As the Torah was the revelation which God had made to Israel, the study of it and the practical application of it were both associated with the "house of meeting." To study it was to ponder the meaning of the revelation. And to practise it was, amongst other things, to worship the God who had given it. The Synagogue was intended to develop through religious fellowship the whole nature of those who met there, spiritual and moral, and by no means only intellectual. And even if the Torah which they studied had been nothing but precepts, yet these included a personal devotion to the service of God which was practically unthinkable without worship of Him. It was as natural that those who met in the Synagogue should join in prayer together, as that they should read or hear the book of the Torah, and should edify one another by expounding its contents. That is what they did; and the Synagogue did not fail to become a most important factor in deepening and strengthening the spiritual life of the people at large. Now if the effect of the exaltation of Torah, due to Ezra, had been, as it is usually said to have been, gradually to harden and cramp the spiritual freedom of the Jewish mind, then either the Synagogue would have ceased to minister in any way to spiritual needs, or else it would have represented a protest against the deadening influence of Torah. But in actual fact there has never been, at all events till quite recent years, any such opposition between the Synagogue and the religion of Torah. On the contrary, it was precisely the religion of Torah which the Synagogue, through all these centuries, has existed to promote; and it was the Synagogue, so inspired, which served as the type and model of Christian worship. The Synagogue is one of the first-fruits of that Judaism which, under the lead of Ezra, took its stand upon the Torah.