But a final reason, which renders your irreverential behaviour still more criminal and more disgraceful to religion, is, that it is in the temple where you come to offer up, in one sense, with the priest the awful sacrifice, to renew the oblation of the cross, and to present to God the blood of his Son as the propitiation of your sins. Now, my brethren, while mysteries so august are celebrating; during these awful moments when heaven opens above our altars; in a time when the affair of your salvation is agitated between Jesus Christ and his Father; while the blood of the Lamb is flowing upon the altar to wash you from stain; while the angels of heaven tremble and adore; while the solemnity of the ministers, the majesty of the ceremonies, and even the piety of the true believers, all inspire fear, gratitude, and respect, scarcely do you bow the knee, scarcely do you cast a look upon the holy altar, where mysteries so blessed for you are consummating. It is even with reluctance that you are in the temple; you measure the duration and the fatiguing length of the salutary sacrifice; you count the moments of a time so precious to the earth, and so replete with wonders and grace for men. You who are so embarrassed with your time, who sacrifice it to an eternal inutility and circle of nothings, and who are even difficulted in contriving to kill it; you complain of the pious solemnity of the minister, and of the circumspection with which he treats the holy things. Ah! you require such respect and such precaution in those who serve you; and you would that a priest clothed in all his dignity, that a priest representing Jesus Christ, and performing his office of mediator and high-priest with his Father, should treat the holy mysteries with precipitation, and dishonour the presence of the God whom he serves, and whom he immolates, by a shameful carelessness and haste? In what times, O my God, are we come? And was it to be expected that thy most precious and most signal kindnesses should become a burden to the Christians of our ages?
Alas! the first believers, who met in the temple at stated hours of the day, to celebrate, in hymns and songs with their pastor, the praises of the Lord, they almost never quitted these sacred abodes, and that only with regret, when obliged to attend to the affairs of the age, and to the duties of their station. How beautiful, my brethren, to see in those happy times the holy assembly of believers in the house of prayer, each in the place adapted to his station; on one side, the recluse, the holy confessors, the common believers; on the other, the virgins, the widows, the married women, — all attentive to the holy mysteries, all beholding, with tears of joy and of religion, to flow upon the altar, the blood still reeking, as I may say, of the Lamb, and so lately crucified before their eyes; praying for the princes, for the Caesars, for their persecutors, for their brethren; mutually exhorting each other to martyrdom; tasting all the consolation of the divine writings explained by their holy pastors, and retracing, in the church of the earth, the joy, the peace, the innocence, and the profound meditation of the heavenly church! How beautiful and splendid were the the tents of Jacob, although the
