Temple

“ And far the carven temple gates
⁠Of red and gold—
The dreamy temples where the gods
⁠Have long been old.
The dragonflies and irises
⁠Beside the stream,
Are far away in lands of dawn
⁠And lands of dream. ”

“ Then you have only to stroll and stroll and gaze and gaze; to watch the glorious altar-canopy lift its bronze architecture, its colossal embroidered contortions, like a temple within a temple, and feel yourself, at the bottom of the abysmal shaft of the dome, dwindle to a crawling dot. ”

“ The lofty pines that grace the other crest,
Enrobed in sparkling splendor, raise their heads
In solemn awe to yonder jewelled dome,
And offer praise to Him whose temple bright
Holds earth and sky. ”

“ Where white Fusiyama lifts proudly its cone,
(The snow-mantled mountain we see on the fan
That cools our hot cheeks with a breeze from Japan.)
But ours the wide temple where worship is free
As the wind of the prairie, the wave of the sea;
You may build your own altar wherever you will,
For the roof of that temple is over you still.
One dome overarches the star-bannered shore;
You may enter the Pope's or the Puritan's door,
Or pass with the Buddhist his gateway of bronze,
For a priest is but Man, be he bishop or bonze. ”

“ How like he is to your Lord! Is he not, like your Christ, a Saviour, and risen from the dead? The Temple or the Church—both are the sanctuaries of the Deity. By the ivy-wreathed altar of the weeping goddess, at the foot of the tall cypresses which cast their mysterious shadows on the snowy whiteness of the marble steps on which lies the bier of the god, you will feel the sacred awe which falls upon every pure soul when it is conscious of the presence of the Deity—call Him what you will. ”

“ Soon shall young men, fiery- hearted, children of Eri, a new race, roll our their thoughts on the hillsides, before your very doors, O priests, calling your flocks from your dark chapels and twilight sanctuaries to a temple not built with hands, sunlit, starlit, sweet with the odour and incense of earth, from your altars call them to the altars of the hills, soon to be lit up as of old, soon to be the blazing torches of God over the land. ”

“ He waves his magic wand, and the halls of the temple extend themselves through the immeasurable; a perspective of pillars spreads from century to century up to the dark gray era of the past, where first the fountain of life gushes up, and where suns and stars, coming forth from the womb of nothing, begin their course. ”

“ Haunting foreshadowings of the temple appear in the realm of imagination, in music, in architecture, in the untroubled kingdom of reason, and in the golden sunset magic of lyrics, where beauty shines and glows, remote from the touch of sorrow, remote from the fear of change, remote from the failures and disenchantments of the world of fact. ”

“ We seem to approach a temple built by giants, with rocky pillars, towering columns, and wonderful colossi on its lofty frieze, stretching out in a perspective of four miles, and, as it winds, discovering new domes with other groups of natural masonry, and other wondrous forms. ”

“ Shall the temple of our thought be a public arena where the most trivial affairs of the market and the gossip of the tea-table is discussed,—a dusty, noisy, trivial place? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself, a place consecrated to the service of the gods, a hypæthral temple? I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my mind with the most insignificant, which only a divine mind could illustrate. ”

“ Do we not loiter in the avenue of the temple, dallying with the vista of giant plane-trees and statues, and noting the carving and the color, mentally shrinking from the moment when the full glory shall burst upon us? We turn and look when we are near a summit, we pick a flower, we note the shape of the clouds, the passing breeze, before we take the last step that shall reveal to us the vast panorama of mountains and valleys. ”

“ There is a temple on a City wall in a country of sand and low scrub, gray with dust. The Temple is beautiful with its outlook on the sea of sand, and the little earth holes of water where the women dig in the sand. It is a Temple to a woman. ”

