Luke 21:5-6 And as some spoke of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts, he said,… Christianity has taken a form in the world; it has become visible. Travelling over ages, and propagating itself in the world, it has assumed a place among the things to which the world pays regard; and besides this grandeur of space and duration which procures it a species of respect on the part of the most indifferent, it has, by its intellectual grandeur (I mean by the grandeur of the ideas which it expresses, and those which it suggests), captivated the regard and admiration of thinkers. Thus is it great after the fashion of the world. Beware of admiring it most of all for that grandeur. Let us fear lest its true grandeur escape our notice. Let us not allow our eye to be misled, and oblige Jesus Christ to say to us again, "Is it this you are looking at?" How great our misfortune if we should have entered the empire of the invisible only to link ourselves more securely to the visible, and if in the kingdom of spirit we should have been able only to find the world! How miserable, if trusting to those vain and hollow words, "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord," we should neglect, as the prophet says in the same place, thoroughly to amend our ways and our doings (Jeremiah 7:4, 5). To look only to this twofold greatness of Christianity, the material and intellectual, is truly to do like the first companions of Jesus Christ, to fix our look upon stones. "fast thoughts, secular traditions, splendid recollections, all these are stones; cold materials, hard and dead. There are other stones, living stones, which form together a spiritual building, a holy priesthood (1 Peter 2:5). (A. Vinet, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And as some spake of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly stones and gifts, he said, |
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