# Sermons (Massillon)/Sermon 21

SERMON XXI.
RESPECT IN THE TEMPLES OF GOD.
"And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of them that sold doves." — Matthew xxi. 12.
Whence comes this aspect of zeal and of indignation which Jesus Christ, on this occasion, allows his countenance to betray? Is this, then, that King of Peace who was to appear in Zion armed with his meekness alone? We have seen him sitting as judge over an adulteress, and he hath not even condemned her. We have seen at his feet the prostitute of the city, and he hath graciously forgiven her debaucheries and scandals. His disciples wanted the fire of heaven to descend upon an ungrateful and perverse city; but he reproached them with being still unacquainted with that new spirit of mercy and of charity which he came to spread throughout the earth. He hath just been lamenting with tears the miseries which threaten Jerusalem, that criminal city, the murderer of the prophets, which is on the eve of sealing the sentence of her reprobation by the iniquitous death she is so soon to inflict on him whom God had sent to be her Redeemer. On every occasion he hath appeared feeling and merciful; and, in consequence of the excess of his meekness, he hath been called the friend even of publicans and sinners.
What then are the outrages which now triumph over all his clemency, and arm his gracious hands with the rod of justice and of wrath? The holy temple is profaned; his Father's house is dishonoured; the place of prayer and the sacred asylum of the penitent, is turned into a house of traffic and of avarice: this is what calls the lightning into those eyes which would wish to cast only looks of compassion upon sinners. Behold what obliges him to terminate a ministry of love and reconciliation, by a step of severity and of wrath similar to that with which he had opened it. For remark, that what Jesus Christ doth here, in terminating his career, he had already done, when, after thirty-three years of a private life, he entered for the first time into Jerusalem, there to open his mission, and to do the work of his Father. It might be said, that he had himself forgotten that spirit of meekness and of long-suffering which was to distinguish his ministry from that of the ancient covenant, and under which he was announced by the prophets.
Many other scandals, besides those seen in the temple, doubtless took place in that city, and were perhaps no less worthy of the zeal and the chastisement of the Saviour; but, as if his Father's glory had been less wounded by them, he can conceal them for a ​time, and delay their punishment. He bursts not forth at once against the hypocrisy of the pharisees, and the corruption of the scribes and priests; but the chastisement of the profaners of the temple can admit of no delay; his zeal on this occasion admits of no bounds; and scarcely is he entered into Jerusalem when he flies to the holy place, to avenge the honour of his Father there insulted, and the glory of his house which they dishonour.
Of all crimes, in effect, by which the greatness of God is insulted, I see almost none more deserving of his chastisements than the profanations of his temples; and they are so much the more criminal, as the dispositions required of us by religion, when assisting there, ought to be more holy.
For, my brethren, since our temples are a new heaven, where God dwelleth with men, they require the same dispositions of us as those of the blessed in the heavenly temple; that is to say, that the earthly altar, being the same as that of heaven, and the Lamb, who offers himself and is sacrificed there, being the same, the dispositions of those around him ought to be alike. Now, the first disposition of the blessed before the throne of God and the altar of the Lamb, is a disposition of purity and innocence. The second, a disposition of religion and internal humiliation. Thirdly, and lastly, a disposition even of decency and of modesty in dress. Three dispositions, which comprise all the feelings of faith with which we ought to enter the temples of God; a disposition of purity and innocence; a disposition of adoration and internal humiliation; a disposition even of external decency and modesty in dress.
Part I. — The whole universe is a temple which God filleth with his glory and with his presence. Wherever we go, says the apostle, he is always beside us; in him we live, move, and have our being. If we mount up to the heavens, he is there; if we plunge to the centre, there shall we find him; if we traverse the ocean on the wings of the winds, it is his hand that guides us: and he is alike the God of the distant isles which know him not, as of the kingdoms and regions which invoke his name.
