A temple is only a more prominent house. As a house was the dwelling of
the earlier priest of his household, who was in covenant for himself and
his family with the guardian deity of that household; so, afterwards, a
temple was a dwelling for the deity guarding an aggregation of families,
and for the priests who stood between him and the community.
This is no new or strange truth; it is obvious. “In the Vedas, Yama, as
the first man, is the first priest too; he brought worship here below as
well as life, and ‘first he stretched out the thread of
sacrifice.’”[261] The fire-altar of the home was first the center of
worship in the family in India;[262] as later the fire-altar was the
center of the worship of the community.
The same cuneiform characters in old Babylonian stand for great house,
for palace, and for temple;[263] as similarly, in ancient Egypt, the
same hieroglyph represented house or temple,–a simple quadrangular
enclosure, with its one doorway.[264]
The oldest form of an Egyptian temple known to us through the
inscriptions of the Ancient Empire indicates that the prehistoric houses
of worship in that land were mere hovels of wood and lattice-work, over
the doors of which was a barbaric ornamentation of bent pieces of
wood.[265] The private house became the public temple.
“The design of the Greek temple in its highest perfection was ... a
gradual development of the dwelling-house.”[266] Palace and temple were,
indeed, often identical in ancient Greece.[267]
Strictly speaking, there were no temples in ancient Persia, any more
than in early India. But the fire-altars that were first on the home
hearth, or threshold, were made more and more prominent on their
uplifted stepped bases, until they towered loftily in the sight of their
worshipers.[268]
It is the same Hebrew word, _ohel_, that stands for the “tent” of
Abraham, and for the “Tent” or Tabernacle of the congregation of
Israel.[269]
In China “temple architecture differs little from that of the
houses.”[270] The house of a god is as the house of a man, only grander
and more richly ornamented. And Japanese antiquaries say that the
architecture of Shinto temples is on the model of the primeval Japanese
hut. The temples of Ise, the most sacred of the Shinto sanctuaries, are
said to represent this primitive architecture in its purest form.[271]
The father of the family was the primitive priest in the Samoan Islands,
and his house was the first place of worship. Then “the great house of
the village,” or the place of popular assembling, was used as a temple;
and afterwards there were special temple structures with attendant
priests.[272]
The transition from house to temple seems to have been a gradual one in
the primitive world. The fire-altar of the family came to be the
fire-altar of the community of families. The house of a king became both
palace and temple, and so again the house of a priest; for the offices
of king and of priest were in early times claimed by the same
person.[273]