Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Kings 6:7
And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither: so that there was neither hammer nor axe [nor] any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.
7. stone made ready before it was brought thither] The R.V. renders made ready at the quarry with a margin on the last three words ‘when it was brought away.’ The final Hebrew word on which the various reading is given is from the root of the verb rendered doubly in 1Ki 6:17 ‘to hew’ or ‘to bring away.’ The best authorities incline to make it a noun signifying ‘the place of hewing,’ ‘the stonequarry.’ The LXX. gives , which implies that the stones were made of their necessary shape at the quarry. The idea of this preparation at a distance, so that there might be as little noise as possible while the building was in progress, was probably derived from the command (Exo 20:25; Deu 27:5) that no iron tool should be used in the erection of the altar. This previous exact preparation must have made the transport a matter of serious care.
On the Jewish fables about the worm ‘Shamir’ by which Solomon caused the stones to be cut, see Buxtorf, Lex. Chald. p. 2455 s.v. .
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The spirit of the command (marginal references), was followed. Thus the fabric rose without noise.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
1Ki 6:7
And the house . . . was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither.
Living stones made ready for the heavenly temple
In the New Testament the Church is termed Gods building–the temple of God–the temple of the Holy Ghost–the temple of the living God–an habitation of God in the Spirit: These terms denote, that as God by the bright symbol of His glory manifested. His presence in the movable tabernacle erected by Moses, and the stately temple built by Solomon.; so does He by His Spirit dwell in the hearts of Christians as individuals, and in the Church collectively.
I. The stones of which it is composed. St. Peter says of Christians, that as lively stones they are built up a spiritual house. A stone is a shapeless mass of rock. It is inert–lifeless: could never split itself from its native quarry; could never fashion itself into classic shape and beauty; and could never set itself up as a lintel or column in any edifice of mare And such by nature is the spiritual state of all men. But believers, having been hewn out from the quarry of humanity by the a, race of God, are termed living stones; not inert masses of rock, not senseless blocks of marble, but full of life, feeling, action; and they are thus designated because Christ, as the tried corner-stone, the sure foundation, is called a living stone, and diffuses His own life through all parts of the spiritual temple which rests on Him. So that every stone in it, from the foundation to the top stone, is made a precious, a glistering, a living stone, through the indwelling life of Jesus, the Prince of Life.
II. The way in which these living stones are prepared for the temple, furnishes a subject of interesting and profitable thought. The wood and stone used in Solomons temple were carefully prepared at a distance from the place where the edifice was to be built. The sacred house was planned out in minutest detail by David, under the direction of the Spirit of God. Each stone, column, lintel, architrave, capital, beam, rafter, had its special and appointed place; but as yet the wood was waving its branches in the forests of Lebanon, and the stone was unquarried in the mountains of Judea. Many an axe and sharp-edged tool passed over that tree before it became a stately pillar; and many a hammer and instrument of iron was used on that once unsightly block ere as a polished stone it was fitted for the temple s wall. Most beautifully does all this illustrate the way of God in building up His spiritual and living temple. Though at conversion the child of God is a marked man, though he is justified freely by the grace that is in Christ Jesus; yet how much spiritual trimming and dressing, how much hewing and squaring does he need to fashion him aright for the position which the Divine Architect intends he shall occupy hereafter! There are sharp angles of character to be rounded off; unsightly protuberances of conduct to be chipped away; many roughnesses of temper to be smoothed down; many flaws and cracks of mind and heart to be chiselled out; and then, when the general form of the stone is prepared, how much severe friction is required to give it the right polish, and bring out all its beauties, so that its smooth surface may fling back the rays of the Sun of Righteousness! Our earth is the place where this work is to be done; for, as there was no noise of any axe, or hammer, or tool of iron heard on Mount Moriah while the temple was building, so in the New Jerusalem above there will be heard no crushing strokes of conviction, no sharp hewings of an awakened conscience, no sound of preparatory discipline. The greater part of the preparation to which we are subjected as professing Christians, is of a disciplinary character, and hence is fitly represented by the axe, the hammer, and the tool of iron. Now the axe seems driven into the root of his happiness; now he is broken as a block of granite under the blows of the hammer of Gods word and now the iron of a sore adversity has entered into his soul, and he feels himself stricken, smitten, and afflicted. In these dispensations, however severe, he is being fitted by the hand of God Himself for a place in glory. God knows for what position in that heavenly temple He has designed us.
III. The end for which these living stones are designed. The real end, then, for which God hath chosen us in Christ Jesus before the world began, and fitted us on earth by His providential dispensations, is, that in the dispensation of the fulness of time, He might gather together in one, all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Him. And this recapitulation of all things in Christ, is to be effected by building all things on Christ as the sure foundation which God Himself has laid in Zion; and Christians, as living stones chosen of God and precious, are, in the language of St. Paul, built upon the foundation of the apostles. This spiritual temple God is now building up, and it progresses just as fast as the living stones arc prepared to take their places above. And this building process is going on every day, in our midst, under our own eyes. (Bishop Stevens.)
Hidden quarries
There is a hidden, withdrawn realm in every one of us, where life is getting itself chiefly shaped. Not een the truest heart, and next our own, Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh. Do noble things, not dream them all day long, urges and sings Charles Kingsley; and it is a good music and a right urging. Yet it is still true that no one can do noble things except he first dream them. There was a voyage to the New World in the thought of Columbus before he left Spain, or there could have been no voyage by ship. There was the boat propelled by steam in the thought of Robert Fulton before the actual boat could go puffing up the Hudson, drawing in its wake the vast retinue of later steam navigation. There must be the hidden dreaming before the doing can be possible. Think of some of these withdrawn and hidden quarries, where the stones are chiefly shaped, which became builded in the temple of our lives–the hidden quarries of the imagination, the affections, the will (Homiletic Review.)
Grave prepares the stones for the spiritual temple
To this our New Testament temple answers. For those of the sons of Adam who are counted worthy to be laid in this building are not by nature, but by grace, made meet for it. No man will lay trees, as they come from the wood, for beams and rafters in his house; no stones, as digged, in the walls. No; the stones must be hewed and squared, and the trees sawn and made fit, and so be laid in the house. Yea, they must be so sawn, and so squared, that in coupling they may be joined exactly, else the building will not be good, nor the workman have credit of his doings. Hence our gospel church of which the temple was a type, is said to be fitly framed, and that there is a fit supply of every joint for the securing of the whole (1Pe 2:5; Eph 2:20-21; Eph 4:16; Col 2:19). (John Bunyan.)
There was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house.—
Building in silence
Incidental as the mention of this curious fact may be, we cannot well doubt that it was intended to have a spiritual significance. Gods house was built in silence. Those who watched it, as it rose in its beauty and majesty, must have felt a sense of awe stealing upon them as the great work proceeded without the din and clatter with which earthly buildings are raised. Much might be spoken in a general way of the eloquence of silence. If you have ever been alone on a mountain-top, lifted above the sounds of earth, you must have had a very solemnising sense of being brought nearer to God and to the awful world unseen. Shallow rivers are commonly noisy rivers, and, as has been well said, the drum is loud because it is hollow. The profoundest gratitude, the deepest love, the intensest anxiety, are mute. The inability to express them is itself expressive. But to speak more directly of the relation of silence to our spiritual life, observe–
1. Silence seems fittest when we first think of God. Surely the earliest consciousness of His presence and His nearness, if it be a real and a vivid consciousness, commands our silence! And then, close as we feel God to be to us, it is undeniable that there is much in His nature that must ever remain mysterious; much that, as far as logical statement goes, seems contradictory. Not mysterious, observe, in such a sense as that we should be justified in giving up thinking of God altogether; but mysterious as implying that when we have reached certain lines of limitation to our inquiries, there we must stop. We can know God; but there is much relating to God which we cannot know.
