SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, 23 July 1927, Page 17

SUNDAY READING

By

REV. A. H. COLLINS

PILLARS AND LILY WORK. “And upon the top of the pillars was lily work.”-—I Kings vii 22. The Temple in Zion was the crowning glory of Solomon’s reign. For its completion the people toiled and gave without grudge or stint, in the golden age of Israel. No building in the ancient or the modern world has ever commanded such reverence or such affection as the Tempi received. Its spoils graced the most beautiful of Rome’s triumphal arches, and the architectural ambition of Justinian never rose higher than the wish to surpass the magnificence of the Temple. Troughout the middle ages this building profoundly influenced the form of Christian Churches, and its special features became the watchword and rallying point of rival schools of architecture: .o pious Hebrew ever, thought of the Temple without a feeling of wonder and delight, mingled with solemn awe. Tojvards it he turned to offer daily sacrifice and prayers. In its defence he battled with sublime courage, and, when because of the people’s sin, the finger of God wrote “Ichabod,” on its walls for the glory had departed, the people iliourned its overthrow with genuine grief and dismay. The reason for this devotion does not lie on the surface. It is not explained by the material splendour or the costly embellishments, for judging by modern standards the Temple was not remarkable. It was quite a small structure compared with Saint Peter’s of Rome, or Saint Paul’s of London. It was only ninety feet long, thirty five feet wide, and forty five feet high. Many modern churches surpass its be; atv of form, and. its wealth of decoration. Dean Stanley Says that four or five such buildings as the Temple might be reared under the roof of our English minsters, though the wealth lavished on the vessels of the Sanctuary surpassed anything attempted in Western Europe. The main attraction lay in the fact that within its walls the people found a fixed religious home. The Temple gave unity to national life and religion. To this common centre, all classes turned to feed the fires of patriotism and develop those religious instincts and emotions of which Ji nation’s strength rests. PLEASURE IN STONES. This is what explains their attachment, ami led the people to take pleasure in its stones, and dwell with loving regard on the smallest detail of their “holy and beautiful home,” as they loved to call it. Love is careful of details: Love makes-common things sacred. Love does not say that a church is' “only bricks and mortar.” It is true that the permanent value of Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul’s Cathedral, does not consist in their venerable age, their stately liturgy, or their noble music. A plain meeting house or the hillside, where our fathers worshipped, no less than a Cathedral with groined pillars, fretted roof, and “storied windows richly dight,” may supply the “altar stairs that slope through darkness up to God.” » It is the Divine Presence that makes a. church. It is not where we are, but where the Eternal is, that the blessing lingers and souls are born anew. Our art may build its holy place, Our feet on Sinai stand, But holiest of the holy knows No tread or touch of hand; The listening soul makes Sinai still, Wherevqr wc may be, And in the vow, “Thy will be done” Lies all Gethsemane. Wc need to watch ourselves, lest we mistake the drapery of religion for religion itself, the aesthetic and the sensuous for the ' ethical and spiritual. Nevertheless .outward form counts. Music and aft must never stand first. There is something greater —conscience —principle —truth. Lilies for beauty there should be but. not lilies alone. There must be. pillars to support the lilies. “Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.” First strength and then beauty. First firm foundations then graceful forms. Life and religion like twin mountain peaks, must stand rooted in strength,, ere - the hand of art can sprinkle flowers on their slopes and sing hymns in their shadow. First deep regard for truth, deep loyalty to conscience, deep reverence for God, then music and song. STRENGTH FIRST CONCERN. Our first concern in life and religion must be strength. We are not sent into the world to be amused and entertained. We are sent to serve God and. develop character. We are here to make the’ foundations of life sure and the acts of life true. Pillars firm, majestic, strong, then lilies sweet, graceful, fragrant. Pillars and lily work. Strength and beauty. That is my puritan message.

