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BEAUTIFYING THE HOUSE OF THE LORD.

A SERMON

Peeached in Old Lyme Congregational Church, on occasion of
Improvements being proposed on the Building, Sunday,
September 12, 1886, by the Pastor,

Rev. B. W. BACON.
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SERMON.

I. Ohron. 29 : 9. Then the people rejoiced, for that they offered willingly, because
with a perfect heart they offered willing'! y to the Lord.
The story of the raising of money and material for the building, or
repairing, of the house of worship is repeated more than once in the
Bible. Not improbably it is because there are lessons to be learned
from it. In the twenty-fifth chapter of Exodus we read the call from
the Lord himself for contributions from the people toward the building
of the tabernacle : "And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, speak
unto the children of Israel that they take for me an offering; of every
man whose heart maketh him willing ye shall take my offering." The
generous response which followed upon this call is related in the thirty-
fifth chapter : " And they came, every one whose heart stirred him up,
and every one whom his spirit made willing, and brought the Lord's
offering, for the work of the tent of meeting  Both men and
women, as many as were willing-hearted, brought brooches and ear
rings, and signet-rings, and armlets, all jewels of gold," and many
another sacrifice of garments and trinkets is enumerated of these " free
will offerings unto the Lord."
The next occasion of importance is that narrated in the passage from
which our text is taken, the effort to build the temple at Jerusalem; an
effort in which king and people vied in the generosity of their " offer
ing to the Lord." Willing gifts they were by which, as the writer has
it, "they consecrated themselves unto the Lord."
Again, we hear of an effort under Joash, the boy of the royal house
of Judah saved by Jehoiada from the murderous designs of Athaliah,
and set upon the throne by the revolution planned by this loyal priest :
" But Jehoiada the priest took a chest, and bored a hole in the lid of it,
and set it beside the altar, on the right side as one cometh into the
house of the Lord; and the priests that kept the door put therein all
the money that was brought into the house of the Lord  And
they paid it out to the carpenters and the builders that wrought upon
the house of the Lord."
A far more desperate and self-sacrificing struggle was that of the
poor, starving, little colony of patriotic Jews who went back from
Babylon under Zerubbabel and Joshua, "even all whose spirit God
had stirred up to go up to build the house of the Lord which is in
Jerusalem. And all they that were round about them strengthened
their hands with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, and with

beasts, and with precious things, beside all that was willingly offered."
It was a struggle between life and death for more than a century, but
" the people had a mind to work," and the enterprise was accomplished.
The writings of the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, who exhorted the
people rather to let their own houses stand roofless and ruined than
suffer neglect of the work on the house of God, are proof of the spirit
of their religious leaders in stimulating the people to the effort.
But it is the last of these instances of popular sacrifice for the beauti
fying of the house of God that is most touching. The building of
Zerubbabel, costly enough for that poor little starveling colony, had
given way, in more prosperous times, to a really magnificent struc
ture. Herod the Great, with all his faults, did more to beautify Jeru
salem than any king since Solomon. Architecture was his passion,
and over the historic threshing-floor of Araunah the Jebusite there
rose now massive walls, and colonnades of pure white marble, and a
lofty dome, whose gilded top, as it flashed the rays of the setting sun,
might well remind the people of that pillar of fire that had led their
fathers through the wilderness, and that rested over the ancient sanc
tuary. On the massive gates of cedar hung a vine, the symbol of Israel
redeemed from the house of bondage, transplanted and nourished by
the Lord's own hand. — It is the same device which our fathers so wisely
and beautifully adopted for the' seal of our native State, applying
to the pilgrim-colony the figure of Hebrew prophecy: "the Lord
brought a vine out of Egypt," and expressing their faith in the motto
" Qui transtulit sustinet." On the costly gates, familiar to our Saviour's
eye, as he passed through into His Father's house, wound this same
symbolic vine. Of no mean material this; stem, and leaves, and fruit,
carved in solid gold, were fastened securely to the wood. Forty and
six years had that temple been building, and still its beauties were not
complete. Forty years long the contributions of rich and poor had
been gathering in an unstinted flood ; for near the beautiful gate stood
the " treasury " — the old time " chest " of Jehoiada, and, even when a
Herod was the builder, the heart of this people, so often stirred to the
noblest sacrifices, " to beautify the house of the Lord," overflowed in
offerings. Ready to forget all the un worthiness of the king who set on
foot the work, they remembered only that " the palace was not for man
but for the Lord God," and rejoiced that they might " offer willingly
to Him with a perfect heart."
So there came one day One greater, than the temple, and sat down
by its beautiful gate. "And He looked up and saw the rich men that
were casting their gifts into the treasury. And He saw a certain poor
widow casting in thither two mites." In an instant His quick eye had
read the story of that heart. Her poverty and want no doubt were
plain enough, but the loving devotion, the all-absorbing, adoring grati
tude, that made it seem to her no anomaly as she passed through those
marble halls, and the double magnificence of those gold-wreathed gates,
to cast in her little all, a free-will offering to beautify only some
smallest corner of this already priceless house of God— these needed
the eye of One who could read beneath the surface; this loving devo-