Nevertheless, in all times, men have consecrated places to him which he hath honoured with a special presence. The patriarchs erected altars to him on certain spots where he had appeared. The Israelites, in the desert, considered the tabernacle as the place in which his glory and his presence continually resided; and, come afterward to Jerusalem, they no more invoked him with the solemnity of incense and of victims, but in that august temple erected to him by Solomon. It was the first temple consecrated by men of the true God. It was the most holy place in the universe; the only one where it was permitted to offer up gifts and sacrifices to the Lord. From all quarters of the earth the Israelites were obliged to come there to worship him. Captives in foreign kingdoms, their eyes, their wishes, and their homages were incessantly bent toward that holy place: in the midst of Babylon, Jerusalem and her temple were always the source of their delights, of their re​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 ​Divinity who dwelleth in them, and all places are full of his glory and immensity, the divine writings incessantly warn us every where to respect the presence of God, who seeth and who watcheth us; on no occasion to offer any thing to his eyes which may wound the sanctity of his regards; and not sully with our crimes that earth which wholly is his temple and the dwelling-place of his glory. The sinner who bears an impure conscience, is therefore a kind of profaner, unworthy of living upon the earth; for, by the sole situation of his corrupted heart, he every where dishonours the presence of the holy God who is ever beside him, and he profanes every spot where he bears his crimes, for all places are sanctified through the immensity of the God who filleth and consecrateth them.
But, if the universal presence of God be a reason why we should every where appear pure and without stain to his eyes, doubtless those places which, in that universe, are particularly consecrated to him, our temples, in which the Divinity, as I may say, corporeally resides, much more require that we should appear in them pure and without stain, lest the sanctity of the God who filleth and dwelleth in them be dishonoured.
Thus, when the Lord had permitted Solomon to erect, to his glory, that temple so famed for its magnificence, and so venerable through the splendour of its worship and the majesty of its ceremonies, what rigid precautions did he not take, lest men should abuse his goodness in choosing a special dwelling-place amid them, and lest they should dare to appear there, in his presence, covered with stains and defilements! What barriers did he not place between himself, as I may say, and man; and, in drawing near to us, what an interval did not his holiness leave between the spot filled with his presence, and the eyes of the people who came to invoke him?
Yes, my brethren, take a description of it. Within the circle of that vast edifice which Solomon consecrated to the majesty of the God of his fathers, the Lord chose, for the place of his abode, only the most retired and the most inaccessible spot; that was the holy of holies, that is to say, the sole spot of that immense temple which was regarded as the dwelling-place and the temple of the Lord upon earth. And, besides, what terrible precautions defended its entry! An outer and far distant wall surrounded it; and there, the Gentiles and foreigners, who wished to be instructed in the law, could only approach. Secondly, another wall very distant concealed it; and there the Israelites alone were entitled to enter: yet was it necessary that they should be free from stain, and that they had carefully purified themselves, through stated fastings and ablutions, before they should dare to approach a place still so distant from the holy of holies. Thirdly, another wall more advanced still separated it from the rest of the temple; and there the priests alone entered every day to offer sacrifices, and to renew the sacred loaves exposed upon the altar. The law required that every other Israelite who should dare to approach it, should be stoned as a sa​crilegious profaner; and even a king of Israel, who thought himself entitled, through his regal dignity, to come there to offer up incense, was instantly covered with leprosy, degraded from his royalty, and excluded for the rest of his life from all society and commerce with men. Lastly, after so many barriers and separations, appeared the holy of holies; that place, so terrible and so concealed, covered with an impenetrable veil, inaccessible to every mortal, to every righteous, to every prophet, even to every minister of the Lord, the sovereign pontiff alone excepted; and even he was entitled to appear there only once in the year, after a thousand strict and religious precautions, and bearing in his hands the blood of the victim for which alone the gates of that sacred place were opened.
Yet, after all, what did that holy of holies, that spot so formidable and so inaccessible, contain? The tables of the law, the manna, the rod of Aaron; empty figures, and the shadows of futurity: the holy God himself, who sometimes gave out from thence his oracles, yet dwelt not there as in the sanctuary of Christians, the gates of which are indiscriminately opened to every believer.
Now, my brethren, if the goodness of God, in a law of love and grace, hath no longer placed these terrible barriers between him and us, if he hath destroyed that wall of separation which removed him so far from man, and hath permitted to every believer to approach the holy of holies, where he himself now dwelleth, it is not that his sanctity exacts less purity and innocence of those who come to present themselves before him. His design hath only been to render us more pure, more holy, and more faithful, and to make us feel what ought to be the sanctity of a Christian; seeing he is every day obliged to support, at the foot of the altar, and of the terrible sanctuary, the presence of the God whom he invokes and whom he worships.
