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THE WORTH OF THE OUTWARD TEMPLE.

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that in God was the secret of their strength, the ground of their national fellowship. But why should that which was there as a sign and pledge of permanence be more capable of being moved, be less solid than the habitations of perishing men? If a city was to grow up, if the kingdom of Israel was coming forth before the eyes of men, it ought to proclaim in some august and enduring form what its existence meant; it should not attract glory to itself, but should show to whom it referred its glory. I express in dry formal phrases that which was evidently working in David's mind when he sat before the Lord, and grieved that he was dwelling in cedar while the house of the Lord was in curtains; and that which Solomon uttered, when he prayed that He who filled Heaven and earth, would yet dwell in the house that he had builded. It was an overpowering sense of the inward invisible majesty, which came forth in the pillars and towers of the outward temple. And we must contradict Scripture if we deny that this was a very great onward step in the education of the Jewish nation. The temple became a school for the prophets. As they meditated in it and upon it they were led into profounder intuitions of the divine presence and government, into a clearer recognition of God as the Lord of the whole earth, into a greater assurance of the triumphs which the unseen righteousness would achieve over all sensual idols, and over all divided evil powers, than had ever been vouchsafed to earlier patriarchs and legislators. And where there was this progress in inward discovery and knowledge, we may be sure that the whole national economy, amidst all real and apparent discouragements, was unfolding itself.

The temple Solomon looked upon as the consecration of the city itself, and of all earthly treasures to the God of

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[Serm.

Abraham. He could therefore build his own palace for thirteen years; could fetch cedar trees and fir trees from Tyre, could receive camels from Arabia with spices and precious stones, could send his ships to Eziongeber, could multiply chariots and horses, could look without fear upon the abundance of silver and gold. This splendour was assuredly a sign to that time, and a sign to all times afterwards, of the divine purpose which was announced in the original creation of man; that it can never become abortive, and that no blasphemous notions of the evil of natural things should be allowed for a moment to set it at naught. The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof. This was a lesson which was never to be forgotten, or to be separated from the other, that he only can dwell in the tabernacle or rest upon the holy hill whose hands are pure, who has not lifted up his hand to deceive his neighbour, or given his money upon usury.

But it is impossible not to perceive that such a time as this of Solomon, though a really great one, is a critical one for any nation. The idea of building a house which the Lord would fill with his glory, was a recognition of God as eternally ruling over that people and over all people. Yet there lay close to it a tendency to make the invisible visible; to represent the holy presence as belonging to the building, instead of the building as being hallowed and glorified by the presence. There was no necessity that this evil should grow out of that good; in a very important sense one is the testimony against the other; still all experience, and none more decisively than the experience of the Israelites, prepares us to expect such a result. And here I believe is the precious moral of Solomon's history, that which makes it a perfectly harmonious history in spite of the incongruities in his own life. There

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DEGRADATION OF A KINGLY SOUL.

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was the seed of idolatry in him as there is in every man. That early prayer for an understanding heart was the prayer against it; the prayer for an inward eye to look through the semblances of things to their reality; for a continual revelation of that which passeth show. The prayer was answered, as fully as any prayer ever was. The divine judgment, the discrimination of good and bad, came to Solomon; it was not limited in any direction; it could be exercised on persons as on things; it was shown to be the faculty which a king requires, because it is that which a man requires, since by it God perceives the thoughts and intents of the heart. But there comes a moment when the king or the man ceases to desire that the light should enter into him, should separate the good from the bad in him. There comes a time when his faculty begins to be regarded as a craft, when he half suspects that the light by which he sees is his own. Then appears the tempter. He may come in the form of an Egyptian princess, or any other; but he will in some way appeal to the senses; he will point the road to idolatry. The secret desire of the heart, mightily resisted once, will be allowed to prevail; it will convert all that once checked it to its nourishment. The gold and the silver, not of the palace only but of the temple-not the glory only of the kingdom, but of the sanctuary—will strengthen and deepen the falsehood of the inner man. The glorious power of judging, which enabled one who knew not how to go out or come in, to look into the hardest cases and to resolve them, itself receives the yoke and bows to the image; its keenness and subtilty only inventing arguments and apologies for the shame. And the sympathising king who sent his people away with gladness of heart, sure that God was the king, and that they had a human king, who

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[Serm. felt towards them as He felt, would gradually become a tyrant, laying on his subjects Egytian burdens, compelling them to do the work of beasts, proving that he valued the stones, the iron, and the brass which formed the materials of God's house above the living beings who were to draw nigh to offer their supplications in it. So the wise king may prepare his subjects for rebellion and his kingdom for division.

A lesson surely full of instruction and wisdom for all kings and for all men; for those who think and for those who act; for those who study the secrets of the human heart, and for those who investigate the meaning of nature ; for those who despise the arts and wealth of the world, and for those who worship them; for those who hold strength and glory to be the devil's, and for those who covet them and hunt after them as if they were divine; for nations upon which God has bestowed mechanical knowledge and the blessed results of it; for nations which look upon human beings as only the machines and the producers of a certain amount of physical enjoyments. But though so full of instruction it would be utterly melancholy and oppressive-seeing that it speaks of retrogression instead of progress, of folly coming forth from wisdom, death from life—if there were no sequel to the story. But the Wisdom which Solomon prayed for and pursued with so true and earnest a heart was not a Wisdom which could die with him, or which his forgetfulness of it could kill. "The Lord possessed me," says the writer of the book of Proverbs, "in the beginning of His way before His works of old. I was set up for everlasting, from the beginning or ever the earth "In the beginning was the Word," says Saint John, "and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

was.

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HOW WE MAY SEEK IT.

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All things were made by Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." "And this Word," so we shall read on Christmas-day, "was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth." This is the King "who shall be found as long as the sun and the moon endureth, whom all nations shall call blessed." This is that Son "who shall judge the people with righteousness and the poor with judgment." This is He in whom the prayers of David are ended.

Brethren, every one of us may ask that Divine Word who is near to us and with us, for an understanding heart. Every one of us who feels that a great work is laid upon him and that he is in the midst of a people which God hath chosen, and some of whom, at least, he must teach and judge, and that he is but a little child, may crave for a spirit to discern the good and bad in himself and in all others. And if we feel, as most of us perhaps do, that what we need above all things else, is that sense of responsibility, that consciousness of a calling, that feeling of feebleness which were the source of Solomon's prayer, let us ask for these gifts first. He who took upon Himself the form of a servant and became a little child has said, Come unto me and take my yoke upon you for I am meek and lowly of heart. He promises us His own meekness in place of our pride. He who was straitened till his work was accomplished will teach us to understand the object and the blessedness of ours. He whose delight was to do the will of His Father who sent Him, will make us enter into the delight of shewing forth God's love to His children. And so we shall understand more and more clearly that we are called