We are told twice in the book of Revelation that the city of God is pure gold like unto clear glass, and then we are told in the same chapter that this city is the Bride of the Lamb, composed of sanctified, souls represented by the typical number of one hundred and forty-four thousand. (Compare Revelation, chapter 14 and 21.) Throughout the Scriptures gold is a type of divine character, of God’s holiness imparted to his creatures. God has put into every created thing, into all minerals, and gems, and flowers, and insects, and birds, and animals, a peculiar meaning known only to himself, a divine and beautiful language, which he alone can interpret, and when he condescends to unveil to us the typical significance which lies veiled in all these things, our minds are dazzled with the poetry of infinite wisdom, and our hearts are fed with truth coming to us through so many varied forms. Thus God created gold with just that combination of attributes, in substance, and color, and unalloyableness, to set forth his idea of the incarnation of his own blessed character in created souls, Hence gold is pre-eminently the type of Christ Jesus, that is of God incarnate in humanity, and hence a type of God’s nature imparted to believers through Jesus. Gold is known to exist in three modes of existence, as it exists in the quartz, and then as it exists in commerce and then as it exists in chemistry and science. In   each of these forms it typifies the existence and progress of the divine life in the soul.

1. Gold in the quartz is a type of the Christ-life imparted to the penitent believer in the new birth. In this respect let us notice that gold is created. It is not produced by growth or development from other metals, but was fashioned by an infinite will amid the furnace heats when God wrought in the geological ages. In like manner the changing of a sinner’s heart into a new character is a divine creation. The washing away of our sins, and the reversing and changing of our affections, causing us to hate sin and to love and to long after holiness, is a stupendous act of the Holy Spirit. The life of God is never grown into us, nor developed out of human affection, but an inexpressible miracle of life infused from an uncreated fountain.

In the next place the gold as it exists in the mine or quartz is not amalgamated with other substances, though it is in close proximity to baser metals, and existing in the same lump with rock, or iron, or sand, yet it is always gold, and nothing but gold it never loses its inherent character.

In like manner the Christ-life in the regenerated heart may be surrounded by other and antagonistic moral elements, yet it is never confused or blended with them, but always possesses its peculiar divine character. That which is born of the flesh remains flesh, that is, it can never be turned into the spirit, and that which is born of the Spirit remains spirit, that is, it never degenerates into flesh. So that though the spiritual life be-gotten of the Holy Ghost, may live in proximity with native Adamic evil, yet it is never amalgamated with that evil, but, true to its divine instinct, craves that which is spiritual, and it seeks to have all uncongenial principles expelled from its presence. In the next place the gold in the quartz is just as good an article in itself considered as it ever will be. It is true that it must undergo many processes before it reaches its highest forms of value and utility, yet nevertheless its essence, its inherent worth, will never be changed; it is gold and nothing but gold, and will remain gold as long as the Creator pleases to preserve it.

In like manner the love of God in the heart, the precious Christ-life imparted to the penitent believer is celestial gold, and is just as good an article in itself considered as exists in the heart of an angel or a glorified saint.

The work of sanctification will purge out the unholy and incongruous human sinfulness, and thereby give the Christ-life the whole space of the moral nature, and lift it to higher degrees of power and usefulness, but this sanctifying operation does not change the nature or quality of that holy golden life which comes from God in the new birth. And as gold possesses a certain number of attributes, and certain inherent beauties which can never be changed in their essence or number, whether it exists in the hidden mine or glitters in the crown of a king, the qualities remain the same, so the life of God in the soul, even in its earliest stage, possesses all the attributes and inherent graces, both in number and quality which it ever will possess through eternal ages. The perfect cleansing of a believer does not multiply his Christian graces, but removes the unholy opposites of those graces. Hence nothing in our moral history can surpass the magnitude of that work of grace which forms within us the golden life of the Son of God.

2. Gold in commerce. This is the form in which gold exists in currency and utensils of art and beauty. Now in passing from its original form in the mine to these higher modes of existence, it must pass through certain processes, which have their beautiful counterparts in the processes of transforming grace. In most cases it must be ground or crushed into a fine meal, that it may thereby be liberated from the earthly substances which cling to it. But in this crushing the whole aim is not to crush the gold, but to pulverize the quartz and earthly substances in which the gold is found, in order that the gold may be liberated. This is true of the mixed believer. God must lead him through a process of pulverizing in order to crush the flinty elements in his will, and tempers, and disposition, not with a view of grinding the spiritual life in him, but that the natural Adamic life in the soul, which is hard and cold and uncongenial to God, may be crushed into powder that the Christ-life may be emancipated from it. And as all quartz is not equally hard or flinty, so all believers are not equally stubborn or self-willed, and some will go to pieces under the hammer of God’s word more readily than others. Yet, nevertheless all the Adamic quartz must be ground in order to separate it from the true spiritual life. In the next place the crushed gold quartz must be washed. It is by this washing that even the finest particles of gold are separated from the dust and sand of common rock and earth. This is a beautiful and accurate illustration of the washing of the believer from that earthliness of nature which separates human depravity from the gold of divine grace. No believer reaches the point where he can be washed from all inward sin, until he is first broken down on all the points of his self-will.

