THE UNIVERSAL HOUSE OF PRAYER.

Isaiah LVI. 6, 7.

It is possible for scholars to differ as to the exact amount of "liberality" that is to be ascribed to this text, and we are rightly warned against severing it from its context and forgetting the hard legal elements by which it is surrounded.1 It may be that these words come from a period when there was in the Jewish community considerable diversity of opinion and sharp discussion connected with this very subject. Perhaps in that time there were some "advanced thinkers" who, seeing that the true spiritual sacrifice could be separated from the temple, drew the conclusion that the temple might be dispensed with. If so, that was a mistake. The time had not yet come when the great word that emancipates religion from the control of sacred places could be spoken, and even when that word was spoken, it was surely not meant to tear the religious life and worship away from local memories so that it might wander forth as a disembodied spirit in a superfine, ethereal freedom.2 The word that destroys monopoly and shames sectarian bitterness is not intended to take out of religion all national life and patriotic feeling. The men who were, five hundred years before the Christ, putting their strength into the building of their own temple, were doing more than they knew for the higher life of the world. This they assert in their own tenacious and narrow fashion, when they claim that this house of Jehovah shall be a House of Prayer for all nations. The assertion cannot be dismissed as mere sectarian arrogance and fanatical patriotism, there is in it the consciousness of possessing truth that is of more than local meaning and application. It is one of the tragic things in human life that a great thought must be wrought into visible form in order to play its part in the world, and that when men seek to give it the form appropriate to their time and place, it may become narrow and even corrupt. But when we study the creeds and forms of a distant age we must remember that it was the noble faith and not the imperfect expression that gave the inspiration and energy. The temple was built as a manifestation of faith in God's goodness and man's need to worship.

1. The Welcome to the Foreigner.

We have here the distinct assurance that Jehovah is opposed to an arrogant exclusive spirit towards the foreigners and others, who were regarded in the strict legal sense as ineligible to become members of the community.3 The great thing is not the bodily condition or the difference of race but the willingness to submit to Jehovah and to submit to His ordinance. It is true that some among the people took a narrower view, or this exhortation would not have been uttered; it is also true that by the conflicts that took place later for the purity and even the existence of their religion the hearts of the stricter Jews were hardened against the outside world. Yet, except in the very heat of battle, they did not lose sight altogether of the larger significance of their faith. The vision of God's greatness carried with it, even indirectly, the oneness of the world and the brotherhood of men. Foreigners are at first welcomed to the brotherhood under stern precise conditions; but this is a beginning, and it is difficult for us now, with all our wisdom, to see how else the movement could have begun. That it did begin at Jerusalem, under great difficulties and limitations, gives to that city an everlasting name. When we look at the later history and present condition of Jerusalem we are inclined to regard it with supercilious scorn as a vulgar story of coarse fanaticism and sectarian strife. But there are moments and moods when those who have no excessive regard for ceremonies or superstitious reverence for sacred places feel that there is an ideal element running through it all. "For four thousand years Jerusalem has been the altar, the confessional, the mourner's bench of the human race. This has been the place where human nature has meditated, repented, and aspired; here the infinite, the undying, and spiritual in man have expressed themselves in the melody of song and the importunity of ceaseless prayer; here the currents which drift toward God in human nature have come to share; here their swell and sweep have lifted themselves into the Psalms of David, the prophecies of Isaiah, and the wailings of Jeremiah. The place has an infinite charm for poor, tempted, frail humanity, because here is the spot where One of our own flesh and blood first conquered the world, the flesh, and the devil; here virtue and honour and purity and holiness and tenderness and pity and sympathy and charity were enthroned and invested with the prestige that comes from succeeding. They failed at Athens in Socrates but they triumphed in Jerusalem in Jesus Christ. Human nature was dignified and ennobled by the success of Christ at Jerusalem. He showed what man can be and do."4