2. When our religion passes into personal conviction, then again we find the value of silence. Then Job answered the Lord, and said, Behold, I am vile; what shall I answer Thee? I will lay my hand upon my mouth. Once have I spoken; but I will not answer: yea, twice; but I will proceed no further. When the sense of self-reproach is keen, when the conviction of guilt is fairly awakened, the sinner is dumb before his God. What can he say? Can he give utterance to the overwhelming sense of personal demerit, or express the depth of humiliation in the convicted soul? And then, when we go forth redeemed and disenthralled, how feebly can words indicate the sense of relief, of gratitude too profound for words! Let not noise, then, be the test of truth. Believe nothing merely because it is said by many, and said very loudly. The people of Ephesus cried with a loud voice for the space of two hours, Great is Diana of the Ephesians! but I do not suppose that any truthful person at the end of the two hours was more impressed by her greatness than at the beginning, or more inclined to believe that her image had fallen down from Jupiter. As you value truth and fairness, as it is the sacred duty of every man to form his convictions without fear or favour, his duty for the sake of others as for his own, resolve never to be led by clamour.
3. But silence has its proper relation to spiritual worship. Certainly this truth is distinctly involved in all that Scripture says of the worth of silence, viz. that if we would commune with our own hearts we must be still; we must cease from the stir and fuss and superficial chatter of a superficial world; above all, from the wilfulness of our hearts and their clamorous devices and desires. We must say in the same spirit as the child-prophet of old: Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth; and then, in self-forgetfulness, listen for the voice that is best heard in silence.
4. But silence has its proper place, its due relation, in regard to our intercourse with our fellow-men. Among the valuable things that some of us have learned from Thomas Carlyle, we shall not forget the value of silence. It seems that there is far too much talking in the world. After all, Carlyle only said what the wise man of old had wisely affirmed, that in all labour there is profit, but the talk of the lips tendeth only to penury. The author of Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is a time to keep silence, and a time to speak. We return, last of all, to our original thought. The temple of God is to be built in silence. In silent conviction the individual is built up a dwelling for Gods Spirit. In silence is His spiritual temple, His Church, built in its glory and beauty, which temple ye are. It is a silent work, because it is a spiritual work. The kingdom of God, to put this truth into New Testament language, is not in word, but in power. It depends upon the invisible touch of the Divine Masters hand, whereby all the building, fitly framed together, groweth into an holy temple in the Lord. (J. A. Jacob, M. A.)
No sound of hammer or axe
1. A single soul under the action of Gods Spirit illustrates both the steady continuity with which great forces operate, and also what we may call the periodicity of exceptional and startling upheavals. None can tell how long it has taken to form a single geologic stratum; silently and slowly, and by a prearranged law, the processes take place by which what we call a rock, a stone, a formation is made; but, in some moment of violent interference, the aspect of a continent is changed. To those close and steadfast years of formation we attach too little importance. The currents of electric and other forces, so essential in various ways, are distinctly active, and may be tested, even where no violent action may be traced; but there comes a thunderstorm, the elements seem at war; and then we see the awfulness of this power for good or for devastation. The efflorescence of life, as one may call it, has the same moral meaning. The pre-ordained flower is in the seed, and grows into its organic beauty by a living vitality which has its preordained type. You look out upon the snow-mantled earth; one snowflake, with innumerable crystals, each exquisite in its beauty and perfect in its structure, is not a snowstorm. But it is essential to it, and has been separately framed so that each fits into each for the perfect whole. Do we not see how all these become as parables, equally with the blocks of quarried stone, which, fitly hewn, went to build the temple? When, for instance, we ask concerning the origin of spiritual life, we axe thrown back into the sphere of the hidden and incomprehensible. A good man always, however, refers all his goodness to the contemplated purpose of the Almighty. Hence he does not hesitate to use and apply to himself the word, elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. The response of the soul to the words of the Saviour, I have chosen you and ordained you, is immediate and unfaltering. Even so, Lord; the love that was before all my sin, my very existence, was the fountain of my life and love. But I have called it hidden and incomprehensible. Yes; it is in the Divine secrecies that all the life to be revealed lies. These are the depths which are unsearchable, the mysteries which are inscrutable.
2. Let us now trace some of the methods by which, in practical experience, the setting of these spiritual stones takes place. That there are such upheavals as correspond with the periods of inorganic nature we have been reminded. Sometimes stormy religious experiences herald the peace which passeth understanding; and the transfer from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light is most emphatic and marked. The world intrudes too much upon our notions of what a spiritual change is. We come to expect something startling and showy. We want a spectacle to see and to exhibit; but the kingdom of God cometh, a true kingdom too, without observation. Readers of the lives of Madame Guyon and Fenelon will at once have grasped my allusion. For interior silence was one of those qualities which made the mystics so devout, and still makes them so interesting study. But that interior silence, that submission of the will to God, that entire absence of self-dependence which has given to mysticism a peculiar charm for a certain order of minds, does it not afford us,–in these days of sensationalism, when everything must be tabulated, set down by name, and labelled with some distinctive sign,–some needful check and counteractive? Does it not suggest to us that the holiest, and therefore the best and safest, ways along which men may pass towards the highest life, are those along the Divine silences? But natures are different. Some need the stimulus of great external excitement. Let us not condemn them, even while we claim a place for those who find refreshment and nutriment both in the things that make no noise. Silence does not mean inaction; nay, has not silence been called the very voice of God? We may be touched to the very core of our being without any deeper, fuller pulsation than that which indicates a healthy, natural inward life. Let the goodman be encouraged to hold on his way in goodness, to cherish with a tender regard the quiet virtues which blossom for Heaven alone to look at; let him not be discouraged that he hears not the throb of his inward vitality. If the fruit of the Spirit be with him, let him not doubt that the Spirit is there. And it would be well to guard against those laboured substitutes for the Divine endeavour, which often accompany an outward show of religion. You are not stirred as once you were, let me suppose; this may be because your nature offers less resistance to the holier will. The noise of the babbling brook as it dashed against the pebbles or rocks in its onward course, has subsided because the flow is less impeded; but the deep stream flows with equal force. My busy, restless, eager friend, we have need of all your earnestness and energy; but settle it well that there are other natures with as true an earnestness which are not equally restless and busy. With an inward reserve force, they, while expending themselves in various ways, have yet something hidden away from human observation; great reservoir forces which will not dry up in summer heat, nor become useless in winters frost. It is of the first importance that our wills shall be confirmed to Gods; and that, without uneasy effort, we endeavour to walk in the light of God. Our outward life may make no noise, even as our inner life may work without friction, but both have their sure reward. We may, on the other hand, be so busy that-like one in ancient story, As thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone (1Ki 20:40)–the special charge with which we are entrusted may escape us. Let every man bring such gifts as he has, and always the best he can bring; but it may please God to set more honour upon those which are lightly esteemed among men and even by ourselves. All these things press home to us this conviction, that above all we are required to be simple and faithful, laying bare every energy we have to the eye of Infinite Love, and willing to have even our best labours passed by and our unconscious and unpretending efforts crowned with such blessing as the Lord may allow. (G. J. Proctor.)
Building in silence
St. Paul, in his Epistles, frequently alludes to the temple, and employs it as a figure or type or symbol to set forth some great Christian truth.
1. Sometimes he speaks of the individual Christian being the temple of God (1Co 6:19).
2. Sometimes he speaks of the Church collectively as the temple of God (2Co 6:16; 1Co 3:16-17).
3. Sometimes Paul speaks of the Church glorified under the figure of a temple, not yet completed, but progressing, continually growing unto a holy temple in the Lord (Eph 2:19). In some invisible realm, God is rearing a temple of sanctified souls gathered from this evil world.
