on a common basis--the two had been
made one in 'the flesh,' that is, the manhood of Christ, for no other
reason than because the 'law of commandments contained in (special
Jewish) ordinances,' which had hitherto been the basis of separation,
was now once for all {109} 'abolished.' Henceforth there was one new
man, or new manhood, in Christ, in which all men were, potentially at
least, reconciled to God and to one another by His self-sacrifice upon
the cross. And to the knowledge of this new manhood all men were being
gradually brought by the 'preaching of peace' or of the gospel, which
had its origin from Jesus crucified and risen, and which, even now that
Jesus was invisibly acting through His apostolic and other ministers,
St. Paul attributes directly to Him.

[Sidenote: _The admission of Gentiles_]

But now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the
blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who made both one, and brake
down the middle wall of partition, having abolished in his flesh the
enmity, even the law of commandments _contained_ in ordinances; that he
might create in himself of the twain one new man, so making peace; and
might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross,
having slain the enmity thereby: and he came and preached peace to you
that were far off, and peace to them that were nigh: for through him we
both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father.

Now we can turn from the negative to the positive statement, and
observe what St. Paul says of the new privileges of the once heathen
converts. He pictures them under four metaphors, each describing a
social state.

{110}

(1) They are citizens in the holy state, the commonwealth of the people
consecrated to God--citizens with full rights, and no longer strangers
or unenfranchised residents (sojourners).

(2) More intimately still, they belong to the family or household of
God.

(3) They are being built all together into a sanctuary for God to dwell
in--a holy structure of which the foundation stones are the apostles,
and the Christian prophets who were their companions; and of which the
corner-stone, determining the lines of the building and compacting it
into one, is Jesus Christ, according to the word of God by Isaiah,
'Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation stone, a tried stone, a precious
corner stone of sure foundation.'

(4) But the metaphor of the building passes into the metaphor of the
growin