_UNCONSECRATED SOULS_
"_This house which I have sanctified will I cast out of my sight,
and will make it a proverb and a by-word among all nations._"
--2 CHRONICLES vii. 12-22.
And thus am I taught that consecrated houses are nothing without
consecrated souls. It is not the mode of worship, but the spirit of the
worshipper which forms the test of a consecrated people. If the worshipper
is defiled his temple becomes an offence. When the kernel is rotten, and I
offer the husk to God, the offering is a double insult to His most holy
name.
And yet, how tempted I am to assume that God will be pleased with the mere
outsides of things, with words instead of aspiration, with postures
instead of dispositions, with the letter instead of the spirit, with an
ornate and costly temple instead of a sweet and lowly life! Day by day I
am tempted to treat the Almighty as though He were a child! Nay, the Bible
uses a more awful word; it says men treat the Lord as though He were a
fool!
From all such irreverence and frivolity, good Lord, deliver me! Let me
ever remember that Thou "desirest truth in the _inward_ man." "In the
hidden parts" help me "to know wisdom."