And for this reason it is that Peter calls all Christians a holy nation; for they are all equally entitled to present themselves before the holy altar: a chosen generation; for they are all separated from the world and from every profane custom, consecrated to the Lord, and solely destined to his worship and to his service: and, lastly, a royal priesthood; for they all participate, in one sense, in the priesthood of his Son, the High-priest of the new law, and because the privilege of entering into the holy of holies, formerly granted to the sovereign pontiff alone, is become the common and daily right of every believer.
It is solely through the sanctity, then, of our baptism and of our consecration, that these sacred gates are opened to us. If impure, we, in some respect forfeit this right; we have no longer a part in the altar: we are no longer worthy of the assembly of the holy, and the temple of God is no longer for us.
Our temples, my brethren, ought therefore to be the house of the righteous alone. Every thing that takes place there supposes righteousness and sanctity in the spectators; the mysteries which we there celebrate are holy and awful mysteries, and which require pure eyes; the victim we there offer up is the reconciliation of the ​penitent, or the bread of the strong and perfect; the sacred anthems heard there are the groanings of a contrite heart, or the sighs of a chaste and believing soul. And on this account it is that the church takes care to purify even every thing that is to appear on the altar; she consecrates with prayers even the stones of these holy buildings, as if to render them worthy of sustaining the presence and the looks of the God who dwelleth in them: she exposes at the doors of our temples a water sanctified by prayers, and recommends to believers to sprinkle it over their heads before they enter into the holy place, as if to complete their purification from any slight stains which might still remain; lest the sanctity of the God before whom they come to appear should be injured by them.
Formerly, the church permitted not, within the circle of her sacred walls, even tombs to the bodies of believers; she received not into that holy spot the spoils of their mortality; she did not believe that the temple of God, that new heaven filled with his presence and glory, should serve as an asylum to the ashes of those whom she numbered not as yet among the blessed.
The public penitents themselves were for a long time excluded from assisting at the holy mysteries. Prostrated at the doors of the temple, covered with hair-cloth and ashes, even the assembly of believers was denied to them equally as to the anathematized: their tears and their mortifications alone could at length open to them these sacred gates. And what delight, when, after having groaned for, and supplicated their reconciliation, they found themselves in the temple among their brethren; they once more beheld those altars, that sanctuary, those ministers so deeply engaged in the awful mysteries; they heard their names pronounced at the altar with those of the believers, and sung with them hymns and holy songs! What tears of rapture and of religion were then not shed! What regret for having so long deprived themselves of so sweet a consolation! A single day, O my God, passed in thy holy house, cried they, no doubt, with the prophet, is more consoling to the heart than whole years spent in pleasure and in the tents of the wicked! Such were formerly the temples of Christians. Far from these sacred walls, said then the minister with a loud voice to all the assembly of believers, — far from these sacred walls be the unclean, the impure, the worshippers of idols, and whosoever loveth or maketh a lie.
The church, it is true, no longer makes this rigorous discrimination. The multitude of believers, and the depravation of manners, having rendered it impossible, she opens the gates of our temples indifferently to the righteous and to sinners: she draws the veil of her sanctuary in presence even of the profane; and, in order to begin the awful mysteries, her ministers no longer wait the departure of the sinful and unclean. But the church supposes that, if you be not righteous in coming here to appear before the majesty of a God so holy, you bring with you at least desires of righteousness and of penitence: she supposes, that, if not yet altogether ​purified from your crimes, you at least feel contrition for them; that you come to lament them at the foot of the altar; and that your confusion and the sincere regret of your faults are now to begin here your justification and your innocence.
If, sinners, it is your desires toward a more Christian life which alone can authorize your appearing in this holy place; and if you come not here to lament over your crimes, but bring with you, even to the foot of the altar, the will, and the actual and rooted affection for them, the church, it is true, who sees not, nor judges the heart, excludes you not from these sacred walls; but God invisibly rejecteth you. In his eyes you are accursed and excommunicated, and have no right in the altar or in the sacrifices; you are one who comes to stain, by your sole presence, the sanctity of the awful mysteries, to seat yourself in a place where you have no right to be seated, and from whence the angel of the Lord, who watches at the gate of the temple, invisibly chases you, as he formerly chased the first sinner from that place of innocence and of sanctity which the Lord sanctified with his presence.