tion touched the heart of the Son of God himself : " And He said, Of a
truth I say unto you, this poor widow hath cast in more than they all;
for all these did of their superfluity cast in unto the gifts ; but she of
her want did cast in all the living that she had. "
I have called up these instances from the Bible, because I am sure
that we can find in them lessons and precedents that will be of im
measurable value to us in the enterprise toward which we are now
moving. It is one to which we may well apply the words of Ezra :
" Blessed be the Lord the God of our fathers, who hath put such a
thing as this in your heart, to beautify the house of the Lord." This
has been the impulse of hearts fired by devotion, from the beginning
of the world. A religious spirit has always found expression (some
times its highest and best expression) in "beautifying the house of
God." Those lofty and stupendous piles on the plains of Egypt and
Babylon bear witness to us from an antiquity compared to which the
temple of Solomon is recent, that the "light which lighteth every
man,'' the fire of adoration that seeks to honor God with what is
noblest and most permanent and best, was burning and shining even
then. The traveler who gazes on the incomparable beauty and grand
eur of the cathedrals of Europe will hardly pause to think of the almost
incredible sacrifices that were made, not here and there, but through
every town and city of importance throughout Christendom, to raise
these " miracles in stone," unspeakably beautiful and costly. That was
not the age of popular wealth. These mighty piles were the first fruits
of reawakening civilization and industry. But if he is capable of feeling
the spirit and atmosphere of their beauty, marvel at the cost of these
"offerings to the Lord" will disappear in the reflection that here all
the richness and spiritual power of Christianity, long repressed and
smothered in all other channels by the formality of a corrupt ecclesias-
ticism, burst into its full flower. Here the prayers, the hopes, the
aspirations of the Christian world, denied their true expression in a
spiritual service of the people, carved themselves in stone, to plead
forever in dumb beauty before the Father in Heaven whom these
hearts reached dimly after; to witness to a thousand generations of a
religious faith that, when the praises of the multitude were hushed,
has bidden the very stones to cry out.
Stand in those pillared aisles, and gaze aloft, as it seems, almost to
the vault of heaven itself. The slender shafts of stone, sculptured with
a tracery-like lace, rise aloft and aloft, through the perpetual cloud of
incense, till, meeting in the vaulted roof, their pointed arch voices an
eternal supplication— as it were clasped hands of stone raised to the
Hearer of Prayer. " See too the Rose, above the western portal,
Flamboyant with a thousand gorgeous colors,
The perfect flower of Gothic loveliness."
Its vast circle, a network of sculptured tracery, a spider's-web whose
filaments are stone, breaks into rich fragments the evening light stained
red and blue and gold by the painting of forgotten hands. From

" storied windows richly dight" steals a warm glow through the incense-
smoke, Uke the flame of fire in the midst of the pillar of cloud ; it falls
on sculptured marble and alabaster, the tombs of martyr, hero and
saint, on banners stained with battle-smoke, the fruit of fields of blood,
and on the vast throng of kneeling worshipers. Stand there with
uncovered head, among the costliest offerings of generations who poured
out the devotion of their hearts here in this boundless beauty, and your
hearts must be hard- if they fail to understand and enter into that
spirit of mute prayer and adoration and grateful love that abounded
and overflowed to beautify the Lord's house.
From the heart of our sweet New England singer it drew its own re
sponse. In his "Golden Legend" our Longfellow Dears witness that
these sculptured aisles can tell their own story to the poet.
— " Who built it ? A great master of his craft,
Erwin von Steinbach ; but not he alone,
For many generations labored with him.
Children that came to see these Saints in stone,
As day by day out of the blocliB they rose,
Grew old and died, and still the work went on,
And on, and on, and is not yet completed.
The generation that succeeds our own
Perhaps may finish it. The architect
Built his great heart into these sculptured stones,
And with him toiled his children, and their lives
Were builded, with his own, into the walls,
As offerings unto God."
But before we take to ourselves this example of religious devotion,
bursting into its flower in that dark age of the church, we must turn
back again to another period of its history, an earlier one, already
alluded to, the story of which is given to us in an especial manner as
the rule and pattern of our faith. Does the Bible inculcate or encour
age the expression of religious feeling through this channel ?
There will be little hesitation as to the answer we should make to this
question. Even without the inferential commendation which might be
drawn from divine approval manifested again and again to those that
love and honor His sanctuary, we might rest with confidence on such
calls from Jehovah himself as those related in the chapter of Exodus
referred to, and in the other passages cited. From the promise in
Isaiah: "The glory of Lebanon (the cedar) shall come unto thee, the fir-
tree, the pine and the box-tree together, to beautify the place of my
sanctuary, and I will make the place of my feet glorious," to the sweet
blessing of Jesus on the widow's mite, as he sat over against the treas
ury, there is commendation and encouragement enough to remove the
last lingering doubt that he who maketh such gifts offereth "a sac
rifice acceptable, well pleasing to God." Indeed, it is only that I might
point out the spirit of this mode of religious offering, that I have cited
these many instances ; for I did not doubt that you felt, as truly as
I did, that this offering which we propose will be not only acceptable
to Him, but will undoubtedly prove of great practical service to His
church here, and even to the spirit and enterprise of the town. It is

