1 J. Stalker. 2 A. Mackennal.
i CORINTHIANS vi. 19, 20 201
4. The Temple thus possessed and indwelt by God became the sphere of His manifestation to man, and from thence they learned His law and received His blessing through ordinance and sacrifice. And thus it is with " the Temples of the Spirit " even now. They are the media through whom He chooses to manifest Himself to the world, and their lives in the power of His in- dwelling are set for the life and light of men. Holiness is in itself not an end, but a means to an end, the end being the blessing of others through our lives and labour. Any conception less than this degrades holiness to the level of refined selfishness, and dishonours Him whose name we bear. The "Temples of God " are not self-contained but Christ-communicating, and each by virtue of its existence as such is a centre of unmeasured blessing to the world.
Not in the world of light alone, Where God has built His blazing throne, Nor yet alone in earth below, With belted seas that come and go, And endless isles of sunlit green, Is all thy Maker's glory seen: Look in upon thy wondrous frame — Eterncl wisdom still the same !
The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves Flows murmuring through its hidden caves, Whose streams of brightening purple rush, Fired with a new and livelier blush, While all their burden of decay The ebbing current steals away, And red with Nature's flame they start From the warm fountains of the heart.
No rest that throbbing slave may ask, For ever quivering o'er his task, While far and wide a crimson jet Leaps forth to fill the woven net Which in unnumbered crossing tides The flood of burning life divides, Then, kindling each decaying part, Creeps back to find the throbbing heart.
But warmed with that unchanging flame Behold the outward moving frame,
202 THE BODY FOR GOD
Its living marbles jointed strong With glistening band and silvery thong, And linked to reason's guiding reins By myriad rings in trembling chains, Each graven with the threaded zone Which claims it as the master's own.
See how yon beam of seeming white Is braided out of seven-hued light, Yet in those lucid globes no ray By any chance shall break astray. Hark how the rolling surge of sound, Arches and spirals circling round, Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear With music it is heaven to hear.
Then mark the cloven sphere that holds All thought in its mysterious folds, That feels sensation's faintest thrill, And flashes forth the sovereign will ; Think on the stormy world that dwells Locked in its dim and clustering cells ! The lightning gleams of power it sheds Along its hollow glassy threads!
O Father ! grant Thy love divine To make these mystic temples Thine ! When wasting age and wearying strife Have sapped the leaning walls of life, When darkness gathers over all, And the last tottering pillars fall, Take the poor dust Thy mercy warms, And mould it into heavenly forms!1
III.
The Glory of God in the Body.
1. " Glorify God, therefore, in your body." Do not let us mar the directness of this appeal by imitating the timidity of those later interpreters who read, " Glorify God in your body and in your spirit." There is but one problem in human life, and that is the problem of the body, the organ through which alone life manifests itself, the home of our activities, the seat of our desires.
1 Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Living Temple.
i CORINTHIANS vi. 19, 20 203
" Glorify God in your body " was the straight appeal of one who knew what it was to stand fast in the liberty with which Christ had made him free.
If " Ye are not your own," that is the premise ; " therefore glorify God in your body," that is the conclusion. Between premise and conclusion is builded Calvary. Before God's " there- fore " stands a blood-stained cross and on it hangs the Son of God. If we are God's, all that we own is His. If He owns us, He owns our property. He allows us to own it, that He may control it. If one owns a piece of ground, he owns the grass that grows on it. If God owns us, we are to glorify Him with all that we own. What we are to give Him is to depend, not on our whims and moods, not on what we think we can spare, but on what it takes to glorify Hij^.. He is to have not what we like, but what He likes. This te «he kind of ownership of property society needs to have recognized; not the public, collective ownership of land and capital for which socialism is shrieking; but the Divine ownership of property whose right rests on the claims of creation and redemption.1
If We do not want to have our life divided up into body and spirit, secular and sacred, week-day and Sunday. The devil likes to keep us talking about what we ought not to do on Sunday morning, because none knows better than he that our destinies are really determined by what we do on Saturday night. A few reserves which are labelled " sacred " are the best guarantee that Beelzebub can have for undisturbed possession of the character. " Give me the body " is the cry of every claimant for the citadel of Mansoul, " and let who will have the spirit." 2