And, in effect, to feel guilty of the most shameful crimes, and to come to appear here in the most holy place of the earth; to come to appear before God, without being, at least, touched with shame and sorrow, without thinking, at least, upon the means of quitting so deplorable a situation, without at least wishing it, and forming some sentiments of religion; to bring even to the foot of the altar defiled bodies and souls; to force the eyes even of God, as I may say, to familiarize themselves with guilt, without at least confessing to him the sorrow of thus appearing before him, covered with shame and reproach, and saying to him, like Peter, * Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man;" or, like the prophet, " Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities," that I may be worthy of appearing here in thy presence, — is to profane the temple of God, to insult his glory and majesty, and the sanctity of his mysteries.
For, my dear hearer, be whom ye may who come to assist here, you come to offer up spiritually with the priest the awful sacrifice: you come to present to God the blood of his Son, as the propitiation of your sins: you come to appease his justice, through the dignity and the excellence of these holy offerings; and to represent to him the claim which you have upon his mercies, ever since the blood of his Son hath purified you; and that you no longer form, in one sense, with him, but one same priest and one same victim. Now, when you appear with a hardened and corrupted heart, without any sentiment of faith, or any desire of amendment, you disavow the ministry of the priest who offers in your stead: you disavow the prayers he sends up to the Lord, in which, through the mouth of the priest, you entreat him to cast his propitious looks on these holy offerings which are upon the altar, and to accept of them as the price of the abolition of your crimes: you even insult the love of Jesus Christ himself, who renews the grand object of your redemption, and who presents you to his Father as a portion ​of that pure and spotless church which he hath washed in his blood: you insult the piety of the church, who, believing you united in her faith and in her charity, places in your mouth, through the hymns which accompany the holy mysteries, sentiments of religion, of sorrow, and of penitence. Lastly, — you receive the faith and the piety of the righteous there present, and who, considering you as forming with them only one heart, one mind, and one same sacrifice, join themselves with you, and offer to the Lord your faith, your desires, your prayers, as their own. You are there, then, as an anathematized, separated from all the rest of your brethren: an impostor, who secretly disavows what you are publicly professing, and who comes to insult religion, and to reject all share in the redemption and in the sacrifices of Jesus Christ, in the very moment that he is renewing the memory, and offering up the price of it to his Father.
What are we thence to conclude? — that, if a sinner, we are to banish ourselves from our temples, and from the holy mysteries? God forbid! Ah! then it is, that we ought to come to this holy place in search of our deliverance; then it is, that we ought to come to solicit, at the foot of the altar, the tender mercies of the Lord, ever ready in that place to lend a favourable ear to sinners; then it is, that we ought to call in every religious aid held out to faith, to arouse in ourselves, if possible, some sentiments of piety and of repentance. And whither, O my brethren, shall we fly, when unhappily fallen under the displeasure of God? And what other resource could remain for us? It is here alone that sinners can find a refuge: here flow the quickening waters of the sacrament, which alone have the virtue of purifying the conscience: here the sacrifice of propitiation is offered up for them, alone capable of appeasing the justice of God, which their crimes have irritated: here the truths of salvation, enforced upon their heart, inspire them with hatred against sin and love of righteousness: here their ignorance is enlightened, their errors dissipated, their weakness sustained, their good desires strengthened: here, in a word, religion offers remedies for all their ills. It is sinners, therefore, who ought most to frequent these holy temples; and the more their wounds are inveterate and hopeless, the more eagerly ought they to fly here in search of a cure.
Such is the first disposition of innocence and of purity, which the presence here of a holy God requires of us, and of the blessed in heaven: " For they are without fault before the throne of God."
But if the sole state of guilt, without remorse, without any wish for a change, and with an actual intention of preserving in it, be a kind of irreverence, by which the sanctity of our temples and of our mysteries is profaned; what, O my God! shall it be to choose these holy places, and the hour of the awful mysteries, to come to inspire infamous passions, — to permit themselves impure looks, — to form criminal desires, to seek opportunities which decency alone prevents them from seeking elsewhere,- — to meet objects whom the vigilance of those who instruct us keeps at a distance in all ​other resorts? What shall it be to make instrumental to guilt, what in religion is most holy; to choose thy presence, great God! to conceal the secret of an impure passion, and to make thy holy temple a rendezvous of iniquity, a place more dangerous than even those assemblies of sin, which religion interdicts to believers? What guilt, to come to crucify afresh Jesus Christ, in the very place where he offers himself up for us every day to his Father! What guilt, to employ, in order to forward our own ruin, the very hour in which the mysteries of salvation, and the redemption of all men, are operated! What madness, to come to choose the eyes of our Judge to render him the witness of our crimes, and of his presence to make the most horrible cause of our condemnation! What a neglect of God, and what a mark of reprobation, to change the sacred asylums of our reconciliation into opportunities of debauchery and licentiousness!