I. The natural unfitness of the material. The house was built of stone made ready–made fit, implying natural unfitness. The stone when raised from the quarry is rough, shapeless, unsightly, totally unfit to occupy a place in the walls of a temple. It may serve to fill up a place in a mean and humble structure; but the builder of a temple requires it hewn, shaped, so as to fit with nicety into its appointed place, that the entire building may at last be symmetrical and beautiful, revealing the skill of architect and builder. We all need the mighty working of the Divine Artificer in order to fit us for the service of heaven. Our total unfitness is manifest, unfitness of nature, of character, of disposition, of taste. In what then does fitness consist?
1. You must be in harmony with your environment in heaven. You must be made ready before you are brought thither.
2. You must be in harmony with the employments of heaven. Heaven is not a place of inactivity. Ample scope will be given for the development and growth of both mind and spirit. Every employment there will, however, be of a highly sacred character, and will be joyful only to those who are in perfect sympathy with holiness.
3. Another qualification is sympathy with God. In heaven God will be the supreme joy of angels and all unfallen spirits; God in Christ will be the joy of all redeemed spirits for ever. There is only one will in heaven.
II. The material for building the temple was brought from a distance. The woodwork was wrought from Lebanon-Cedars, the stones also are supposed to have been brought chiefly from the sides of Lebanon; brass without weight from the foundries of Sue-doth and Zaretan; gold, silver, and precious stones from Ophir and Parvaim. This fact symbolises the distance, the moral distance, from God of the material with which He builds for Himself the heavenly temple. Strangers, foreigners, aliens, enemies, afar off are the expressions employed in the Scriptures to describe our condition when sought and found by a gracious God.
III. The means employed. Ordinary means only were used in the erection of Solomons temple. No miracle was wrought. To men hath God committed the ministry of reconciliation. We have this treasure in earthen vessels. Saved ourselves He sends us forth to save others. While the instruments are human the means are varied. In the quarry some blast the rock, some hew the stone, some may be seen sawing, others polishing, others removing it when finished. While holding fast the unchanging truth, that the Holy Spirit alone effects the great moral change in every regenerated soul, the means He employs are varied. There are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all (1Co 12:4-7). Stones differ materially in their character and nature. Some will break, others split, others crumble, others polish. As human beings we differ greatly in temperament, ,disposition, tastes, qualities, and we require different treatment in order to bring out the best that is in us. The discipline that would be a blessing to one might prove a curse to another. God, who holds in His hand the weapon, knows perfectly the nature, the qualities, the character of the man He is working upon.
IV. Its gradual advancement. Solomon took seven years to build his temple, but it took David many more years to provide and prepare the materials. So the great spiritual temple in the heavenlies has been in process for about six thousand years, and even now it seems far from completion. The foundation may be considered laid when the first promise of a Saviour was proclaimed to fallen man. The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpents head. Throughout the centuries the building has been rising beautiful and fair under the superintendence of the Divine Architect. Fresh stones are gathered and piled on the sacred edifice. Every day reports progress.
V. The silence with which the temple rises. There was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was in building. This world is the quarry where the souls of men are to be prepared for the kingdom of heaven. Whatever change your spirit requires in order to fit you for a place in the heavenly temple must be realised here. This world is the only one where renewal is possible. Probation is limited to our earthly life. (R. Roberts.)
Greatest works wrought in silence
I. The erection of the temple. The building of the temple at Jerusalem was a grand work. But this grand work, we are informed, was wrought in silence; and when we consider the nature and dimensions of the material used, this seems very extraordinary. Some of the blocks of stone were 80 feet long, 10 feet high, and 14 feet wide. Its pillars were socketed in solid masonry. Yet these ponderous masses were hewn, squared, fitted without the sound of a hammer, an axe, or any tool. This silence not only demonstrated that the work was Divine, but symbolised the mode in which the Eternal works out His vast designs.
II. The processes of nature. He who built all things is God. How did He rear this grand temple of the universe, compared to which the building on Mount Moriah is a mere atom? How did He round and burnish and set ageing the innumerable worlds and systems that roll throughout immensity? Without any sound of hammer, or axe, in infinite silence. How does He bring round the various seasons of the year, change the aspects of the landscape, draw up the herbs, the plants, and flowers, from the silent earth, and build up the majestic trees of unnumbered forests? It is all done in silence. In solemn silence all grow and all move, flourish, and decay.
III. The edification of Christly souls. All virtuous souls are His building, His temple to dwell in. But how does He build them up in true knowledge in unbounded confidence in the truth, and invincible love for all that is right, beneficent, and Divine? In the most silent way. How did He, the great Architect, begin this work in Christ? He did not strive nor cry, neither did any man hear His voice in the streets. Thus now He proceeds, He inbreathes a regenerating, holy thought silently into the soul, and there it works and works until it builds up the temple of a noble character. Conclusion.
1. Do not judge of the prosperity of any Church by its boisterous sounds. All Divine operations are in silence. In the working of human machinery, the grating noise and rattling din are often insufferable to the ear; but how noiselessly works the stupendous and complicated mechanism of the great universe! Scarcely a sound is heard where Gods hand is most manifest.
2. Do not endeavour to promote any Divine cause by noise and bluster
In silence mighty things are wrought,
Silently builded thought on thought,
Truths temple greets the sky.
And like a citadel with towers,
The soul with her subservient powers
Is strengthened silently.
Soundless as chariots on the snow,
The saplings of the forest grow
To trees of mighty girth.
Each nightly star in silence burns,
And every day in silence turns
The axle of the earth.
The silent frost with mighty band
Fetters the river and the land
With universal chain,
And smitten by the silent sun,
The chain is loosed, the rivers run,
The lands are free again.
(Homilist.)
Quiet and order in the temple
I. It might be expressive of the character of the worship which would be acceptable to God in the temple.
1. Worship prepared for. The stones were cut and shaped beforehand. So should we go to the house of God in the spirit of devotion. Many go expecting there to get spiritual thoughts, who keep worldly thoughts in their heads until they reach the very doors of the sanctuary. To cultivate a spirit of prayerfulness and reverence before going to the house of God will warrant us to expect the acceptance of our worship, and a blessing on ourselves.
2. Worship quietly conducted. God is not delighted with loud and noisy declamation. A reverent tone will be subdued; but not hypocritically so.
3. Worship conducted in an orderly manner. Random, irregular, disorderly services cannot be such as God would approve. Late attendance, listlessness in Gods house, unseemly haste to leave, all these appear to be condemned.
4. Worship appropriately conducted. There should be regard paid to the fitness of things.
II. The circumstance mentioned in this narrative may be expressive of the character of the spiritual temple, of which the material temple was typical.
1. There must be a change in those who are made stones in the living temple.
2. Religion has to do with the externals of mans life. An uncouth, rough, rugged Christian is an anomaly. The servant of God should be gentle, meek, patient, lovely, amiable
3. The work of preparation must be done outside the church. Men are not to be brought into Christ s church as members in order that they may be converted, but because they have been already converted.
4. All stones in the temple were serviceable. Christians in different spheres of life have greater or less responsibility according to circumstances; but all are precious in the sight of the Lord. (F. Wagstaff.)
