time, and delay their punishment. He bursts not forth at once against the hypocrisy of the pharisees, and the corruption of the scribes and priests; but the chastisement of the profaners of the temple can admit of no delay; his zeal on this occasion admits of no bounds; and scarcely is he entered into Jerusalem when he flies to the holy place, to avenge the honour of his Father there insulted, and the glory of his house which they dishonour.
Of all crimes, in effect, by which the greatness of God is insulted, I see almost none more deserving of his chastisements than the profanations of his temples; and they are so much the more criminal, as the dispositions required of us by religion, when assisting there, ought to be more holy.
For, my brethren, since our temples are a new heaven, where God dwelleth with men, they require the same dispositions of us as those of the blessed in the heavenly temple; that is to say, that the earthly altar, being the same as that of heaven, and the Lamb, who offers himself and is sacrificed there, being the same, the dispositions of those around him ought to be alike. Now, the first disposition of the blessed before the throne of God and the altar of the Lamb, is a disposition of purity and innocence. The second, a disposition of religion and internal humiliation. Thirdly, and lastly, a disposition even of decency and of modesty in dress. Three dispositions, which comprise all the feelings of faith with which we ought to enter the temples of God; a disposition of purity and innocence; a disposition of adoration and internal humiliation; a disposition even of external decency and modesty in dress.
Part I. — The whole universe is a temple which God filleth with his glory and with his presence. Wherever we go, says the apostle, he is always beside us; in him we live, move, and have our being. If we mount up to the heavens, he is there; if we plunge to the centre, there shall we find him; if we traverse the ocean on the wings of the winds, it is his hand that guides us: and he is alike the God of the distant isles which know him not, as of the kingdoms and regions which invoke his name.
Nevertheless, in all times, men have consecrated places to him which he hath honoured with a special presence. The patriarchs erected altars to him on certain spots where he had appeared. The Israelites, in the desert, considered the tabernacle as the place in which his glory and his presence continually resided; and, come afterward to Jerusalem, they no more invoked him with the solemnity of incense and of victims, but in that august temple erected to him by Solomon. It was the first temple consecrated by men of the true God. It was the most holy place in the universe; the only one where it was permitted to offer up gifts and sacrifices to the Lord. From all quarters of the earth the Israelites were obliged to come there to worship him. Captives in foreign kingdoms, their eyes, their wishes, and their homages were incessantly bent toward that holy place: in the midst of Babylon, Jerusalem and her temple were always the source of their delights, of their re-