Great God! when insulted on Mount Calvary, where thou wert still a suffering God, the tombs opened around Jerusalem; the dead arose, as if to reproach to their descendants the horror of their sacrilege. Ah! reanimate, then, the ashes of our fathers who await, in this holy temple, the blessed immortality; let their bodies rise out of these pompous tombs which our vanity hath erected to them; and, inflamed with a holy indignation against irreverences which crucify thee afresh, and which profane the sacred asylum of the remains of their mortality, let them appear upon these monuments; and, since our instructions and our threatenings are unavailing, let them come themselves to reproach to their successors their irreligion and their sacrileges. But if the terror of thy presence, O my God! be insufficient to retain them in respect, were the dead even to rise up, as thou hast formerly said, they would, in consequence of it, be neither more religious nor more believing.
But if the presence of a holy God require here, as of the blessed in heaven, a disposition of purity and innocence, the presence of a God, terrible, and full of majesty, requires one of dread and of internal collection. — Second disposition, marked by the profound humiliation of the blessed in the heavenly temple; " And they fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God."
Part II. — God is spirit and truth, and it is in spirit and in truth that he requireth principally to be honoured. That disposition of profound humiliation which we owe to him in our temples, consists not, therefore, solely in the external posture of our bodies; it also comprises, like that of the blessed in heaven, a spirit of adoration, of praise, of prayer, and of thanksgiving; and such is that spirit of religion and humiliation which God demandeth of us in the holy temple, similar to that of the blessed in the heavenly temple.
I say a spirit of adoration; for as it is here that God manifesteth his wonders and his supreme greatness, and descendeth from heaven to receive our homages, the first sentiment which should be formed within us, on entering into this holy place, is a sentiment ​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 ​is the house of prayer, where every one ought to come to lay his secret wants before the Lord; where, in public calamities, he is appeased by the general prayers; where the assembled ministers lift up their hands for the sins of the people; and where the eyes of the Lord are ever open to our wants, and his ears attentive to our cries.
Not but we may address ourselves to him, as the apostle says, in every place; but the temple is the spot where he is more propit ious, and where he hath promised to be always present to receive our homages, and to lend a favourable ear to our requests. Yes, my brethren, it is here that we ought to come to join in lamentation with the church, over the scandals with which she is afflicted, over the divisions with which she is torn, and over the dangers which surround her; over the obstinacy of sinners, and the coldness of charity among believers: we come, with her, to solicit the mercies of the Lord upon his people; to entreat of him the cessation of wars and other public scourges; the extinction of schisms and errors; the knowledge and the love of righteousness and of truth for sinners; and perseverance for the just. You ought, therefore, to come with an attentive and collected mind, a prepared heart, and which offers nothing to the eyes of God that may avert the favours solicited by the church for you, and to appear with that exterior of a suppliant, which, of itself, shows that he prays and that he worships.
Nevertheless, my brethren, while the ministers are lifting up their hands here for you; are supplicating the Lord for the prosperity of your families, for abundance to your lands, for the preservation of your relations and children, who perhaps expose themselves for the welfare of their country, for the end of wars, dissensions, and all the miseries with which we are afflicted; while they are entreating remedies for your backslidings, and aids for your weakness; while they are speaking to the holy God in your favour, you deign not even to accompany their prayers with your attention and your respect. You dishonour the holy gravity of the church's lamentations by a spirit of inattention, and by indecencies which would hardly become even those criminal resorts where you listen to profane songs; and the only difference in your behaviour is, that, in the one, you are touched and rendered attentive by a lascivious harmony, while here you endure, with impatience, the divine songs of thanksgiving and in praise of the Lord.
