Matthew 17

Matthew 17:22-20

Subdivision 5. (Matthew 17:22-27; Matthew 18:1-35; Matthew 19:1-30; Matthew 20:1-28.)Responsibility and Reward. The responsibilities of the Kingdom follow, by an easy transition; upon the principles of it as thus declared; closing with a view of the rewards of grace in which love will satisfy itself at the end of the way. We have here, not merely the fact that there are such, but the doctrine as to them - a most important one - and giving us a precious and wonderful insight into heaven itself, which is a sweet and how fitting conclusion to all this part. After this the Lord presents Himself openly to Israel, and the final scenes draw on.

1. The governing principle is what comes first before us; and this, as we have seen; is the cross. Accordingly the Lord again speaks of it to His disciples now. He does not apply it; and nothing further is connected with it here, except the exceeding grief of His disciples. But it is not difficult to trace it as in moral connection with what follows. The Son of God as Son of man passing through the world, is not discerned by the men of it.

Had they possessed this wisdom, “they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” True, it was guilty ignorance, the result of being so absolutely in contrast with Him spiritually; and the followers of their Master are, just in proportion as they resemble Him, in the same way unknown. “Therefore the world knoweth us not,” says the apostle, “because it knew Him not” (1 John 3:1). Being thus rejected, He accepts it without contention, and in this too calls upon His disciples to follow Him. At Capernaum those that collected the half-shekel which was the temple-tribute, come to Peter and ask him: “Doth not your Teacher pay the half-shekel?” He at once answers, in entire forgetfulness of the glory of Him whom He had confessed as the Son of God, that He did pay it. If it were the atonement-money, the dishonor done to Him would be most manifest, yet the Lord raises no question upon this ground; and, according to the institution of Exo 30:11-16 that was only required upon the occasion of a numbering of the children of Israel. Joash, however, refers to it (2 Chronicles 24:6), when urging contributions for the temple-service; but evidently as a precedent only, as the restrictions of the law were not carried out in the answer to his exhortation. “After the return from the captivity,” says Farrar, “this bekah, or half-shekel, became a voluntary annual tax of a third of a shekel” - showing it was hardly looked at as carrying out the original enactment of the law of Moses - “but at some subsequent period had again returned to its original amount.” The Lord treats it as a simple temple-tribute, but even on this ground cannot let pass the question of its claim upon Him. He does more than as such resist it for Himself: He puts His rash and forgetful disciple along with Himself, as free. He does not wait for Peter’s question, but shows His divine knowledge by anticipating it. “What thinkest thou, Simon?” He asks; “from whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? from their sons, or from strangers? There could be but one answer: “From strangers.” “Surely then,” the Lord replies, “the sons are free.” But, though He vindicate this liberty, in practice He does not insist upon it. Personal right one is always entitled to surrender, and the “giving offence” - the causing spiritual injury - to any one, by any claim of it, though misunderstood wholly, that were indeed for Him, the Lord and yet the Servant of His people’s need, impossible to be thought of. “But that we may not give them offence, go to the sea, and cast a hook, and take up the fish that cometh up first; and when thou hast opened its mouth, thou shalt find a shekel: that take, and give unto them for me and thee.” Thus He veils His glory, yet declaring it in the very way in which He veils it. To summon a fish of the sea to pay the tribute for Him, guards indeed well His glory, as the Lord of that higher temple which Israel’s temple figured, and which is the universe that His hands have made (Hebrews 9:23-24). There is not even the appearance of compromise as to what He is, and only His grace is shown in thus stooping. Not an adversary even can cavil at it; and the weakest instead of stumbling, can find in it only measureless comfort in the realization of this union of power and grace in Him. But not only so: as “Son over” this “house of God” (Hebrews 3:1-6), He can make others free of it (John 8:36). Yea, He can set free the very slaves - and there is no slavery in God’s universe but that of sin - and make them sons of the house of which He is Master. And this is what He shows us now in Peter, the representative disciple, as we have so lately seen him. The fish brings the tribute-money for him also, a piece which is the equivalent of two half-shekels: “For Me and thee,” the Lord says; not “for us”: for if He had not His unique glory, we could not have our blessing. “For Me,” and so, through My grace, “for thee:” and in this (or what is implied in it) we all have part. We, through His grace, are sons of God, and free. Yet must we be content to wait for the time when we shall be recognized as this, and in the meanwhile to pay tribute, as if we were not what we are. Not expecting recognition, and not claiming rights, and earnest to avoid giving offence by any self-assertion; our privilege, as well as our responsibility, is to walk in the steps of Him with whom the path of humiliation and of service was His choice and glory. 