of a depraved heart; but he condescends to the weakness of man, and mercifully and wisely provides for all its requirements. Man needs a temple. His nature shows it: were he pure intellect he could dispense with it—were he mere animalism he could not rise to it, still less above it; but as soul and body, immortality and mortality wed together, he finds in the appointments of God, his word, his house, his ordinances, all that is requisite in this dispensation to aid, to stimulate, improve, and fit him for a nobler and more glorious destiny. Sinners need temples. They require to be arrested, roused, awakened, or they perish in their sins; their minds require light, their judgments facts, their consciences conviction, their whole. nature regeneration, improvement, and elevation; and no process has been shown or felt in the history of mankind to have been so fraught with power, as that of a faithfully preached gospel. Saints need temples no less than sinners. They are the corn in the field, the flowers in the garden, the branches of the vine, and they must have the dew-drops and sunbeams of the sky to fall upon them, or they wither; they are dependent, they live on influences from above. Grace is an exotic; it is implanted from. on high, amid an inhospitable and uncongenial world, and it must be sustained and invigorated from the source of its birth; and it has been invariably and uniformly found, in all places, ages, and circumstances, that the greater our growth in grace, the greater becomes our appetite for the means of its maintenance and increase the exercises and influences of the sanctuary of God. It was no sentimental poet, but holy David, who wrote the eightyfourth psalm: "How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth, for the courts of the Lord. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: a day in thy courts is better than a thousand: I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness." The soul grows in capacity with its progress in knowledge and truth; one satisfaction delighting it awhile, indeed, but preparing it also to thirst for new and more glorious draughts from the fountain of living waters; and hence, wheresoever the invitation is sounded forth, on the highway, or amid sacred furniture, from the pulpit or on the hill-side, "Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters," it hears in such words sounds full of melody and irresistible attraction, and resolves, at all hazard or expense, to be there. The "company" of the people of God is a Christian's "own," the scene, the source, the kindler of fellowship, sympathy, communion; and therefore they who have made the greatest progress in conformity to the divine image, are they who seek most, and frequent oftenest, the house of God, the assembly of the saints, and enjoy its ennobling exercises with greatest delight and largest benefit. "People of the living God, I have sought the world around, Peace and comfort nowhere found. Now to you my spirit turns, Like the cloud, the wind, the wave, Mine the God whom you adore, Society requires temples. The Christian church is the nursery of a Christian people. A society that springs from the mosque, the Socialist's den, the Romish temple, will be found unmanageable, unquiet, unprosperous, the mere slaves of a designing priesthood, the creatures of democratic or rather ochlocratic turbulence, and destitute altogether of that nobility of nature which imparts obedience to laws and lawful authority without servility, and creates a manly, independent character without the least tendency to disrespect and insubordination. The house of God is the sacred platform which levels none and elevates all-on which liberty, equality, fraternity, truly so called, grow up as branches of the tree of life, instinct with true vitality, and loaded with real fruits; where our common and aboriginal nature is felt by all hearts to be our common condition, and acknowledged amid all the trappings of rank and the vails of circumstance; where rich and poor meet together, and see and cherish the ties of a common but not ignoble brotherhood. Society cannot become compact till wedded by Christian love: and it can attain its culminating greatness only when it is universally illuminated and inspired and directed by the wisdom that is from above. All government in this world requires temples. Be it a monarchy, a republic, or an aristocracy, there can be little righteous rule above, and less loyalty and obedience below, where the restraining, guiding, sanctifying truths of Christianity are not appreciated. Conscience is the fountain of power; it must be touched. In the house of God, and through the instrumentality of the truth of God, this faculty is reached, and awakened, and replaced upon its legitimate throne; and man then thinks and plans as before God. We may be assured, houses of prayer, where such results follow, are far more important contributions to the stability and safety of the state than prisons; and the lessons of Christianity than stringent laws; and love and loyalty, the inner inspiration of the soul, than the fears created by penal codes, or the obedience forced from without by an Argus-eyed police. Loyal subjects, and wise and just and merciful rulers, are not the wild shoots of nature, growing on the commons of the earth, but divine plants, the planting of the Lord, and requiring divine nutriment. I never can believe that the social order, all but universal allegiance, and enthusiastic