The quiet world
One might often think that the great world-life is mostly characterised by strife and stress and storm. And true it is that these are facts. In business, competition; in politics, conflicting parties; in international relations, either war or rumours of war, or, at best, armed peace–the strain of jealousy and fear; in the church, sectarianism; in theology, endless controversy; in ethics, even, different schools with many unsolved problems. In such a world it would appear almost impossible to live a quiet, tranquil life–to enjoy anything like harmony of being. And this reflection is not without its danger. There is a temptation to catch the fever; to live in the storm; to think ourselves on to the rack; to be ever on the wave of excitement; and to regard life as mainly consisting in its more tumultuous elements. It is therefore of some value to reflect that behind all the tumult there is always a great body of life which is quiet and tranquil. The world is not as noisy as it sounds, nor as stormy as it appears. Paul was no doubt right when he said that there were many voices in the world, and that none of them was without signification. It is also true that there is a great deal of substantial life which is not loud; of solid sound building where the noise of tools is not heard; of weaving durable material after beautiful patterns without the din of machinery, on the silent looms of tranquil souls. The sea is in many ways a fit emblem of life. We have watched it when strong winds made it angry; how it rose in wrath; how the waters roared and were troubled; how the waves broke on rock and shore; it looked as if the whole volume of the ocean had been stirred to its depth. But it was not so. It is even so in the great human world. Even its most tremendous revolutions leave its largest part in the steady sway of orderly life, where feeling and thought and action are normal and peaceful. It is the same along the whole course of history, and we are apt to forget it. History as written is for the most part the history of what made a noise. The sound of warriors rushing to battle, the clashing of armour, the groans of the conquered, and the shouts of the conqueror fill our ears. And yet it is evident that these were at no time the whole of life. The vast body of life is always unhistoric; the quiet world is not reported because it is quiet. Drop into history at any one point that we may think it more concretely. Harold, the English king, hears of the coming of William of Normandy. Immediately he marshals the war forces, and soon you hear the tramp of soldiers on the march. They meet the enemies; the armies fight; there is tremendous excitement. Ask any historian what the great event of the year 1066 was in England, and he will say it was the battle of Hastings. And it looks indeed as if English life then was a battle and nothing else. Yet even when that battle was being fought, which undoubtedly was the great event of the year, and which had such important consequences for this country, it is certain that of the two million people then in England, the vast majority went calmly and regularly on with their life, many not knowing, and many not heeding the engagement of the soldiers. Thousands of yeomen and cottars, of freedmen and serfs went the daily round as if there was no Duke of Normandy on the south coast; hundreds of monks chanted the canticles divine, undisturbed by the noises of the warriors. And all these who lived in the quiet world contributed their share to the national advancement. What is life in Britain from the first coming of the English down to the establishment of their final supremacy? It is mostly made up of battles–battles with the old Britons; battles among the different kingdoms of the English themselves; battles with the Danes–terrible battles; battles with the Normans; and battles all the way. William of Normandy said on his death-bed, I am stained with rivers of blood. And in reading the history of this long period we seem to be walking on the bank of a river of blood all the way. English life then was one long battle. No, no; battles there were indeed, many and furious, but even then I think the quiet world was larger than the world of storm. And in the story of those old times, rude and rough as they were, we can afford to turn our eye from the battle-field to the hearth, where nature has already opened the fountains of tenderness; where the mother fondles her child with sweet delicious love; and we may be very sure that more than king or soldier, the mother builds the nation. If it be true that in noise and tumult the enemies are driven back and conquered, it is in silence for the most part that character is built. Japan surprised the world in her war with China. It has been said that her fighting power has made her a nation, but we might well ask, what made her fighting power? it was in the quiet world of mutual devotion, patriotic sentiment, and noble sacrifice, her strength was reared for battle. And in our day, in these times of national disquietude, one might sometimes think that the world is made up of governments and armies and speculators–they make such a noise. And depend upon it, the national well-being is more dependent upon the quality of the quiet world than upon noisy action. There must be noisy action, of course; there must be public service; we must have men whose speeches shall resound to the ends of the earth, and whose words shall be heard everywhere; but we are too liable to think of our national strength as consisting in these. Every nation has been asking itself recently how strong it is. And for an answer they have been counting their ironclads and their armies, and estimating their exchequers. England has been displaying her flying squadron to advertise her strength. Our American ambassador in London wisely reminded us that not in these things lie the real forces of a nations life. I would say indeed that the three great spheres in which a nation is built are the home, the school, and the church. In the sweetness and purity of its domestic life, in the character of its education, in the depth and reality of its religion, a nations life mostly consists. And the best work in these is quietly done. Now, it is very necessary for those who have to live much in the loud world, to keep in close touch with the world that goes quietly on its way. The hard serious student will find life full of problems. To the thinker, there is no doubt that it is so. And you can find a problem everywhere. The simplest objects when you examine them put you at the heart of mystery. The simplest statements if you analyse them throw you upon the profoundest problems. This sometimes becomes a source of great depression; men are weighed down by it into inaction. Out of this mood I know no better way than to reflect upon the quiet world. When you are debating what is duty, thousands are just quietly doing it, and they have peace and harmony of being because they do. When you cannot decide as to whether or not there is ground for theism, thousands quietly turn their souls in reverence to the Unknown and worship, and though they cannot theorise, they know they are helped, they feel the lift, and the problem is not there to them. Believe me, there is often an escape from the over-pressure of a problem in the contemplation of a fact. The life of quiet goodness, of unostentatious fidelity, of calm, resolute devotion, of aspiring prayer, is a life fed from eternal sources, and drawn onward and upward by the everlasting energy, ruling all finite movements from the mind of God; and it will survive the indignities of time, and live in immutable glory. (T. R. Williams.)
The fruits of silence
The gems of the worlds literature, the marvels of inventions of science and art, the great thoughts and words which live age after age, are the fruit of silence. From silent studies of a Raphael comes, at length, the work of art. The poet broods long in silence and then gives to the world his immortal song. Inventors with knit brows bend over models, and by and by produce a boon to toiling races. The orator shuts to the door, and then comes forth to sway great audiences and sweep away tyranny and wrong. The Christen lingers in the hush of prayer and meditation, and then appears with his face all aglow.
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 7. The house – was built of stone] It appears that every stone was hewn and squared, and its place in the building ascertained, before it came to Jerusalem: the timbers were fitted in like manner. This greatly lessened the trouble and expense of carriage. On this account, that all was prepared at Mount Lebanon, there was neither hammer, axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the building; nothing except mallets to drive the tenons into the mortises, and drive in the pins to fasten them, was necessary: therefore there was no noise. But why is this so particularly marked? Is it not because the temple was a type of the kingdom of God; and the souls of men are to be prepared here for that place of blessedness? There, there is no preaching, exhortations, repentance, ears, cries, nor prayers; the stones must be all squared and fitted here for their place in the New Jerusalem, and, being living stones, must be built up a holy temple for a habitation of God through the Spirit.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Made ready; hewed, and squared, and fitted exactly according to the direction of the architect. No
tool heard in the house, while it was in building: so it was ordered, partly, for the case and conveniency of carriage; partly, for the magnificence of the work, and commendation of the workmens skill and diligence; and partly, for mystical signification. And as this temple was a manifest type, both of Christs church upon earth, and of the heavenly Jerusalem; so this circumstance signified as to the former, that it is the duty of the builders and members of the church, as far as in them lies, to take care that all things be transacted there with perfect peace and quietness; and that no noise of contention, or division, or violence be heard in that sacred building; and for the latter, that no spiritual stone, no person, shall bear a part in that heavenly temple, unless he be first hewed, and squared, and made meet for it in this life.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
7. there was neither hammer nor axenor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was in buildingAsubterranean quarry has been very recently discovered near Jerusalem,where the temple stones are supposed to have been hewn. There isunequivocal evidence in this quarry that the stones were dressedthere; for there are blocks very similar in size, as well as of thesame kind of stone, as those found in the ancient remains. Thence,probably, they would be moved on rollers down the Tyropean valley tothe very side of the temple [PORTER,Tent and Kahn].
