(Continued from p. 111)

"So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, (R.V.), but fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God; and are 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" (Eph. 2:19-22).

Words are said to be signs for ideas, but if we would behold them in a more fascinating role, we must transmute them into pictures. As signs they are but stiff finger-posts, pointing the way along the pathways of thought, but as pictures they blazen the thought before the mind, in such a way that it takes up its bed and walks. It joins the peripatetics. The word becomes all alive, and quickens the mind with its picturesque perspicuity.

Ellicott thinks that the expression "stranger" may be paired off with the word "fellow-citizens," while "sojourner" may find a mate in "householder," in a sort of double wedding of opposites, a union not entirely unblessed with happiness.

The "stranger" suggests the immigrant, landing on the Battery, in New York City, poor, hesitant, forlorn, desolate, the future misted with uncertainty, the present pregnant with ponderous perplexity. In the "fellow-citizen" the "stranger" is transformed and transfigured; he is surrounded with compatriots, and threads his way with no uncertain steps amid the maze of our busy marts, "one of us." The country belongs to him. Again, the "sojourner" is the homeless wanderer, here to-day, away on the morrow, the habitant of a wayside inn or chance hostelry, his acquaintances friendly solely for what they may get out of him, one seen, as the Afghans are said to regard the stranger, as a "bird of gold to be plucked to the last feather." One of "the household," on the contrary, is bound up in the life of a home-circle, and if, as the word suggests, "domestic," yet "domiciled" with a loving master, and reveling in the word "our," like the trusty servant of an old English lord, whom Charles Spurgeon sketches:"They were down in the country, and there was a wagon standing at the door of the country-seat, and his lordship said, 'John, whose wagon is that?' "Oh,’ says he, 'that is ours, my lord; it has brought some of our goods down from the town.' In a minute or two the lord said:'John, what coach is that coming up the drive?' 'Well, my lord,' he says; 'don't you know that's our carriage?' 'But,' he said, 'I see some children in it; are they our children, John?' 'Oh, yes, my lord!' he says; 'Bless their hearts! They are our children; and I am going downstairs to bring them in.'" John was a household-er in the homely sense of our text. But how pitiable an object is the man "without a country" and without a home! Yet when the man without a country and without a home finds both country and home, he, above all others, knows in practical experience the true meaning of the word "blessedness." And if that be true of worldly relationships, doubly and trebly is it true of the heavenly relationships. Paul must have gloried in his Roman citizenship on the steps of the castle in Jerusalem, when, right on top of his maltreatment at the hands of the mob, the soldiers themselves were about to scourge him. His claim to it had been like some magic incantation, and the cruel thongs fell from him and the scourging was at once taboo. I warrant me, however, that in the Roman prison he gloried still more when, with Roman bonds upon him, he wrote his beloved Philippian householders, "For our citizenship is in heaven, from whence we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our bodies of humiliation, and fashion them like unto His own body of glory, according to the working of that mighty power, whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself." Such citizenship meant escape from greater evil than any implied in mob violence and illegal scourging in Jerusalem, the "city of dreadful night." And if Paul thought of his birth in Tarsus, "no mean city," with justifiable pride, with what joy abounding must he have looked on to the heavenly fatherland and "the city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." He had all those Christian virtues that Peter tabulates as requisites for keen-sightedness, and therefore he could "see afar off."

The expression "of the household of God," or "householders of God," as it is literally, bespeaks our home in the assembly here below, however, as well as membership in the "many mansions."

How lovely is membership in the Assembly of Christ! What a home the "Church of the living God" makes Christ's own, in the world. Within its doors we are with Christ; and with Christ, we are with God; and to be with Christ and with God, in fully appreciated fellowship, is just the very happiest lot on earth, as it is the chief joy of heaven. And should not the retrospect, Now a citizen, but once a stranger; now of the "household of God," but once a sojourner, sprinkle oil on its kindled fires? The metrical version of an ancient psalm, portraying the joy of the captives returned from Babylon, is jogging precious memories, even as I write, and our joy should be as much greater than that of the captives as our deliverance has been the more magnificent and profound. "Now" and "once," "now" and "once," is a precious antiphonal chant:

"When from bands, her sons redeeming,
God to Zion led the way,
We were like to people dreaming,
Thoughts of bliss too bright to stay.

