The Church a Temple

“Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house.”

It is difficult, if not impossible, for us to enter into the feelings of an ancient Israelite in regard to the temple at Jerusalem; yet unless we do so in some degree, we must lose the force of numerous figures in the New Testament, which seized upon the imagination of the Jew. To him, that structure was the best of all terrestrial things. It was at once the citadel of his commonwealth and the sanctuary of his Church. To this spot his face was turned in devotion, wherever he might wander on the earth’s surface. Its walls contained all that he held most splendid in ceremonial and most sacred in mystery. In some sense it was the

* New York, April 3, 1854.

centre, not of Palestine only, but of the world, for his Lord had said, “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.” Its pomps and praises, the volume of its harmonies both vocal and instrumental, its bleeding and smoking propitiations, ifs odorous clouds of incense, its ablutions and sprinkhngs, its throngs of exalted worshippers, its festive processions, and its inaccessible mysterious shrine, all conspired to give it a hold on his admiration and his affections, such as no other material structure ever gained over human hearts. Hence the most available charge against our Lord Jesus, and that which was best fitted to make the populace infuriate, was that he had spoken contemptuously of the holy fabric. It was not unnatural, that in a period of formal religion, the minds of the people should have become knit to the external pile. No gleam of its higher mystery and spiritual intention had yet broken upon their worldly minds. Not yet had it been revealed that God is a Spirit, and that they who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth, anywhere, everywhere, and not at Jerusalem or this mountain. And yet, from the beginning, God had been preparing his Church for better things, by means of this visible type, and clearing the way for the setting up of a house not made with hands. Even in the rudest stages of religious discipline, all that is outward, palpable or formal, is in its nature temporary, and is used to sjmbohze something greater and loveher, beyond the domain of sense. The day was rapidly approaching when this glorious architecture should be given to the flames, and when Israel should be without an earthly sanctuary. The vanishing of the typical system vras foreshown, when the vail of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. Shortly after this, the Church began to take its new and Christian form. But those who came under this New Testament influence from out of Judaism, were steeped in associations derived from Hebrew rites. The apostles, therefore, themselves Jews, found it natural and important to address them in terms derived from the old economy; and hence we find no figures more abundant than those which are derived from the temple and its rites. In this instance, the mind of the apostle Peter, full of the strains of Old Testament psalmody, thinks of his adorable Redeemer as predicted in the 118th Psalm. The words of David are: “The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the comer.” All in a glow with the image, his imagination under divine influence, proceeds to carry up a spiritual structure on this foundation, and to fill it with a worshipping spiritual Israel. So he breaks forth: “To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious, ye also as lively stones are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” The warmth of Oriental style does not shrink from aD. that our severer rules might regard as a mixture of metaphors. The rapid transition of mind here certainly gives origin to a double figure; for the same persons who in one clause are called the temple, are in the next represented as the worshippers. Both temple and worshippers, in the type, were intended to show forth the Church of God, or the entire body of sanctified believers. Prom these words, therefore, I would invite you to consider with me the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ as a temple.

1. It is a SPIRITUAL HOUSE. The apostle Paul speaks of a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Here also we may say with him, “that was not first which was spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterwards that which is spiritual.” Such is the order of divine revelation to the human mind. We are led from the material to the immaterial. Common apprehensions fail to reach this; and there are many who never get beyond that which can be seen and felt. But in proportion as we gain insight into God’s plan and are elevated by faith, we learn to value the things unseen, and awake to the knowledge of a vast and glorious spiritual universe, of which all that surrounds us is but the husk and emblem. Our Lord was continually engaged in lifting the minds of his disciples from all the glory of their darling shrine, to the wonders of an imperishable house. You remember that when they would have attracted his admiration to the buildings of the temple, he replied, “See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”

All was to make way for a masterpiece of spiritual architectm’e, which only the wise and the believing have eyes to behold.

