The desecration of the temple in Jerusalem did not spring up
full-statured in a day. The court of the Gentiles was a spacious
place, having an area of fourteen acres. Round its four sides
there ran a colonnade with four rows of marble pillars and a
roof of costly cedar. Many things were needed in the sacrifices
of the temple, and what place more convenient for the buying
of them than this great, spacious court? One day, I imagine, a
man stept inside with a cage of pigeons. A bird so small and
sweet-voiced as a dove could not hurt the sacred place! By and
by a man with a sheep to sell led it in. A sheep is the most
innocent of all animals. No harm could come to God or man from
the presence of a sheep. Still later the man with a steer to
sell brought him in. “I have as much right here as you have,” he
said to the man with the sheep and the man with the pigeons, and
soon there were a dozen steers. That is the way it all happened.
The abuse grew up so gradually that nobody observed it, and
before men knew it the sacredness of the place was gone. Just
so does the desecration of the day of rest take place in great
cities. One man steps into the temple of rest, saying: “Let me
sing you a little song.” His voice is sweet and the song is
pretty, and what is so beautiful and innocent as a song? And a
man outside hearing this song inside the temple says: “I think
I’ll come in and sing, too.” His voice is harsh and his song is
a different kind of a song, but in he comes, and who is wise
enough to draw the line and say this song is proper, that song
will never do? And while these two men are singing, another
man who can not sing at all, and who can only use his feet,
decides that he, too, has a right to exercise his gifts inside
the temple, and in he comes, and after him a dozen others, and
after them a hundred others, some bringing doves, some sheep,
some steers, until the whole day is trampled into sordidness and
one of the most precious of all the privileges of man has been
wrested from him.--CHARLES E. JEFFERSON.
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