I.
The Materials of the Building.
The Temple of God is made up of " the blessed company of all faithful people," the apostles and prophets being the foundation,
* Henry Ward Beecher.
EPHESIANS II. 20-22 71
and Christ Himself the chief corner-stone. This is that one body into which we are all baptized by one spirit. This is the society for which Christ prayed that they might be " all one."
^ A few years ago I spent an evening at a meeting called for the purpose of deepening the spiritual life. It was a meeting of great power and blessing. That same night a dream came which fixed itself vividly on my mind. I stood on a rocky promontory overlooking a terrible chasm. Spanning the chasm, from one rocky side to the other, was a bridge of the most dazzling beauty, exquisite in design and workmanship, and built of the most costly material. As I stood in awe and wonder, I exclaimed, " How glorious ! " No sooner had I spoken than a voice at my side, in tones of reproach, said : " You see only its beauty. Look again and see its size. That bridge is large enough to carry across in safety the entire human race." Again I looked, and lo ! the bridge, albeit the most beautiful thing my eyes had ever seen, was so wide and so strong that the whole race might have crossed over it.^
1. Where do the materials come from ? The stones for this building are dug out of that vast quarry of sinful humanity of which Ephesus formed a part. "In whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit."
\y^^ A quaint old legend runs thus : Proceeding from a pile of material which had been left as rubbish, after a great building had been erected, a voice was heard shouting, " G-lory ! glory ! " A passer-by, attracted by the rejoicing, stopped to know the cause ; and found that the voice came from a mass of marble half covered with dust and rubbish. He brushed away the dirt, and said —
" What are you shouting for ? There is surely little glory to you in the rubbish heap."
" No," said the marble, " not much glory now, that is true ; but Michael Angelo has just passed by, and I heard him say, ' I see an augel in that stone.' And he has gone away for his mallets and chisels, and he is coming back to carve out the angel."
And the stone went off again in an ecstasy, shouting, " Glory ! glory! glory!"
Humanity was like that stone in the rubbish heap — broken, unclean, useless ; but the great Sculptor saw it, and He wondered that there was no one to help. As Angelo saw the angel in that stone, so God sees the image of His Son in the human wreck. Jesus would not have died for us had it been otherwise. To His
^ C. B. Keenleyside, God's Fellow- Workers, 31.
72 SPIRITUAL ARCHITECTURE
eye, the flower is in the bud, the fruit in the blossom, the butterfly in the grub, the saint in the sinner, and the hero in the rustic. The grace of God carved a Miiller out of the family scapegrace, a Pastor Hsi out of the ruined opium fiend, a John B. Gough out of the bar-room wreck.^
^ Exclusive of animal decay, we can hardly arrive at a more absolute type of impurity than the mud or slime of a damp, over- trodden path in the outskirts of a manufacturing town. I do not say mud of the road, because that is mixed with animal refuse ; but take merely an ounce or two of the blackest slime of a beaten footpath on a rainy day, near a large manufacturing town.
That slime we shall find in most cases composed of clay (or brickdust, which is burnt clay) mixed with soot, a little sand, and water. All these elements are at helpless war with each other, and destroy reciprocally each other's nature and power, competing and fighting for place at every tread of your foot — sand squeezing out clay, and clay squeezing out water, and soot meddling every- where and defiling the whole. Let us suppose that this ounce of mud is left in perfect rest, and that its elements gather together, like to like, so that their atoms may get into the closest relations possible.
Let the clay begin. Bidding itself of all foreign substance, it gradually becomes a white earth, already very beautiful ; and fit, with help of congealing fire, to be made into finest porcelain, and painted on, and be kept in kings' palaces. But such artificial consistence is not its best. Leave it still quiet to follow its own instinct of unity, and it becomes not only white, but clear ; not only clear, but hard ; nor only clear and hard, but 80 set that it can deal with light in a wonderful way, and gather out of it the loveliest blue rays only, refusing the rest. We call it then a sapphire.
Such being the consummation of the clay, we give similar permission of quiet to the sand. It also becomes, first, a white earth, then proceeds to grow clear and hard, and at last arranges itself in mysterious, infinitely fine, parallel lines, which have the power of reflecting not merely the blue rays, but the blue, green, purple, and red rays in the greatest beauty in which they can be seen through any hard material whatsoever. We call it then an opal.