CHAPTER XI.
GOD’S TEMPLE IN HUMANITY.
“So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but ye are fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God, being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the chief corner stone; in whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit.”—Eph. ii. 19–22.
Not unfrequently it is the last word or phrase of the paragraph that gives us the clue to St Paul’s meaning and discloses the point at which he has aimed all along. So in this instance. “For a habitation of God in the Spirit”: behold the goal of God’s ways with mankind! For this end the Divine grace has wrought through countless ages and has made its great sacrifice. For this end Jew and Gentile are being gathered into one and compacted into a new humanity.
I. The Church is a house built for an Occupant. Its quality and size, and the mode of its construction are determined by its destination. It is built to suit the great Inhabitant, who says concerning the new Zion as He said of the old in figure: “This is my rest for ever! Here will I dwell, for I have desired it.” God, who is spirit, cannot be satisfied with the fabric of material nature for His temple, nor does “the Most High dwell in houses made by men’s hands.” He seeks our spirit for His abode, and
“Doth prefer
Before all temples the upright heart and pure.”
In the collective life and spirit of humanity God claims to reside, that He may fill it with His glory and His love. “Know you not,” cries the apostle to the once debased Corinthians, “that you are God’s temple, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”
Nothing that is bestowed upon man terminates in himself. The deliverance of Jewish and Gentile believers from their personal sins, their re-instatement into the broken unity of mankind and the destruction in them of their old enmities, of the antipathies generated by their common rebellion against God—these great results of Christ’s sacrifice were means to a further end. “Hallowed be Thy name” is our first petition to the Father in heaven; “Glory to God in the highest” is the key-note of the angels’ song, that runs through all the harmonies of “peace on earth,” through every strain of the melody of life. Religion is the mistress, not the handmaid in human affairs. She will never consent to become a mere ethical discipline, an instrument and subordinate stage in social evolution, a ladder held for men to climb up into their self-sufficiency.
The old temptation of the Garden, “Ye shall be as gods,” has come upon our age in a new and fascinating form, “You shall be as gods,” it is whispered: “nay, you are God, and there is no other. The supernatural is a dream. The Christian story is a fable. There is none to fear or adore above yourselves!” Man is to worship his collective self, his own humanity. “I am the Lord thy God,” the great idol says, “that brought thee up out of animalism and savagery, and me only shalt thou serve!—Love and faithful service to one’s kind, a holy passion for the welfare of the race, for the relief of human ignorance and poverty and pain, this is the true religion; and you need no other. Its obligation is instinctive, its benefits immediate and palpable; and it gives a consecration to individual life that dignifies and chastens, while it calls into exercise all our faculties.”
Yes, we willingly admit, such human service is “religion pure and undefiled, before our God and Father.” If service is rendered to our kind as worship to the Father of men; if we reverence in each man the image of God and the shrine of His Spirit; if we are seeking to cleanse and adorn in men the temple where the Most High shall dwell, the humblest work done for our fellows’ good is done for Him. The best human charity is rendered for the love of God. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength. This,” said Jesus, “is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” On these two hangs the welfare of men and nations.