2. (1) This lowliness of spirit is now insisted on in the strongest way, the Lord using a little child as His text throughout, and in answer to a question proposed by His disciples which evidenced their need of such instruction. There had been a dispute among them, the other synoptists tell us, as to who among them should be the greater. The Lord’s words about the keys to Peter, and His joining him with Himself in payment of the temple-tax, may have led to this; but the cause is not stated, nor is it important. The important thing was the condition of soul which the question itself revealed. Greatness was what they sought; and in that which they owned to be the Kingdom of heaven; yet which (as they are shown later) they are making but a kingdom of the Gentiles in their thoughts, a place for the gratification of ambition and self-seeking. In this a little child was capable of being their instructor. Jesus called to Him a little child, and placed him in the midst of them and said, with one of His emphatic affirmations, “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children; ye shall in no wise ENTER into the Kingdom of heaven.” The question was here a more fundamental one than that which they had started. One must enter it, in order to be great in it and ambition could not even enter. It is plain that, while merely the ordinary term is used here, which applies both to the mystery- and the final-form of the Kingdom, yet it is of the latter both the disciples and the Lord are speaking. They have in mind the time when “greatness” will be estimated by the King, and receive its reward, and the Lord states the necessary condition for even entrance into it at that time. The word for “be converted” is simply “turn yourselves,” though surely here having reference to that spiritual change, for which a compound form of it is generally used, of somewhat stronger meaning. The little child as a symbol reminds us of the way in which God has ordained that men should enter the present life, most surely in lowliness and feebleness enough. The long drill and discipline of childhood might well seem intended to “hide pride from man,” and the mercy of God it is that provides for beings so helpless, the love and care which after all, in such a world as this, so generally wait upon the birth of children. So also is it with the beginning of spiritual life, which we enter not as doers of something great, but in feebleness and poverty to receive grace, not due. And the end is as the beginning: it is in grace we grow; at the end as at the beginning, it is salvation that we receive; reward at last is not claim but mercy. In this way it is as little children that the Kingdom of heaven must be entered; and in proportion to the simplicity with which this is done will the true character of the Kingdom be attained. “A little child” may, indeed, have in its heart the seed of ambition as of all other evil, but not the man who estimates himself but as that.

To him no ambitious thought is possible. While the Lord in His grace identifies Himself with the least of His own; so as to assure every one that his littleness will not make him of little account to Him. This is an assurance which prevents the consciousness of nothingness becoming a distress; nay, rather, enables us only the more to realize the sweetness of a love so great. (2) Thus it wraps itself about the objects of it, like a mother with a babe, and grows, as one might think, passionate in denouncing those who would injure them. “But whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in Me, it were better for him that a great mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and he sunk in the depth of the sea;” - so does God care for the feeblest of His own! But offences would come: “woe to the world because of” them; yea, “woe to the man by whom the offence cometh!” And here the Lord repeats, with more general application, what He had said in the sermon on the mount with more special reference to the seventh commandment of the law. Better to cut off hand or foot, - better to pluck out an eye, if it caused offence, than to retain these and be cast into the hell of fire. It is the Saviour of men; He who died in His love to redeem them, who ever gives the most earnest and emphatic warning of that to which sin of necessity brings those who cleave to it. (3) But His heart turns to what is more congenial: “See that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto you that their angels in heaven continually behold the face of My Father who is in heaven.” Well, then, may they be held in loving regard by men. But the doctrine of the passage has its difficulty. De Wette, as quoted by Lange, says with regard to it: “In the Old Testament we only read of guardian angels of empires (Daniel 10:13; Daniel 10:20). But at a later period the Jews believed also in the existence of guardian angels for individuals (Targum of Jonathan on Genesis 33:10, Genesis 35:10, Genesis 48:16). Similarly also the New Testament (Acts 12:7?)” Yet he takes it as figurative, in which way it would be hard to understand it. Meyer, approved by Lange, in opposition to this says, “The belief in guardian angels is clearly admitted by Christ.” Probably most agree with this; Dr.

