Serving the city.
A militia, selected from all the tribes of Israel, is to be marshaled as the garrison of Jerusalem. Thus representatives of the whole nation are to have a share in the service of the city.
I. MEN SERVE GOD BY SERVING MAN. They who serve the royal city serve the king. If we love not our brethren whom we have seen, we cannot love God whom we have not seen (1 John 4:20). But a true-hearted love for God must inspire practical love for man. Obedience to the two great commandments is one common experience in the heart of the servant of God. It is a mistake that any should urge "the service -f man" as a new religion for the age; this is the true ritual of the old religion of Christ (James 1:27). There is no Christianity without it. Christianity is most vigorous and fruitful when ministries of active benevolence are most vigorously maintained. Jesus was the Son of man, who "went about doing good."
II. ALL CLASSES SHOULD TAKE PART IN THE SERVICE OF MAN. The one tribe of Levi was told off for the service of the temple; but every tribe was to he represented in the city guard. The special work of the Christian ministry devolves upon those who are specially adapted to it, and called by God to devote their lives to it. It is not every Christian who is required to occupy the post of a minister of a Church or to go out as a missionary to foreign lands. But every man, woman, and child should take part in the Christian work of helping others. Every class in society, every order of mind, every gift, faculty, and opportunity can and should be used for this wide and varied service.
III. A CITY HAS PECULIAR CLAIMS ON CHRISTIAN SERVICE. Jerusalem was to be specially provided for as the capital of the land. The metropolis needs to be carefully guarded. But every city has its claims. These depend on several considerations.
1. Great needs. A city is a heterogeneous collection of human beings. The energetic are attracted and the helpless are drifted there. In the city human life is lived at its best and at its worst. The poverty, the vice, the degradation, that haunt the purlieus of great cities call for especial attention. The enemies that now attack our cities are not armed men besieging after the old style. But strong drink; gambling; profligacy; cruel oppression of workpeople; fierce competition among traders; selfish inconsiderateness on the part of the public, making this competition almost a necessity of life; overcrowding, rendering common decency a physical impossibility, and infant mortality a frequent occurrence; the tremendously rapid growth of the centers of population overtaking the means of Christian work; the obscurity and loneliness of life in a crowd permitting the unfortunate to perish unheeded;—these and other characteristic circumstances of modem city life call for redoubled energy on the part of all Christian people in great fields of work. Christ concentrated his ministry on the densely populated regions round about the Sea of Galilee.
2. Great influence. A city is a center of influence to all the region round about. The metropolis is the heart of the nation. If there is righteousness in the center, righteousness may flow through all the national life. Christianity, which came as a cosmopolitan religion, manifested from the first metropolitan affinities. The apostles concentrated their labors to a great extent on the principal cities of the empire—Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Corinth, Athens, Rome. The country-people were more slow to receive the gospel, and thus the names "pagan" and "heathen" came to stand for "non-Christian." It will be a bad thing for Christendom if the cities are lost to Christ.