reverence for our institutions in this great land, are merely the results of commercial calculation of loss by their removal-or of Saxon doggedness, or of pure habit, or of traditional veneration. Their roots have struck, no doubt, into the convictions and hearts, but deeper and stronger still, I believe, into the consciences of our people. A jus humanum in itself thus rises to the rank and strength of a jus divinum; and in the blow levelled at the ordinance of man, they see a stain aimed at the honour of God. The true charter of our social liberties is the word of God; and the place where its words are read, and its responsibilities impressed-call it cathedral, church, or chapel-is a place on which the state mightily depends. It is the Bible that exposes all forms of tyranny and falsehood, and by bringing before the mind the types, and images, and formulas of immortal truth and spiritual freedom; by dis placing the authority of the church by the authority of Christ; by annihilating the decretals of popes by the voice of God. Put away our Bibles, and pull down our sanctuaries, and how long would our institutions remain? The Bible is the palladium of our constitutional freedom: with the Bible, we can never be enslaved, without it we cannot remain long free; what is brightest in our history is reflected from it; what is most powerful, pure, and holy in our constitution is inspired by it. In the future dispensation, in which, as asserted in the passage under review, there will be no temple, it may be proper to add, there will be no necessity for a temple. In the ancient temple of Jerusalem-the special and peculiar residence of Deity-were the Urim and Thummim, the Shechinah and the mercy-seat, and the overshadowing cherubim. But in the coming dispensation, the temple will be co-extensive with the city, the church and state be one; the very walls will be built of those precious stones, fragments of which were placed on the breastplate of the high-priest; and the glory of the Lord, that dwelt between the cherubim of old, will cover with its splendours every spot of the holy city. Then all citizens will be Christians, all rulers spiritual; and the great idea of Dr. Arnold, so forcibly and eloquently rendered by the Duke of Argyll, in his recent work*-impossible in this dispensation-will be actualized, and church and state will be melted into one in the New Jerusalem, inseparable and undistinguishable for ever. All will be priests unto God. Such temples as exist on earth will be unnecessary in the future age, because all space will be holiness to the Lord. In the ancient economy, certain rules and acts of worship were so restricted to the temple of Jerusalem, that it would have been sin to attempt to perform them in any other place. Thus it is written in Deuteronomy xii. 14, "Take heed to thyself, that thou offer not thy burnt-offerings in every place that thou seest; but in the place. which the Lord shall choose, in one of thy tribes, there shalt thou offer thy burnt-offerings, and there shalt thou do all that I command thee." "Presbytery Examined, or an Essay, Critical and Historical, on the Ecclesiastical History of Scotland since the Reformation." By the Duke of Argyll. Moxon, Dover street. In 2 Chronicles vii. 12, it is written, "And the Lord appeared unto Solomon by night, and said unto him, I have heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place to myself for a house of sacriAnd in this present dispensation, though the type is merged in its antitype, and the whole earth is fit in itself for sacred rites and spiritual worship—as it is declared by our blessed Lord, "The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him ;" "Ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father;"-yet every spot is not in fact suited for assembled worshippers, owing to the din, and conflict, and interruptions of the world. Mammon has preoccupied one part; the conflict of political parties, another; the competition of trade, another; and unless a spot be selected and separated from the surrounding worldliness, and hedged and walled round, and visibly and legibly devoted to sacred and spiritual things, there could scarcely be a visible church. This arises from abounding worldliness, from the imperfections and sinfulness of our position, and from the usurpations of Satan, which become more intrusive as the hour of his ejection draws nigh. But in the New Jerusalem-the better, and purer, and perfect age-a Sabbath-calm shall float over a redeemed earththe whole earth shall be retrieved, as it is already redeemed, and every acre shall be holy; every pulse of every heart shall be worship, and every breath shall be as fragrant incense, and the floor of that temple shall be the whole earth, and the worshippers all living men, and time a perpetual Lord's-day; there shall be no world to keep out, no intrusion to prevent-no distinction between house and house, service and service, spot and spot possible; all scenes will be salvation, and all sounds praise. Christ shall be the temple of the Millennium, and all redeemed saints. "pillars in the temple of my God." All hours, too, shall be canonical, all seasons high festivals, and all affections at all hours in tune. All space shall be temple-space, and all days templedays. We gather from these revelations of the future, what are the elements of fitness for its sublime and holy employments. Delight in the service of God is the characteristic of all its inmates, and |