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But the chief glory of all was the solemn high altar, with its riddells surmounted by taper-bearing gilded angels, with its brocade cloth, and its painted halpas behind; and above it, before the rich window which smouldered against the dawn, hung the awful pyx, covered by the white silk cloth, but empty; waiting for the priest to come and bid the Shechinah of the Lord to brood there again over this gorgeous throne beneath, against the brilliant halo of the painted glass behind.
The Shechinah was the symbol, and in one aspect was a part, of that self-revelation. However, in common speech the Temple was spoken of as the house of Jehovah.
Sorrow has often produced great books, great psalms, to which the sorrowful heart turns for solace. But in the truest sense the Shechinah rests on man only in his joy, when he has so attuned his life that misfortune is but another name for good fortune. He must have learned to endure before he seeks the solace of communion with the souls of the great, with the soul of God.
It is not unreasonable, therefore, to suppose that He who appeared to Moses at Horeb, not in some unknown supernatural blaze of glory altogether detached from earth, but in the common fire of a shepherd in the common dry vegetation of the desert, and who made use of the common shepherd's rod which Moses carried in his hand to perform the wonderful miracles before Pharaoh, would also make use of the obelisk of Heliopolis, one of the most familiar objects which met their eye during their captivity, as the pattern of the Shechinah cloud which guided His people in their journey to the land of Canaan.
In too many this approaching responsibility produced no visible effect in the tenor of outward life they talked and thought as lightly as before, and did not elevate the low standard of schoolboy morality; but there were some hearts in which the dreary and formless chaos of passion and neglect then first felt the divine stirring of the brooding wings, and some spiritual temples were from that time filled more brightly than before with the Shechinah of the Presence, and bore, as in golden letters on a new entablature, the inscription, "Holiness to the Lord."
"Since the soul has awakened, since it yearns toward freedom, do not lull it to sleep by force; hearken to its voice. The world with its charms has no beauty and holiness whatever, wherefore, then, obey its laws? In John Chrysostom it is said: 'The real shechinah is man! Shechinah is a Hebrew word and it means the holy of holies. Consequently "
Into the praises of Apollo, joyous as they were, where, to the exultant anthem was joined the evolution of the dance beneath the vaulted sky, as if in his very presence, for the sun was his shechinah, there enters an element of solemnity, which, in certain connections, is almost overwhelming: as, for instance, in the first book of the "Iliad," where, after the pestilence which has sent up an endless series of funeral pyres, after the strife of heroes and the return of Chryseïs to her father, the priest of the angry Apollo, after the feast and the libation from the wine-crowned cups, there follow the apotropoea, and the Grecian youths unite in the song and the dance, which last, both the joyous paean and the tread of exultant feet, until the setting sun.
But the worshipper had to deplore the absence of the Ark, the symbolical Urim and Thummim, the Shechinah or Divine Presence, and the celestial fire which had maintained an unceasing flame upon the altar. Their Sacred Writings, too, had been dispersed, and their ancient language was fast becoming obsolete.
And the Shechinah shall inhabit the temple for ever, and the glory of God shall never depart from Israel; but they shall walk amid the splendours of the glory of the Eternal, and all the earth shall resound with his praise, as is written in Ezekiel, ch. xxxvii., and xxxix., and xliii.; and in Joel, ch. ii., and in Zech., ch. ii., and Isaiah, ch. xi., and throughout the latter part of his prophecies, and in Jer. xxxi.
'Oh, I don't mind that, said Mabel. 'Lots of Christians do that. There was a Cook's party went out from Middleton for last Easter. The lover was too pleased with her acquiescence in the Palestinian honeymoon to analyse the terms in which it was given. He looked into her eyes, and saw there the Shechinah the Divine glory that once rested on Zion.
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