GOD'S TEMPLE | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · April 8, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 15

GOD'S TEMPLE.

I stood before a portal wide Within which flowed a human tide; I trod the marble portico With footstep hesitant and slow, And, awed and wondering, entered where The penitent doth kneel in prayer.

The midday sun's bewildering glare Could never find an entrance there,— Ever a tender twilight gloom Pervaded all the lofty room, Save where the altar candles shed A faint and flickering light instead.

Paintings and sculptured saints of eld On every side I then beheld,— A tender radiance, soft and mild, Illumed the Virgin and the Child, And shrouded nuns and maidens fair Bowed in deep adoration there.

Is this “God's temple,” made with hands, Adorned with spoil of many lands, Where chants of praise and hymns of prayer Rise on the incense-burdened air, Where all combines with practiced art To please each sense and touch the heart?

And doth he dwell within these walls More than in Nature's leafy halls? And is his presence only found Within the church-bell's solemn sound? With heart sincere, thus questioned I, Where is the house of the Most High?

'Tis not in rooms reserved for prayer, Though oft we feel his presence there, 'Tis not in church with fretted dome, Though there he loves to meet his own— In howling wild or busy mart, God's temple is the human heart. —Selected.