T > reverse this order and care more for the aesthetic than the ethical, is to court disaster. Yet the tendency of the hou is to reverse this order, and think more of the elegancies of life than its sanctities. Give us lilies, give us flowers! cries the dawdling dandy with no more spinal column than a jelly fish. Many a foolish girls cares more for the fashion of her gown than the faith of her soul—more for “accomplishments” than convictions —more for what is on her head than for what is in it. Some

foolish mothers would rather many their daughters to a rake who Jias money, than to a poor man who is honest and elcan bloodfd. Give us lilies! Let life swim in a delicious haze of fancy and romance! Ah! but there are no flowers worth the having which do not grow on the tops of pillars. If you 'destroy the foundations of the earth, where will your flower garden be? You must have the granite rock which runs inward to earth’s core if you are to have the streams which flash and glide. What is the use of “accomplishments,” with no moral principles to better them? What use is it that W man can speak half a dozen languages if he has nothing to say? What is the use of it that a woman can paint and sing if she has no soul that clamours for expression? The main thing is strength and the only way to grow sweet and. beautiful, is to put under life deep convictions, stern regard for truth and honour, and the fear of God, which is “the beginning of wisdom.” PILLARS OF STRENGTH. This that is true of life, is pre-emin-ently true of religion. Sentiment has its place in religion, but there is no place for sentimentalism. Emotion and emotionalism are poles asunder. You cannot swim in a river of froth.. Where feeling is allowed to run riot over reason, it is fatal to pure religion and undefiled. The men of the apostolic age were pillars like in strength; so were the Puritans; so were the men of “The Mayflower.” They were men of brain and brawn. The greatest poets of America were of Puritan stock. Emerson, had seven generations of Puritan ministers behind him. Bryant and Longfellow and Lowell carried the marks of a sturdy drilling in loyalty to God and duty. I know the old order changes, giving place to new, and we should welcome change that means improvement. But to sacrifice reverence to decency on the %ltar of popularity; 'to demand sermons that are mere snippets, hymns that are not poetry and tunes that are not music; to forget that holiness beeometh God’s house, and that edification is more than entertainment, is to miss the chief thing in religion. Yet the professional evangelist who is often a combination of personal magnetism, narrow piety and adroit showmanship, with his little stock of addresses, hoary with age, and dripping with emotion, can travel round the world and receive for a ten days’ mission more than the faithful pastor receives in a year, and the people will to have it so.

But if I urge “strength,” I do not despise "beauty.” We need not destroy the “pillars” in order to cultivate “lilies.” There is nothing sacred in ugliness. Slipshod is no sign of grace. The church should be the home of beauty and the jealous guardian of all that is loveliest in tint and tone.

The Anglican revival known as “the Oxford movement,” was mainly religious; but one of its visible fruits was a quickened regard for the order and comeliness of church buildings and services. Prior to that movement many of the parish churches were in disgraceful disorder and neglect. Afterward titled ladies coveted the honour of cleansing and adorning the sanctuary. It is ever so. A genuine revival of religion will show itself in greater regard for the order and the cleanliness,of tlie-churcli and the church grounds. Some churches are not even clean, and the grounds are disgraceful, yet the people who assemble there would be ashamed to have their houses in equal shabbiness and disorder. OUR TWOFOLD MISSION. The temple drew men like a magnet. They took pleasure in its stones. They marked well its bulwarks and considered its palaces. The Psalms are steeped in loving regard for the house of the Lord. I shy then our mission is twofold. We have to illustrate strength and beauty in religion and life, to build on firm foundations of thought and conviction, and array them in forms of convincing grace and charm. “Please God make everybody good and please make all good people nice.” So prayed a little child, and it was a good prayer. But all good people are not nice; they are sometimes the reverse of nice. They remind one of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s description of his sister after she became a novice of the Anglican Convent at Clewer: “Here is Christina, who has entered the religious life and made herself exactly like a penwiper.”' There is something wrong with a religion that makes men gloomy and the prophets of evil tidings. They think they are serious when they are merely dull, and what they call being ' faithful simply means that they are ill-tempered or the victims of ill-health. “Away with those fellows who go howling through life and all the time passing for birds of paradise,” cried Henry Ward Beecher. Christianity is the religion of good cheer. “Give us,” Robert Louis Stevenson prayed, “Give us to go blithely on our business. Help us to perform the petty round of irritating concerns with laughter and kind faces.” So with courage and gaiety he pursued what he called his “task of happiness.”

It is told of a child who had seen George Whitfield, that when she was dying she was heard to say, “Mother, let me go to Mr. Whitfield’s God!” If the good man had done nothing else than commend God to the heart of a child, he had not lived in vain. It is our mission so to delineate the character of God that men will say with Charles Kingsley: “Oh, how beautiful God must be!”