Seventeen hundred years ago a Christian teacher gave a
description of an Egyptian temple, with its porticoes and
vestibules and groves and sacred fields adjoining, the walls
gleaming with precious stones and artistic paintings, and its
shrines veiled with gold-embroidered hangings. “But,” he says,
“if you enter the penetralia of the enclosure and ask the
officiating priest to unveil the god of this sanctuary, you will
find a cat, or a crocodile, or a serpent--a beast--rolling on a
purple couch.” And a modern writer asks us to contrast this with
the temple of Jehovah at Jerusalem. Here, too, you would find a
gorgeous building, a priesthood, altars, and a shrine hidden by
a veil. Within the veil stands the Ark of the Covenant, covered
by the mercy seat, sprinkled with the blood of atonement, and
shadowed by the golden cherubim. Let that covering be lifted,
and within that ark, in the very core and center of Israel’s
religion, in its most sacred place, you find, what? The two
tables of the moral law. There, in a word, you have the contrast
of the two religions. The moral law, enforced by the belief
in the one true God--that is the religion of Israel--and that
religion was interpreted, fulfilled, and consummated by the
revelation of the Christ.--THOMAS F. GAILOR, “Student
Volunteer Movement,” 1906.
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