Secondly, THE PROPHECY RELATIVE TO celebrate the holy ceremony with vocal and instrumental music;

THE LATTER.

pet spoke."

"When the harp awoke,

When he had offered a sublime prayer,

victims,

David, in his zeal for the honour of God, was grieved, that he himself was The cymbal clang'd, the deep-tongued trumaccommodated in a palace of cedar, while the divine presence dwelt within curtains; and he accordingly made preparations for a magnificent and durable temple. and immolated a prodigious number of God, however, would not permit him, a man of war and of bloodshed, to accomplish the undertaking in person, but it was completed with his costly materials in the subsequent reign of his son, Solomon, the peaceful and the magnificent. By the building of this stately edifice, consisting of stones hewn from the quarries, and cedar from the forests of Leba

non,

"For here fair science nursed her infant fire,
Fann'd by the artist aid of friendly Tyre;
Then tower'd the palace, then in awful state
The temple rear'd its everlasting gate;
No workman's steel, no ponderous axes rung,
Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric
sprung-

Majestic silence!"

44

Then Salem spread her suppliant arms abroad,
View'd the descending flame and bless'd the

present God."

The personal Jehovah descended his radiant cloud, which filled all the house, as an emblem of his taking possession of it; and he likewise appeared in a vision of the night to Solomon, whom he assured that he had chosen that place for a house of sacrifice, and a home where his honour -his glory, should dwell. Accordingly St. Paul, in speaking of the Israelites, distinguishes them to those "to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises." And in his epistle to the By the building of this permanent Hebrews, he describes the first or legal structure, I say, an important promise covenant, as having a tabernacle, and was faithfully and fully performed. It candlestick, and table, and show-bread was then that the Israelites were con- in the sanctuary, or holy place; and withfirmed in the rest which they enjoyed after all their toils and journeyings; and a type was thereby afforded of the Sabbath and repose of heaven, to be enjoyed by the soul after its tabernacle, the bodily frame, shall have finished its wanderings through the dreary wilderness of life. "For we know," says the apostle Paul to the Corinthians, "that if our earthly house of this tabernacle," that is, our body, a perishable tabernacle of the immortal spirit; if this, I say, were dissolved by death, "we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens;" that is, our souls shall be clothed with an incorruptible and permanent body, fashioned after the likeness of Christ's glorious body.

When Solomon dedicated unto God this gorgeous edifice, rich with gold, silver, brass, precious stones, and olive wood; when he had finished all its courts, and porticoes, and altar, and molten sea, when he had assembled many priests to

in the second veil, the holiest of all, having the ark of the covenant, and over it, the cherubim of "glory" covering the mercy-seat. This edifice was erected nearly five hundred years after the first pitching of the tabernacle in the wilderness. It subsisted upwards of four hundred years, when it was utterly demolished by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who carried the Jews into his own country; and where they remained in captivity during seventy years, fiftyeight years only from the destruction of the temple. At the end of that period, Cyrus, king of Persia, who had recently made himself master of Babylon, permitted the Jews to return to their own country, (agreeably to the prophecy which had announced him by name,) and restored to them the sacred vessels and utensils of divine service, which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away as spoils. In the second year, subsequent to the return of the first great detachment of Jews into

and rational support, have contended for the entire re-construction of the temple of Herod; thinking that they might thereby obtain a sidelong hit at the veracity of prophecy, which, as we shall immediately see, declared that the Messiah should come to that second temple of Zerubbabel. But in this attempt they have entirely failed, it being clearly proved by their opponents that Herod reared his temple on the yet standing foundations of the temple of Zerubbabel, though crumbling in the decay of nearly six hundred years. But were it otherwise we cannot suppose, that so grand a prediction as that announcing a glory of the latter house which should be greater than the glory of the former, had no further reference than merely to the superior architecture of Herod's temple, though it had pinnacles glittering like stars, and massive marble stones, and a vine of gold and jewels, and a sculptured porch, described by Josephus, as when touched by the sun, resembling a hill of snow. Its superior glory, notwithstanding these splendours, must have rested on something spiritual.

