(3) St. Paul describes the Church as a sanctuary which is gradually to be built for God to dwell in. We remember how our Lord had said of the temple at Jerusalem, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.' 'He spake,' St. John explains, 'of the temple of his body[11].' That--His own humanity proved triumphant over death--was to be henceforth the tabernacle of God's presence among men. Where that is God is, and the true worship of the Father in spirit and in truth. But that body, raised again {118} the third day and become 'quickening Spirit' as the body of the risen Christ, takes within its influence the whole circle of believers. The 'body of Christ,' which is God's temple, comes to mean the Church which lives in Christ's life, and worships in Christ's Spirit. This is still the Church of the fathers of the old covenant, but fundamentally reconstituted. God, as St. James perceived[12], was fulfilling His promise to 'build again the tabernacle of David which had fallen.' It was being built anew upon the apostles and their companions the prophets, the immediate ambassadors of Christ, as foundation-stones of the renewed building, who themselves 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.