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And the house, when it was in building,…. And all the while it was building:
was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither; being hewn or squared by the builders and stonesquarers of Solomon and Hiram, 1Ki 5:18; wherefore the builders had nothing more to do than to lay them in their proper places in the building; it was built with these stones quite up to the ceiling, as Josephus says t; and these so admirably polished, and so artificially joined together, that not the least sign of an axe, or of any working tool, could be discerned in them:
so that there was neither hammer, nor axe, [nor] any tool of iron, heard in the house while it was in building; the first of these observations shows, that none are to be laid in the spiritual building of the church, but such as are first hewed and squared by the Spirit, grace, and word of God: or who have an experience of the grace of God, are sound in the faith, and of becoming lives and good conduct; and the other denotes, that such as are therein, whether ministers or members, should do all they do for the edification of the church in a quiet and peaceable manner, without clamour, contention, fights, and tumults.
t Antiqu. l. 8. c. 3. sect. 2.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(7) Neither hammer nor ax . . . heard.This striking provision, involving much labour, and requiring no little skill, was one of reverence. It may have been suggested by the prohibition (see Exo. 20:25; Deu. 27:5) of the use of tools on the altar of the Lord. But the idea implied in this prohibition was rather differentviz., the use for the altar of stones in their simple, matural condition, without pollution by the art of man. It has been chronicled in Hebers well-known lines:
No workmens steel, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
7. Stone made ready before it was brought thither Literally, Stone completed at the quarry; that is, hewn and shaped for the very spot it was known to be designed to occupy.
Neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard This further attests the consummate skill of the Sidonian builders. But this fact, so noticeable in itself, is also deeply symbolical. It indicates the silent but sure and mighty growth of the kingdom of Christ. In his personal ministry he did not cry nor lift up his voice in the street; and his Church, like the silent increase of the mustard seed, rises and spreads, and thus goes on to its completion, every day disclosing more and more the consummate skill and infinite wisdom of the Great Architect, “in whom all the building fifty framed together groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord.” Eph 2:21.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
1Ki 6:7. So that there was neither hammer nor axe, &c. The true reason why no noise was heard in the building of the temple was, that the stones and all other materials were hewn and squared and fitted at a distance; so that when brought to the place where the temple was to stand, there was nothing to do but to join them together; and this might be done not only for the ease and convenience of the carriage, but also for the magnificence of the work, and in commendation of the workmen’s skill and ingenuity. See Exo 20:25 and Martin’s Explication des Textes Difficiles, p. 186. We do not enter into any direct and full explanation of the building of the temple, as it would necessarily lead us into too great length, and not be clear, after all, without the assistance of plates. We therefore refer to those authors who have treated professedly on the subject; and particularly to Calmet, Scheuchzer, and Univ. Hist. vol. 1Ki 4:8 vo.
REFLECTIONS.1st, Long had the Lord taken up his abode within the curtains of the tabernacle; but now a glorious building rises to his honour, planned by himself, and dedicated to his service.
1. The time when it was begun. In the fourth year of Solomon, when the materials were prepared, and four hundred and eighty years after their coming from Egypt, allowing forty to Moses, seventeen to Joshua, two hundred and ninety-nine to the Judges, forty to Eli, forty to Samuel and Saul, forty to David, and four to Solomon.
2. The silence observed in the building. No iron tool was heard; the materials were exactly fitted before they were brought to the spot, and nothing remained but to cement them together. Note; (1.) Those whom God honours as lively stones in his temple, he squares and fashions for their place. (2.) They who build the spiritual temple should be men of peace; clamour and fierce dispute disjoint the stones instead of cementing them.
3. The dimensions were just double those of the tabernacle in length and breadth, and treble in height; the windows narrow without and wide within; and chambers built round it, for the priests who were in waiting, three stories high. Note; (1.) When we look at others’ faults, we cannot be too indulgent, nor when on our own too severe. (2.) The more enlarged our hearts are in divine graces, the nearer we shall rise to heaven.
2nd, 1. God sends a gracious message to encourage Solomon in the work, and to signify his pleasure in it; assuring him, that, if he continued faithful, he would secure to himself and his kingdom the perpetuity of his blessings. Note; (1.) Heart-obedience to God’s law is more valuable than the most expensive donations to his church. (2.) They who go forth with a desire to God’s glory, may confidently expect some tokens of his approbation.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
DISCOURSE: 331
THE STILLNESS WITH WHICH THE TEMPLE WAS BUILT
1Ki 6:7. And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither: so that there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was in building.
NEVER was there upon the face of the globe a building, that in point of elegance or grandeur could be compared with the temple of Solomon. It had been the desire of David to erect it; but he was forbidden of God to do so, because he had been engaged in many wars, and had shed much blood. God however approved of his desire, and told him, that his son should have the honour which was denied to him. Nevertheless David began immediately to make preparations for the building; and Solomon in three years after he came to the throne was ready to begin the work; which in somewhat more than seven years he was enabled to complete. There is, in the structure of this edifice, one circumstance so remarkable as to deserve very particular attention: the wood and stones were all prepared at a distance, and brought to the place perfectly fitted for the situation in which they were to stand: and with such unerring skill were they all framed, that, during the whole time of building the temple, there was no occasion for an axe or hammer to be used; and the whole structure was completed without the smallest noise. Now whoever considers the figurative nature of the Jewish dispensation must see, that such an extraordinary circumstance as this could not have happened from mere chance, or have occurred at all without some very important meaning. We doubt not but that it was intended by God to shadow forth some truths for the instruction of his Church in all ages. What these were, we cannot declare with certainty, because no inspired writer has specified them: but we apprehend that, whatever else this circumstance might intimate, it was particularly calculated to represent,
I.
The perfection of Gods designs
[Every part of the edifice, and every vessel in it, was formed, as it were, in the mind of the Divine Architect, long before Solomon or David ever entertained the thought of executing such a work. Before Moses constructed the tabernacle, there was a model set before him by God, and he was ordered to make every thing according to the pattern shewn to him in the mount [Note: Exo 25:40.]. A similar model was given by God to David, and shewn by him to Solomon, for the constructing of the temple [Note: 1Ch 28:11-13; 1Ch 28:19.]: so that, as existing in the divine mind, the work was perfect before it was begun.
Now this shews us what is really the case with respect to every thing in the whole creation. As the creation itself was all formed in the divine purpose, though it occupied six successive days to complete it, so all things to the very end of time are present in the mind of God, having been ordained of him before the foundation of the world.
We are aware that to many this appears an bard saying: but it is a true saying: for how could so many things have been foretold by prophets in different and distant ages, if they had not been previously fixed in the purposes of God? Had there been any thing left to chance, some of these prophecies must hare failed: but not even the minutest circumstance that has been predicted has ever failed: and this proves that God foresaw every thing that should ever come to pass; and that he foresaw it, not as probable, but as certain, and therefore certain, because he had ordained it. This is true respecting the vilest iniquities of men, no less than their greatest virtues. The whole treatment which our blessed Lord should meet with, was foreseen, and fore-ordained; though the agents were perfectly free in their actions, and were as much accountable to God as if nothing had been foreseen or fore-ordained [Note: Act 2:23.]. Nor is it only unwittingly that men have accomplished the divine purposes, but against their will: for Josephs brethren were bent upon defeating the divine purposes, and yet actually accomplished them by the very means which they used to defeat them [Note: Gen 45:5; Gen 50:20.]. There does indeed appear on some occasions a change of the divine purpose, as in the sparing of Nineveh, and in the prolonging of Hezekiahs life: but these were not changes in the divine purpose, but changes in the divine dispensations, agreeably to the purpose which had been previously formed in the mind of God.
