THE STATUE AND THE STONE. 



stone taken out of the quarry the amorphous boul- 

 der lying on the moor, not the stone crystallized 

 into the mathematical facets of the gem. The statue, 

 moulded by human art, shares in the limitations 

 of man's own nature. Made by God, the stone 

 shares in His infinitude. The mystic stone in the 

 vision grew and expanded until it became a great 

 mountain and filled the whole earth. The landscape 

 consisted of itself and its shadow. It presented a 

 different aspect from each new point of view. The 

 uniform monotonous despotisms of antiquity were 

 created by man for his own aggrandizement; they 

 had therefore fixed bounds of space and duration 

 beyond which they could not pass. But the kingdom 

 of God is the creation of Divine love and grace, and 

 therefore it unfolds with the need of man, and develops 

 new capacities of blessing him, and endures for ever. 



The image of the stone does not suitably convey this 

 idea. Every stone, however rough, has a limit as fixed 

 as the statue. But the idea of fixed shape is not so 

 inherent in the stone as in the statue. A stone may be 

 of any shape may be weathered by the elements, or 

 roughened by violent contact with other stones into the 

 most varied forms ; but a human statue must preserve 

 the human shape and observe the fixed proportions of 

 the human form. So, in like manner, the idea of de- 

 velopment is not inherent in a stone. It is of a fixed 

 size ; it cannot become larger. But Scripture imparts 

 the power of growth to it, and secures, by a combina- 

 tion of images, what one alone cannot effect. We see 



