ll of which find a proper significance if we suppose them
addressed to Gentiles, to whom they are only applicable in the higher
sense of the words to which I have referred. If we understand them so,
we have here an instance of what runs all through the letter; the taking
hold of Jewish ideas for the purpose of lifting them into a loftier
region, and transfiguring them into the expression of Christian truth.
For example, we read in it: 'Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a
holy nation'; and again: 'Ye are built up a spiritual house, to be a
holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices.' These and other
similar passages are instances of precisely the same transference of
Jewish ideas as I find, in accordance with many good commentators, in
the words of my text.

So, then, here is Peter's notion of--

I. What the Christian Life is.

All those who really have faith in Jesus Christ are 'strangers of the
Dispersion'; scattered throughout the world, and dwelling dispersedly in
an order of things to which they do not belong, 'seeking a city which
hath foundations.' The word 'strangers' means, originally, persons for a
time living in an alien city. And that is the idea that the Apostle
would impress upon us as true for each of us, in the measure in which
our Christianity is real. For, remember, although all men may be truly
spoken of as being 'pilgrims and sojourners upon the earth' by reason of
both the shortness of the duration of their earthly course and the
disproportion between their immortal part and the material things
amongst which they dwell, Peter is thinking of something very different
from either the brevity of earthly life or the infinite necessities of
an immortal spirit when he calls his Christian brethren strangers. Not
because we are men, not because we are to die soon, and the world is to
outlast us; not because other people will one day live in our houses and
read our books and sit upon our chairs, and we shall be forgotten, but
because we are Christ's people are we here sojourners, and must regard
this as not our rest. Not because our immortal soul cannot satisfy
itself, however it tries, upon the trivialities of earth any more than a
human appetite can on the husks that the swine do eat, but because new
desires, tastes, aspirations, affinities, have been kindled in us by the
new life that has flowed into us; therefore the connection that other
men have with the world, which makes some of them a