Places of Worship

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     "The disciples met at first in private houses, or wherever they could find a suitable room. 'Even the Jew had his public synagogue or his more secluded proseucha, but where the Christians met was indicated by no separate and distinguished dwelling; the cemetery of their dead, the sequestered grove, the private chamber, contained their peaceful assemblies.' 'For nearly two hundred years,' writes Stanley, 'fixed places of worship had no existence. About this time notices of them become more frequent, but in such ambiguous terms that it is difficult to ascertain how far the building or how far the congregation is the prominent idea in the writer's mind.

     But whether fixed or otherwise, it is a significant fact, that during its period of greatest purity and most active growth, the church had no special buildings consecrated for the worship of God. Clement of Alexandria, not satisfied with citing Paul's declaration at Athens, 'God dwells not in temples made with hands,' appeals, in support of the same great truth, to the ancient poets and philosophers. 'Most excellently does Euripides write:
          'What house constructed with the workman's hands,
          With folds of walls can clothe the shape divine?'"
                                        --Church History (Backhouse-Tylor).