worth our while, however, to remember, from the very outset, that
" Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it."
My dear friends, we can be sure that the Lord will build this house, if
we set about our building in the spirit inculcated by His word. If we
do not, we shall labor in vain.
There are but two points characteristic of all these stories of the build
ing and repairing of the Jewish sanctuary to which I will particularly
call your attention. The first is the fact that from first to last, from
the command to rear the tabernacle in the wilderness to Ezra's effort
" to beautify the house of the Lord in Jerusalem," and even in the forty
years' building of Herod the Great, such enterprises are regarded as the
affair of the people. It is their sanctuary, the offering of their hands.
In our time if there is a great public question of too vital importance to
be decided by a representative body, it is submitted to the people, that
their decision may be the supreme law. Thus when our Constitution
was adopted, when the French government was changed from a repub
lic to a monarchy and from monarchy back to republicanism, the ques
tion was submitted to the whole people, and this is practically the
method followed in England on every question of great importance. It
is not without significance, as it seems to me, that, in all these repeated
records of building and repairing and beautifying the house of the Lord
in Jerusalem, the appeal is made to the people. That was a theocratic
nation. In the earliest instance Moses stood as the representative of
their invisible King, with full powers to levy what tax or assessment
should be deemed fitting for a building designed to be at once the seat
of their government and their house of worship. At a later period
David and Joash and Ezra occupied the same position, and a tax im
posed by them in the name of Jehovah would have been a legal method
of raising the required funds. This was in effect the method of rais
ing the priestly revenues and of providing for the temple-service. It is
worth our notice, then, that on every occasion of this kind the ordinary
method is laid aside, and neither law, nor assembly, nor ruler is suffered
to interpose. The transaction is a direct one between the people and
their God. It is a matter of fundamental importance which concerns
every individual of the nation, one in which the people can be trusted
to establish in offerings of loyalty and gratitude the right relation be
tween themselves and their lofty, invisible King, to consecrate them
selves herein, as the writer of our text has it, "to the Lord." The Lord's
call through Moses was : " Speak unto the children of Israel that they
take for me an offering — of every man whose heart maheth him willing
ye shall take my offering."
The second point I would have you observe is the recognition, made
plain as plain can be in every one of the cases, that the gifts of the peo
ple for the building and the beautifying of the sanctuary are gifts to the
Lord. "My offering," "an offering for me," "they offered willingly
to the Lord " — these are the terms that are used. The adornment of the
city, the gratification of personal tastes, the pleasing of influential per
sons, or the conciliation of opposing parties, these are motives which
jar and clash harshly with the whole spirit of the narratives. The

spirit of this word of God, the spirit which pervades the story of these
efforts that stand as the example for our own, is a spirit of worship to
God. First, then, there underlies the whole this great and noble idea :
.that the building and beautifying of the house of the Lord is the great,
fundamental act of worship of the whole people to Him; a great com
mon offering needing no mediation of priesthood or hierarchy, but the
people's offering to God. It is the consecration of the congregation, a
firm and enduring foundation for a relation between them and Him
which must underlie all subsequent rites and offices of worship.
The second idea follows from the first, viz: that it is a sacred act, a
true and legitimate part of every ritual, nay, the one great act of wor
ship in which all mankind, in every age alike, have agreed to testify
their devotion to the Giver of all good. Shall we doubt that the im
pulse is from His Spirit ? There is one more confirmation of the worth
of this worship, a proof that the impulse is from Him, one which
blessedly confirms every sacrifice acceptable and well-pleasing to God.
It is the voice of God's own Spirit in the heart, the inexpressible sweet
ness and peaceful ecstasy of an approving conscience. When Paul
would point to an unmistakable foretaste and pledge of heaven he
alludes to this witness of the Spirit in our hearts, and calls it the
" earnest," the pledge, of the joy that is to come. What joy was it but
this of which we read in our text : " Then the people rejoiced for that
they offered willingly, because with a perfect heart they offered will
ingly unto the Lord ? "
Ah, my dear friends, as we step forward to this great act of worship
of the people, God grant — God grant, that it may be in this spirit, to
consecrate ourselves therein to the Lord. Then, as we beautify the
house of the Lord, this "holy and beautiful house" which our fathers
built, we shall be entering into one grand act of worship with them;
for it is to such a spirit in them that we'Owe this already noble monu
ment of faith; we shall know that we are offering a sacrifice of a sweet
savor, acceptable, well pleasing to the Lord, and, because He builds the
house, we shall not labor in vain.
Come at the Lord's own call, and consecrate yourselves in this free
will offering to Him, and perchance, as you are casting in your gift, you
may look up and see One "sitting over against the treasury," whose
glance blesses as it rests upon the "two mites" given in devotion to Him.
So let our work be done for Him, and the blessing of God's smile rest upon
our hearts; and " let the people rejoice, for that they offered willingly,
because with a perfect heart they offered willingly to the Lord."

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