2. It is very obvious that, of this spiritual temple, the “BUILDER AND MAKER IS God.” It is for his glory and for his residence. The plan and the execution are his. In all ages of the world his eye has contemplated this structure, and his arm is carrying it forward. In the spiritual temple, God is pre-eminently doing his ovm work; manifesting his own perfections; exalting created intelligences to purity and happiness; and producing those heavenly virtues which are more precious than all the marble, gold, and gems of the earth, and which are wrought only by the Spirit of holiness.

3. Yet this spiritual temple, Teared by the hand of the infinite Spirit, is nevertheless no shadowy edifice. It is in a high sense real, being composed of human beings. Angels may contemplate the work and aid in it, but they form no part of it. “Ye,” says our apostle to Christians, “ye, as lively (that is, living, animated) stones, are built up a spiritual house.” Such is the value and dignity of a human soul, made in the image of God, redeemed by the Son, and dwelt in by the Spirit, that there is a consummate glory in a structure of which every component part is such a soul. In other places, the individual believer is represented as a temple of God; but here, by a change of figure, which beautifully and expressively brings forward the fellowship, multitude and union of believers, the whole are set before US as compacted into one perfect structure. The stones are no longer masses of granite, marble or porphyry, but men, redeemed and sanctified, and hereafter to be perfected and glorified. Every saint has his appointed place. The temple comprises all the righteous, who have been, are, and shall be to the end of time. We often think of believers, as separate existences, and sometimes of the Church on earth at a particular time; but we must also rise to the contemplation of the complete body, in which not one true servant of God is wanting, from righteous Abel to the last who shall be summoned to glory by the final trump.

4. The temple has a foundation. We need not wander far to find what it is. “Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner-stone, elect, precious.*’ “Other foundations can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” “Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone, in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord, in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.” It was meet that the Son of God should take humanity, in order that he might be the foundation of this human temple. It rests on him, for its coherence, beauty, grandeur and very existence. Its walls are cemented by his precious blood. Every lively stone in the pile bears his image, and is fashioned after the head stone of the corner. His truth is the basis of all faith in the Church. His righteousness is the ground of all pardon, acceptance, and title to life. His Spirit prepares and adorns each individual member, brings him into the structure and keeps him there. Each soul, and all conjoined, rest and rely on Jesus Christ alone, as the source of strength, union, and perfection. The whole heavenly architecture is of him and for him, and his divine virtue is felt in every part of it, from the base to the summit.

5. The work of rearing this temple is now going ON upon earth. This is expressly said by Peter: “To whom coming, as living stones, ye also are built up;” that is, ye are now in the very process of being built up a spiritual house. It may be aflSrmed that our sinful world is permitted to remain chiefly, if not solely, for this very purpose, that the work of the living temple may go on. When a wise architect is about to frame a great edifice, he selects his site, designs his plan, and gathers his materials. From the guilty race of Adam God is perpetually choosing and calling those who shall be the living stones in his temple. Though the consummation is to be in another state, the busy process of preparation and erection is in this. When the temple of Solomon was to be reared, what hewings, shaping and transportation of cedars in the forests of Lebanon; what excavations in the quarries of the vale; what castings in the plain of Zarthan; what moulding and carving of gold and silver among the artificers of Israel. All was looking towards the going up of the stately waQs upon Moriah, without the sound of axe or hammer. Thus may

If ri fw we gain an emblem of what is now in process among ourselves. Our state is altogether preparatory. Nothing has yet taken its real shape. All that we call the work of religion or of the Gospel among men, is only the getting out of the material, or the building of it into its place. Forgetting this, we frequently judge amiss of all that God is doing, and “quite mistake the scaffold for the pile.” No wise critic will judge of a half-finished architecture. At such a stage much is temporary, much is obscure, all is incomplete. The beautiful idea of the artist hes hidden among a chaos of platforms, engines, and heaps of rubbish. Such is precisely the condition of the Church below. It is at best but a small part of the entire structure, which belongs to all ages, and which is to see an age when believers shall be increased, perhaps, as a thousand to one. Much that we behold is, after all, only scaffolding that shall be removed, or rubbish that shall be cast away. But meanwhile the work is going forward, and the walls, however slowly, are rising. Every thing in God’s providence respecting the present world is made to lead to this. All preaching of the Word, diffusion of truth, conversion of sinners, and edification of saints, are means in God’s hands for carrying up his structure. Prophets and apostles are humble instruments in the work. Thus Paul, a wise master-builder, says:” Ye are God’s building. I have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile

THE CHURCH A TEMPLE. ^qq

the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple are ye.”