To these men Jerusalem had come to be the city of God in the supreme sense. In the earlier days it had been a capital city and a royal sanctuary. Then when Samaria was destroyed and local sanctuaries had fallen into disrepute as "heathenish," the claim was made, in Deuteronomy, that there is one God and one sanctuary. When this claim was most vigorously asserted the patriots were, in large numbers, torn from the city and sent into a strange land to learn to worship God without their beloved sanctuary. But the time had not yet come for men to recognise clearly that the formula "one God," rightly understood, means that the claims of rival sanctuaries fall into a subordinate place, become, in fact, matters of sentiment and not of essential faith. For the Jew, Jerusalem must remain, in a special sense, the city of God, the Holy City, a place where men are nearer to God than elsewhere, a shrine to which pilgrims from different lands turn with strong desire. Such glory and prestige Jerusalem must have from her own children when what we call an unkindly fate, but which by faith we may recognise as a wise providence, scattered them over the world. But here we may have a proof, more than four centuries before the coming of our Lord, that men outside the sacred circle longed to share in its life. This longing is regarded by the prophet as a gift of God and as prophetic of the future glory of His house. Men must curb their fiery patriotism and chasten their sectarian temper that the pious longing of the stranger may be encouraged, that Jerusalem may accomplish its real destiny by becoming a house of prayer for humanity. Humanity did not mean to him what it means to us, but we may truly say that the spirit of universalism was struggling with the legal barriers behind which it was born.

2. The Nature of the Fulfilment.

Without any apologetic discussion of "prediction" in the stricter sense, we may say that this hope has been fulfilled. The history of Jerusalem is one of the strange things in this wonderful world. It does not enter into competition with Rome or Athens, it belongs to a different order. From the time that David made it the capital of a nation and the centre of its religious life, it has lived in the full light of history and has had a strangely chequered career. It has been the home of proud patriots and fanatical zealots, in it great prophets delivered their message and met their fate. The halo of legend has gathered round it; its sorrows have been chanted in plaintive tones and its glories sung in simple strains. Round its walls fierce battles have been fought, and in its streets the blood and tears of many nations have been shed. Nations and sects have contended for its sacred places, and pilgrims from the four quarters of the globe have wended their painful way thither. The pilgrims and tourists of to-day, who attain their goal with less expenditure of personal toil, can see that much commercialism is mingled with all this display of devotion, but they can surely see that the real basis of the matter is not in these vulgar accretions but in an idealising of historical facts and a glorifying of the heroic deeds of the past. There is danger in this, but it is not without its noble features; in contending for the largeness and freedom of religious thought we must still remember how dependent the great majority of men are on national tradition and local sentiment. Through it all, however, this is clear, that representatives of all the great nations of the world do now look to Jerusalem as spiritually "the mother of us all," and in that symbolic sense the city has become a house of prayer for all nations.5

Still we cannot be content with this; there is something even greater than the romance that lingers round this strange chapter in the world's history, something in comparison with which all that the visible city can offer seems mean and tawdry. What is all this, we are compelled to ask, compared with all the living influences that have gone out into the world, influences which refused to be bound to any place or confined to any one symbol. We must then seek the larger fulfilment in the realm of ideas. The prophets, especially Isaiah and Jeremiah, who were deeply attached to the city, protested against the undue exaltation of altar and temple. Though these men do not give the specific analysis of religious ideas that we expect from a modern teacher, their words imply that there is a spiritual reality that is more important than the outward symbol. As a matter of fact, that which has made Jerusalem a power in the world, made its name stand for the ideal city, and surrounded its memory with such a halo of sacred associations is that it was the home of great teachers and martyrs, messengers of God who bruised their sensitive souls against its ignorance, prejudice, and stupidity. It is in the light of the teaching of those noble men that Jerusalem is viewed to-day by its most intelligent admirers. The actual city is glorified because its past is viewed in an ideal light, and much more because it has become the centre of a large, intellectual world that has grown out of the ministry of its great men. It is the teaching that was too great for Jerusalem that has made the name of Jerusalem great.

