mselves have their positions determined and secured by Christ
Jesus as chief corner-stone. It was a spiritual fabric combining, like
a Gothic cathedral, various parts or 'several buildings,' with their
distinctive characteristics, all however united in one construction,
one great sanctuary of a redeemed humanity in which God dwells.

The metaphor suggests the combination of national and individual
differences in real unity. It encourages us to pay due regard to the
free developement of our own characters and capacities, but also to
develope ourselves as parts of {119} a greater whole, always
remembering that the work of a Christian individual or a local church
is in God's sight measured, not by its isolated result, but by the
contribution it makes to the life of the whole body. An eccentric
individuality, a schismatic developement is, even in proportion to its
strength, a source of weakness to the whole. By its relation to the
whole life of the Church all Christian effort must be both invigorated
and restrained.

The metaphor suggests further that the social organization of the
Church is an organization for worship. It is a house and a
citizenship, because it is also a sanctuary. The strength of corporate
Christianity is to be measured by the vitality of corporate worship. A
church life in which the eucharist is not the centre, for all the
vigour which it may show in learning, or preaching, or philanthropy, is
after all but a maimed life.

(4) But the Church, as a visible organization of men, can be what it
is--the city of God, His household and His sanctuary--only because it
is pervaded by Christ's life and spirit. The 'stones of the building'
are not merely placed side by side of one another, or held together by
any external agency of government; they {120} are as branches of a
living tree, limbs of a living body. In this recurrent thought, which
will be presented to us in another form when St. Paul comes to speak of
the head and the body, is the interpretation of all his theory of the
Church. It is verily and indeed the extension of the life of Christ.

How are we to receive this great and manifold ideal of what the Church
means[13]? It is by meditating upon it till St. Paul's
conceptions--and not any lower or narrower ones, Roman or Anglican or
Nonconformist--become vivid to our minds. Then, knowing what we aim at
restoring, we shall seek, in each parish and ecclesiastical centre, to
concentrate al