THESE words may serve to suggest some profitable reflections, preparatory to our entering on the subject of the present lecture. They are the words of an inspired prophecy, applied directly by our blessed LORD Himself to the then existing temple of the Jews. If we read them as they stand in the Old Testament, among other glorious predictions concerning the sanctuary of the LORD GOD of Israel, we are naturally inclined to expect some more illustrious fulfilment of them, than seems to have been ever vouchsafed to the “house of Prayer” at Jerusalem. The words of Isaiah (and the evangelist St. Mark has more exactly quoted them) are, “MY house shall be called an house of Prayer, _for all people_;” a prophecy apparently equivalent, or nearly so, in magnitude to that of holy David, “_all nations_ whom Thou hast made shall COME and worship before Thee, O LORD, and shall glorify Thy name!” And it is very evident that this was never realized in the fullest extent, with respect to the Jewish Temple. Must we say then that the prophecy did not refer at all to the literal temple in Judea? None, perhaps, would venture so to affirm, seeing that our LORD Himself refers it to that temple. Thus much however we are bound to conclude, that this example shows us, how little we are able to decide beforehand what amount, or kind of fulfilment, a Divine prediction may have. And the fact, that our LORD spoke of the temple, such it was then, as GOD’S house, may serve also to check any over-hasty accusations of total apostasy, in consequence of extreme degeneracy among His people. It may be useful here to premise this, because it is not unusual to prejudice all enquiry, concerning the Catholic doctrine of the Ministry of the Christian Temple, by a precipitate and comprehensive assertion of its inconsistency with the spirituality and dignity of the Divine designs; an assertion generally supported by unmeasured charges of a corruption fatally destructive of the Divine sanction, of the Sacred character of any institute. Granting that the present state of the Apostolically descended Ministry in the Church Universal, is very far from what _we_ should have anticipated, from some of the statements of Scripture, it would not follow, it seems, that those statements are frustrated, but only that we had misinterpreted them. It would not follow, that the Ministry is not truly CHRIST’S, but only that it needs His purifying. Our LORD came to His temple of old, of which such “glorious things” had been spoken, and He found it a “den of thieves,” but still claimed it as His own, in the glowing words of the prophecy, “MY house shall be called the house of Prayer.” It was not the glorious pile that Solomon had reared—it was not that which the returned children of the captivity had built; and its Priesthood stood not forth conspicuous for holiness. The beautiful courts of that temple had been restored and rebuilt by the crime-stained Herod; and they had been