When Jesus had finished cleansing the Temple of those that sold oxen, sheep and doves, pouring out the changers' money and overthrowing their tables, then the disciples remembered that it was written -- "The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up." -- (John 2:17).

What a perfect picture of much present day Churchianity! A quenchless zeal for secondary things in the house of God co-existent with the loss of the God-consciousness! That which is heaviest does not weigh heaviest! Christ, the Head of the Church, an unreleased prisoner in His own House! Zeal for it, obscuring Him! Zeal for the externals of the House of God obliterating the vision of God! Our darkening incense hiding God!

The task of the next Reformation will be to restore to us the lost sense of the presence of God so that men coming into the God-impregnated atmosphere shall report that "God is with you of a truth."

Christ shocked those who substituted devotion to the temple for devotion to God, by saying -- "In this temple is One greater than the temple" -- One greater than all of its formal service; One greater than all of its multiplied activities; One greater than all of its socialized program; One greater than its forty and six years in construction, which the Jew boasted of in describing its greatness; One greater than its mammoth blocks of stone; One greater than nature which yielded the material of its construction, -- Yea, One greater than the universe which the Pantheists adore but of whose Creator they are ignorant -- (the created universe being an expression of His power, men not finding Him through it, primarily, although "day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge" -- but truly appreciating, it through Him).

Let us say of all temples made with hands that they cannot contain Him whom the heavens cannot contain; that He dwelleth not in temples made with men's hands; let us say to all churches which arrogate to themselves the Name of God that there is One greater than their ecclesiastical system; One greater than all of its machinery; One greater than their "ISM;" One greater than all their form; One greater than their shibboleth; One greater than their most cherished tenets; One greater than their particular doctrinal moulds; One greater than their polity; One greater than their educational scheme -- it is He who inhabiteth ETERNITY, whom the heavens cannot contain, much less the weak institutions of men! He who, by wondrous grace, has come, in this dispensation, to dwell in these earthen vessels -- the bodies of regenerate men!