I confess, my brethren, that I am quite unable to sympathise with these complaints. I do not think it requires any effort of imagination to realize the state of mind of an ordinary Jew, as he walked through the city of David, or stood upon the holy hill, in the days of Herod and of Pilate. If we realize the state of mind of an ordinary citizen of London, walking in our streets, or entering the Abbey which contains the sepulchres of our kings and poets, we shall not need any other aid to bridge over the chasm which divides us. Occupation with everything that is before us, with the news of the hour, with the private business which we have most in hand, indifference and torpidity about the past,--these would be our general characteristics. They may be varied by our greater or less interest in architecture--our desire to maintain or confute some architectural theory--by national pride, if we should be making our buildings known to foreigners--by a certain painful sense that we ought to put our minds into a sentimental attitude. Do you suppose the case would have been different with the Jews? Do you suppose there was any charm in the outside of the Temple, which forced a sensual money-getting race into a more elevated or more serene habit of feeling than that which we drop into? Do you suppose that their sacred traditions, their glorious history, their divine calling, must have broken the charm of custom for them, or have lifted the incubus of the world from their hearts? If you do, you adopt a notion which the Scriptures confute in every line. They never tell us that the gravitation of the Jewish soul to earth was less strong than that of other men. They never represent the Jew as wanting one bad and base tendency which belongs to you and me. The evidence which the Bible has produced of its veracity to people of all conditions, in all countries, the most unlike outwardly to those of whom it speaks, is this, that it shows us creatures in all _inward_ respects like ourselves, as little capable of being moved by present signs or by records of the past, out of chillness and death, as we are.