architectural restoration which characterised that age. The same impulse throughout the civilised world, which had caused Augustus Cæsar to change Rome from a city of brick into a city of marble, had penetrated to Judea. For the last forty and six years the restorations of Herod and his family had been conducted with a splendour which almost outshone that of Solomon. Corinthian porticoes, gilded gates, carved portals, made the old Temple of Zorobabel and Ezra shine like a mountain of snow fretted with gold. And to enjoy this sight, a new taste had been awakened in the age, which rendered it keenly alive to the glories both of the past and the present. When the disciples broke out with their admiring exclamation, "See what manner of stones and what buildings are here," they, the unlettered peasants of Galilee, expressed by an unconscious impulse the instinct of the nation. They, as they measured with their hands those stones, which we can still see, twenty, thirty feet long,-they, as they looked up towards those lofty towers which have long since perished, were but saying in their brief, simple fashion what the more highly cultivated intellects of their countrymen were expressing in well-turned periods and elaborate treatises. There were, doubtless, not a few among the doctors of the law who had pored over the ancient records of the nation: there was one youth who might have stood by, as the Apostles wound their way down the Temple hill, Josephus, warrior, statesman, and writer, all in one. He must already have begun to lay up the stores of that Archæologia of the Jewish people, which, in

imitation of the Greek work of the Halicarnassian Dionysius bearing the same name, on the early history of the Roman people, was to be his special contribution to the literature of his country. He must then have been taking those measurements and making those observations which, with all their shortcomings, yet render his account of the Jewish city and Temple the best antiquarian and architectural description that the ancient world contains.

And now, is not this the feeling which has called together so large a portion of my present congregation and which has occupied so many of us during the past week? We have met together, day by day, to "see what manner of stones and what buildings are here" in this ancient edifice, and in this great metropolis and its neighbourhood. We account it an honour and a duty to trace the records of the successive ages of our country from the rude fragment of primitive rock, from the deep dyke, from the Roman rampart, onwards through the various forms of grace and beauty by which Christian architecture has been developed through Norman vault and Medieval arch and Byzantine dome to our own time. Our lot, too, has fallen in an age when the passion for adorning and building is as ardent as it was in the age of Herod and Augustus— when the delight in antiquity and the charm of the past is more keenly felt than it has perhaps ever been since the world began ; when the spirit and the beauty of ancient buildings and ancient history is more fully appreciated than it was even by the builders and the actors themselves.

Now is this feeling right or wrong? What are its dangers and what its advantages? What is there in it of the earth earthy? and what, of the heavenly and immortal? In itself, no one can doubt that the interest expressed by the earlier disciples in the text is perfectly innocent. It arose evidently from the first feeling of a genuine childlike heart. It was the same feeling as that with which the Psalmist spoke almost the same words-" Walk about Zion, go round about her, tell the towers thereof, mark well her bulwarks;" or, still more pathetically, "Thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof." And although it is true that the immediate answer of our Lord on this occasion was one of dark and terrible import, "Seest thou these stones? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down," yet those very buildings which, in one point of view, called forth the stern malediction, from a more general point of view called forth His loving admiration. He was wont to walk to and fro in the porch or cloister, which was called after the name of Solomon, and was filled with the relics of olden times. When, on the Mount of Olives, the unsympathetic bystanders would have repressed the shouts of the children who proclaimed His coming, He appealed from the hard heart of the present to the dead stones of the past. He reminded them that, "if they should hold their peace, these stones," the old historic stones of that sacred hill, which had seen the farewells of David and the teachings of the Prophets, would immediately cry out, with a voice of their own, louder than the

acclamations of the multitudes; and when He advanced a few steps further, and the sight of that splendid and venerable city flashed upon him, the tears of affectionate sympathy rushed into His eyes. "He wept over the city," and breathed the hope that even then, at that last moment, she might have known the things that belonged to her peace, and risen to a position worthy of her ancient glory and present splendour. How then are we, who are always saying, "See what manner of stones and what buildings are here," to avoid the censure and gain the blessing of Him who knows what is in man? What is the true religious aspect of Archæology?

I. First of all we must profit to the full by that warning voice which checked for the moment the enthusiasm of the antiquarian disciple. The admiration for stones and buildings, however innocent, and good, and useful, is not religion. The regard for antiquity, the love of the past, if pushed to excess, may become the ruin of religion. It might have been supposed, from the language of some of those who revived these archæological studies thirty years ago, that Gothic architecture was one of the cardinal virtues. It might be supposed, from the manner in which antiquity is sometimes extolled, that it is the one test of truth and excellence of all sorts. Against this our Lord's warning is decisive. Of the most sacred stones and buildings that this earth has ever borne, He pronounced, not without exultation, that not one of those stones should be left upon another. One of the most venerable relics that has ever been handed down to

the guardianship of succeeding ages, the brazen serpent that Moses made in the wilderness-the symbol in coming times of the future Redeemer was ruthlessly destroyed by the most pious of the Jewish kings. Solomon and Herod, the most munificent of builders, were not the best of the Jewish kings; they were amongst the worst.

In one word, Christianity is not antiquarianism, and antiquarianism is not Christianity. There are times, and places, and circumstances, when antiquity must give way to truth, the beauty of form to the beauty of holiness, and the delights of poetic and historic recollections to the stern necessities of fact and duty. It was well to be reminded, even at Jerusalem, that there was something more enduring than the stones of the Temple. It is well, even here, to be reminded of that often-predicted prospect which future generations may view from the broken arches of our stateliest bridges, over the ruin of our noblest churches.

II. But having been thus forewarned, we are forearmed. If the text in the first instance suggests the one correction which is needed, it also suggests, by its relation to those other passages which I have quoted, the true lesson to be derived from antiquarian research. Let me describe briefly the important benefits which it may confer on the world even in a religious point of view.

1. It awakens that love of the past, which is so necessary a counterpoise to the excitement of the present and the future. "I have considered," says the Psalmist in one of the most philosophic and exalted strains of