Lessons of sacred history.
I. THE SACRED PLACES OF ISRAEL.
1. The tabernacle. It was the tent of witness or of attestation; otherwise the "tabernacle of the assembly," or of the congregation. It was the visible center of Israel's natural and spiritual life, the hearth and home of the people and the altar of God. He met with them to declare his will, to make known his laws, and they with one another as a community having a common weal. Religion is the true foundation of society. She is the" oldest and holiest tradition of the earth." When a house of God is erected in the wilds of Australia or of America, a center of civilization is fixed. It is the earthly representation of a heavenly reality. Moses made the tabernacle after a Divine archetype or model given to him. So worship on earth must ever aspire to and reflect the "life above," the risen life, the life of spiritual freedom and victory. God is ever saying to new societies, as to the new society in the desert, "Make me a house after the pattern you have seen;" that is, have a place and a recognition in your life for the holiest ideals, the most sacred purposes of life.
2. The temple. Both the tabernacle and the temple were designed and constructed after the analogy of human dwellings; the tabernacle was but a more richly furnished tent. As the wealth and power of the nation increased, it was fitting that this should be reflected in the greater magnificence of the house of God; and as they became settled in the Holy Land, that the tent of the nomad should give way to the palace of a King. The temple of Solomon represented in its magnificence the greatness of the victorious kingdom of David. The outward institutions of religion in a people should keep pace with its growth in material prosperity. It is miserable that the church should be worse furnished than the ordinary dwellings of the worshippers, or that the minister of religion should fare in poverty while he supplies their spiritual wants. A rich man can surely afford to contribute as much to the pastor's necessities as he pays in stipend to his cook. But there are higher truths. The tabernacle passed away; the temple, as Stephen had predicted, was to pass away; the spiritual verities eternally remain.
II. THE TRUE SACRED PLACE IS EVER THE SOUL OF MAN.
1. The dwelling of God in visible temples is a symbolic thought, the reality to which it points is his intercourse with the soul of man. This was the great truth of prophetic teaching. The prophets were themselves living illustrations of it. God dwelt in them, spake through them, breathed upon them, turned their hearts unto his shrine, communed with them face to face, as a man with his friend. "The true Shechinah is man," said a great Father of the Church.
2. It is the spiritual indwelling which is at the heart of all true religion. When it is once grasped, great consequences follow. The priest and the ritual and the fixed place are no longer necessary. Every one who has a truth from God, and feels that it must be spoken, is a prophet. New oracles may be opened at any moment, new witnesses may arise, the truth find a fresh utterance from unexpected lips. If this truth be not recognized, the sacred building becomes an empty shell, the priests mere mummers, the ritual a pantomime. To believe that God can care for splendid temples and ritual, for themselves, is imbecile superstition. To believe that he values all the expressions of living and loyal hearts is a part of rational piety. But at the highest point of religious intelligence it may be well asked, "What need of temple, when the walls of the world are that?"
3. The denial of the spiritual truth is the source of error, superstition, and crime. The earlier Jews killed the prophets, leaving posterity to find out their value and raise their monuments. Posterity did the like. The very men who waved the torch of truth more brightly in darkened ages, and those who had the best news to toll their times, were silenced and suppressed. The culmination of all was the betrayal and murder of Jesus. Such a story of miserable persecution and suicidal hatred of the good carries its deep and permanent warnings. How dishonest if we take occasion from this passage to form an idle opinion of the peculiar bigotry of the Jews! Was ever a corporation, a body with vested interests, or a Church, known to act otherwise towards the new truth and the new teacher? Has any great teacher in the Christian Church been received at first with welcome and owned as "sent from God"? Grudging toleration is the most he can expect. Only those who know that religion is an affair of the individual soul, not of the Church or the formal confession, will welcome him in whom religion now embodies itself, and through whom, in the decay of systems, God speaks with freshness and power to the world.—J.