1 1 4 TILE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



this in the union of ideas borrowed from the mineral 

 and vegetable kingdoms from architecture and plant 

 life in some of the images employed to designate the 

 Christian Church and the Christian life . " In whom all 

 the building framed together, groweth into an holy 

 temple in the Lord"; " Rooted and grounded in love." 

 We see it in the tradition of the Targumists, partially 

 adopted by St. Paul and used as a Christian image 

 that the rock which Moses smote followed the Israel- 

 ites in all their wanderings through the wilderness, and 

 furnished water to every man at his own tent door ; the 

 Christian application of it implying the adaptation of 

 the Gospel of Jesus to all the circumstances of man 

 marching with him in all his progress, and ministering 

 to all his wants wherever he finds himself. The gran- 

 deur of the Bible gives the grandeur of its own concep- 

 tions to every comparison it uses, expands its powers 

 and imparts to it qualities which it does not inherently 

 possess, and thus makes it more elastic to represent the 

 expansive force of the kingdom of God. There is 

 nothing fixed or stereotyped in this kingdom. It has a 

 wonderful power of adjustment and assimilation. It 

 expands its horizon as humanity progresses. It grows 

 with human growth. As with a mountain, whose true 

 greatness foreshortened when seen from the plain 

 can only be ascertained at its own height, the higher we 

 ascend, the higher it rises up before us, and its top, 

 from the utmost point of our attainment, is lost in the 

 clouds. The most progressive nations have found the 

 most significance in its eternal truths ; and the greater 