3. Other Elements in the Picture.

One of the things insisted upon here is the observance of the Sabbath, and we know that at the time of the Babylonian exile, and later, this institution received greater emphasis as a religious obligation and a distinctive feature of Jewish religion. The actual origin of this institution is lost in the dim past, but after all the recent discussions we can still say that we owe the Sabbath to the Jews. In what rudimentary form it may have existed before their time is uncertain. In our Bible we can trace a distinct movement and a definite character. In our Old Testament the sevenday week appears and Sabbaths take rank with other religious festivals.6 In later times it became more religious and ecclesiastical; the weekly meeting for prayer on this day helped to keep Judaism alive in a foreign land. In still later times, when the fight for the purity of the Church was severe, the strict observance of the Sabbath became a test of orthodoxy. This degenerated into hard legalism and petty quibbling until it called forth the protest of our Lord. The conditions of society to-day are quite different; it is impossible to have a total cessation of the varied activities of our complex life. But our larger experience has shown that there is in this institution of the Sabbath a permanent truth. It is easy to ridicule the extremes of scrupulousness, amounting to superstition, that have been manifested in this regard, more especially by Jews and Scotsmen. But a much more profitable exercise of one's powers is to find the positive truth and uplifting power in any great institution. As the account of creation suggests, the need of periodic rest is not a mere ceremonial demand but is in the nature of things, and if we are better than sheep and goats "which nourish a blind life within the brain," worship will go along with rest. While we maintain freedom of worship, and release all worship from restraint and coercion, it is clear that the community is better for a day of rest; it frees many from the drudgery of work, the slavery of toil, and gives to all who enjoy it the opportunity for that communion with men that is implied in the public worship of God. That the Sabbath, notwithstanding the controversies surrounding it, and the imperfections attached to it, has helped to free men from the bondage of materialism and to bring them to a closer religious fellowship can scarcely be denied. In so far as this is true it has been a religious force.

But the main element is the creation of a book. At a time when the Jews expected the temple to be permanent they were unconsciously preparing the way for a religion that could live without it When the temple was lost for a while during the Babylonian exile, the men who preserved their religious loyalty were thrown back upon the Sabbath worship and the study of the book. The result of this was that when six centuries later the temple met its final fate, by the influence of the school and the position assigned to religious teachers the religion was in no danger of perishing. Men missed the temple, they mourned over the desolation of Jerusalem, but for them the problem "How can we sing Jehovah's song in a foreign land?" had been solved The book had become a bigger thing than the temple. The temple is local and fixed; the book can become universal by means of its free movement. Men must travel to the temple and learn its language, but the book goes out to meet men and speaks to each man in his own tongue. May we not say that the Jews of the restored temple, gathering together their devotional literature for use in their house of prayer and in their daily life, helped to make that house "The House of Prayer" for all nations in a different and a larger sense than they themselves dreamed of? In doing this they created something greater than any temple, a prayer book for humanity that has exerted an influence on all Christian liturgies and that is more and more appealing to the heart of the world. These psalms and prayers were, no doubt, much more influenced by local struggles and sectional differences than now appears; we must in their case allow something for the softening influence of time; the small human entanglements tend to fall away, as they recede into the distance of the past, and the large universal elements are free to do their noble work. Here everything is turned into devotion and becomes a matter of prayer. Prayer, which does not rest on mere command but rather on deep-seated instinct and pressing need, here becomes vocal and finds classic expression. Nature, history, the life of the community and its particular members, all these varied regions of life are brought within the range of prayer. It is true that there are psalms in praise of "the law" in the ecclesiastical sense, for how could that great realm of Jewish life be neglected in a book of "common prayer," but it is in this book that we learn that there is in this religion something deeper and richer than external legislation and ritual requirements. Here a rich stream of spiritual life flows freely, reminding us that seekers after God in all ages and churches have much in common. In that temple of humanity that is not bounded by any sectarian walls, these songs and prayers rise continually to heaven. The passionate cry "My soul thirsteth for God"7 cannot be completely met by any symbol but only by the presence of God Himself, and "He being Lord of heaven and earth dwelleth not in temples made with hands."8

1 By Duhm.

2 John iv. 21.

3 Deut. xxiii. 1-3.

4 See Note, p. 138.

5 Gal. iv. 26.

6 Isa. i. 13; Ex. xx. 10-11; Gen. ii. 3; Deut. v. 14-15; Isa. Iviii. 6.

7 Ps. xlii. 2.

8 Acts xvii. 24.