If this doctrine were not true, God would not be a perfect Being. If any thing were left unfixed in the divine counsels, God could not be omniscient, but would become wiser by the events of every successive day. But can any one doubt whether God be omniscient or not? Surely, as St. James declares, Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world [Note: Act 15:18.]. To deny that God possesses the attribute of foreknowledge would be downright atheism: and to separate this attribute from his pre-ordination appears to me inconsistent and impracticable: nor do they who take refuge in this distinction find themselves at all better able to reconcile their doctrine with the freedom of mans will, and his responsibility for his conduct, than those who consider every thing as fore-ordained: and if they get rid of some difficulties, they involve themselves in more and greater than they avoid. In truth the language of Scripture is so strong respecting the divine decrees, that it is not possible to explain away many passages which relate to them [Note: Isa 46:9-11; Eph 1:4-5; Eph 1:9; Eph 1:11; Eph 3:9; Eph 3:11.]. We acknowledge that the subject is deep, and far beyond the comprehension of man: we would therefore never speak of it but with the deepest reverence; nor ever without reminding our hearers, that it is with the divine commands, and not the divine decrees, that they have to do: it is to those, and not to these, that they must look, as the rule of their actions. Still however we dare not deny that God is the Sovereign of the universe, who acts in all things according to the counsel of his own will, and for the praise of the glory of his own grace [Note: Eph 3:9; Eph 3:11.]: and though we would by no means make this a prominent subject of our ministrations, yet we cannot but think that the occasional contemplation of this mystery is, as our Article expresses it, full of pleasant, sweet, and unspeakable comfort.]
Besides the perfection of Gods designs, we see prefigured in this account,
II.
The mode in which they are accomplished
[The stillness with which the work of the temple proceeded intimated the still and silent way in which God carries on all his works, in the world, in the Church, and in the souls of men.
In the world we behold men carrying on their designs with great noise and tumult: but God is secretly and silently effecting his own purposes in the midst of all. Each of the four great empires, the Chaldean, Persian, Grecian, and Roman, successively rose on the ruins of that which preceded it; but none of the conquerors imagined whose counsels they were fulfilling, or whose instruments they were. Sennacherib boasted what victories he had gained; but he was only an axe or saw in the hand of Omnipotence [Note: Isa 10:5-7; Isa 10:13-15; Isa 37:24-27.]. We shall have a perfect insight into this matter, if we look at the transactions which took place at the death of Christ: all parties followed the bent of their own hearts; but all accomplished with the utmost possible exactness the counsels of the Most High. God spake not to them by any audible voice to direct them; nor did he interpose in any visible way to guide their motions; but he presided in the storm, and overruled every disposition of their hearts for the accomplishment of his own eternal purpose [Note: Act 4:27-28.]. And it is a most consolatory thought, that, in all the great events which are now taking place in the world, the counsel of God shall stand, and he will do all his will.
In the Church more especially does God carry on his work in this way. It was said of our Lord, that he should not lift up his voice, nor cause it to be heard in the street [Note: Isa 42:2.]: he was to found his kingdom upon earth by a secret and invisible influence on the minds of men. His Apostles also were to go forth in dependence on that power, and, by their simple testimony, to convert the world unto him. In their attempts to subdue men to the obedience of faith, they were to use no carnal weapons, but only such as should derive their efficacy from the grace of Christ [Note: 2Co 10:4-5.]; agreeably to that prophetic declaration, Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts [Note: Zec 4:6.]. Accordingly it was in this way that they prevailed over all the power and policy of earth and hell: and in this way will Christ continue to extend his conquests, till all his enemies be put under his feet.
In the same way also does God accomplish his purposes in the souls of men. It is not in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire, that God manifests himself to them, but in the still small voice [Note: 1Ki 19:11-12.]. The seed sown in their hearts, groweth up, they know not how: changes occur, which threaten to destroy it; but still it survives, and springs up, and brings forth fruit in its season. This operation is compared by our Lord to leaven, which continues to spread, till it has diffused itself through the whole mass. Thus does the grace of God silently, but progressively, renew the whole man, till we are changed into the very image of our God.]
From this subject we may learn,
1.
What ought to be the character of our religion
[Nothing is more common, and nothing more delusive, than a noisy, talkative religion. True religion is a humble, silent, retired thing, not affecting public notice, but rather wishing to approve itself to God [Note: Psa 131:2 with Jam 1:26.]. It is not in saying, Lord, Lord, but in doing the will of our heavenly Father, that we shall find acceptance in the last day. Happy would it be, if many, who place all their religion in running about, and hearing sermons, and talking of the qualifications of ministers, and disputing about religious opinions, would attend to this hint, and endeavour to acquire more of that wisdom which evinces its divine origin by the excellence of its fruits [Note: Jam 3:17.]!]
2.
How we should judge of growth in grace
[We would not undervalue the inward feelings of the heart: but, if not accompanied with more substantial evidences of piety, they are very deceitful. We should examine whether we are fitted for the duties of our respective stations. Of all the stones in the temple, there was not one which did not exactly suit its place: so will it be with us, if we have really been wrought upon by the Spirit of God: whether we be parents or children, masters or servants, magistrates or subjects, true grace will lead us to discharge our own duties aright. This is properly to act as members of a body, all fitly framed together, all performing their proper functions, and all contributing to the good of the whole [Note: Eph 4:15-16.]. That this idea is just, as arising from the present subject, is certain; for both St. Peter and St. Paul have placed the subject in this very point of view [Note: 1Pe 2:4-5; Eph 2:20-22.]. Let us therefore particularly attend to it; and whilst we all profess to stand on the same foundation, and to be connected together by one Corner-stone, let us approve ourselves living stones, by contributing as much as possible to the union, the beauty, the stability, and advancement of the whole building.]
3.
How the dispensations of God will appear in the last day
[A person who should have seen the materials of the temple in their rough state, would have formed no conception of their appearance after they were all fashioned by the workmen, and placed in the order appointed by the Divine Architect: but when the whole building was completed, it was the wonder of the world. Thus at present we have a very imperfect conception of the beauty of Gods Church, or of his wisdom in all his various dispensations: but when his temple shall be complete in heaven, what a glorious edifice will it appear! How will each admire the way in which he was taken out of the quarry, and formed for the particular place that has been allotted him! Here men are apt to wonder, why they must have so many and so severe blows: but there none will think that he has had one stroke too much, or more than was absolutely necessary to fit him for his place: if by the most painful experiences he may have been formed for a more conspicuous station in the temple above, he will feel no regret at any thing he suffered in the body, but will adore the heavenly Workman, that condescended to use such means for his advancement. Let us then, if any thing perplex us now, remember that we see only in part; and be contented to wait till that day, when God shall be glorified in all his saints, and be admired in all them that believe.]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
1Ki 6:7 And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither: so that there was neither hammer nor axe [nor] any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.
Ver. 7. Was built of stone. ] Tam artificiose non tantum sine deformi cicatrice vulneris, sed et sine subtilissimae suturae notis, ut imponerent oculo spectatoris quasi tota moles in tantam magnitudinem ex unico ingenti lapide tam magnifice consurgeret: i.e., so artificially were the stones of the temple polished and cemented together, as if the whole fabric had been but one entire stone.
Made ready before it was brought thither;
So that there was neither hammer nor axe, &c.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
1 Kings
BUILDING IN SILENCE
1Ki 6:7
The Temple was built in silence. It ‘rose like an exhalation.’
‘No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung, Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.’
Perhaps it was merely for convenience of transport and to save time that the stones were dressed in the quarries, but more probably the silence was due to an instinct of reverence. We may fairly use it as suggesting two thoughts.
I. How God’s house is mostly built in silence. ‘ The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation.’
1 In reference to its advance in the world. Destructive work is noisy, constructive work is silent. God was in ‘the still small voice,’ not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire. Christ’s own career, how silent it was! Drums are loud and empty. The spread of the kingdom was unnoticed by the world’s great ones-Caesars, philosophers, patricians, and it silently grew underground. Hence may flow-
a An encouragement to those whose work is inconspicuous.
b A lesson not to mistake noise and notoriety for spiritual progress.
c Guidance as to our expectations of the advance of Christ’s kingdom. It will transform society by slow, often unnoticed, degrees, by radical change of individuals’ habits. The elevation of humanity will be slow, like the imperceptible rise of the Norwegian coast. Sudden changes are short-lived changes. ‘Lightly come, lightly go.’ What matures slowly will last long.
