mass of those who are saved, and furthermore it is a company who are especially to share the royalty with Christ in His coming kingdom. All these points will be proved by the multiplied Scriptures which will be presented in these chapters.

I. According to Scripture, there are an earthly and a heavenly Israel. Earthly Israel consists of the twelve tribes of Jacob, who were separated from all other nations, to be God's witnesses to the other nations, and their ministry as such is exclusively confined to this world, and there is not one single passage in the Bible to prove that the office and ministry of the twelve tribes of Israel, according to their fleshly birth, was ever to rise into Heaven, or extend beyond the sphere of this habitable earth.

Moses says, "When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel."� (Deut. 32:8.) That is, God set the twelve tribes of Jacob in the center of all other nations, and made them the key of His dealings with all other nations. And you cannot find any Scripture where the function of the flesh-born tribes of Israel ever extended beyond this earth. Thus the twelve tribes of Israel were espoused to God as His earthly Bride, and in many places in the prophets, God speaks of being a husband to Israel, but always as an earthly people, but when Israel crucified the Son of God, that is, killed her husband, God put her away, even as an earthly spouse, and sought out another people.

Now in connection with this, there is a spiritual Israel belonging to Heaven, a heavenly people, whose function is not only to serve on this earth, but also in Heaven, and in the resurrected and glorified state, and in the future ages. According to the Apostles, the prophet Hosea foretells the gathering out of a spiritual Israel from various peoples of the Gentiles, who had not obtained mercy, in the Mosaic dispensation, but shall obtain mercy in the Church Age.

"At that day, saith the Lord, thou shalt call Me Ishi (that is, my husband); and shall call Me no more Baali (that is, my master). For in that day I will make a covenant with thee, and will betroth thee unto Me for ever in righteousness, and judgment, and lovingkindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto Me in faithfulness: and thou shalt know the Lord. And I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy, and I will say. Thou art My people, and thou shalt say. Thou art my God."� (Hos. 2: 1623.) St. Paul refers to this passage as proving that God will call a true spiritual Israel from the Gentiles, and engraft them on to the true Israelites among the Jews, and make of them one body of heavenly people, the Church of the Firstborn. This is what Paul speaks of as the Church being a mystery, which was hid from other ages, and not revealed until the days of the Apostles. "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light, which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy."� (1 Pet. 2:9, 10.) Here Peter refers also to the prophecies in Hosea and Isaiah about God calling out a people from the Gentiles, true Israelites in heart, and uniting them with the holy ones from the Jews, and so making one body who were to be holy, and also to be royal, and also to be priests, and co-regents with King Jesus in a kingdom, not only on this earth, but extending into Heaven and in the ages to come. Hence it is not Scripture to teach that the Bride of Christ is composed of the earthly, flesh-born twelve tribes of Jacob.

2. In the next place, the Bride of Christ does not comprise all of those who are saved, but a select company out from that body who have been conformed to Christ in His life and sufferings and ministry in a special degree. Everything that God does is done according to pattern, and by number, and by weight, and measure, and when He forms a plan or pattern He never changes it, but goes right on through all ages working according to His own pattern, which is always perfect from the beginning. He first formed Adam of the dust of the ground, and then breathed into him the breath of life, and then put him to sleep, and then took a rib from his side and formed it into a woman, to be Adam's wife.

This is infinitely more than a type, or a poetic illustration. It is a perfect, divine pattern, or rule, by which the Almighty works, and a pattern that never has been, and never will be, changed. Here is the infallible scriptural doctrine, proved by many passages, as to how God forms that chosen company which is to constitute the Lamb's Wife. The Lord Jesus has an earthly human body, taken from the substance of the Virgin Mary, and united with this earthly humanity was the person of God's eternal Son, making one God-man, the second Adam. And then Jesus went down into death, corresponding to the deep sleep God put upon Adam, and then out from the crucifixion of Jesus, and His rent heart, God sends forth the regenerating and sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit to form another body of holy ones, who are to be the companion and co-regent with Christ, walking by His side, sitting with Him in His Messianic throne as a helpmeet, the true, heavenly Eve of the second Adam. Some are teaching that the Church does not form the Bride, but the body of Christ, but the Scriptures teach that the Bride is taken out from the body, and is in the highest sense called the body of Christ, that is, the body from His body, just as Eve was in the highest sense a body for Adam taken from his body. The Scriptures teach that a man is to give supreme honor to his wife, and that she is to be as dear to him as his own body or his own life, which is exactly the way Christ loves and honors the Bridehood saints. Peter says that husbands are to dwell with their wives according to knowledge, and give honor unto them as unto the weaker vessel, that their prayers be not hindered, (i Pet. 3:7.) The teaching that if the Bride of Christ is His body it could not be both the body and the Bride, is contrary to Scripture.

Paul says, "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish for the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the Church, and the Savior of the body, and so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies."� (Eph. 5:23-28.) This proves infallibly that the wife is spoken of as the body of the husband, and he is called the head of the wife's body. And furthermore, it teaches that those who make up the Bride must not only be saved but sanctified in the most thorough degree, and be without spot or wrinkle or blemish, and prepared to be presented to Jesus at His second coming in a glorious or glorified condition.

