6 THOU ART PETER
On long journeys through Palestine, Central Asia and Greece, Peter preached the gospel. History shrouds his activities in darkness, only to throw those of Paul into brighter light. In his Epistles this Apostle immortalized himself, and with his person also the history of the young religion. He tells the story of the struggle of a new world to take form in the space of an old world and out of the materials of the old world. The simple image of the tree which must dig into the depths of earth, nurse of all nature, in order that, leaving this earth again as living life, it may win the heights on which in all truth it is just as dependent as on the dust, doubtless applies in essentials to the growing Church. We know how much driftwood it took from the stream of time in order to complete its world of ideas, its mysteries, its customs and its learning; but on the other hand everything that was assimilated was transformed according to the norm and character of the formative energies of the Church, The living tree is something else than the elements from which it lives, and the Church also was a giver in the act of receiving, was not merely the statue but the sculp- tor of the stone it took from the wayside.
Paul's conception of the ccclesia was conveyed by the image o body and soul. It is a simple picture but unfathomable. His time did not exhaust its meaning, nor have subsequent centuries done so* The Church is one living organic whole, needing the earthly and destined to form this according to the form of its own inner Fashioner, Christ Jesus. Those who surrender themselves to Him are the "holy people," the "communion of God." They are to be found here and yonder. The boundaries of states are not the borders of God's king- dom. The "union" of the "third generation'* of Christians cut across all distinctions between Greeks and Jews. It had a different attitude toward yesterday, today and tomorrow than did other religions, for it already lived close to the reality of God. It hovered over what had been and what was to be, even as does His spirit which gathers to- gether the running and tumbling waters of time into an everlasting now. Before God nothing is in motion: all things arc cradled in rest, To lie in Him, to cast the anchor of faith into the eternal waters, means to rise above the perpetual motion of history. But how is this truth to be grasped? How is it to be comprehended? Rejoice!
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