This new guest to her eyes new laws hath given:
'Twas once _look up_, 'tis now _look down to heaven_.
And here is perhaps his best.
_Two went up into the Temple to pray_.
Two went to pray? Oh rather say,
One went to brag, the other to pray.
One stands up close, and treads on high,
Where the other dares not lend his eye.
One nearer to God's altar trod;
The other to the altar's God.
This appears to me perfect. Here is the true relation between the forms
and the end of religion. The priesthood, the altar and all its
ceremonies, must vanish from between the sinner and his God. When the
priest forgets his mediation of a servant, his duty of a door-keeper to
the temple of truth, and takes upon him the office of an intercessor, he
stands between man and God, and is a Satan, an adversary. Artistically
considered, the poem could hardly be improved.
Here is another containing a similar lesson.
_I am not worthy that thou shouldst come under my roof._
Thy God was making haste into thy roof;
Thy humble faith and fear keeps him aloof.
He'll be thy guest: because he may not be,
He'll come--into thy house? No; into thee.
The following is a world-wide intercession for them that know not what
they do. Of those that reject the truth, who can be said ever to have
_truly_ seen it? A man must be good to see truth.
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