of terror, of silence, and profound recollection, of internal humiliation, on viewing the majesty of the Most High, and our own meanness; to be occupied with God alone who showeth himself to us; to feel all the weight of his glory and of his presence; to collect all our attention, all our thoughts, all our desires, our whole soul, to pay him the homage of it, and to cast it wholly at the feet of the God whom we worship; to forget all the grandeurs of the earth; to see only him; to be occupied only with him; and, by our profound humiliation, to confess, like the blessed in heaven, that he alone is almighty, alone immortal, alone great, alone worthy of all our love and of our homages.
But, alas! my brethren, where, in our temples, are those respectful souls, who, seized with a holy dread at the sight of these sacred places, feel all the weight of the majesty of the God who dwelleth in them, and are incapable of supporting the splendour of his presence, otherwise than in the immobility of a humiliated body, and the profound religion of a soul who adores? Where are those who, losing sight of all the grandeurs of the earth, are here occupied with that of God alone? Let us boldly say it before a king, whose profound respect, at the foot of the altar, does equal honour to religion and to himself; it is not to honour the God who dwelleth here that too many enter into this holy temple; it is to cover themselves with the cloak of piety, and to make it instrumental toward views and interests which sincere piety condemns. They come to bow the knee, as Haman bowed it before the profane altar, to attract the regards and to follow the example of the prince who worships; they come here to seek another God than he who appears on our altars; to make their court to another master than the Supreme Master; to seek other favours than the grace of Heaven; and to attract the kindness of another paymaster than the immortal Rewarder. Amid a crowd of worshippers, he is an unknown God in his own temple, as he formerly was in the pagan Athens. Every look here is for the prince, who hath none himself but for God; all wishes are addressed to him; and his profound humiliation at the foot of the altar, far from teaching us to respect here the Lord, before whom a great king bows his head and forgets all his greatness, teaches us only to take advantage of his religion, and of the favours with which he honours virtue, to adopt their semblance, and, through that deception, to exalt ourselves to new degrees of greatness upon the earth. O my God! is not this what thou announcedst to thy disciples — that times would come when faith should be extinguished, when piety would become an infamous traffic, and when men, living without God upon the earth, would no longer acknowledge thee but in order to make thee subservient to their iniquitous desires?
A spirit of prayer is also comprised in this disposition of humiliation; for the more we are struck here with the greatness and with the power of the God whom we worship, the more do our endless wants warn us to have recourse to him from whom alone we can obtain relief and deliverance from them. Thus the temple