Judea, they began to clear away the ruins sly antagonists of Christianity, assailing of Mount Moriah, and to lay the founda- it under the mask of liberal friendship tions of a new temple, which the Scriptures call" the latter house." The young men on this occasion rejoiced at the idea of worshipping, in a fane of their own, the God of their fathers, whose praises they had heard in their captivity, but whose grandeur they never witnessed. But the old men, who fifty-eight years before, remembered the temple of Solomon standing in its venerable magnificence, like an ancient oak, whose trunk is enveloped with moss, and who foresaw that poor captives had neither funds nor materials in evil days, and after a long period of misfortune, to build a structure that would at all vie with the splendour and extent of Solomon's architecture and decorations, instead of rejoicing, wept aloud; so that, as we learn in the book of Ezra, the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy, from the noise of the weeping uttered by the ancient priests and Levites, and chiefs of the fathers of Israel. To cheer on the emancipated captives to the work, in this state of mingled exultation and despondence, God sent the word of a glorious prophecy. "Who is left among you," exclaimed the venerable Haggai, "that saw this house in her first glory? how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing? yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord; and be strong, O Joshua, son of Josedeck, the high-priest; and be strong all ye people of the land, saith the Lord, and work; for I am with you." "The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former," and I will fill this house with glory, "and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts."

Now, in certain spiritual respects, the mere splendour of the second temple was, so far from being greater, very much inferior to that of the temple of Solomon. We have it upon the authority of Jewish tradition, that the second temple when finished was deficient in five particulars, which had all conspicuously added to the grandeur of the first. One of these was the original ark of the covenant and the mercy-seat, with the two tables of the law, and the pot of manna, and Aaron's rod that budded, and which had all been Now what were the CIRCUMSTANCES conveyed into Solomon's temple from the WHICH FULFILLED THIS PREDICTION. Let primitive tabernacle of the wilderness, this be our second point of consideration. and were the most sacred of Jewish antiDisputes have arisen among divines, quities. These were lost in Babylon, whether, the temple built by Herod the and never restored. It is usually supgreat, about forty years before the birth posed, indeed, that an ark or chest was of Christ, was an entirely new erection; made for the temple of Zerubbabel after or a restoration of the temple of Zerubba- the fashion of the first ark of the cove bel, retaining the foundations of that edi- nant, and that Ezra's corrected copy of fice, and even a porch which yet remained the Pentateuch was therein deposited: a of the former temple of Solomon. The circumstance rendered probable by what

we see in modern synagogues which have | Messiah, the King of Zion, meek and all a little coffer, wherein some valuable bringing salvation, cometh, riding upon manuscript of the law is laid up. But a colt, the foal of an ass; and there shall whether the cherubim, whose wings formed the mercy-seat, were absent from the second temple or not, that which brooded therein-the Schechinah, the emblem and envelopment of the present Jehovah, was certainly nowhere to be found. Again, the urim and the thummim, the twelve gems on the high-priest's breastplate, which in some way gave out oracular responses, was either no longer in the second temple, or no longer possessed its oracular virtues.

be a fountain opened in Jerusalem for sins, and for uncleanness-and the shepherd shall be smitten, and the sheep shall be scattered; and they shall look on him whom they pierced; and he shall be sold for thirty pieces of silver, and given to the potter." Let Malachi reply, "Behold I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in; behold. he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts." In fact, four years after the superstructure of Herod was fully built upon the foun. dations of the temple of Zerubbabel, the infant Jesus was introduced into that temple; and again, in his twelfth year, when he reasoned with the doctors; and afterwards twice, when he expelled the buyers and sellers from his Father's as desecrating that house of

It is clear, then, that the presence of Christ is the grand circumstance which verified the prediction of Haggai—that the glory of the latter house should be greater than the glory of the former.

And the last point of inferiority con-house sisted in the spirit of prophecy, which, prayer. though it remained in the three prophets, Haggai, Zachariah, and Malachi, while the second temple was building, yet for ever afterwards ceased during five hundred years, until Anna, Zacharias, and John the Baptist, announced, like morning stars melting into a dawn, the actual arrival of the Sun of righteousness.

