The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Peter — Section 95

approach of the soul to Christ, and we IJuch when, with the reliance of our whole nature, we grasp his cross, and him who died on it, as our only Foundation. But that act of faith must be continuous, if we o.re to draw life from him in an unbroken stream. 'l'he form of expression in the Greek shows that the "coming" is not an act done once for all, but one constantly repeated. The grace drawn from Christ in a moment of active faith cannot be stored up for use ill a time whell faith has fallen asleep. As soon as wo cease to draw near to him, the flow stops. There must be a present faith for a present blessing. Let us, then, rely on 110 past acts of devout emotion, but hourly renew our conscious faith, and seek to nestle closer to his side, from whom all our life aud all its hopes and joys, with all its goodness and power, proceed. So shall there rise up into us, from the living Root, the sap which shall produce ill us flowers alld abiding fruit. So shall there be one life in him and ill us.-A. M. Ver. 5.-Temple, priest, sacrifice. Temple, priest, sacrifice-these three are the con- stituents of worship, as the world knew it before Christ. He i~ the reality, felt after by heathenism in its rites, shadowed by Judaism in its ceremonies. A universal want is unconsciously confessed by the former; a Divine satisfaction of it is prophesied by the latter. But not only does Christ in his own Person and work supply these three to men; he also makes those who come to him by faith all these in a real though derived and subordinate manner; they, too, become temple, priest, and sacrifice. Christianity lifts the externals of sacrificial religion into a higher sphere, and does away with the symbols, because it brings the realities. Whether the first readers of this letter were Jewish or Gentile Christians, they must have felt the bareness of their new worship as contrasted with the elaborate rituals of their former faiths, and have especially needed the insight into their real dignity which these words eupply. Perbap~ this age needs the lesson not less, though for different reasons. Let us simply look at these three aspects of the ideal Christian character. I. CHRIST IS THE TRUE TEMPLE; WE DECOME A TEMPLE THROUGH mM. The temple is the dwelling-place of Deity, The need for it arises from man's weakness, which cannot grasp the pure spirituality of the Divine nature, but has to aid its conceptions by localizing God, and still more from man's sin, which to his own consciousness bas profaned the world, and cannot bear the thought of God's dwelling among the foulness of everyday abodes. Christ is all which temples shadowed. The temple was the dwelling-place of Deity, and in him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. It was the place of meeting between God and man, and in him we draw near to the God who in him has drawn near to us. It was the place of sacrifice, and in bis flesh the one propitiation has been offered for sin for ever. It was the place of Divine manifes- tation, and in him the whole glory of the Divine nature bas been flashed upon the world with a brightness before which the light that shone between the cherubim pales its fires. The burden of the context here is that by coming to Christ we become partakers of his life, and are therefore assimilated to him. So the whole aggregate uf the scattered strangers to whom Peter writes, and all the solitary souls who, one by one, draw near to Jesus, are builded up into one great temple, the true sanctuary, con- sisting l•f all redeemed humanity, in which God dwells. All Churches are but chapels m its side aisles. Its ample roof covers them all, and will shelter new forms of Christian fellowship as yet undreamed of. Through the ages it is being slowly builded, like some great cathedral unfinished for centuries, each of which has added something to the pile. And as the Church as a whole is the temple, so its members in detail are temples of God. By a real though mysterious indwelling, more real if one may say ,o, and less mysterious than that by which he inhabits eternity or dwells in the material universe, God comes and makes his abode in every believing soul. A Divine Spirit can fill and penetrate the human spirit, as the sunshine drenches and snturates some poor film of mist, till every particle is suffused with the fiery brightness. \Ve are too apt to water down that most solemn and blessed trnth of God's indwelling into the mere presence of an influence on our spirits. We need to rise to the height of the wonderful, awful, gladsome thought that God himself dwells in every soul that comes to Christ. II. CHRIST 18 THE TRUE PRIEST ; WE ARE PRIESTS THROUGH HIM. The priest, like the temple, has his origin in man's consciousness of unworthiness to draw near to his  THE FIRST EPISTLE GBNERAt OF PETlm. [cii. u.1-26.