Page:The Corner-Stone of the New Jerusalem.djvu/26

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the corner-stone of

Thus in Psalms 18: 31, “For who is God save Jehovah? or who is a rock save our God?” “Unto thee will I cry, O Jehovah my rock,” 28 : 1. And it is said concerning the children of Israel that “They remembered that God was their Rock, and the High God their Redeemer” 78: 35. And of these same children of Israel, Paul says that “they did all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ .” 1 Cor. 10: 4.

Christ, then, is a rock—a spiritual Rock— the Rock of Israel—the Rock on which the church must be built, if it stand impregnable against the gates of hell. " For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ,” 1 Cor. 3: 11. He is a Stone laid for a Foundation in Zion, “a tried Stone, a precious Corner-stone, a sure Foundation.”

Now, inasmuch as God is also called a Rock, and is the only secure Foundation for the Church to rest upon, therefore God and Christ must denote identically the same Divine Being. Otherwise the church would have more Foundations than one.

When this truth is denied, the foundation is gone, and the church cannot long continue to stand. It “reels to and fro like a drunkard.” The first Christian Church has not—certainly for the last fifteen hundred years—acknowledged the supreme,