Brown remarks: Among men, those who nurse and rear the royal children; however humble in themselves, are allowed free entrance with their charge, and a degree of familiarity which even the highest state ministers dare not assume. Probably our Lord means that, in virtue of their charge over His disciples (Hebrews 1:14; John 1:51), the angels have errands to the Throne, a welcome there, and a dear familiarity in dealing with His Father which is in heaven; which on their own matters they could not assume.” This, however, seems too much like the state of an earthly court, from which it is rash to draw analogies for heaven. The difficulty as to interpreting our Lord’s words as referring to guardian angels is that it seems a very indecisive passage to stand alone for the doctrine, which assuredly the verses in Hebrews and in John’s Gospel do not teach. Daniel more nearly approaches it, though the angels representing; the empires there seem all to be evil, and only Michael as “prince” of the Jewish people is really in any sense a “guardian” (see Daniel 10:21). But the Lord’s words seem to apply strictly to “little children,” and not simply to believers as designated in that way. He is not telling His disciples not to despise believers, but certainly what might seem to them comparatively of little account, which believers as such would not. (Comp. Matthew 19:13.) On the other hand, we have no reason that I am aware of, for introducing into what is here the additional thought that there is restriction even among the unfallen angels as to seeing the Father’s face. The fallen condition in which we are is that, rather, one would suppose, which makes such a restriction seem necessary or natural. The passage in the Acts referred to, though commonly taken to imply also the Jewish doctrine of guardian angels, hardly seems capable of being reconciled with it: for why should a guardian angel assume Peter’s voice, so as to be mistaken for him? and in this place Brown interprets “his angel” to be “his disembodied spirit, his ghost.” The two passages in this case would strengthen one another; and the children’s angels, or spirits, being permitted to behold the Father’s face in heaven would be indeed an admonition not to despise them, as well as an unspeakable comfort as to the condition of an infant after death. The next clause is omitted in some ancient MSS. and versions, and it has been thought to be an insertion from Luke 19:10; but, as others have remarked, the omission of “to seek” - simply, “the Son of man came to save that which is lost” - is significant. They are lost ones needing a Saviour; but seeking implies a condition of active wandering from God such as in their case is hardly begun yet. His own joy in salvation - the joy of the Shepherd over a lost sheep found - the Lord then emphatically declares. It is but a glimpse of what we have in Luke poured fully out, and here without the contrast of Pharisees with “tax-gatherers and sinners,” there brought out so vividly. The ninety and nine in this case seem but brought in to emphasize how the one lost has concentrated upon him in the meantime all the solicitude, and, when found, the tenderness of the Shepherd, as if there were not another. Yet this over-abounding joy does not, in fact, disparage the interest in them which is only for the moment not in the same way realized. Let any of these become the lost, they too would arouse the same anxiety and tenderness. In Luke the parable is uttered to a different audience, and in other circumstances which combine to present these ninety and nine in a manner in some respects very different from this. Here it is the Father’s will which He has come to carry out, and it is not the Father’s will that one of these little ones should perish. How sweet and perfect an assurance! It is only the contrary will of man that hinders his salvation: on God’s part there can be no contrary one: “As I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth.” Thus the little ones removed from us by death we may trust confidently to the divine love which waits on them. Our assurance as to them is rooted in the unchangeableness of the divine nature. 3. The Lord goes on to speak of holiness, which is also absolutely characteristic of God, and which must be maintained by all who are associated with His name on earth: “Let him that nameth the name of the Lord,” says the apostle, “depart from iniquity.” The assembly comes here, therefore, into a special place of responsibility and for the first time we find it assuming a position and exercising powers for which He has endowed it with authority as representing Him. On the other hand, in most suited connection with this, we find His people reminded of their weakness and dependence upon Him: a dependence which, when realized, brings in that assured and ready help which makes it but a means of realizing in turn the resources and nearness of the living God. The whole is crowned with the assurance of His presence in the midst, where two or