6. But we must go further. Not only is the work going on, but under the mighty hand of God the process is so conducted by the wise position, due adjustment, and manifold mutual relations of all the parts, as to procure that symmetry and perfection which is one day to be the admiration of the universe, who will see in it the brightest display of the Divine perfections. The plan is perfect, and, unlike human plans, is carried out with the absence of all defect and error. Prom the massive foundation to the humblest interior appendage all belongs to one perfect draught; all exhibits one sublime idea. Every stone, timber, moulding, surface, tint and pinnacle, is just what was designed, in its proper place and just connexion. In every well-ordered building, there are parts which could not be anywhere else, without being useless, offensive, or hurtful. So in the “spiritual house,” each of the “lively stones” is laid according to God’s infallible design; each soul is built into its proper niche, each Christian that is born into the world appears at the right time and place, if not for his ovTi highest exaltation and reward, yet for the grand result of the Divine fabric. Each has a fixed relation to all the rest, but chiefly to those which Ue nearest. Of all the millions of converted souls, there is not one which has not his office and function in the extensive scheme; and though, strictly speaking, the Creator cannot be said to need any of his creatures, yet in reference to the execution of his plan, each individual is demanded for the very position which he occupies. The structure does not rise “like an exhalation,” suddenly and all at once, but by slow degrees. The times for each successive development in the Church are ordered by an infinite Wisdom; and while our impatience murmurs at the tardiness of Him with whom “a thousand years are as one day,” every revolution, persecution, reformation and relival, falls out exactly at its predetermined instant, while “the building groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord.” As part answers to part by a felicitous arrangement, each member contributes its appropriate service. The truth of God and the graces of his Spirit pervade the whole; and the religious advancement of the humblest believer tends to the general end; for every part is connected with Christ, “from whom the whole body, fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint suppHeth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body, unto the edifying of itself in love.” Our views are necessarily limited to the growth of the Church in our own particular age, and even this demands a scope of observation wider than is given to most; but the Infinite Mind takes in the lapse of ages, contemplates periods yet more astonishing than any which have revolved, and sees the magnificent spiritual house, going up in stately proportions through them all.

As each renewed soul is just that which God has made it, born in the country and the age which he foreknew, trained by providences which he designed, and removed to the upper world at his good pleasure, we may rest assured that Divine skill will never want proper instruments, and that no vacuity will exist in those temple-chambers, for lack of men or talents, when their hour has come. In surveying the past, we observe a beautiful fitness and an enchanting variety in the materials which have been already built into that part of the edifice which has thus far been reared. How unlike the corps of prophets to the corps of apostles; and how unhke the several individuals of each. We have Scripture authority for placing these among the most honourable and sustaining parts of the fabric, near the corner-stone; for we are “bmlt upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets.” Isaiah with his evangehc clarion, Jeremiah with his pastoral reed of sorrows, and David with his many-voiced harp, sometimes loud in notes of triumph and sometimes subdued to the voice of weeping, stand out with a marked individuahty which becomes the more surprising, the more nearly we examine the distinctive features. They may be likened to those immense but goodly stones, carried up in courses, along the precipitous side of the valley, to form the bases for the temple of Solomon. The twelve apostles, including the last and, humanly speaking, the greatest, though brethren, how unhke! Who, for an instant, could mistake Paul for Peter, or either of them for John? They occupy salient angles of the great foun-THE CHURCH A TEMPLE.

