all the evidence which proves, not that one country is better than another, or one portion of the Church better than another, but that there is a principle of decay, a tendency to apostasy, in all, and that no comfort can come from merely balancing symptoms of good here against symptoms of evil there, no comfort from considering whether we are a little less contentious, a little less idolatrous, than our neighbors. Alas for this church or for any church, if its existence now, if its prospects for the future, are to be determined by such calculations as these! No, brethren, our hope has a deeper foundation. It is this; that when the bones have become most dry, when they are lying most scattered and separate from each other, there is still a word going forth, if not through the lips of any prophet on this earth, then through the lips of those who have left it, yet not proceeding from them, but from Him who liveth for ever, the voice which says, "These bones shall rise." It is this; that every shaking among the bones, every thing which seems at first a sign of terror, - men leaving the churches in which they have been born, forsaking all the affections and sympathies and traditions of their childhood, -infidel questionings, doubts whether the world is left to itself or whether it is governed by an evil spirit, are themselves not indeed. signs of life, but at least movements in the midst of death which are better than the silence of the charnelhouse, which foretell the approach of that which they cannot produce. It is this; that all struggles after union, though they may be of the most abortive kind, though they may produce fresh sects and fresh divisions, though they must do so as long as they rest on the notion that unity is something visible and material, yet indicate a deep and divine necessity which men could not be conscious of in their dreams if they were not beginning to

awake. It is this; that there are other visions true for us, as they were for Ezekiel, besides the vision of dry bones. The name of a Father has not ceased to be a true name because baptized men do not own themselves as His children. The name of a Son has not ceased to be a true name because men are setting up some earthly ruler in place of Him, or are thinking that they can realize a human fellowship without confessing a Man on the throne above the firmament. The name

of the Spirit has not ceased to be a true name because we are thinking that we can form combinations and sects and churches without His quickening presence, because we deny that He is really in the midst of us. It is this; that when all earthly priests have been banished or have lost their faith, though there should be none to mourn over the ruins of Jerusalem, or to feel its sins as his own, yet that there is a High-Priest, the great Sin-Bearer, ever presenting His perfect and accepted sacrifice within the veil, a High-Priest not of a nation, but of humanity. It is this; that though all earthly temples, in which God has been pleased to dwell, should become desecrated and abominable, though all foul worship should go on in the midst of them, and though what is portrayed on their walls should too faithfully represent what is passing in the more secret chambers of imagery, though at last the shrines that have been supposed to contain the mystery which they set forth should be utterly destroyed, and a voice should be heard out of the midst of them, saying, "Let us depart," yet that this will not be the sign that the Church of God has perished, only the sign that the temple of God has been opened in heaven, and that from thence must come forth the glory that is to fill the whole earth.

SERMON XXVII.

THE NEW TEMPLE.

LINCOLN'S INN, 2D SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.-JUNE 20, 1852.

Thou son of man, show the house to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities: and let them measure the pattern. And if they be ashamed of all that they have done, show them the form of the house, and the fashion thereof, and the goings out thereof, and the comings in thereof, and all the forms thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and all the laws thereof: and write it in their sight, that they may keep the whole form thereof, and all the ordinances thereof, and do them.EZEKIEL xliii. 10, 11.

THE later visions in the book of Ezekiel relate to a Temple, the form and proportions of which are very minutely described. What is this Temple? The first obvious suggestion is that Ezekiel was looking forward to the times of Ezra; that this Temple is an anticipation of that of which Zerubbabel brought forth the headstone. But the building which rises before the eyes of the seer covers an area which the second Temple never can have occupied. The scale of it appears to exceed that of Solomon's, which struck the old man, who had seen it or heard of it from his father, as so much grander than its successor. In Ezekiel's vision, moreover, there is a distinct allusion to that appearance of the glory of the Lord which belonged, the Jews say, exclusively to the elder building. Christian writers have availed themselves of these circumstances to decide

peremptorily that the vision is of a spiritual, not an earthly, Temple. The difficulties in the way of such an opinion are very great. Accurate admeasurements in feet and cubits seem as if they must relate to a visible, not to an invisible, fabric. There are still two possible. opinions. One is popular among many of our countrymen. It is that a Temple exactly answering to Ezekiel's description will appear hereafter in Jerusalem. The other you will at once identify as foreign. It is that of a critic of great learning and acuteness, often of much sympathy with the earnest patriotism of the prophets. He thinks that Ezekiel carried with him into Chaldea the habits, prejudices, and formality of the priestly order to which he belonged. Therefore, though he had high moral purposes and divine instincts, he could not but regard the reappearance of a Temple like that which Nebuzaradan had destroyed, only more magnificent, as the consummation of an Israelite's dreams and hopes. The critic connects this explanation of the later chapters of the book with a theory respecting the whole of it. Ezekiel is, in his judgment, more of an artist than a prophet. The elder prophets, he thinks, delivered their discourses before the people; the son of Buzi, for the most part, composed his in his chamber. The book therefore, he supposes, while it wants freshness, has a unity of purpose which we do not find elsewhere. The Temple, in which the early years of the seer were passed, gives it a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I shall not seek to get rid of this last explanation by calling it the irreverent offspring of a modern or a foreign. school. The criticism, which was fashionable among the most approved interpreters of our Church in the last century, leaves me no excuse for such language. They seem to have thought that not one, but all the

prophets were busy, in the most solemn moments of their own lives and of their country's history, in selecting ingenious and striking epithets and in developing their thoughts with a grotesque Oriental imagery. I believe the more recent commentator would shrink from such language. He would admit that the prophets were, one and all, deep-minded, reasonable men; and that is one step towards the belief that they were really inspired by God. Nor would it hinder any one, I should think, in his progress towards that conviction, to suppose that, as each prophet exhibits a different character, temperament, and style — the signs of a distinct work, so the one who was least called forth by sudden emergencies, who was not in the midst of the fears and hopes of a siege or of an invasion, should have contemplated events less as detached, more in a series, than his predecessors. Least of all would it detract from the probability of a divine education, to suppose that the holy function of the priest had given a color — as I maintained last week that it did- to all Ezekiel's thoughts, and that in it we may discover the key to their order and connection.

But on the other hand, I think, every thoughtful reader, whatever his notions about Inspiration may be, must admit, that, if there was any thing in Ezekiel's circumstances, or in the constitution of his mind, which disposed him to look upon the world as a student looks out upon it from his closet, no one had that tendency more repeatedly and painfully counteracted. Petty trials and the most serious trials, the eating of loathsome food, the death of his wife on the day on which he had spoken to the people, served alike to rob him of any lofty conceits, to bring him down to the level of the most unhappy of those with whom he was associated, to teach him that outward events were linked and