three are gathered to His Name and this at once seals their commission to maintain what is due to Him under whose authority they act, and pledges Him to meet all their necessities. But this is another text which, having been variously interpreted, calls for careful examination at our hands. (1) The disciples having been charged to avoid what would be offence against another, and as to themselves rather to get rid of what might seem like hand or foot than go on with what was matter of offence, are now taught how to deal with sin in another. But at once question begins: What is the sin which we have to do with here? and are we to take it as generally taken; as simply personal trespass? For some of the most ancient MSS. and some editors omit the “against thee” of the common version; and have only “if thy brother sin,” which would seem to make it wider. This can however, I think, be better settled as we go on; and we may leave it for the present undecided. But undoubtedly we are to remember that, in any case, the thing to be considered by us is what the Lord calls “sin,” and we must not allow ourselves to admit practically a lighter word than that. “Sin,” whether it be against oneself or not, is something which should bring up at once before us the psalmist’s deep realization, “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned” (Psalms 51:4); words which only appear the more striking as we think of the dreadful character of that which he had committed against his neighbor. Sin can only be viewed rightly as against God; and to treat it so we must be before God about it. We must know how, in Old Testament language, to eat the sin-offering in the holy place. This is the only fully effectual corrective of the danger from any personal element, wherever (as in the present case is generally taken for granted) that may be found. In the presence of God sin is truly judged, but therefore judged in ourselves first and so it is we obtain that “spirit of meekness,” in which alone we are able to “restore” those “overtaken in a fault” as considering our own proneness to temptation (Galatians 6:1). That is the first thought here, and always as regarding one who has sinned - restoration: “if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.” There is not to be the thought, as presently and plainly insisted on; of “pay me that thou owest,” but of gaining a brother: of winning him back to all that belongs to Christian brotherhood. For sin means collapse, estrangement from this, - a shadow over the glory of “what is really life,” and dishonor to Christ and to God. How in the apprehension of this, could one even think of one’s own things, save as one may truly find them in the thought of a “brother”! And this governs all in this first step taken: “go and show him his fault” - literally, “convict him,” bring him to conviction - “between thee and him alone.” Let there be no needless exposure, no pain that can be spared, nothing that would arouse resentment, and so most surely hinder recovery. He is to feel that, as Elihu with Job, you desire to justify him, - if that may not be, yet to put his case into his own hands for trial, and lift him up into the Christian place of judgeship, master of himself once more. Grace is in anywise the only power over sin. It is not laxity, as people misconceive it, but always sin’s unsparing enemy and scourge. “Sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under law, but under grace.” Yet how often do those who are themselves wholly debtors to grace, use the law without hesitation in their dealings with one another. Of course, they betray in this their own slight knowledge, while the fruit is reaped in failure to maintain the holiness they seek. We cannot, by our will to do it, make that which is the “strength of sin” become its antidote. But if this, then; be the divine principle in dealing with it, it is plain that whether it is sin against myself or against another can make no difference. This does not come into consideration; and the reading which would leave it out seems practically right. If it is grace that is moving me for a brother’s deliverance, it can make no difference against whom the sin is. Nay, if it is in my brother, it is against me necessarily, if not directly: it injures me, aggrieves me, as one of the family. It will in any case work the same misery: it is equally against God my Father, against Christ my Lord, and against the soul of him who has committed it while again grace requires not to find a legal title to proceed, as in my own matters, but in the needs to which it ministers finds its sufficient justification. In any case, the principle applies, wherever and so far as the circumstances permit the application there is supposed, as we see, a condition of things in which love finds its call and opportunity, and which cannot, perhaps, and need not, be further defined. The next step to be taken; if the first be ineffectual, is to “take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.” These