MATT. Xxi. 42. “The stone which the builders rejected, the same is be-
come the head of the corner : this is the Lord’s doing, and it is
marvellous in our eyes.”

This text describes very clearly what the proper place
of Christ ought to be in the heart.
If the Bible be not a fable, Christ is the great fact of our
universe. He is everything to God; and if He be not the
same to us in some measure, we cannot be standing in our
right relationship to God; and if that is not right, then
none of our relationships are right—the centre is wrong-
Christ is not in His own place. The image here used is
that of a building. There is presented to the builders one
particular “stone,” which should have the chief place at
the top of the angle, the head of the corner. But they
reject it, and yet without the builders, and despite the
builders, it goes there. The builders never put the head
corner-stone into its place. Observe the expression “the
same is become the head of the corner,” and to carry out
the same thought: “This is the Lord’s doing.” The Jews
were the builders to whom God first gave the privilege of
building His Church. They were the rejecting builders,
upon whom after a few years of grace “the Stone” fell and
ground them to powder.
But we are all soul-builders, self-builders; and the great
thing we have to do is to place the head corner-stone right.
None of the building can prosper or stand if Christ be not
where He is made to be. There is a distinction between
the foundation-stone and the head corner-stone. Christ is
both, but there are Christians who acknowledge Him as the
foundation-stone who do not honour Him as the culmina-
ting point of life, the head of the corner, life’s focus, life’s
glory. Three things the corner-stone is to the building,
and those Christ must be to us.
1. The structure ranges up to it. All else is below that
it may be high, and all ministers to it.
2. The whole fabric holds it up to the view of men, that
it may be admired.
3. It binds the whole together.
There is not a created thing but must one day glorify
Jesus. To Him “every knee shall bow”—some with a
loyal subject’s will, some with a dastard felon’s fear. The
whole fabric of universal being shall at that day own Him
the head corner-stone. The only alternative left to any
man is how he will glorify Him. Shall it be by the
stability of an endless love, or by the ruin of a Christless
hope?
Therefore now let it be our daily joy to “bring out that
top stone with shoutings,” and cry “grace, grace unto it.”
James Vaughan, M.A.