Thus, my brethren, in place of the public prayers arresting the arm of the Lord, so long impending over our heads; in place of the supplications, which resound in every part of our temples, being able, as formerly, to suspend the scourges of Heaven, to bring back days of peace and of tranquillity, to reconcile nations and kings, and to attract peace from heaven to the earth; alas! the days of evil still endure; the times of trouble, of mourning, and of desolation, cease not; war and fury seem to have for ever taken up their abode among men; the desolate widow demands her husband; the afflicted father in vain looks out for his child; brother ​is divided from brother; even our successes shed mourning and sorrow through our families, and we are forced to weep over our own victories. Whence comes this? Ah! it is that the prayers of the church, the only sources of the favours which God sheddeth upon kingdoms and upon empires, are no longer listened to; and that you force the Lord, through the irreverence with which you accompany them, to avert his ears, and to turn his attention from them, and which thereby renders them useless to the earth.
But, not only ought you to appear here as suppliants, and in a spirit of prayer, since it is here that the Lord dealeth out his favours and his grace; as it is here, likewise, that every thing renews to you the remembrance of those already received, you ought also to bring hither a spirit of gratitude and of thanksgiving, seeing that, on whichever way you turn your eyes, every thing recalls to you the remembrance of God's blessings and the sight of his eternal mercies upon your soul.
And, first, it is here where, in the sacrament by which we are regenerated, you have become believers: it is here that the goodness of God, in associating you, through baptism, to the hope of Jesus Christ, hath discerned you from so many heathens who know him not: it is here that you have engaged your faith to the Lord; your written promises are still preserved under the altar. Here is the book of the covenant which you have made with the God of your fathers: you should no longer then, appear here but to ratify the engagements of your baptism, and to thank the Lord for the inestimable blessing which hath associated you with his people, and honoured you with the name of Christian; you ought to feel all the tenderness and respect of a child, for the blessed womb which hath brought you forth in Jesus Christ, and the glory of this house ought to be your glory.
What are you then, when, in place of bringing your thanksgivings to the feet of the altar for so singular and so distinguished a blessing, you come to dishonour it by your irreverences? You are an unnatural child, who profane the place of your birth according to faith; a perfidious Christian, who come to retract your promises before the very altars which witnessed them; who come to break the treaty on the sacred spot where it was concluded; to blot yourself out of the book of life, where your name was written with those of the faithful; to abjure the religion of Jesus Christ on the very fonts where you had received it; to make a pompous display of all the vanities of the age, at the feet of the altar where you had solemnly renounced them; and to profess worldliness where you had made professions of Christianity.
Nor is this all; for, secondly, it is here that Jesus Christ hath so often said to you, through the mouth of his ministers, "My son, thy sins are forgiven thee; go and sin no more, lest a worse thing befal thee." It is here, that, melting in tears, you have so often said to him, a Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee." Now, my brethren, on the very spot where you have so often experienced the grace of forgiveness, not only you forget the blessing, ​but you come to give new subject of offence; on the very spot where you have so often appeared penitent, you proclaim yourselves still worldly and profane. Ah! far from coming to these holy tribunals to recapitulate the disorders of your life; far from coming to renew those promises of penitence, those sentiments of compunction, those emotions of shame and of confusion, of which they have so often been the depositories; you boldly appear before them with an unblushing countenance, your eyes wandering here and there, full, perhaps, of guilt and adultery, as the apostle says, to renew in their presence the same infidelities that your tears had once expiated, and to render them ocular witnesses of the same prevarications of which they had been the secret confidants and the blessed purgers!
What more shall I say, my brethren? — In the third place, the temple is the house of doctrine and of truth; and it is here that, through the mouth of the pastors, the church announces to you the maxims of salvation, and the mysteries of the heavenly kingdom, concealed from so many infidel nations: — fresh motive of gratitude on your part. But, alas! it is rather a fresh subject of condemnation; and even here, where, from these Christian pulpits, we are continually telling you from Jesus Christ that the unclean shall never enjoy the kingdom of heaven, you come to form profane desires; even here where you are warned that you shall one day have to render account of an idle word, you permit yourselves criminal ones: lastly, even here, where you so often hear repeated that evil to him that scandalizeth, you become yourself a stumbling block and a subject of scandal. Thus, my brethren, why do you believe that the word of the gospel, which we preach to princes and to grandees of the earth, is no longer but a tinkling brass, and that our ministry is now become almost unnecessary? It may be that our private weaknesses place a bar to the fruit and to the progress of the gospel, and that God bless not a ministry, the ministers of which are not pleasing in his sight: but besides this reason, so humiliating for us, and which we cannot, however, either dissemble from you, or even conceal from ourselves, it is doubtless, the profanation of the temples, and the indecent and disrespectful manner in which you listen to us, that deprive the word, of which we are the ministers, of all its energy and virtue. The Lord, estranged from this holy place through your profanations, no longer giveth increase to our toils, nor sheddeth his grace, which alone causeth his doctrine and his word to fructify: he no longer looketh upon these assemblies, formerly so holy, but as an assembly of worldly-minded, of voluptuous, of ambitious, and of profane. — And how would you, that he turn not his countenance from them, and that the word of his gospel fructify there? Reconcile, in the first place, with him, by your homages, by your collected behaviour, and by your piety, these houses of the doctrine and of truth: then will he compensate for your deficiencies; he will open your hearts to our instructions, and his word shall no longer return empty to him.
