Heaven Without a Temple

“And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it.” — Rev. xxi. 22.

No temple therein; are these words a promise or a threat? Heaven without a temple seems a strange boon. Heaven without pain, heaven without death, heaven without sorrow or sighing, — all this I can understand; but heaven without a temple — is it not nature without a sun? Nay, verily, rather is it nature without a cloud. What the seer means to describe is not a heaven where there shall be no religion, but a heaven where there shall be nothing but religion, where religion shall be all in all. The Jewish temple circumscribed the range of man’s worship. It said, Thou shalt worship here but not there, to-day but not to-morrow, in the sacred but not in the secular, in the burnt-offering but not in the hourly offering of the will. But the vision of heaven without a temple spoke volumes. It said, All places are holy, all days are holy, all duties are holy. Every spot whereon thou treadest is henceforth sacred. Say not, I must give one portion of my time to God; thy God claims all thy time — thy heart and soul and strength and mind. Say not, I must cease betimes from work that I may worship; thy work must itself be a worship, a rest in God. Hast thou pondered the meaning of these words,” The Lord thy God is a jealous God V God’s love for thee is too divine to be satisfied with the fragments of thy heart; He must have all or nothing. He will not accept from thee the mere pauses in thy pursuit of pleasure, the mere breathingspaces in thy race of ambition; He will have thee to find Him everywhere. He will not let thee call one house His edifice if thereby all other houses be profaned. His temple is an universal temple. Its height is the summit of heaven, its depth is the base of sacrifice, its length is the measure of eternity, its breadth is the vastness of every finite need, its glory is the glory of the Lamb.

0 Thou, whose love is not confined to temples made with hands, enlarge my heart to worship Thee. Help me to see Thee where men see only the world, to hear Thee where men hear only the voices of the crowd. Enlarge the range of my reverence. Teach me to realise the awful solemnity of the things which I call common. Impress me with the truth that the meanest household duty is a service of Thee, that the smallest act of kindness is a praise of Thee, that the tiniest cup of water, though it were given only in a disciple’s name, is a worship and a love of Thee. Help me to feel the sense of Thy presence everywhere, that even in the prosaic haunts of men and in the commonplace battles of life I may be able to lift up mine eyes and say,” This is none other than the house of God, this is the gate of heaven.,,