if I may so
say, the public character of God is but the surface of the revelation
that He makes to us, when in the deepest secrecy of our own hearts He
pours Himself into our waiting spirits. O brethren! it is within the
curtains of the Holiest of all that the Shekinah flashes; it is
within our own hearts, shrined and templed there, that God reveals
Himself to us, as He does not unto the world.

And then, further, Christian men, as the temples and habitations of
God, are appointed to be the great means of making Him known to the
world around. The eye that cannot look at the sun can look at the
rosy clouds that lie on either side of it, and herald its rising;
their opalescent tints and pearly lights are beautiful to dim vision,
to which the sun itself is too bright to be looked upon. Men will
believe in a gentle Christ when they see you gentle. They will
believe in a righteous love when they see it manifesting itself in
you. You are 'the secretaries of God's praise,' as George Herbert has
it. He dwells in your hearts that out of your lives He may be
revealed. The pictures in a book of travels, or the diagrams in a
mathematical work, tell a great deal more in half a dozen lines than
can be put into as many pages of dry words. And it is not books of
theology nor eloquent sermons, but it is a Church glowing with the
glory of God, and manifestly all flushed with His light and majesty,
that will have power to draw men to believe in the God whom it
reveals. When explorers land upon some untravelled island and meet
the gentle inhabitants with armlets of rough gold upon their wrists,
they say there must be many a gold-bearing rock of quartz crystal in
the interior of the land. And if you present yourselves, Christian
men and women, to the world with the likeness of your Master plain
upon you, then people will believe in the Christianity that you
profess. You have to popularise the Gospel in the fashion in which
go-betweens and middlemen between students and the populace
popularise science. You have to make it possible for men to believe
in the Christ because they see Christ in you. 'Know ye not that ye
are the temples of the living God?' Let His light shine from you.

III. I remark again that as temples all Christian lives should be
places of sacrifice.

What is the use of a temple without worship? And what kind of worship
is that in which the centre point is not an altar? That is the sort
of temple that a great many profess