stifling convictions, and not quenching the workings of conscience. He that resists the voice of conscience may be throwing away his last chance of salvation. That warn- ing voice may be God's "day of visitation." The neglect of it may fill up the measure of a man's iniquity, and provoke God to let him alone for ever.
We learn, lastly, jfrom these verses, how much Christ disapproves of the profanation of holy things. We read that He cast the buyers and sellers out of the temple, and told them that they had made God's house "a den of thieves." He knew how formal and ignorant the ministers of the temple were. He knew how soon the temple and its services were to be destroyed, the veil to be rent^ and the priesthood to be ended. But He would have us know that a reverence is due to every place where God is worshipped. The reverence He claimed for the temple, was not for the temple as the house of sacrifice, but as " the house of prayer."
Liet us remember this conduct and language of our
Ix)rd, whenever we go to a place of public worship.
Christian churches no doubt are not like the Jewish
temples. They have neither altars, priesthood, sacrifices,
nor symbolical furniture. But they are places where God's
^vi^ord is read, where Christ is present, and where the Holy
GMiost works on souls. These facts ought to make us
gTBTve, reverent, solemn and decorous, whenever we enter
tliem. The man who behaves as carelessly in a church
as be would in an inn, or a private dwelling, has yet
mueb to learn. He has not the "mind of Christ."
Notes. Lukb XIX. 41—48.
^ j^ ^ £^ Wept over it.] This is a remarkable expression. Gualter
w