Another point in which the glory of the latter house was greater than the glory of the former was the court of the GenWhat circumstances, then, we return tiles. The temple of Solomon had only to ask, verified the prophecy of Haggai-two courts-that of the priests and that that the glory of the latter house should of the Israelites. The Gentiles were be greater than that of the former, seeing considered as profane, and unless conthat it was comparatively so mean a build-verted, as wholly adopting the Jewish ing, and inferior in these five important religion, disregarded and despised. It is respects. Let Haggai himself reply-not precisely known at what time after “For thus saith the Lord of hosts; yet the captivity the court of the Gentiles once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; and I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations" He who should be desired and expected by all nations, both Jews and Gentiles"shall come; and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts." Let Zachariah reply-"The man whose name is the Branch (the branch out of the root of Jesse) shall bear the glory; and shall sit and rule upon his throne; and the

was enclosed: but, when built, probably after the translation of the Septuagint, two hundred and ninety years before Christ (which with the dispersion of the Jews spread abroad an acquaintance with the sublimities of the true religion) this outer court admitted all men to a certain consideration among the chosen people. The publican, the Ethiopian eunuch, Cornelius, and others, were what is called proselytes of the gate; admitted within the golden gate of Susa, and worshipping

the one God in the court of the Gentiles | we may, with strict propriety, apply the at Jerusalem. This was a step towards moral of this whole dissertation to our the further admission of the nations into own minds. We have now, after a conthe entire covenant of peace, through the siderable interruption, returned by the blood of him who entered within the blessing of God, to offer our united great or inner veil, threw down the chel, prayers and praises in a temple, never the middle wall of partition between the aspiring, but always decent; not ostenfirst and second courts, beyond which it tatiously splendid, but not grudgingly had formerly been death for the Gentiles mean; and at this time restored from its to pass, and brought them near which decay, and beautified in the glory of its were before time afar off, and made both simplicity. We are not assembled, howone. This was also foretold by the pro- ever, to admire it, or to boast of it outphets, both before and after the captivity, wardly; but we are to remember that and recognised by the aged Simeon. "I protestantism, though duly regardful of will give thee," saith Isaiah," for a light decent externals and modest decorationsto the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my though mindful that man is a being whose salvation to the ends of the earth." senses are the windows of his soul, has "And from the rising of the sun," said lopped off the gaudy trappings of popish Malachi, "to the going down of the superstition. We are to remember that same", "my"—that is, Christ's name Christianity is not like Judaism, a reli"shall be great among the Gentiles." gion of pomp and ceremony, and multiAnd Christ came, as a light to lighten plied festivals; not like paganism, a the Gentiles, not less than as a glory unto | religion wherein the fine arts, and the the people of Israel.

Now as this admission of the Gentiles into the privileges of the new covenant, tended to liberalize the minds of the Jews, so on a more contracted scale, ought it not less to teach the different persuasions of Christians to regard each other with due toleration and indulgence; and making a prudent reservation of their own views and principles, to unite in sentiments and deeds of charity.

Thus we see that it was altogether in a spiritual sense, that the glory of the latter house was greater than the glory of the former.

powers of genius, the chisel of the sculptor, the ode of the poet, the combinations of instrumental music, the trillings of various voices, the stated procession, the scattered flowers, the blaze of many lights, or the costly frankincense of Arabia, are directed to excite the fancy and the passions to a pitch, which lulls the conscience, and draws away attention from the conduct; but a religion of chaste design, and like the yet uncorrupted mother of mankind—

"When unadorn'd, adorn'd the most."

A religion of the mind and of the heartJerusalem, the sacred city, is once a religion of convinced reason, and conmore ruined, the temple has been again fiding faith and sober feelings-a religion buried. It was rased to the ground, and of simplicity and sincerity-a religion even salt was sown where the plough which teaches that God is a Spirit, and had been dragged over the site of its that they who worship Him are to worfoundations. One stone has not been ship Him in spirit and in truth. In this left upon another-even as our Saviour view, then, the grand point to be acpredicted. The arch of Titus at Rome knowledged by us is this: that however bears memorials of its plundered trea- humble the edifice-here God dwelleth, sures-its seven-branched and golden that the light of his countenance is especandelabrum, its sacred ark, its silver cially in this place. The grand duty to trumpets, which were all deposited in be attended to, and object to be devoutly the heathen temple of peace, and ulti-wished is, that in this temple God may, mately lost in the destruction of the west- week after week, be more fervently and ern empire. frequently worshipped, that Christ may Yet there are still two senses in which be more and more in our thoughts, that