Beacon Lights of History, Volume 02: Jewish Heroes and ProphetsLord, John
Religion
Beacon Lights of History, Volume 02: Jewish Heroes and Prophets
Lord, John
History, Ancient; Jews -- History -- To 70 A.D.
dwelling-place was in the heavens, and whom the heaven of heavens could
not contain. There were rites and sacrifices, but these were offered to
an unseen divinity, whose presence was everywhere, and who alone reigned
as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, forever and forever. The Temple,
however, with its courts and porticos, its vast foundations of stones
squared in distant quarries, and the immense treasures everywhere
displayed, impressed both the senses and the imagination of a people
never distinguished for art or science. And not only so, but Fergusson
says: "The whole Mohammedan world look to it as the foundation of all
architectural knowledge, and the Jews still recall its glories, and sigh
over their loss with a constant tenacity unmatched by that of any other
people to any other building of the ancient world." Whether or not we
are able to explain the architecture of the Temple, or are in error
respecting its size, or the amount of gold and silver expended, or the
number of men employed, we know that it was the pride and glory of that
age, and was large enough, with its enclosures, to contain a
representation of five millions of people, the heads of all the families
and tribes of the nation, such as were collected together at its
dedication.
As the great event of David's reign was the removal of the Ark to
Jerusalem, so the culminating glory of Solomon was the dedication of the
Temple he had built to the worship of Jehovah. The ceremony equalled in
brilliancy the glories of a Roman triumph, and infinitely surpassed them
in popular enthusiasm. The whole population of the kingdom,--some four
or five millions,--or their picked representatives, came to Jerusalem to
witness or to take part in it. "And as the long array of dignitaries,
with thousands of musicians clothed in white, and the monarch himself
arrayed in pontifical robes, and the royal household in embroidered
mantles, and the guards with their golden shields, and the priests
bearing the sacred but tattered tabernacle, with the ark and the
cherubim, and the altar of sacrifice, and the golden candlesticks and
table of shew bread, and the brazen serpent of the wilderness and the
venerated tables of stone on which were engraved by the hand of God
himself the ten commandments,"--as this splendid procession swept along
the road, strewed with flowers and fragrant with incense, how must the
hearts of the people have been lifted up! Then the royal pontiff arose
from the brazen scaffold on which he had seated himself, and amid clouds
of incense and the smoke of burning sacrifice offered unto God the
tribute of national praise, and implored His divine protection. And
then, rising from his knees, with hands outstretched to heaven, he
blessed the congregation, saying with a loud voice, "Let the Lord our
God be with us as he was with our fathers, so that all the earth may
know that Jehovah is God and that there is none else!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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