Sunday Morning Musings: The Courtyard of the Tabernacle
"While the religion of the early Israelites has been adversely criticized, its disparagers have failed to give consideration to the time and environment of which it was a natural and consistent product. It is impossible to judge one civilization by comparing it with another widely separated from it in point of time. The modern world looks upon many ancient practices as cruel and barbarous, but is guilty every day of offenses which would have proved equally revolting to the sensibilities of ancient peoples! At no time has the world been composed of a majority of thinking people. Only here and there is found an intellect actually seeking to solve not only the problems of its own destiny but also those of others. The esoteric, spiritual side of every religion is a beautiful, humanitarian, and transcendent code, to be understood only by those who have raised themselves above the plane of the prosaic and the conventional. For ages man has served the "letter of the law," not realizing that "the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."
"To the true scholar and mystic, the Old Testament is an endless source of inspiration. To the intellectualist, it is a cause of ceaseless wrangling, and he argues over dates and places, overlooking entirely the sublime truths concealed under the crude allegories of Scripture. He who understands thoroughly the Mystery of the Tabernacle needs no other religion for he will be at one with the seers of all ages. As he goes about his daily life, every man -- unknown to himself -- is a priest of the Tabernacle; for as priests were appointed by Jehovah to keep His house in order, so each individual is, in a like manner, appointed to keep his own little world in order. Nature is the Tabernacle, man is the priest, and the one God of all nations and all peoples dwells in every human soul behind the embroidered veil of the "Holy of Holies."
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