is to say, of the priests, who are continually present there before God, and whose innocence and purity ought to equal that of the heavenly spirits. True it is, that thou thereby warn est us, O my God! what ought, in our temples, to be the holy gravity, and the inviolable sanctity of thy ministers; that it is for us to bear here, stamped upon our countenance, the holy dread of the mysteries which we offer up, and the lively and intimate sense of thy presence; that it is for us to inspire here the people around us with respect, by the sole appearance of our modesty; that it is for us not to appear around the altar, and employed in the holy ministry, often more wearied, more careless, and more in haste than even the assisting multitude; and not to authorize their irreverences by our own. For, O my God! the desolation of the holy place hath commenced with the sanctuary itself; the respect of the people there hath become weakened only in consequence of being no longer supported by the holy gravity of the worship and the majesty of the ceremonies; and thy house hath begun to be a house of dissipation and of scandal, only since thy ministers have made of it a house of traffic, of weariness, and of avarice. But our examples, in authorizing your profanations, do not excuse them, my brethren.
And, in effect, it seems that God hath never left them unpunished. The shameful indecencies of the children of Levi, which had so long profaned his house, were followed with the most dismal calamities: the holy ark became a prey to the Philistines; it was placed at the side of Dagon, in an infamous temple; the glory of Israel was blasted; the Lord withdrew himself from amidst his people; the lamp of Judah was extinguished; there was no highpriest, and Jacob was, all of a sudden, without altar, and without sacrifice.
There is little doubt, my brethren, but that the miseries of the last age have been the fatal consequences of the profanations and of the irreverences of our fathers. It was just that the Lord should abandon temples where he had so long been insulted. Dread, my brethren, lest we prepare for our posterity the same calamities, in imitating the disorders of those who have preceded us. Dread, lest an irritated God should one day abandon these temples which we profane, and lest they, in their turn, become the asylum of error. What do I know but that he is already preparing all these evils for us, in permitting the purity and the simplicity of faith to be adulterated in the minds, in multiplying those men so wise in their own conceit, and so common in this age, who measure every thing by the lights of a weak reason, who would wish to fathom the secrecies of God, and who, far from making religion the subject of their worship and of their thanksgivings, make it the subject of their doubts and of their censures? Thou art terrible in thy judgments, O my God! and thy punishments are sometimes so much the more rigorous, as they have been tardy and slow.
Let us reflect, then, my brethren, on all these grand motives of religion; let us bring into this holy place a tender and an attentive piety, a spirit of piety, of compunction, of collection, of thanksgiv-
