lling-place of God.

Now, do not run away with the idea that that is a metaphor. It was
the outward temple that was the metaphor. The reality is that which
you and I, if we are God's children in Jesus Christ, experience.
There was no real sense in which that Mighty One whom the Heaven of
Heavens cannot contain, dwelt in any house made with hands. But the
Temple, and all the outward worship, were but symbolical of the facts
of the Christian life, and the realities of our inward experience.
These are the truths whereof the other is the shadow. We use words to
which it is difficult for us to attach any meaning, when we talk
about God as being locally present in any material building; but we
do not use words to which it is so difficult to attach a meaning,
when we talk about the Infinite Spirit as being present and abiding
in a spirit shaped to hold Him, and made on purpose to touch Him and
be filled by Him.

All creatures have God dwelling in them in the measure of their
capacity. The stone that you kick on the road would not be there if
there were not a present God. Nothing would happen if there were not
abiding in creatures the force, at any rate, which is God. But just
as in this great atmosphere in which we all live and move and have
our being, the eye discerns undulations which make light, and the ear
catches vibrations which make sound, and the nostrils are recipient
of motions which bring fragrance, and all these are in the one
atmosphere, and the sense that apprehends one is utterly unconscious
of the other, so God's creatures, each through some little narrow
slit, and in the measure of their capacity, get a straggling beam
from Him into their being, and therefore they are.

But high above all other ways in which creatures can lie patent to
God, and open for the influx of a Divine Indweller, lies the way of
faith and love. Whosoever opens his heart in these divinely-taught
emotions, and fixes them upon the Christ in whom God dwells, receives
into the very roots of his being--as the water that trickles through
the soil to the rootlets of the tree--the very Godhead Himself. 'He
that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.'

That God shall dwell in my heart is possible only from the fact that
He dwelt in all His fulness in Christ, through whom I touch Him. That
Temple consecrates all heart-shrines; and all worshippers that keep
near to Him, partake with Him of the Father that dwelt in Him.

Only remember that in Ch