witnesses are not to establish the truth of the charge: for of this the one who has sinned is already “convicted,” but to bring the influence of the truth to bear upon him the more by their confirmation. They are a jury of appeal to make him realize the gravity rather than the truth of his sin; - a midway step between the private reasoning and the full publicity of the assembly. Love would yet spare the person, while it cannot spare the sin and therefore the present procedure. The third appeal is to the assembly as a whole, which is defined in what follows as a gathering to the name of Christ. It is astonishing that any could have had the thought here of the Jewish synagogue, although it is true that the Christian assembly did not yet exist, and that the Lord is speaking anticipatively; but the same could be said in general of what is before us in all this part of Matthew. The Christian assembly has as yet only once been spoken of, and in the present case it is a local one - a gathering," for which we must wait historically for the Acts. Here we have it strikingly for the first time as entrusted with the maintenance of holiness in connection with Christ’s Name on earth. It is, as we see, the last court of appeal, and to whose acts He gives, in the most solemn way, authoritative sanction. The case is left in its hands for final decision, which is supposed to be in accordance with what has been done before; and now, “if he refuse to hear the assembly, let him be unto thee as a Gentile and a tax-gatherer.” This is the fourth step therefore: the man is now to be treated as in an outside place, as a Gentile, a “man of the nations,” by itself expresses. A “tax-gatherer” adds to this the thought of having lost the place inside by his unworthiness. The outside place is manifest: of course, in the Lord’s lips it could not mean any dismissal of care and thought and labor after the one so treated. It is one of that hated class - the tax-gatherers - who records, and alone records, this injunction: himself the most signal example of the grace that sought all such. On the other hand, while business intercourse and communications might go on, even in all this would it be but the more apparent that what was Christian had come to an end, till divine grace should restore it. The Christian in the world was to be but the reflex of his Master’s mind; and as surely as He could not go on with sin; no more could those who were to act on earth for Him who had left it. It is true that it is said here, “let him be to thee,” and this is the binding of this conduct on the individual; but any proper consideration given to the matter will assure us that this could not possibly mean that this refusal of Christian fellowship was to be merely on the part of the one against whom the sin had been. Were the witnesses who had shown their sympathy up to this point with the brother who had been sinned against, now to withdraw it, and go on in fellowship with him they had condemned, because the case was not their own? Was the brother offended, and to whom at least this must apply, to act in such a way, not because of the sin; but because he himself was the person wronged? How this would destroy the whole character of discipline, as well as the spiritual character of Christian fellowship! The assembly would be little Christian which could become partner to any thing of this sort, or look at sin as having merely a particular reference, and not being the general concern of all. The next verse also, which applies, of course, to the assembly as a whole, negatives absolutely any such conclusion. For here, in the fifth place, the numerical order certifying it as a principle of divine government in the kingdom of God at hand, - the power of God allying itself here to human weakness - the Lord adds, with one of His “verilies,” the oath for confirmation, which is an end of all dispute: “Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” The Church on earth acts for its absent Lord; and, as so acting, He gives it His authority with the broad seal of royalty attached to the commission. Without this it could not move in the regulation of such matters at all: all the authority that it has is delegated to it by the King; it is not a democracy, but a monarchy most absolute, - a Kingdom not of man but of God. It is plainly also in the moral sphere that the commission applies; and this at once makes known its limitations. In nothing so plainly as in the moral sphere is every thing based upon the character of God Himself. Every thing here is fixed, therefore, and unchangeable. The Church cannot so much as define what good or evil is. Every conscience here is subject to God alone, and the only appeal to it is as the appeal of light to the eye - the appeal of self-evidence. The eye may be diseased, the conscience hardened, the appeal useless; but this is always a result of rejecting the light: the light itself is divine, not human; and brings the soul before God, not man, not the Church.

