There was but one way of breaking down this habit of mind: it was to affirm and prove that the Temple was not a fiction,--that the belief of the elder men respecting it was not a fiction,--that God and man were not divided,--that the prophecy of their complete fellowship was not an idle prophecy leading to nothing,--that men might draw nigh to God, as to a father, on the holy hill of Zion; because there was an only-begotten Son, whose body was filled with that Spirit which would raise it out of the grave. No; our Lord did not deceive the Jews when He gave them the fullest, truest sense of their own Scriptures, of their own calling and history. If any words, any acts could have undeceived them, they would have been His. Alas! when money-worship has reached the vitals of a nation, when it has entered into the house of God, the very words and acts of the Son of God may not purge it of its delusions,--they may take their shape and colour from these delusions. May God avert the _omen_ from our land, from our Church! May He enable us to believe that every building in which He permits us to worship Him, and to present before Him the finished sacrifice of Christ, is indeed the house of our Father, because of His Father! May every chastisement He sends to us, individually or nationally, be viewed by us as a scourge with which He is cleansing His temple of them that sell and them that buy in it,--of our corrupt traffickings with our own consciences and with Him! May He help us to believe in Christ's incarnation and passion, that we may attain to the full glory of His resurrection, and may find in it the proof that His body was the temple of the Holy Ghost, and that ours are to be temples holy and acceptable unto Him! DISCOURSE VII. THE NEW BIRTH. [Lincoln's Inn, Palm Sunday, March 16, 1856.] ST. JOHN III. 3. _Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God._