lly
carved, '_This_ is the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.'
Now, note where that legend comes from, and of what place it was first
spoken. A boy leaves his father's house to go on a long journey on foot,
to visit his uncle; he has to cross a wild hill-desert; just as if one
of your own boys had to cross the wolds of Westmoreland, to visit an
uncle at Carlisle. The second or third day your boy finds himself
somewhere between Hawes and Brough, in the midst of the moors, at
sunset. It is stony ground, and boggy; he cannot go one foot farther
that night. Down he lies, to sleep, on Wharnside, where best he may,
gathering a few of the stones together to put under his head;--so wild
the place is, he cannot get anything but stones. And there, lying under
the broad night, he has a dream; and he sees a ladder set up on the
earth, and the top of it reaches to heaven, and the angels of God are
ascending and descending upon it. And when he wakes out of his sleep, he
says, 'How dreadful is this place; surely, this is none other than the
house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.' This PLACE, observe; not
this 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.

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, or ought to know, 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
p