3. Tlie actual is ever approximating to the ideal. — The work keeps moving on. Just as, when any great building is being erected, you see here and there the different workmen engaged with the particular portion which devolves upon them, so it is with the holy temple St. Paul speaks of in the text. The ministers and stewards of God's mysteries are doing their work in the particular part of the spiritual building assigned to them. One may have his work to do in a part of the building where a skilled and superior workman is required; another in a more humble place, though it too is necessary for the perfection of the whole ; some have to chisel wealth into stones meet for the Master's use; some to chip off the excrescences of intellect, in
^ Bishop H. 0. G. Moule, All in Christ, 171. EPH.-COL. — G
82 SPIRITUAL ARCHITECTURE
order that the stones may fit into the walls of God's building; some have, with ruder hands, to blast the rocks of ignorance and prejudice, and to be content to leave the polished corners of the temple to more experienced hands. But you see, all the while the building is growing ; it is rising higher and higher ; and as we see more activity, more zeal, more earnestness in the cause of this building of God, we know that Satan trembles ; because every living stone in the spiritual building, which is precious in the eyes of the great Architect of the Universe, is a stone rescued from the ruins of the world, destined to have its final place amongst those of which the Lord speaks, when He says, " They shall be mine, when I make up my jewels."
^ We did not speak of the " higher life," nor of a " beautiful Christian," for this way of putting it would not have been in keeping with the genius of Drumtochty. Religion there was very lowly and modest — an inward walk with God. No man boasted of himself, none told the secrets of the soul. But the Glen took notice of its saints, and did them silent reverence, which they themselves never knew.^
^ "We call to mind the beautiful description by Tennyson of that mysterious city which Gareth and those with him beheld through the mist. They pronounced it "a city of enchanters," and it was told them concerning its builders —
They came from out a sacred mountain-cleft Toward the sunrise, each with harp in hand, And built it to the music of their harps.
For an ye heard a music, like enow
They are building still, seeing the city is built
To music, therefore never built at all,
And therefore built for ever.
III.
The Use of the Building.
1. It is to he " a habitation of God in the Spirit." — God is to be the occupant of the Temple. Here is the eternal destiny of the true Church of God. It is not only that it is to be " saved ^ Ian Maclaren, Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush,
EPHESIANS II. 20-22 Ss
in Christ for ever," ineflable as is the wonder of that fact. It is not only that it is "to enjoy God fully for ever," though that amazing prospect is so amply and definitely revealed. It is to be a holy Sanctuary, a Shrine, a Divine Presence - Chamber, a permanent Habitation of God. In measure, the wonderful fact has already begun to be ; already He dwells in His people, and walks in them ; already the eternal Son resides in the very heart of the true member of the Church, by faith. But all this is as when some building, planned already by the master in its final glory, is slowly rising, and beginning to show, amidst fragments and dust and the noise of the workmen, some hints and outlines of what it is to be ; the owner, the intending dweller in it, walks in and out amidst the vast beginnings, and perhaps rests and shelters himself under the unfinished walls and roofs. It will be otherwise when the last stone is in place, and the last splendid equipment of the chambers is completed, and he receives his admiring friends in the banquet-chamber, and shines out amidst the shining of his palace, himself the central splendour of it in all his dignity of wealth and welcome. So it is with the saints, and with their common life as the Church of God. Wonderful are the beginnings. Amidst all the apparent confus- ions of the field where the building is in progress, its form and scale begin to show themselves, across the perspective of centuries and continents. And when the stones already in place are scrutinized, it is found that each of them is a miniature of the whole; a shrine, a home of the presence of the Lord, by faith. But a day of inauguration is drawing on when " we shall see greater things than these." Then the Divine indwelling in each " living stone " will be complete and ideal, " for sinners there are saints indeed." And as for the community, it will cohere and be one thing with a unity and symmetry unimaginable now.
There all the millions of His saints
Shall in one song unite, And each the bliss of all shall view