the Lord to say less or more": but that his life in all things great and small was to be at God's disposal, seems hardly to have entered his head.

O my friends, understand that it is easier to serve God with the whole life than with the half of it. Settle it in your mind once for all, that God is to have His way with you in everything. It will be a wise way, a loving way, a father's way, and for that very reason often above the comprehension of you, His child. It may sometimes seem a hard way, but in accepting it there will be peace for you, and joy, and a growing strength. The worse self will more and more readily succumb to the better. The life will have one key-note running through it all, and there will be no more spasmodic religion.

VIII

TEMPLE RELIGION

"I saw no temple therein."-Rev. xxi. 22.

THE Jewish reader of this remarkable book would find nothing more surprising in it than the statement of our text. The apocalyptic seer beholds the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, and after describing its manifold glories, he adds: "I saw no temple therein."

Have you ever considered what the Temple was to the devout Israelite ?-the very eye of Jerusalem as Jerusalem was the eye of the Holy Land. The Temple had been an essential factor in the making of the nation, the means of gathering the divided and discordant tribes into one harmonious whole. On it Solomon had lavished his wealth and made it redolent of cedar, resplendent with gold. It was towards the site of the Temple that the exiled Jews looked in their captivity, and at last re-erected it with a mingling of joyous shouts and pensive tears in the troublous times of the first return. Yet once again it was rebuilt by Herod in more than its pristine splendour, rising platform on platform, terrace above terrace, with marble porticoes, gates of Corinthian brass and an eastern wall of shining gold-a world's wonder. Words fail to describe

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what the Temple was to the Jews of old, stored as it was with the memorials of God's most intimate dealings with His chosen people, where still the incense burned night and day in the light of the lamp that went not out, and where the morning and evening sacrifice daily renewed their covenant with Jehovah. The Temple, the great gathering place in later times of the widely scattered nation, where vows were paid and offerings prescribed, where harvest and vintage were celebrated with rejoicing and all seasons consecrated to Him who giveth all, and where on one momentous day in the dim light of the inner sanctuary, the high-priest with bended knee and sprinkled blood made atonement for the sins of the people!

Thus the Temple focussed all the patriotic fervour and religious devotion of the nation, and stood forth the indispensable means for maintaining true relations with the Most High. Surely when the New Jerusalem came down out of heaven, its chief glory, outshining the splendour of pearly gates and golden streets, would be its Temple. With what amazement then would John's Jewish auditors hear him say, “I saw no temple therein.” "No temple!" they would exclaim-" Impossible!"'

The statement would be scarcely less surprising to the ancient pagan then to the ancient Jew. To the Egyptian worshipping at the altars of Luxor or Karnac, to the Hindoo bathing in the sacred waters of the Ganges at Benares, crowded with temples more ancient than that of Solomon, and no less to the Buddhist in China or Japan, religion without a temple would have been inconceivable.

We ourselves, if oft repetition had not made us familiar with the words, might account this absence of any temple in the heavenly Jerusalem a strange thing. True, we protestant nonconformists have always abjured the need of any temple as a place of sacrifice. The sacrifice once offered on Calvary needs no repetition on any altar, and, therefore, no temple to enshrine the altar. But the temple viewed as a place of worship, still seems to meet a need, and the words "no temple therein," give us pause.

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What, then, do they signify? The book in which they occur is full of imagery. It teaches largely by symbols, and these words suggest that when God's work is perfected in us, all outward accessories of worship, all religious forms and symbols, prescribed creeds and set ordinances will have served their purpose, and will cease to be. Spirit with spirit, man shall hold communion with his Maker. saw no temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it." "The time cometh," said Christ," when neither in this mountain nor yet in Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father; for God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." So our text teaches us that the Temple and what it stands for, all that is external and formal in creed and worship, however necessary as a means of training and discipline, marks an imperfect state; and "when that which is perfect is come that which is in part shall be done away." Without the scaffolding the building cannot be reared, but when the building is complete the scaffolding is taken down. It is only a disfigure

ment and a hindrance to the free use of the permanent structure.

Consider what we mean when we speak of the temple" in this widest sense as a mark of imperfection and ultimately a hindrance. Start by way of illustration with the Temple at Jerusalem. Undoubtedly it helped to conserve and consolidate the nation and promote unity and purity of worship. That was one of the ends for which it was erected, and why in the time of Josiah, all the local sanctuaries with their varying and semi-idolatrous rites were suppressed, so that the people might feel that they were one nation having one God, who had led them and blessed them from generation to generation. Again, when Zerubbabel's Temple was erected at the close of the captivity this point was emphasised, so much so, that the Samaritans were not allowed to share in the building of it because they were of mixed race. No! This was Jehovah's Temple for Jehovah's people, the pure seed of Abraham.

But here you see how the Temple, if in one aspect a symbol of unity and a force making for unity, was at the same time a mark of division and a source of division. It was through the refusal of the Jews to permit the Samaritans to join in building it that that bitter strife arose between them which lasted as long as the Temple itself. If it included and united all Jews, it excluded and proscribed all Gentiles. In Herod's Temple the court of the Gentiles was separated from the court of the Jews by a low wall, which bore at intervals the inscription, still decipherable on a recently discovered stone--" No stranger is to enter