"Filled with laughter stood we gazing,
Loud our tongues with rapture sang,
Quickly with the news amazing,
All the startled nations rang.

"See Jehovah's grace and glory,
Mark what love for them He had,
'Yea, for us!' Go, tell the story!
This He's done, and we are glad."

A lovely little verse in the 68th psalm, another "redemption song," "He setteth the solitary in families," nestles softly between the words, "A Father of the fatherless, and an Advocate of the widows, is Jehovah in His holy habitation," and, "He bringeth out those who are bound with chains." The text seems to me just made for a superscription to our Ephesian theme, an illuminating epitome of its content. If we only actually loved one another as "Christ also loved us, and gave Himself for us," how much more would our Christian assemblies mean to us than they do. What delightful homes they would become! What quiet refuges from the moil and toil of life! Then they would be to us indeed refuges like that of which Alexander Maclaren speaks:"While the storm hurtles its loudest on the outermost coasts of our being.. .an island set in some stormy sea, with wild waves breaking against its coast, and the wind howling around it, but in the center a deep and shady dell, that heareth not the loud winds when they call, where not a leaf is moved by the tempest." Let it then be one of our highest ambitions in life to make them even such.

We now come to the second division of our text:"And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone." The very sudden change in the metaphor here is at first rather disturbing. The train of thought takes the switch at full speed, and we are momentarily rather shaken out of our equanimity by the shift. But does not the very swiftness of the change predicate the eager reciprocity of love? Because God built David a house of cedar, David most naturally and loyally wished to raise to God a house of prayer and praise. But, in our text, God is represented as having dowered us with both country and home, and should we not be more keenly eager to build for Him a holy temple? This house is, of course, the work of God's blessed Spirit. That is true. But shall there not be on our part a spirit of gratitude, that outpours itself in an abounding joy in this work of the Spirit?

This responsiveness on our part, this glad acquiescence in the work of the Spirit, is specified in Hebrews 3 as essential to God dwelling among us, for it says, "If we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end." The Old Testament states that God dwells amid the praises of His people, while Peter reaffirms the thought in, "Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, for a holy priesthood." It is because God is among us that we praise, and He is among us because we praise. Is it not an altogether astounding and wonderful thing that God delights thus in us?-that He "rejoices over us with singing," that He is "silent in His love?"-that He has found in us a home? It seems almost too wonderful to believe. It would be the faith of a madman, were it not that we are "built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone." That is the alone sufficient basis of everything. It is a foundation, blessed be God, that is of Himself and "standeth sure." To adapt the words of an Old Testament prophecy:"Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation. He that believeth shall not be put to shame."

The apostles and prophets in the New Testament era, at least, were of such a type, however, that in no wise could they have been the foundation. "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth," said Jesus Himself, "because Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." A kingdom "built upon babes" could have never stood. Yet has nothing devised of the earth's wisest begun to rival this work of babes. For in those babes God's Spirit wrought, "and the gates of Hades shall not prevail" against the work. It is "growing unto a holy temple in the Lord!" And He,

"Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the blue sky, and the living air,"

is still in His holy temple. In Christ "we are builded together for a habitation of God, through the Spirit."

"Oh, where are kings and empires now,
Of old that went and came?
But, Lord, Thy Church is praying yet,
A thousand years the same.

"We mark her goodly battlements,
And her foundations strong,
We hear within the solemn voice
Of her unending song.

"For not like kingdoms of the world,
Thy holy church, O God;
Though earthquake shocks are threatening her,
And tempests are abroad;-

"Unshaken as eternal hills,
Immovable she stands,
A mountain that shall fill the earth,
A house not made by hands."

F. C. Grant

(To be continued, D.V.)