grets, and the object of their worship and of their prayers; and Daniel chose to expose himself to all the fury of the lions, rather than to fail in that pious duty, and to deprive himself of that consolation. Jerusalem, indeed, had often seen infidel princes, attracted by the sanctity and the fame of her temple, coming to render homage to a God whom they knew not; and Alexander himself, struck with the majesty of that place, and with the august gravity of its venerable pontiff, remembered that he was man, and bowed his proud head before the God of hosts whom they there worshipped.
At the birth of the gospel, the houses of believers were at first domestic churches. The cruelty of tyrants obliged those first disciples of faith to seek obscure and hidden places to conceal themselves from the rage of the persecutions, there to celebrate the holy mysteries and to invoke the name of the Lord. The majesty of the ceremonies entered into the church only with that of the Csesars. Religion had its Davids and its Solomons, who blushed to inhabit superb palaces, while the Lord had not whereon to lay his head: sumptuous edifices gradually rose up in our cities: the God of heaven and of the earth again, if I dare to say so, resumed his rights; and the temples themselves, where the demon had so long been invoked, were restored to him as to their rightful master, consecrated to his worship, and became his dwelling-place.
But here they are no more empty temples like that of Jerusalem, where every thing took place figuratively. The Lord still dwelt in the heavens, said the prophet, and his throne was still above the clouds; but since he hath deigned to appear upon the earth, to hold converse with men, and to leave us, in the mystical benedictions, the real pledge of his body and of his blood, actually contained under these sacred signs, the heavenly altar hath no longer any advantage over ours; the victims which we there immolate is the Lamb of God; the bread in which we participate is the immortal food of the angels and blessed spirits; the mystical wine we there drink is that new beverage with which they make glad in the kingdom of the heavenly Father; the sacred canticle we there sing is that which the celestial harmony makes continually to resound around the throne of the Lamb; lastly, our temples are those new heavens promised by the prophet to men. We see not fully there, it is true, all that is seen in the heavenly Jerusalem, for here below we see only mystically, and, as it were, through a veil; but we possess him, we enjoy him, and heaven hath no longer any advantage over the earth.
Now, I say, that our temples being a new heaven, filled with the glory and the presence of the Lord, innocence and purity are the first disposition by which we are entitled, like the blessed in the eternal temple, to appear there; for the God before whom we appear is a holy God.
In effect, my brethren, the sanctity of God, spread throughout the universe, is one of the greatest motives held out by religion to induce us every where to walk before him in purity and in innocence. As all creatures are sanctified by the intimate residence of the
