church; not this city; not this
stone, even, which he puts up for a memorial--the piece of flint on
which his head has lain. But this _place_; this windy slope of
Wharnside; this moorland hollow, torrent-bitten, snow-blighted! this
_any_ place where God lets down the ladder. And how are you to know
where that will be? or how are you to determine where it may be, but
by being ready for it always? Do you know where the lightning is to
fall next? You _do_ know that, partly; you can guide the lightning;
but you cannot guide the going forth of the Spirit, which is that
lightning when it shines from the east to the west.[209]

But the perpetual and insolent warping of that strong verse to serve a
merely ecclesiastical purpose is only one of the thousand instances in
which we sink back into gross Judaism. We call our churches "temples."
Now, you know perfectly well they are _not_ temples. They have never
had, never can have, anything whatever to do with temples. They are
"synagogues"--"gathering places"--where you gather yourselves together
as an assembly; and by not calling them so, you again miss the force
of another mighty text--"Thou, when thou prayest, shalt not be as the
hypocrites are; for they love to pray standing in the churches" [we
should translate it], "that they may be seen of men. But thou, when
thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door,
pray to thy Father"--which is, not in chancel nor in aisle, but "in
secret."[210]

Now, you feel, as I say this to you--I know you feel--as if I were
trying to take away the honour of your churches. Not so; I am trying
to prove to you the honour of your houses and your hills; not that the
Church is not sacred--but that the whole Earth is. I would have you
feel, what careless, what constant, what infectious sin there is in
all modes of thought, whereby, in calling your churches only "holy,"
you call your hearths and homes "profane"; and have separated
yourselves from the heathen by casting all your household gods to the
ground, instead of recognizing, in the place of their many and feeble
Lares, the presence of your One and Mighty Lord and Lar.

"But what has all this to do with our Exchange?" you ask me,
impatiently. My dear friends, it has just everything to do with it; on
these inner and great questions depend all the outer and little ones;
and if you have asked me down here to speak to you, because you had
before been interested in anything I ha