​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 ​church was as yet under oppression and obscurity; and the enemies of faith, even the prophets of the idols, in viewing their good order, their innocence, and their majesty, with what difficulty did they refuse to them their admiration and their homage! Alas! and at present the rapid moments which you consecrate here to religion, and which ought to sanctify the remainder of the day, often become themselves the greatest guilt of it.
Lastly, niy brethren, to all these inward dispositions of prayer of adoration, and of gratitude, which the sanctity of our temples exacts of you, there is likewise to be added the external modesty, and the decency of ornaments and of dress — last disposition of the blessed in the heavenly temple: but on this part I shall be very brief.
And, in effect, should any instruction on our part be necessary to you on this point, O, worldly women? for it is you whom this part of my discourse principally regards. To what purpose all that display, I say not only of ostentation and of vanity, but of immodesty and of impudence, with which you make your appearance in this house of tears and of prayer? Do you come here to dispute with Jesus the looks and the homages of those who worship him? Do you come to insult the mysteries which operate the salvation of believers, by seeking to corrupt their heart at the feet even of the altars, where these mysteries take place for them? Are you determined that innocence shall in no place of the earth, not even in the temple, that asylum of religion and piety, be protected from your profane and lascivious nakedness? Doth the world not sufficiently furnish you with impure theatres, with assemblies of dissipation, where you may make a boast of being a stumbling block to your brethren? Even your houses, open to dissipation and to riot, do they not suffice for you to figure with an indecency which would formerly have been suited only to houses of debauchery and of guilt; and which is the cause that, not respecting yourselves, that respect is lost for you, of which the national politeness hath always been so jealous? For modesty alone is estimable, as St. Paul formerly reproached to believers. Must the holy temple be also stained by your immodesties? Ah! when you appear before your earthly sovereign, you mark, by the dignity and by the propriety of your deportment, the respect which you know to be due to his presence; and before the Sovereign of heaven and of the earth, you make your appearance, not only without precaution, but even without decency or modesty; and you display under his eyes an effrontery which wounds even the eyes of the wise and respectable! You come to disturb the attention of the believers who had expected to have found here a place of peace and of silence, and an asylum against all the objects of vanity; to disturb even the deep meditation and the holy gravity of the ministers, and to sully, by the indecency of your dress, the purity of their looks attentive to the holy things.
Thus the apostle desired, that the Christian woman should be covered with a veil in the temple, on account of the angels; that ​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​ing, of adoration, and of praise; let us never quit our temples without bearing from them some new grace, since here is the throne of mercy from whence they are shed upon men; never quit them without an additional relish for heaven, without new desires of terminating your errors, and of attaching yourselves solely to God; without envying the happiness of those who serve him, who have it in their power to be continually worshipping him at the feet of the altar, and whose station and functions particularly consecrate them to his holy ministry. Say to him, as the queen of Sheba formerly said to Solomon, " Happy are thy men, happy are these thy servants, which stand continually before thee, and that hear thy wisdom." And should the duties of your station not permit you to come here to worship the Lord at the different hours of the day, when his ministers assemble to praise him; ah! continually turn, at least, toward the holy place, like the Israelites formerly, your longings and your desires. Let our temples be the sweetest consolation of your troubles, the only asylum of your afflictions, the only resource of your wants, the most certain recreation from the confinements, the fatiguing attentions, and the painful subjections of the world: in a word, find there the beginning of that unalterable peace, the plenitude and the consummation of which you will find only with the blessed, in the eternal temple of the heavenly Jerusalem.