inctly recognized, but he is there in authority and supremacy, as the
center of the assembly. "Incarnated in the church!" do we say? We get
this conception by comparing together the inspired characterizations of
Christ and of the church. "This temple" was the name which he gave to
his own divine person, greatly to the scandal and indignation of the
Jews; and the evangelist explains to us that "he spoke of the temple of
his body." A metaphor, a type! do we say? No! He said so because it
was so. "The Word was made flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld
his glory" (John 1: 14). This is temple imagery. "Tabernacled"
(_eschenosen_) is the word used in Scripture for the dwelling of God with
men; and the temple is God's dwelling-place. The "glory" harmonizes with
the same idea. As the Shechinah cloud rested above the mercy-seat, the
symbol and sign of God's presence, so from the Holy of Holies of our
blessed Lord's heart did the glory of God shine forth, "the glory as of
the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth," certifying him
to be the veritable temple of the Most High.

After his ascension and the sending down of the {24} Spirit, the church
takes the name her Lord had borne before; she is the temple of God, and
the only temple which he has on earth during the present dispensation.
"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God
dwelleth in you?" asks the apostle. This he speaks to the church in its
corporate capacity. "A holy temple in the Lord, in whom ye also are
_builded together_ for a habitation of God through the Spirit," is the
sublime description in the Epistle to the Ephesians. It is enough that
we now emphasize the fact that the same language is here applied to the
church which Christ applies to himself. As with the Head, so with the
mystical body; each is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and thus is God in
some sense incarnated in both; and for the same reason. Christ was "the
Image of the Invisible God"; and when he stood before men in the flesh he
could say to them, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." Not
otherwise than through the incarnation, so far as we know, could the
unknown God become known, and the unseen God become seen. So, after
Christ had returned to the Father, and the world saw him no more, he sent
the Paraclete to be incarnated in his mystical body, the church. As the
Father revealed himself through the Son, so the Son by the Holy