dation, and lie nearest to the corner-stone, elect and precious. Some of their brethren, though not visible in the front which meets our eye, may have done equal service in the bearing up of the mass. Martyrs and confessors found their place, in succeeding ages, as the wall advanced; some as glorious for ornament as strong for use. When love needed a signal display, amidst the blood of martyrdom, we see it immortalized in an Ignatius and a Polycarp. When stalking heresy needed a front of steel to stand unmoved against all its columns, we find an “Athanasius against the world.” When the language of Greece is to be elevated to new dignity by conveying the wonders of Christianity, we hear the golden eloquence of a Basil and a Chrysostom. When Roman philosophy had died out of the world, we behold it revived in an Augustine, the father of the fathers. Later down in ages, we catch ghmpses even amidst Romish corruptions of a Bernard and a Kempis. The note of alarm is given to a sleeping carnal church, first by Wiclif, Huss and Jerome, then by Zwingle, Luther, Calvin, and Knox. But time would fail me, should I try to illustrate by particular instances the truth, that in God’s building every variety of temper, genius, and talent finds its place, and that heavenly wisdom will never suffer any want of material for the sacred walls. Let it be for the encouragement of such among us as are conscious of no high powers, and who sometimes wonder for what service in Christ’s Church we are fit, that in a great structure all the component portions are not equally great. There is not only the solid and the costly, the rock and timber; not only the precious and ornamental, the gold and silver; but likewise the humble and subsidiary, yea, even the otherwise valueless and the minute; for not even mortar and earth can be spared from the construction. The Great Builder has some lowly crevice in his house, which the meanest and feeblest of us may occupy. We may not be called to bear up buttresses, or to crown turrets, or to adorn the carved work of the sanctuary; but it should satisfy us, if in some remote recess and unknown shade, we fulfil the office which the Master has laid upon us.

The building of God, compared with which all human enterprises and structures are as nothing, goes on in a manner unobserved by men, in a mysterious silence, though often amidst surrounding turmoil and alarms. Divine Providence can turn to its own account events the most untoward and convulsions the most appalling. The blood of martyrs was the seed of the Church. The irruption over the Greek and Roman nations of the great barbaric hordes from the Indo-Germanic stock, laid open the way for the coalescence of Christianity with a new social and pohtical element, to which we owe our language, our laws, our freedom, and our modern civilization. We read that the second temple went up “in troublous times.” The wall of the Christian fabric has done so too. Dreadful and sinful as wars are, they are instruments in God’s hand; and when we hear the hurtle of arms and the shriek of battle-

414 ‘’^SE CHURCH A TEMPLE.

fields, we may consider that Jehovah has not forgotten his temple; these sounds are but the blasts of his quarry or the crash of cedars in his forest of Lebanon. The conquests of Charlemagne and his successors carried the Gospel, more or less purely, into regions hitherto pagan. That great event of our day, as yet partially understood — the revolution in China — however it may result, shows how easily the high wall of separation might be broken down and the triumphant standards of Christianity carried in. And that great European conflict, for the crisis of which the whole civihzed world is now waiting with breathless expectation, direful as must be its proximate effect, will undoubtedly in some way tend to the upbuilding of Christ’s kingdom. “Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee; the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.”

7. The living temple is to have an extension and GLORY, even on our earth, such as has never yet been attained. How far the walls have thus far risen no man is competent to declare. But the work is daily advancing. Whatever some may find it convenient to assert, in favour of darling hypotheses, religion is in progress. To go no further back than the beginning of this century, which has been the era of Bible and Missionary associations and triumphs, we see an undeniable extension of the Christian area on earth. But the Scripture abounds with declarations of a latter day, the glory of which is yet future. “In the last days it shall come to pass, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow unto it. And many nations shall come and say. Come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob.” In a great edifice, the later stages of construction are those which most reveal the beauty of the conception. Therefore God addresses his Church: “The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir-tree, the pine-tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of my sanctuary; and I will make the place of my feet glorious“” Hasten on, O blessed day, when the resplendent towers of Zion shall catch the rising beams of the returning Sun of righteousness!

