occasions for the exercise of the goodness which is lodged
potentially in us, when He creates us in Christ Jesus. So be sure that
the path and the power will always correspond. God does not lead us on
roads that are too steep for our weakness, and too long for our
strength. What He bids us do He fits us for; what He fits us for He
thereby bids us do.

And so, dear brother, take heed that you are fulfilling the purpose for
which you receive this new life. And let us all remember the order in
which being and doing come. We must _be_ good first, and then, and only
then, shall we _do_ good. We must have Christ for us first, our
sacrifice and our means of receiving that new life, and then, Christ in
us, the soul of our souls, the Life of our lives, the source of all our
goodness.

'If any power we have, it is to ill,
And all the power is Thine to do and eke to will.'

'THE CHIEF CORNER-STONE'

'Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ
Jesus Himself being the chief corner-stone.'--Eph. ii. 20 (R.V.).

The Roman Empire had in Paul's time gathered into a great unity the
Asiatics of Ephesus, the Greeks of Corinth, the Jews of Palestine, and
men of many another race, but grand and imposing as that great unity
was, it was to Paul a poor thing compared with the oneness of the
Kingdom of Jesus Christ. Asiatics of Ephesus, Greeks of Corinth, Jews of
Palestine and members of many another race could say, 'Our citizenship
is in heaven.' The Roman Eagle swept over wide regions in her flight,
but the Dove of Peace, sent forth from Christ's hand, travelled further
than she. As Paul says in the context, the Ephesians had been strangers,
'aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,' wandering like the remnants of
some 'broken clans,' but now they are gathered in. That narrow community
of the Jewish nation has expanded its bounds and become the
mother-country of believing souls, the true 'island of saints.' It was
not Rome which really made all peoples one, but it was the weakest and
most despised of her subject races. 'Of Zion it shall be said,' 'Lo!
this and that man was born in her.'

To emphasise the thought of the great unity of the Church, the Apostle
uses here his often-repeated metaphor of a temple, of which the Ephesian
Christians are the stones, apostles and prophets the builders, and
Christ Himself the chief corner-stone. Of course the representation of
the foundation, as being