But they were
being destroyed only that they might become useful. They become part
of a new sanctuary, in which God is to be worshipped, where the Gospel
will be preached, where penitent sinners will find the Christ-Saviour,
where sorrowing ones will be comforted. Surely it was better that
these stones should be torn out, even amid agony, and built into the
wall of the church, than that they should have lain ages more,
undisturbed in the dark quarry. They were saved from uselessness by
being destroyed.
These are simple illustrations of the law which applies also in human
life. We must die to be useful--to be truly a blessing. Our Lord put
this truth in a little parable, when he said that the seed must fall
into the earth and die that it may bear fruit. Christ's own cross is
the highest illustration of this. His friends said he wasted his
precious life; but was that life wasted when Jesus was crucified?
George MacDonald in one of his little poems, with deep spiritual
insight, presents this truth of the blessed gain of Christ's life
through his sacrifice and death:--
"For three and thirty years, a living seed,
A lonely germ, dropt on our waste world's side,
Thy death and rising, thou didst calmly bide;
Sore compassed by many a clinging weed
Sprung from the fallow soil of evil and need;
Hither and thither tossed, by friends denied;
Pitied of goodness dull, and scorned of pride;
Until at length was done the awful deed,
And thou didst lie outworn in stony bower--
Three days asleep--oh, slumber godlike, brief,
For Man of sorrows and acquaint with grief,
Heaven's seed, Thou diedst, that out of thee might tower
Aloft, with rooted stem and shadowy leaf
Of all Humanity the crimson flower.
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