to be the home, here and hereafter, of all the hearts that purely love and worship Him.  We read of one who, a day’s march from his father’s house, lay down and slept; and in his sleep God spake to him, and lo, out in a wild and lonely place, Jacob said, ‘This is none other but the house of God.’  For every one to whom the voice of God has come, and who has listened to that voice and believed in its message, the mountains and valleys of this fair world, the breath of every morning and the hush of every evening, are instinct with a Presence.  Wordsworth dwelt in the house of the Lord all the days of his life.  And if the wonder and beauty of the earth lift up our hearts unto our God in praise and worship, we dwell there also.

Yes, but this world is a world of men.  In city or on hillside the great persistent fact for us, the real setting of our life, is not nature, but humanity.  Life is not a peaceful vision of earthly beauty.  Our experience is not a dreamy pastoral.  There are shamed and broken lives.  The world is full of greed and hate and warfare and sorrow.  Nature at its best cannot by itself build for us a temple that humanity at its worst, or even at something less than its worst, cannot pull down about our ears.  For the Psalmist, probably David himself, the temple was symbolic of all heavenly realities.  It stood for the holiness and the nearness and the mercy of God, and for the sacredness and the possibility of human life.  In the light and power and perfect assurance of these things he desired to dwell all the days of his life.  For us there is the life and word of One greater than the temple.  Jesus of Nazareth dwelt in the house of the Lord.  Between Him and God the Father there was perfect union.  And no one ever saw the worth of human life as Jesus saw it.  And no one ever measured the sacred values of humanity as He measured them.  And now, in the perfect mercy of God, there is no man but may dwell in the house of God alway and feel life’s sacredness amidst a thousand desecrations, and know its preciousness amidst all that seeks to obscure, defile, and cheapen it.

To behold the beauty of the Lord. It is only in the house of the Lord, the unseen fane of reverence, trust, and communion, that a man can learn what beauty is, and where to look for it.  Out in the world beauty is held to be a sporadic thing.  It is like a flower growing where no one expected a blossom.  It is an unrelated and unexplained surprise.  It is a green oasis in the desert of unlovely and unpromising things.  But for the dweller in the house of the Lord beauty is not on this wise.  Said one such dweller, ‘The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.’  He looked across the leagues of burning sand and saw the loveliness of Carmel by the sea, and of Sharon where the lilies grow.  To the artist beauty is an incident, to the saint beauty is a law of life.  It is the thing that is to be.  It is the positive purpose, throbbing and yearning and struggling in the whole universe.