“ AFTER THREE DAYS.
[Written after visiting Holman Hunt's picture of 'Christ in the Temple.']
I stood within the gate
Of a great temple, 'midst the living stream
Of worshippers that thronged its regal state
Fair pictured in my dream.
Jewels and gold were there;
And floors of marble lent a crystal sheen
To body forth, as in a lower air,
The wonders of the scene.
Such wild and lavish grace
Had whispers in it of a coming doom;
As richest flowers lie strown about the face
Of her that waits the tomb. ”

“ Wondering she gazed, until, penetrating further and further through the light, she saw in the depths of heaven a Temple like her own, only perfect, glorious beyond comparison, [Pg 105] and full—full of worshippers robed and singing like herself, and full of that wondrous radiance which streamed from the heavenly form she had seen. She laid her harp upon the shrine, and to her surprise the strings began to quiver of their own accord! An electric current united them to the harps in the heavenly temple, and they vibrated in exquisite harmonies the echo of the harmonies above. ”

“ The largest temple the world has ever seen rose in pyramidal form six hundred feet in air. The broad and shaded streets were resplendent with the pomp and pageantry of the court of a mighty empire, and were alive with the bustle of the traffic of the known world. ”

“ The great temple is of noble proportions, with an overhanging roof of enormous size but constructed on such graceful lines as to be exquisitely beautiful. But within dust reigns, while without as usual the grass and weeds grow unchecked. ”

“ One feels that they have done with earth; one can fancy them a band of white-robed kings and priests forever ministering in that great temple of which the Alps and the Apennines are the walls and the Cathedral the heart and centre. Never were Art and Nature so majestically married by Religion in so worthy a temple. ”

“ It is in this vast temple, where he unveils his glory, that I offer up my orisons and my incense; and not on altars built by human hands, or within temples consecrated by priestly incantations."
"I agree with you, that power, and wisdom, and goodness, are displayed in the works of God, and that we may worship him either in the glen or on the mountain top, beside the running stream or within the recesses of pathless woods; but, as we are sinners, can we indulge any hope of mercy, unless he condescend to promise us forgiveness? ”

“ And in the temples are the sounds of music, and from each roof arises the savour of pleasant burning; and all that look at a cool temple, whichever temple they look at, or hear the hidden music, turn in to see whether it be indeed the End. ”

“ See to it, my brother, that you lend a hand and help to rear the true temple, which is rising slowly through the ages, at which successive generations toil, and from whose unfinished glories they dying depart, but which shall be completed, because the true Builder 'ever liveth,' and is 'a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.' Above all, brethren! take heed that you are yourselves builded in that temple. Travellers sometimes find in lonely quarries long abandoned or once worked by a vanished race, great blocks squared and dressed, that seem to have been meant for palace or shrine. ”

“ The temple before us was a large open court and deep vaulted chamber, massive and elaborately carved, and chiselled from the heart of the mountain itself, and rising up nearly a hundred feet. There were many other temples in the hillside, with doorways, arches, pillars, windows, galleries, and verandahs, supported by solid stone pillars filled with figures of gods and goddesses, heroes, giants, birds, beasts, and reptiles of every shape—quite enough to baffle the most careful student in anything like a thorough examination of their vast and intricate workmanship. ”

“ Ay, they do say so, the hirelings that foul with their feet the water whence the flock should drink: ‘we are the people, and wisdom shall die with us!’ ‘The Temple of the Lord are we!’ But the Temple of the Lord is larger, and wider, and higher, than their poor narrow souls. ”

“ To draw them, there is a gorgeous temple with an imposing altar, a tabernacle, a covenant, a shekinah lighted from heaven, a priesthood clad in the splendid garments, and all the superb apparatus of a magnificent ritual. Even the daily habits, materials of common dress, qualities of food and kinds of flesh, are all to be regulated in detail by specific statutes. ”

“ The sages have seer, and said that this entire creation is indwelt and inspired by God; and we have been taught, it has been brought home to us, that this wide-spread universe is the sacred temple of the supreme Deity. When exalted to this blessed consciousness, wherever we be, we stand on the holy ground of His temple, we are always and everywhere in the sanctifying presence of our God. ”

