THE UNMIXED GARMENT.

It is only when we are flooded with the full spiritual light promised in the New Testament, that we can pierce the manifold vails of the Old Testament, and discover not only a wondrous beauty, but a forceful application of its truths to our hearts. Even the things in ceremonial and Jewish life, which some think have no connection with Christian life, have in reality a more powerful spiritual application to Christians of to day than to the Jews of those ancient times. That which applied so strictly to a Jew's outer life, applies with equal or superior strictness to a Christian's inner spiritual life. We are to have the inner circumcision of heart, the cutting off of the carnal mind, of which their outward circumcision (the cutting off of flesh) was a type. They had an external and visible leaving of slavery in Egypt, and crossing of the Jordan into the Holy Land; we are to have an interior and spiritual leaving of the bondage of Satan, and a spiritual crossing of Jordan into the domain of holiness. And just in so far as the things of the soul surpass those of the body, so far do the things of the Old Testament apply to us interiorly more than to the Jews exteriorly. We may find an illustration of this truth in the unmixed garment of the Jewish ceremonial law. "Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woolen and linen together." — Deut. xxii. 11. Such a command may seem very strange to us, that they were not to mix wool and linen in the same garment, but it shows us the infinite care God has over the smallest interests of his people; it shows, also, that God sees an infinite fitness of things which is too fine for our gross minds. Wool is an animal product, linen is a vegetable product; they come from two separate kingdoms in nature. This Scripture has its only true and pre-eminent meaning when applied to the inner moral robing of Christians. We are not to have our souls' garniture mixed, partly of the wool of carnality and partly of the linen of spirituality. Grant that the great majority of believers — or, more strictly, half-believers — are sadly mixed in their religious character and experience; grant, also, that every Christian is mixed — partly spiritual and partly carnal — in the first stage of grace, yet the only and universal standard in the Bible is unmixedness of moral character. The old antinomian idea of dragging two moral natures all through life, is not taught in any Scripture, and is preached from the grossest perversions of Scripture. We are not to weave our religion from products of separate kingdoms — as the double-nature teachers would have us. In our prayers, affections, motives, faith, and good works, we are not be partly selfish and partly Christly; not part earth and part heaven, wool and linen tangled and mixed in the soul-life; but unmixed, pure, holy, in all the piece. "When the priests minister in the inner court, they shall be clothed with linen garments; no wool shall come upon them while they minister in the inner court and within; they shall not gird themselves with anything that causeth sweat." — Ezek. xliv. 17, 18. Here we have the thought of unmixedness of moral robing carried to a still higher pitch of emphasis. In the first passage, we see no prohibition of woolen garments, but only the wool and linen should not be mingled in the same garment (see Lev. xix. 19); but in this passage, we see that on entering the inner court within the vail they were to wear no woolen garments, but to be clothed throughout with unmixed linen. This old text is most emphatically fulfilled in the inner life of sanctified Christians.

We can enter the "inner court" of communion, the holy of holies of perfect love, only upon this old prophetic condition, that we lay aside from our hearts all woolen, carnal vestiges, and put on the linen of unmixed submission and faith, in which there is no mingling of earth or self.

"They shall not gird themselves with anything that causeth sweat." In warm climates, woolen clothes excite and overheat the flesh: and for a subject to stand in the presence of his monarch, excited, overheated, in a perspiration, would be very unseemly. As wool sweats the body, so the elements of the carnal mind fret and overtax the life of the imperfect believer. Sweat is the badge of bondage and the effect of slave-service. (Gen. iii. 19.)

Just so long as any carnal robes hang around the believer's spirit, he will have soul-sweat in his serving; there will be the inward chafing of his carnal nature against his religious life, causing sweat; his very worship will have drudgery in it. God bids us lay apart every vestment of soul that chafes, frets, burdens, confuses or over strains us in his sweet service. "And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white; for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints." — Rev. xix. 8.

We see nothing here about this being the personal righteousness of Christ imputed to these saints; the fine linen was the righteousness of saints, righteousness wrought in them by the Holy Spirit through faith. In this text there is not even an allusion to the woolen mixture. Long ago the last carnal garment has been purged out; they have long been accustoming them selves to the pure linen of unmixed habits of spirituality, and the time has at last come for their inner mantle of holiness to be manifested to admiring worlds, for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.