em by a beautifully-worked marble
balustrade, separating the outer from the inner court, upon which stood
columns at regular intervals, bearing inscriptions, some in Greek and
some in Latin characters, to warn {105} aliens not to enter the holy
place. One of the Greek inscriptions was discovered a few years ago,
and is now to be read in the Museum of Constantinople. It runs thus:
'No alien to pass within the balustrade round the temple and the
enclosure. Whosoever shall be caught so doing must blame himself for
the penalty of death which he will incur.'

This 'middle wall of partition' was vividly in St. Paul's memory. He
was in prison at Rome at the time of his writing this epistle, in part
at least because he was believed to have brought Trophimus, an
Ephesian, within the sacred enclosure at Jerusalem. 'He brought Greeks
also into the temple, and hath defiled the holy place.'

It was this 'middle wall of partition,' representing the exclusiveness
of Jewish ordinances, which St. Paul rejoiced to believe Christ had
abolished. He had made Jew and Gentile one by bringing both alike to
God in one body and on a new basis.

There were in fact two partitions in the Jewish temple of great
symbolical importance. There was the veil which hid the holy of
holies, and symbolized the alienation of man from God[2]; and there was
'the middle wall of partition' {106} already described, representing
the exclusion of the world from the privileges of the people of God.
The Pharisaic Jews ignored the spiritual lessons of the first
partition, and devoutly believed in the permanence of the second. But
Saul, while yet a Pharisee, had felt the reality of the first, and had
found in his own experience that the abolition of this first barrier by
Christ involved also the annihilation of the second.

[Sidenote: _The breaking down of partitions_]

It is in the Epistle to the Colossians that he lays stress upon the
abolition in Christ of the enmity between man and God. 'It was the
good pleasure of the Father ... through him to reconcile all things
unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross.' 'You,
being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh
... did he quicken together with Christ, having forgiven us all our
trespasses; having blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was
against us, which was contrary to us: and he hath taken it out of the
way, nailing it to the cross.' So with th