2 In reference to its growth in our souls.
Silence is needed for that. There must be much still communion and quiet reflection. The advance in the Christian life is variously likened to a battle, since there are antagonists and struggle is needed to overcome; and to vegetable or corporeal growth, which the mysterious indwelling life works without effort and almost without consciousness, but it is also likened to the erection of a building, in which there is continuity, and each successive course of masonry is the foundation for that above it. That work of building is work that must be done in silence. If we are to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus, we must silently drink in the sunshine and dew, and so prosperously pass from blade to ear, and thence to full corn in the ear.
Surely nothing is more needed in these days of noisy advertisement, and measurement of the importance of things by the noise that they can make, than this lesson of the place of silence in Christian progress, both for individuals and for the Christian Church as a whole.
II. How God’s house is built of prepared stones.
There is providential training of men for their tasks before these are given to them.
But the highest application of the symbol which we venture to find in our text is to the relation between the earthly and the heavenly life.
This world is the quarry where the stones are dressed for the Temple in the heavens.
a Life is the chipping and hewing. The unnecessary pieces are struck off with heavy mallet and sharp chisel. Pain and sorrow are thus explained, if not wholly, yet sufficiently to bring about submission and trust.
b The Builder has His plan clearly before Him, and works accurately to realise it. He perfectly knows what He means to build, and every stroke of the dressing-tool is accurately directed. There are no mistakes made in His quarrying.
c We may be sure that the prepared stones will be brought to the Temple site and built into it. There lie gigantic half-hewn pillars in abandoned quarries in Syria and Egypt. But no one will ever say of the divine Temple-Builder: He began to build and was not able to finish. It remains a problem how the old builders managed to transport these huge stones from the quarries to the site, but we may be sure that the Architect of the ‘house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,’ knows how to bring every stone that has been prepared here, to the place prepared for it, and for which it has been prepared. We may repose on the Apostle’s assurance that ‘He that has begun a good work in you will perform it,’ or rather on the more sure word of Jesus Himself, ‘He that overcometh, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
made ready = made perfect.
before: i.e. in the quarries afar off, or beneath the city.
heard. So in the spiritual house. Eph 2:20-22.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Hewing and Building
And the house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready at the quarry: and there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.1Ki 6:7.
1. The erection of the Temple was, it is felt instinctively, the great event of Solomons reign. Not that midnight cry for wisdom; not the marvellous insight which, as the reward of that petition, God gave him into the secrets of the universe; not the wealth and honour in which, by an unasked blessing, he excelled all his contemporaries; none of these has made him so essential a part of the worlds history as the fact that he was the man who raised up the first sanctuary for the worship of the true God.
2. As the House of God, the Temple was the chief joy of Israel and the glory of the Jewish Economy. St. Paul, in his Epistles, frequently alludes to that Temple, and employs it as a figure or type or symbol to set forth some great Christian truth. Sometimes he speaks of the individual Christian being the temple of God. He admonishes the Corinthians not to degrade or pollute the body, for the reason that the body is the Lords. Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you? (1Co 6:19). Sometimes he speaks of the Church collectively as the temple of God. Ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them (2Co 6:16; 1Co 3:16-17).
3. In the heart of the chronicle, in the midst of architectural details, which we pass with little interest, is this verse which captures the imagination and shapes before the mind the picture of a temple growing silently into shape and beauty, with no sound of hammer or axe or any tool of iron heard while it is building. It is a verse which suddenly frees the fancy in the midst of the completely prosaic. It reads like an interruption in the narrative, and the Biblical critic tells us that it has either become misplaced or is an addition by a later hand. It matters little whether the hand that wrote it was the earliest chronicler or a later commentator. It was the hand of a genius. It added a touch which turns a builders table of specifications into a poem and a parable. The house was threescore cubits long and twenty cubits broad and thirty cubits high. The porch was twenty cubits long and ten cubits broad. The inner chamber was five cubits broad and the middle was six cubits, and so on; and the only person interested is the architect, who has the plans of a far finer building pigeon-holed at home. The rest of us are not wildly excited by cubic measures. This is the prose of the building trade. But here is poetry and mystery: The house when it was in building, etc. This verse comes like a touch of magic, and you feel the silence and the mystery as of the city which the Apostle saw coming down from God out of heaven.
Now in the text two facts are mentioned about the building of the Temple: the stones were prepared beforehand in the quarry, and so the actual building was accomplished with no noise. Thus we have
I.The House of God is Built of Prepared Stones.
II.The House of God is Built Silently.
I
The House of God is Built of Prepared Stones
1. There is one sight in Jerusalem, often left unvisited by those who go to the Holy City. This is the great cavern under a portion of the city, known locally as Solomons quarries. The entrance to this cavern is found just outside the Damascus Gate, on the north side of the city, and opposite Jeremiahs Grotto. The entrance is very small and obscurely located. For some reason, the place is little thought of by the local guides; but it is certainly well worth a visit. The quarries are not a natural cavern, but a cavern made by the taking out of immense quantities of rock. The cavern extends for a long distance under the city, gradually sloping towards the south. It is 700 feet to its inner end; it varies from 60 to 300 feet in width, and averages 30 feet in height, the roof being supported by large pillars of the native rock. In the walls and overhead the traces of chisels are everywhere to be seen, and the chips from the hewn rock lie thick under foot. In many places the stones have been left half cut out, and the marks of the chisel and pick are as fresh as if the quarrymen had only just left their work; even the black patches made by the smoke of their lamps are still visible. The best archologists agree that there is no improbability in the supposition that the great stones used in the substructure of the Temple of Solomon and in its surrounding walls were obtained from this quarry and fitted for their places in this underground workshop. The stones were prepared in this quarry and in others, were made to the right shape and size, and were then taken to the Temple site; and the building went up from prepared material, without the sound of hammer or axe or any tool of iron while it was in building.
As I wandered round the walls of Jerusalem with one who knew intimately all that is at present known of its antiquities, how well I remember the sudden surprise that came upon me when he said: There you see those blocks, with huge chamfered edges, and rough middle dressings. They are by their tooled edges and the masons marks, of which some have been discovered, probably, almost certainly, the work of Solomons builders. There, now level with the ground, as Christ said they should one day be, and extending from forty to eighty feet below it, according to the disposition of the native rock underneath, was in very deed stone lying close to stone even as on that day when, as we read in the sixth chapter of the First Book of the Kings, Solomon built the house, and finished it. It took ones breath away; such centuries had passed and the stones had not cried out, but to-day they were eloquent. And as I gazed upon those gigantic blocks of Judan limestone, bedded together so nicely that a sixpence could not pass between, my thoughts naturally went off to the masons who built so wonderfully and laid the stones so well. In gazing I saw again the swart-faced builders of Solomon, and the dark-eyed, dark-bearded masons of Hiram who did hew the stones, and the stone squarers working so diligently with plumbline and square. But though about me the air seemed to breathe the scent of the cedar and the fir from the great side galleries, the porches, and the chambers that Solomon built, and to feel the dazzle of the golden lilies and knops and pomegranates and the glory of the palmtrees and cherubim, one could not forget the motive for all those wonderful buildingsthose mighty stones which, you remember, so touched the heart of one of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, ten centuries after, that as he went out of the Temple he said, as we read in St. Mar 13:1, Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are hereone could not, I repeat, forget that that motive was worship and praise of the Invisible, the worship of Jehovah, the praise of the great I Amos 1 [Note: H. D. Rawnsley.]