It is the mighty hammer of God’s truth, sometimes in the form of law, or in the form of severe judgments, or in the form of searching truth, or in the form of trouble and sorrow; these are but the shapes of God’s flint mills which break down the toughness of our natural wills, and then we are ready for the flood gates of cleansing power to be turned upon us, to wash us from the crushed fragments of our own choices and dispositions and ambitions and carnal desires. It is then that the gold which was given us in the new birth gets liberated from its Adamic mixture. In the next place this washed gold is melted and formed into blocks of pure gold without earthly admixture.

In like manner just as soon as the omnipotent Sanctifier washes out our native quartz and carnal mind by the precious blood of Jesus, the blessed Holy Ghost then melts our whole heart, and understanding, and will, into a warm flow of inexpressible love and sweetness and power. When the Comforter thus comes in, it seems our whole being will dissolve in a furnace of spotless love. All the fountains of our being are broken up and overflow their banks. He then reveals to us that the love in our souls is made perfect, like a block of pure gold. In the next place these blocks of gold are minted into coins, or made into articles of usefulness or beauty, in which state it goes out over the world as the gold of commerce. And so the sanctified believer, after receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit, is minted into divine currency, and into spiritual weapons, and utensils of divine power and beauty, and sent forth among mankind to show forth God’s grace in testimony, in love, in good works, in the enduring of manifold tribulations, and thus the golden life of God is manifested to others, that they also may become transformed and made “partakers of like precious faith.”

3. Gold in chemistry and science. Not until the nineteenth century have scientific men, after many experiments, found the art of refining” gold to that height of perfection and beauty which was affirmed of it in the first century by the Holy Spirit. For generations learned skeptics, in hunting for arguments against the infallibility of God’s word, used the passage in Revelation 21 about gold being “like transparent glass,” as a supposed proof of Scriptural error, they stoutly affirming that gold never was and never could be transparent. But the time came when God had a chemist who experimented with the refining of gold, until he brought it into a state of transparency and found in looking through it that it had a beautiful green color like an emerald. This proved that the science in the Bible is many centuries ahead of the science of men. Water seems colorless, yet in looking into deep, clear water, it presents a green color. So glass seems colorless, yet in looking through very thick glass it reflects a beautiful green tint. And so yellow gold when made transparent refracts the light like a beautiful emerald. To make gold reach this lofty state requires an enormous degree of heat, which in a certain sense glorifies the gold, and purges it from its own self. This is a type of a real process of annealing and furnace-testing through which the Holy Ghost leads those who are the chosen spouse of the Lamb of God. The Scriptures in multiplied forms of teaching set forth the truth that after believers are fully sanctified they are led through processes of severe trials, hot furnace-testings, which put to thorough proof every virtue and every grace of their hearts. There are conflicts with powers of darkness, corresponding with the seven years’ war of the Jews in Canaan. Sometimes like the desolations of Job, or like the imprisonment of Joseph, or like the Spirit-baptized David fighting his way to a throne, or like Daniel in the lion’s den, or like the apostolic sufferings after Pentecost. These extraordinary testings may sometimes be external, or sometimes internal; they may be mostly in the physical nature, in other cases mostly in the mental, in other cases they may be purely spiritual, but in whatever shape the furnace may be, the result that God is aiming at is the same, namely, the complete mellowing, melting, transforming of the whole nature, into a beautiful, celestial transparency and sweetness of Christ-like character. This is the fine art work of the Holy Ghost. When sanctified believers pass through this furnace refinement, they take on a more intensified form, and a more heavenly type of mind than ever before. The work of perfect love is marvelously intensified, and broadened, and made more profound and simple in all its characteristics.

In this state the love of God glows in the heart like a sweet, steady, spicy flame. There are less vicissitudes in the experience. It is a state of wonderful simplicity; everything is transparent. The words are few. A divine stillness pervades the mind, not the stillness of death, but the stillness of a hot summer noon. The understanding is lifted into a divine atmosphere where it sees God in every thing and every event. As looking through gold in this highest state of perfection it seems green, so the mind in this highest state of the sanctified life is in a state of perennial verdure. The Holy Spirit fills the thoughts with the verdure of perpetual spring. The understanding is flooded with divine beauty.

Another trait of this gold is its exquisite softness, so much as to render it unfit for commercial purposes. In like manner the soul under the melting of burning love is filled with an unearthly tenderness. There is a gentleness of speech, and a slow, soft, measured walk with God. Loudness and impetuosity are gone. Harshness of judgment is melted away. The mellowness of a beautiful autumnal ripeness settles down on the whole being.

Another trait of gold in this state is, its incredible expansiveness. A single cubic inch of it we hear can be hammered out to cover several acres of ground, into a veil so thin as to be invisible to the natural eye, and yet with a texture so fine as to hold itself together.

In like manner, the soul that has passed into a real heavenly state of living has an immensity to it in every direction, a vastness of thought, a broadness of charity which envelops the world round and round; a magnitude of delicate sympathy for all sufferers whether human or animal, a keen, far penetrating stretch of vision, which makes the soul feel as if it was standing on some lofty mount of observation scanning with utmost ease all the affairs of earth, and looking out unto the glory lit regions of the heavenly world. These are the crowning qualities of pure gold, and these are the blessed characteristics of those believers who are to compose that living, portable city which is the Lamb’s wife.