l' (or rather 'factious') after the first and second
admonition is to be 'refused'[10]. Government is to be a constant
element in the Christian life. But the character of authority and of
obedience is to be changed. The authority is to be reasonable
authority, and the obedience intelligent obedience. Passive obedience
to an authority which does not explain itself, whether in a spiritual
director or in the Church as a whole, St. Paul would have thought of
meanly as a Christian virtue. And the multiplication of authoritative
observances he would have dreaded as a {117} bondage. Our Lord was
very unwilling to give His disciples, when He was on earth, much
direction. And St. Paul is true to his Master's spirit. Our life
should be ordered by principles, rather than directed in detail. For
to rely upon direction from outside dwarfs our sense of personal
responsibility, and personal relationship to the divine Spirit. A
certain amount of confusion, hesitation, difference, due to men feeling
their way, due to their different individualities having free scope,
St. Paul would apparently have thought preferable to that sort of order
which is the product of a very strong and exacting external government,
and to an undue exaltation of the virtue of passive obedience.

(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 the