“ No sooner are you inside the great red gateway of the temples than you are in the world of fairy-tales. For temple 39after temple opens up before you, low fantastic structures, on which Oriental imagination has run riot in colour and form. You are bewildered by the innumerable courtyards of stone lanterns, the paraphernalia of drum-tower and bell-tower, fountain and dancing-stage, which surround them. You are sobered by the dark groves between the temples, which contain the tombs. ”

“ After groping about for an hour and a half by torchlight through those mysterious chambers sacred to the generative power of nature, of which beauty has always been one of the principal symbols, from the sting which its appearance infixes in the human soul, he issued forth filled with enthusiasm, under the influence of which he attempted to climb up to the apex of the temple. ”

“ If they are entering the city for the first time and crave exceeding virtue, they approach the great temple on the hill by lying face down at every step and beating their foreheads upon the ground. Wooden shrines of dazzling whiteness stand in quiet streets or cluster by themselves behind the temples. ”

“ The more dazzlingly brilliant the smooth, yellow sandstone walls of the temple appear in the light of the morning sun, the more squalid and mean do the dingy houses look as they crouch in the outskirts. When the winds blow round them and the hot sunbeams fall upon them, the dust rises from them in clouds as from a dry path swept by the gale. ”

“ This magnificent temple, "by its united excellences of materials, design, and decoration, internal as well as external, has been universally considered the most perfect which human genius ever planned and executed. ”

“ Seeing the beauty of the temple and the mighty work that comes of aiding nature, working in unity and harmony, they also built their houses to be like the temple. Stone they used for brick, beautiful they built them within and without, and they labored to make their dwellings fit temples for the gods. ”

“ He has built the true Temple, in that His body is the seat of sacrifice and of revelation, and the meeting-place of God and man, and inasmuch as through Him we are built up into a spiritual house for an habitation of God. ”

“ Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee! ”

“ It is the building of a glorious temple, whose base shall be coextensive with the bounds of the earth, whose summit shall pierce the skies, whose splendor shall beam on all lands; and those who hew the lowliest stone, as much as those who carve the highest capital, will be equally honored, when its top-stone shall be laid, with new rejoicings of the morning stars, and shoutings of the sons of God. ”

“ Every Lodge is a Temple, and as a whole, and in its details symbolic. The Universe itself supplied man with the model for the first temples reared to the Divinity. The arrangement of the Temple of Solomon, the symbolic ornaments which formed its chief decorations, and the dress of the High-Priest, all had reference to the order of the Universe, as then understood. The Temple contained many emblems of the seasons-the sun, the moon, the planets, the constellations Ursa Major and Minor, the zodiac, the elements, and the other parts of the world. ”

“ The essential idea of a temple is and ever has been that of a place specially set apart for service regarded as sacred, and of real or assumed sanctity; in a more restricted sense, a temple is a building constructed for and exclusively devoted to sacred rites and ceremonies. ”

“ Raise up, then, from this Temple, the temples of the Oneness of God, that they may tell out, in the kingdom of creation, the tidings of their Lord, the Most Exalted, the All-Glorious, and be of them that are illumined by His light.
13 We, verily, have ordained this Temple to be the source of all existence in the new creation, that all may know of a certainty My power to accomplish that which I have purposed through My word “Be”, and it is! Beneath the shadow of every letter of this Temple We shall raise up a people whose number none can reckon save God, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting. ”

“ Our Temple building is of the same nature; we are living in the dispensation of the fulness of times, embracing all the powers, principles, doctrines and covenants since the world was, and among the rest is Temple building. ”

“ God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions. ”

“ Strange it is, that men having so grand a shrine, so wonderful a temple, made by the Deity himself, in the midst of the sublimest portion of his creations, should disregard the fitness of the scene for that instinctive homage which the least religiously inclined person must pay to the mighty Author of the surrounding wonders, and stoop to offer adoration to the mishapen works of his own hands. ”