The rule of conscience means in result the rule of God, just as that of the eye would mean that of the light. Though light and the eye are very different things, yet the “light of the body is the eye.” The Church is a body not legislative but executive: it does not decree what shall be, but decides upon what is. It has authority to act, but upon lines laid down for it; and authority to act does not guarantee the action. But unless the action be according to His mind, it should be plain that the Lord could not sanction it. He could not “bind” sin upon one who had not sinned, nor “loose” it where there had been no repentance. This would be to put evil for good and good for evil, and to put the Church above her Lord. Either, then; the Church’s action is secured infallibly, or there are conditions implied which we shall be able to gather from the context. In the specified case to which this assurance is appended, it is abundantly plain that it is a case of real “sin:” “if thy brother sin.” Of this he is to be convicted, and witnesses brought in, and then it is to be told to the assembly. This is the case in which the assembly is authorized to act, and only in such plain cases. As far as we read here, if the case were not plain, - if there were not, therefore, agreement about it, - it would not be such as would give title, or (to speak better) impose responsibility, to act at all. It must be in the light, not in the dark, we walk. The fact is, that it is not here that the Church has ever realized its real difficulties, although, of course, here also there may be unfaithfulness to the Lord, and what is to be done then is not yet taken up. We are here at the beginning of things, and must expect, in this, as in other matters, to have the truth gradually unfolded to us. The point is here, that the Church is guardian of the holiness to be always associated with the profession of the name of the Lord; there is no question at present of doctrine at all, and it would be premature to speak of it yet in any explicit way; though something may be inferred in what almost immediately follows: but that is another thing. (2) The sense of responsibility should lead ever to the sense of weakness, and this is the order of thought here. Remembering the need of His people, the Lord now assures them of the way in which they may count upon Him for the supply of all their need. And, like Him, He does not limit it to this or any particular need: “Again I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree together on earth as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father who is in heaven.” Above all is this assurance needed where, as the connection would imply, and in some measure the agreement also, the acting together as representatives of Christ on earth is that as to which need is realized. Here one cannot but feel the grace of this lowest possible number for consent or united action. Supposing there were no more together in a place, or that others failed to realize the need, yet here would the Lord meet those who did so. Thus, while not necessarily implying the failure of His people, He provides for it. How tender are these all-seeing Eyes that contemplate us! (3) And He adds this assurance, the unspeakable comfort of His people ever since: “For where two or three are gathered together unto My Name, there am I in the midst of them.” It is not “in My Name,” as in the common version; but “unto:” His name being thus the central point of gathering. “In His name” would be by His authority, or as representing Himself: both things, of course, true, but neither of them defining, as this does, the Christian assembly. His Name speaks of doctrine - the truth of what He is, Himself being absent; and where He, apprehended by faith, thus draws His people together, there He promises Himself to be among them, their sufficient resource and the sanction of what they do in the manner already enjoined to maintain in love the holiness of His name. It should be evident that more is intended here than to declare His readiness to meet the need of two or three who unite to supplicate Him in some common interest. This is simply appended to what has been before enjoined in the matter of assembly discipline, and both are sealed with this final promise of His presence where two or three are gathered to His name: words which must apply to the assembly so gathered. His presence in their midst is more directly called for by their action in the first case as representing Him than by their supplication in the second. Compare the apostle’s words to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 5:3-5), though the Lord’s here are so much more, as He is Himself beyond all other. No body of people gathered to aught but the truth as to what Christ is could have any claim to the promise here, as none who fulfil this condition could be excluded. If those are admitted among the orthodox who are themselves unorthodox, and this be deliberate, then it is plain his Name ceases to be that to which such a company is gathered. The orthodoxy even of the mass cannot make up for the failure as to the gathering-point. However many the Christians there, the gathering is not Christian. A false Christ is not Christ; deliberately held to, it is the denial of Christ; and here it is important to remember that ignorance is by no means the same thing as denial, which assumes knowledge. As to the blessed Person of the Lord His own words declare our common ignorance as to much: “No man knoweth the Son but the Father.” But that which Scripture declares of Him is by that fact no longer to be beyond our knowledge, but what is committed to our trust as the vital centre of all truth and blessing. Christ is the manifestation of God, the Redeemer of men; as the Word of God, by whom and for whom all things were created, He is the Sum of all knowledge that is really such. Aberration here is quick distortion of all other things. Thus “gathered to My name” is vital to the Assembly. They are in the world as His representatives the Spirit by which they are baptized into one body is in them to glorify Him. How would every thing be lost if His Church could accept a substitute for Him; or allow the darkening of one glory of the “Light of men”! Here, then, is the Church as it is presented to us for the second time and in living activity in the Gospel of Matthew. In no other Gospel is it presented to us at all. And here it is seen, as we may say, according to the constant character of Matthew, as in the Kingdom, and in the exercise of authority suited to the Kingdom of heaven. We have nothing as yet of the Body of Christ, or of espousal to Him; nothing of it even as indwelt of the Holy Spirit, nor explicitly as the house of God - though it is what He builds, and Peter and such as he are “stones” in the building: a building instinct with glorious life, against which the gates of hides cannot prevail: a living Church, manifesting its life in love and holiness, finding its centre of attraction and controlling authority in Him who is its Creator and Lord, refusing all other. Such is the picture given to us in the Gospels.