Many centuries had gone by, and the Temple still stood, after many vicissitudes, in something like its earliest grandeur, and on its ancient site, when Jerusalem, the Holy City, witnessed another and a different scene.
In some humble dwelling, in one of its obscurer streets, a little company of worshippers was gathered together in an upper room. There was no outward splendour there to attract the eye, no imposing rites, no stately ceremonial, no altar, no priest, no ringing burst of melody. A few devoted men and women joining in fervent supplication, nothing more, when " suddenly there came
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66 THE TEMPLE OF LIVING STONES
a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind," and cloven tongues of flame were seen hovering over each of them, and in this baptism of fire every heart was kindled with holy love and zeal, every voice burst forth in accents of adoring wonder and praise. In this outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, in fulfil- ment of the Saviour's promise, and in token of His divine and almighty power, we see the dedication of that spiritual temple which He founded on this earth, we behold the beginning of that Church which is not for one nation, but for all people ; which is not in its essential features outward and visible, but inward, set up in all believing, loving, and obedient hearts ; which is not to continue for a season and pass away, but is to endure for ever, as a kingdom of righteousness, and peace, and joy.
2. The Apostle Peter set himself to try to persuade Jewish Christians that the time had come for the admission of the Gentiles to religious equality with the favoured Jewish nation, and that without submitting to the ceremonial law or taking part in the ceremonial sacrifices which (to the ordinary Jewish apprehension) were the price of their spiritual privileges. And the method he adopted was not to belittle the position of Israel as the chosen people of Jehovah, but to suggest that the old Jewish idea of a chosen people was but a poor analogue or type of the position of the Christian Church, that it was in that purely spiritual but none the less visible and concrete society that there was to be found the real fulfilment of the highest aspirations or predictions of Hebrew prophecy. For him the Christian Church was the spiritual Israel. Nor was the new and Catholic society which was to succeed to the narrow Nation-churches of the ancient world a society which could dispense with those funda- mental institutions of old-world religion — Temple, Priesthood, Sacrifice. The Church itself, the society, was the true temple — the visible, material, local, yet living, habitation, as it were, of Deity. The whole of this society were Priests. And that society of Priests absorbed into itself the religious functions which everywhere in the old world, and especially in ancient Israel, were shared by kings — " a royal priesthood, a holy nation." Nor was the temple without its sacrifice ; for the external animal sacrifices of the old ritual were but a fJiint counterpart of the spiritual
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worship of the new society, the uplifting of will and heart to God, especially in the great act which the ancient Church called the Eucharist or thanksgiving far excellence — itself only a symbol or visible embodiment of the one real and true sacrifice of the will to God in a holy life.
The Temple.
The Apostle has in his mind the great Temple at Jerusalem, esteemed and honoured by the whole Jewish race. And he summons up the vision not only of that vast edifice, but of the separate stones, which he well knew must have passed under the builder's eye. And then by a bold venture of imagination he thinks of these stones as endowed with life, and taking their proper place in the building,
1. The Temple has a foundation. Christ is the chief corner stone. The term " stone " speaks to us of all that is solid, massive, steadfast, strong. It suggests at once ideas of immovable principle and ever-persistent purpose, and of capacity at once to resist and to sustain. We read in it how our Master is " the same, yesterday and to-day, and for ever," in a fixity which the cliffs and crags may picture, but to which all the while they are but as fleeting shadows, as unsubstantial dreams, placed beside Him who is " this same Jesus " for ever.
But then, besides, Christ is the Living Stone. Taken by itself, the rock-metaphor gives us all we want of certainty and strength ; but there is nothing in it of itself to warm the thought and to move the soul to a personal regard. But, behold, He is the Living Stone ; He is strength instinct with glowing life. This foundation, this bulwark, this massy tower, " foursquare to opposition " — look at it again ; it is not it, but He. The Eock has voice, and eyes, and arms, and heart. He lives, all over and all through ; and it is with a life which pours itself out in thought, and sympathy, and help, and love, to the refugee upon the Eock.
^ Here and here only in Holy Scripture is our Lord called the Living Stone. Eepeatedly elsewhere, both in the Old Testament and in the New, we read of Him as the Stone, the