MOUNT, MOUNT OF THE LORD
We find the church of Christ continually distinguished by this name in the Old Testament Scripture, and as such we cannot pass it over without some attention to the subject; otherwise the name itself is too familiar to every reader to require explanation. In allusion to the times of the gospel, the Holy Ghost, by his servants the prophets, pointed to the church under these figures.--"It shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the tops of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hill,, and all nations shall flow unto it." So proclaimed both Isaiah and Micah, Isaiah 2:2; Micah 4:1. So Zechariah 8:3. "Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth, and the mountain of the Lord of hosts the holy mountain." And the gospel itself, with all its blessings, is described under the figurative language of a rich feast in the Lord's holy mountain." (Isaiah 25:6-7.)
The church, in allusion to the same, and looking forward to the coming of Christ, in a high and beautiful, strain of imagery, saith, "Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountains of myrrh, and to the hill of frankincense." The mountain of myrrh can mean no other than the Lord's house, the church of Jesus. And the expression of myrrh is beautifully adopted to denote Christ's sufferings on the mount, when his sacred body was bruised, and the fragrance of his merits became like the rich perfume of myrrh and frankincense which grew there. And if, as some think, that both these figures of the mountain of myrrh, and hill of frankincense, have peculiar reference to the mount Moriah, where Isaac was intentionally offered up a type of Christ, the figure is striking and just indeed. And what it is to the church at large, such is it to every child of God during the dark shades of night, until the day of the renewed life breaks in upon the soul at conversion.
Oh, that the Lord may graciously enable every one of this description to say with the church, Until the day of grace break, and the shadows flee away, I will get me to the mountain, the church, there the myrrh of Christ's fragrancy in sufferings will refresh me, until the day of glory and the everlasting light, unmixed with the shades of night, shall break in upon my soul, and I shall then dwell in the everlasting mountain of the house of God for ever! Amen.
Perhaps the reader will be pleased to behold the several most remarkable mountains of Scripture brought into, one point of view. I shall not arrange them according to the order in which they stand in the Bible, but, for the better apprehension and memory, in alphabetical order, together with references to the Scriptures where the account of them may be seen. (NOTE: These are in the next entries)