Ezekiel 42:13 - Homiletics.

Holy places.

In a Protestant reaction against the superstition that attaches magical sanctity to certain sites, we have perhaps lost hold of the truths of which that superstition was a perversion.

I. THERE IS A SANCTITY OF ASSOCIATION . We may own to a revulsion for a man who would botanize on his mother's grave. Every Englishman must feel a thrill of national pride when he visits the field of Waterloo, as every Greek must have done when treading the plain of Marathon. Though a man may have traveled far and have acquired wealth that has raised him above his humble origin, it is but natural that he should look back to the cottage home of his childhood with tender affection as to the most sacred shrine on earth. It may be from superstition, or it may be from sentiment; but whichever be the cause, it is surely no strange thing to confess that the house of God in which a man has worshipped for years gathers to itself a peculiar consecration. There his burdened soul has been cheered; there the light has pierced his darkness; there he has sat side by side with the loved and lost, and if the place that once knew them now knows them no more, does not the very sense of change and the very pain of the vacancy add a new sacredness to the place, while dear memories of a beautiful past cling to its very walls and drape them with a sweet, sad sanctity?

II. THERE IS A SANCTITY OF USE . The sacred chambers were to be used by the priests, and in them sacrificial meals were to be eaten. Thus the sanctity of sacred usage was to be attached to these rooms. The commonest thing becomes holy when it is consecrated to a holy purpose. The shop may be a temple, the counter an altar, and the wares sacrifices, when the business is carried on for the glory of God in quiet obedience to his will of righteousness. Thus the very bells on the horses may have "Holiness to the Lord" inscribed upon them. It is in this direction that we should move when we would abolish too narrow distinctions between the secular and the sacred. We should lose the distinction, not by making religion earthly, but by making earth religious; not by desecrating the spiritual functions, but by consecrating things of the outer world.

III. THERE IS A SANCTITY OF LIFE . This is the only true sanctity. The other forms of sanctity are its reflections and results. True holiness resides in the heart, and there alone. That is the holy place in which the holy man dwells. The presence of the priest sanctifies the temple-chambers. But it is not the "linen ephod" or any badge of office that makes the true priest. Every man who has habitual access to the presence of God is a true priest of God. He who walks with God treads holy ground. A halo of sanctity surrounds the heavenly life. Whether this life be spent in a temple court, a hermit's cell, a Christian home, or in the hard, fierce world, it is encircled with holiness, and it weaves about it its own sacred tabernacle.