Within the Court of the Priests, on an elevation reached by twelve steps, stood the Holy House, the Temple itself. In comparison with its many and massive outliers, this was a small edifice, but in the architectural plan it was made the most impressive, if not the most imposing feature of the whole. It has been properly described as "a glittering mass of white marble and gold."[92] {59} Like the earlier Temples, this comprised Porch, Holy Place, and Most Holy Place or Holy of Holies. The Porch measured one hundred cubits both in width and height. The Holy Place was forty by twenty cubits, as in the Temple of Zerubbabel, but its height was increased to forty cubits. By adding side chambers, with a passage between them and the main building, Herod made the new Temple greater and grander than either of its predecessors. The Holy of Holies retained the original form and dimensions, making it a cube, twenty cubits in each measurement. Between this and the Holy Place hung a double veil, of finest material, elaborately embroidered. The outer of the two veils was open at the north end, the inner at the south; so that the high priest who entered at the appointed time once a year could pass between the veils without exposing the Holy of Holies. The sacred chamber was empty save for a large stone upon which the high priest sprinkled the sacrificial blood on the Day of Atonement; this stone occupied the place of the Ark and its Mercy Seat. Outside the veil, in the Holy Place, stood the altar of incense, the seven-branched candle-stick, and the table of shewbread. That the Temple of Herod was by far the grandest structure ever erected as a Temple in any age is generally admitted; yet its beauty and grandeur lay in architectural excellence rather than in the sanctity of its worship or in the manifestation of the Divine Presence within its walls. Its ritual and service were largely man-prescribed; for while the letter of the Mosaic Law was professedly observed, the law had been supplemented and in many features supplanted by rule and priestly prescription. The Jews professed to consider it holy, and by them it was {60} proclaimed as the House of the Lord. Devoid though it was of the Divine accompaniments of earlier shrines accepted of God, and defiled as it was by priestly arrogance and usurpation, as also by the selfish interest of traffic and trade, it was nevertheless recognized even by our Lord the Christ as His Father's House.[93] Therein the Boy Jesus was presented as required by the Law,[94] thereto came He with His people at the time of the Passover;[95] within its precincts He declared Himself and the Father who sent Him.[96] When at last, rejected by His own, and by them brought to the cross, He wrought the sacrifice through which salvation was made possible to man, the veil of the Temple was rent by an unseen power and the last vestige of supreme sanctity departed from the place.[97]