8. But let me not longer detain you from the truth, that for the completion of the living temple we must look to THE HEAVENLY STATE. Scripture metaphors and similitudes must not be so pressed as to urge a meaning out of every particular, nor must we be surprised if the parable does not show a perfect exactness in all its subdivisions. It has been said long ago, that similes and what they represent are often like circles; they touch only in a single point. If therefore we have thus far considered the spiritual house as going up in this world, we may by a shght variation of the image regard it still more precisely as attaining its real form and finish in the world to come. In this view, all that takes place here below is but the preparation of materials, the selection of the lively stones and the goodly cedars, the excavation, hewing, felling, squaring, shaping and polishing; in expectation of being transported to the Jerusalem above. The home of the Church is not here. Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come. At no one period, even the brightest before the second coming, are all the members of Christ gathered together in one place. We often think and speak as if little was accomplished, because little is seen on earth. But we forget that only part of the living structure is here, and this a small part. Every moment, blessed souls, fitted by gracious discipline in this vale, by the axe and hammer and furnace of trial and the moulding hand of sanctification, are carried away in angelic arms, to be placed in the house above. This is only the preparatory state. Out of this mass God is gathering his elect and taking them to his temple. Are there not millions already in heaven? and are there not more countless millions yet to be gathered thither? Then, when the last redeemed one shall be caught up, to be added to the transcendent pile, “he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying, Grace, grace unto it!” In the visions of the beloved disciple, we see the figure swelhng in amplitude, and the house becomes a city, “the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, and her light like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper-stone, clear as crystal; its wall having twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, every several gate of one pearl, and the street of the city pure gold, as it were transparent glass.”

Let us awake. Christian brethren, to the reality of a spiritual structure, for which such preparations are making around us. We are in the midst of the labours which are to result in this great monument of divine wisdom, power, and love. What are our earthly palaces, what our civil and military marvels of architecture, what our toils and accumulations, compared with this building of God, which is to outlast the world? The people of this world, we know, are absolutely indifferent to the temple which is rising. They sneer at it as the antediluvians treated the ark; they are ignorant of it, as were the Tyrians and Zidonians of the first temple, even while unwittingly they aided it; or they oppose it, as the Samaritans did the second temple. Nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his. If the house is rejected, so was its corner-stone. Still it is ascending, and God’s purposes are working themselves out. There is nothing which we can do in life so important as to contribute in some humble measure to the upbuilding of the Church. It is the only work of which the fruit cannot be lost. One soul, saved by our means, is a living stone added to the edifice. One soul made hoHer and better through our labours, is a new ornament to the unseen sanctuary. Not a toil, a self-denial, or a tear, shall fail of recognition; though lost to the view of men, “the day will reveal it.” Open the eye of faith and behold God’s great work of regeneration and salvation, which proceeds incessantly and successfully. The question is a solemn one: Am I in this temple or out of it? There is no middle ground. Have I come to Christ, the chosen precious comer-stone? Am I builded upon his truth, his righteousness, his person? Am I in union and communion with that multitude of saints, who, as lively stones, are knit together indissolubly in this subHme and increasing structure? Have I any good hope, through grace, that I shall be among the constituents of the heavenly city? The answer is important now; but the day is coming, when the answer shall be one of doom! If yea, lift up your head, and bid farewell to every anxious thought about inferior things. What are the loss or gain, the pain or joy, of threescore years and ten, when you look towards the things which are not seen, which are eternal! But if the answer be nay, pause this instant. All is at stake. Remaining thus without, all is lost, and forever. That headstone, however precious to them that believe, is no comer-stone to you; but “a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence.” “For whosoever falleth on this stone, shall be broken.” Are we in our senses? Have men ever heard of their danger and their way of escape, that all should lie in so profound an apathy? God’s temple will still be complete and glorious, though you should form no part of it. Much that seems (by church profession) to belong to the structure, is only an appendage or a seeming — “wood, hay, stubble.” “The day shall declare it, for it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.” And some who escape shall “hardly be saved,” yea, “saved, so as by fire.” May God own us, beloved, in that day! Amen.