This proves also that the Bride of Christ is not made up of the flesh-born twelve tribes of Israel but largely of New Testament saints, gathered from the Ephesian Greeks and other Gentiles. Paul says to those converted heathen in Corinth, "I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy, for I have espoused you to one Husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."� (2 Cor. 11:2, 3.) What a flood of light streams forth from this Scripture on the Bridehood saints. You notice these were converted Gentiles, yet Paul affirms they had been espoused as Bridehood saints to Christ for their Husband. Furthermore, he refers back to Eve as the pattern which God made for the Bride of Christ, and warns these saints not to be beguiled by any false teacher, as Adam's spouse had been deceived by the old serpent. So this confirms the truth that the Bridehood saints, who in this life are espoused to Christ, are those who like Eve are taken out of the great body of the saved ones.

3. From the foregoing it seems clear that the Bridehood saints are to be a selection from the selection, but mark you, this selection depends on the saints themselves being willing to choose God's best, and to meet the conditions which are needful for such a place in the coming kingdom. Jesus teaches us that some true worshipers of God may not be in the Bridehood company. "Then came to Him the disciples of John, saying. Why do we fast oft, but Thy disciples fast not? And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber mourn as long as the Bridegroom is with them? but the days will come when the Bridegroom shall be taken from them and then shall they fast."� (Matt. 9: 14, 15.) These disciples of John were the true servants of God, and on their way to Heaven, but they were not in the same rank, at least at that time, that the disciples of Christ were, for Christ affirms that His disciples were children of the bridechamber, and were keeping company with their future Bridegroom, and hence were so happy in that divine courtship and lovemaking that it was practically impossible for them to go mourning and fasting while their divine Lover was visible with them. This demonstrates the various ranks among the saved ones, and that they are not all children of the bridechamber.

A similar lesson may be obtained from the words of John the Baptist, when he said, "I am not the Christ, but am sent before Him. He that hath the Bride is the Bridegroom, but the friend of the Bridegroom, which standeth and heareth Him, rejoiceth greatly because of the Bridegroom's voice. This my joy therefore is fulfilled. He must increase but I must decrease."� John the Baptist was the last of the prophets of the Jewish dispensation, and with his ministry the Mosaic dispensation came to a close. John may himself be in the Bridehood, but officially as a prophet of the Jewish Age he was the friend of the Bridegroom, which proves that the earthly twelve tribes do not constitute the Bride of Christ; because John refers to Jesus as the Bridegroom who was just about to gather out the Bridehood company, and his joy as an Old Testament prophet was made complete at seeing Jesus going forth to gather out the elect saints. We have in Proverbs an inspired description of that heavenly daughter who excels all others in the vast family of God, and who is the Bride. (Prov. 31:10-31.) In these verses there is a perfect description of the Lamb's Wife, covering all the points of excellency in character, in industry, in benevolence, in purity, in affection, in missionary zeal, in rulership, in wisdom, and every quality that belongs to the perfection of an earthly queen or type of the heavenly queen.

"Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all."� The daughters spoken of must refer to the various companies of the saved ones, but the Bridehood saints excel them in all things, so that she is the select one from those who are saved. David teaches us the same thing in Psalm 45. The first half of the Psalm is a most beautiful description of the King, and the second half of the Psalm is just as perfect a description of the Queen, who sits by Christ's side, dressed in the gold of Ophir. We notice in this Psalm that various companies of saved one are referred to, but the Queen is above them all. It says, "Kings' daughters were among thy honorable women,"� and then speaks of the daughter of Tyre bringing gifts, and then speaks of the virgins who are the companions of the Queen, which refer to various ranks of those who are saved in the great kingdom of God, but above them all there sat on the King's right hand the golden-clad Queen, There is also the teaching that she had undergone great suffering, until she had been weaned from her own people and had become dead to earthly affection.

In order to understand verses 10 and 11, where it is said she forgets her own people and her father's house, we must refer back to Deuteronomy 21:10-12, where a Jewish warrior goes forth and captures his enemies from the Gentiles, and among them he selects a beautiful woman to be his wife, but before he marries her she must have ample time to grieve over all her dead relatives, and bewail the loss of her father and mother and all her relatives, until she can forget them in the new love which she has for this Hebrew prince that captured her, and this forms a perfect type of Christ, the Jewish Prince, capturing souls from the Gentiles, and from among them selecting a Bride who is to be perfectly weaned from all of her father Adam's family, and her old earthly loves, in order to be the Bride of her divine Captor.

Another Scripture proving this double selection of the Bridehood saints is found in the Song of Solomon, 6:8, 9; "There are three score queens, and four score concubines, and virgins without number, but above all these, my dove, my undefiled is but one, she is the only one of her mother (that is, the select one), she is the choice one of her that bare her. The daughters saw her and blessed her; yea, the queens praised her."� The court of Solomon was an inspired type of the heavenly kingdom in the coming age, and there queens and countless virgins stand for the various ranks of the saved ones, but out from their number is one designated as the dove, the undefiled, the special or choice daughter of her mother. If we regard the universal Church of God in all generations as being the mother, and the various ranks and companies as being the daughter of that mother, then the Bridehood company is the elect one from all the rest, because she conforms more entirely to the will of God, to the crucifixion of Jesus, to being weaned from the things of earth, to being transformed by the Holy Spirit, and thereby spoken of as the dove, the Bride of the Lamb.