But both St. Peter and St, Paul invariably explain that this holiness in the sense of consecration implies a demand for holiness in the sense of purity of life. " Ye are the temple of God," says St, Paul, " and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy." And so St. Peter, " As he which hath called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living," Your holiness must not be merely "separation for God's service," it must be conformity to God's nature. It must be holiness in the sense in which God can be spoken of as " holy," i.e. perfect, sinless, " Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." The condition of this freedom from
1 R. E. Prothero, The Life of Dean Stanley, ii. 242,
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sin is abiding in Christ and His Spirit, and this is not only possible, but a growing reality which will one day be actual fact of experience.
^ The Tabernacle was holy because it was indwelt by God. Of course there is a sense in which all places are indwelt by God. " Do not I fill heaven and earth ? saith the Lord." But in a very special sense God chose to make the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, for the time being, His local habitation. There it was He mani- fested Himself, as He manifested Himself nowhere else, to man. There it was He held converse with those whom He had appointed as the representatives of man. There it was He accepted the sacrifices which prefigured the great Sacrifice which was to be offered in the end of the world. The Tabernacle was holy because it was indwelt by God. The Church of Christ is holy because she is indwelt by God the Holy Ghost. " The Lord (says the Prophet) shall suddenly come to his temple." May we not say that there was at least one great fulfilment of that prophecy on the day of Pentecost, when God the Holy Ghost suddenly came, and by coming laid the first stones of that great Temple of the living Church of Christ which is the Holy Habitation of the Most High ?
God occupied, if one may say so, but part of the Tabernacle. God the Holy Ghost occupies every part of the Christian Church. At first sight that seems a truism, but it contains a momentous question for every one of us. If God the Holy Ghost occupies every part of the Christian Temple, if the Church of Christ is filled in every corner by God the Holy Ghost, the question arises. Does God the Holy Ghost dwell in me ? If not, then I am not part of that holy temple and I am not part of the Church of God. Let there be no possible mistake ; nothing but the indwelling of God the Holy Ghost can make us parts of the true Church of Christ, of that holy temple which is built up of living stones.^
^ " Ye are in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin ; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness." Wonderful equivalence and exchange ! The Lord leaves not His disciple orphaned ; He comes to him ; He is in him ; He manifests Himself to him, and abides in him. And yet it was expedient that He should go away ; for otherwise the Paraclete would not come. The Paraclete comes ; and behold He mediates and makes for the Christian's soul and self a Presence of the Lord which somehow is better — far better — for the man in this his pilgrimage
^ W. M. Hopkins, The Tabrrnade and its Teaching, 92.
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and tabernacle than even the joy and glory, if it were granted, of his Saviour's corporeal proximity — shall I dare to say than his Saviour's personal indwelling as the Son of Man outside the vehicle of this Presence of the Spirit ?
This sacred mediation of the heavenly Spirit, this conveyance through Him of every blessing of the vital Union, appears every- where in the subject. In the imagery of the Building it is " in the Spirit " that the saints, compacted into their Corner Stone, are "being builded together to be the habitation of God." " Where that Spirit is " — if I may quote words of the Dean of Llandaff — "where that Spirit is, there is the Body, and only there." And so it is when the exercises and actions of the spiritual life — which life is Christ — are spoken of at large. It is " in the Spirit " that the saint — that is to say, the genuine Christian here below — " has access " in Christ unto the Father. It is those who are " led by the Spirit" who "are" in truth and deed, not in a certain sense, but in reality and nature, " the sons of God " in His Son. It is " by the Spirit " that they " mortify," that they continuously do to death, " the deeds of the body," in the power and name of Christ. It is " by the Spirit " that they " walk " in Christ. It is " because of the Spirit dwelling in them " (a truth full of significance as to the nature of the body of the resurrection) that "their mortal body shall be quickened," in the day when their Lord from heaven shall change it into likeness to His own. Of that harvest the indwelling Spirit is the Firstfruits. Of that inheritance He is the Earnest. So the Sevenfold One is sent forth into all the earth, as the Eyes, as the Presence, of the exalted Lamb of the Sacrifice. It is by Him, and by Him alone, that that presence is in the Church, and is in the Christian.^