2. The stones in the spiritual House of God are prepared beforehand. Believers having been hewn out from the quarry of humanity by the grace of God are called by St. Peter living stones. They are not inert masses of rock, not senseless blocks of marble, but full of life, feeling, and action; and they are thus designated because Christ, as the tried corner-stone, the sure foundation, is called a living stone, and diffuses His own life through all parts of the spiritual temple which rests on Him. So every stone in it, from the foundation to the top-stone, is made a precious, a glistering, a living stone, through the indwelling life of Jesus, the Prince of life. So long, then, as the soul of the believer rests on Jesus Christ alone for salvation, and on nothing else, it has spiritual Life. Build it upon any other foundation, and it is a senseless stone; only as laid by the Holy Ghost upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief corner-stone, can it receive in itself the life of Christ, and become through the impartation of His own vitality a living stone.
3. Yet how much spiritual trimming and dressing, how much hewing and squaring does he need to fashion him aright for the position which the Divine Architect intends he shall occupy hereafter! There are sharp angles of character to be rounded off; unsightly protuberances of conduct to be chipped away; many roughnesses of temper to be smoothed down; many flaws and cracks of mind and heart to be chiselled out; and then, when the general form of the stone is prepared, how much severe friction is required to give it the right polish, and bring out all its beauties, so that its smooth surface may fling back the rays of the Sun of righteousness!
One would think, from such words as those of the text, that there was no room for struggle in the religious life, or in the conversion into that life. The whole building grows up softly, silently, almost mystically, and we are tempted to feel as if there were no sympathy in that temple with the wrestling of our hearts. Nay, but hast thou forgotten that the struggle was all past ere ever the building was begun? Forgotten that the stone was made ready before it was brought thither? What a world of meaning lies unspoken in that little clause! Before these stones came into unity they all existed in individual separation, in isolation, in solitude. Before they passed into the stage of silent building they had each to go through a process of noise and conflict, had each to be hewn into symmetry with its place in the coming temple. There is a great unrecorded battle of the spiritual life hinted at in this making ready; it is but a flash of thought, but it is a flash that lights up our whole experience and reveals us to ourselves. It tells us that the silence is not the first but the last thing, that there is a making ready for the symmetry ere the symmetry is reached. It tells us that Saul of Tarsus has his struggle ere the light from heaven breaks upon his viewthat conflict where he finds it so hard to kick against the goads. It tells us that Nicodemus has his solitary walk by night ere he can take up the dead Christ from the shadow of the crossthat solitary walk wherein he feels deserted by the old and not yet convinced by the new.1 [Note: G. Matheson.]
4. The greater part of the preparation to which we are subjected as professing Christians is of a disciplinary character, and hence is fitly represented by the axe, the hammer, and the tool of iron. Prosperity not only is the destruction of fools, but in the great majority of cases it hardens the heart of the nominal Christian, so that Christ Himself is forced to say, How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God! And for many hundreds of years, God by the voice of Jeremiah has complained, I spake unto thee in thy prosperity; but thou saidst, I will not hear. This hath been thy manner from thy youth, that thou obeyedst not my voice. Afflictions come more immediately to the heart, and operate with a more searching and purifying influence upon the life. They show a man his weakness and sinfulness; lay open the moral anatomy of his nature; subject to severest test his principles of action, and cause him to retire into the chambers of his soul and learn there, in the light of the Bible and the light of conscience, his relations and duties to God and man. Now the axe seems driven into the root of his happiness; now he is broken as a block of granite under the blows of the hammer of Gods word; and now the iron of a sore adversity has entered into his soul, and he feels himself stricken, smitten, and afflicted. In these dispensations, however severe, he is being fitted by the hand of God Himself for a place in glory.
Marvellously comforting is this message to many a struggling soul. Art thou perplexed by thine inward disquietude? Art thou tossed upon a sea of doubt and wrapt in a mist of uncertainty? Art thou experiencing the accusations of a conscience that speaks louder and louder every day? Say not that, therefore, there is no place for thee within the silence of the mystic temple; it is just therefore that there is a place for thee. This struggle of thine is thy making ready. This loudness of thy conscience is the hewing of thy hardness into symmetrythe symmetry that will fit thee to be a stone in the temple of Christ. Thy solitude is not the neglect of thee, thy struggle is not the absence of thy God from thee; it is the eye of thy God upon thee. He has taken thee up to the wilderness that He may make thee ready. All the pain He sends thee is the sign of His interest in thee, the proof that He is preparing thee for the symmetry of the temple of peace. Thy wilderness is the vestibule into thy heaven. Bless the Lord, O my soul.1 [Note: G. Matheson.]
Tis the Master who holds the chisel;
He knows just where
Its edge should be driven sharpest
To fashion there
The semblance that He is carving;
Nor will He let
One delicate stroke too many
Or few be set
On forehead, or cheek, where only
He sees how all
Is tendingand where the hardest
The blow should fall
Which crumbles away whatever
Superfluous line
Would hinder His hand from making
The work divine.
With tools of Thy choosing, Master,
We pray Thee, then,
Strike just as Thou wilt; as often,
And where, and when
The vehement stroke is needed.
I will not mind,
If only Thy chipping chisel
Shall leave behind
Such marks of Thy wondrous working
And loving skill
Clear carven on aspect, stature,
And face, as will,
When disciplines ends are over,
Have all sufficed
To mould me into the likeness
And form of Christ.
5. Three processes are mentioned here through which the living stones pass to be prepared for their place in the House.
(1) First, there is the process of testing. There were thousands of stones in the distant quarries that had been tried and cast back into the pile of refusesome that had been tried and tried again and at last cast aside, having proved unworthy of a place in the Temple.
One of the most awfully serious views of life to me is that each one of us is being constantly tested and proved, that we are every day revealing ourselves, disclosing what there is in us to God and the universe. We are every hour, as it were, under His hammer. He tries us, proves us, to see whether we are fit and willing to be prepared for the eternal temple, or fit only to be cast away for ever with the trash, the rubbish, the sweepings of the world.1 [Note: E. H. Evans.]
Even in our surface worldly-wise opinions, which float lightly on the stream of thought, we admit much of this. We admit that the test of faith in anything is willingness to suffer. The test of courage is when a real occasion calls for it. The test of patriotism is readiness to make sacrifice for country. Lukewarm adherence to a party or a cause is a source of weakness. All the fighting has to be done by men of other mould. When victory in anything is assured, there are plenty of brazen throats to scream hallelujah and brazen brows seeking to be crowned by the laurels of triumph. The faith which costs nothing is worth nothing. It does not go deep enough. Some men, as the Scottish proverb goes, will put their hand twice to their bonnet for once to their pouch. It does not cost much to salute a man or a scheme. The test of all manner of devotion must be practical. The lady in the age of chivalry set her knight-errant to do some difficult task which he accomplished for love of her or died in the attempt. The principle is right, though the applications were often absurd.1 [Note: Hugh Black, Comfort, 60.]
(2) Next, there is the preparation proper, the hewing and polishing. There were 80,000 hewers of stone and wood in the distant mountains of Lebanon, and some stones prepared for the foundations were over five yards long. When the stone was found to be soundwithout a single flawit was then handed over to be made ready, by the hammer, the file, the saw, and the iron tools. So is it with the Christian when he has obeyed God by believing in Jesus. He has passed the first process; he is then handed over, as it were, to be made meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. He receives the title to the inheritance the day he obeys and believes; but he must be polished, sanctified, before he is meet. And this making ready, the lopping off of the rough corners, the polishing with the tools of iron, is often a rough work, hard to bear.
We ask, under our trials, if God loves us; now that we are His acknowledged children, why is it that He does not keep away from us the griefs and Sorrows? why the many afflictions even of the righteous? Why? Because this is a world of making ready. We are here in the land of the quarries, the land of the tools of iron, the axe and the hammer, and the rasp and the file. The land where stones are being made ready. We have all of us some rough side that needs polishing, a temper that needs smoothing down, a passion that must be lopped off. There is much work yet to do before we are ready for the inheritance of the saints in light. We cannot be taken to the light until we are made ready.
We are here to be sanctified as well as saved, and our sanctification is far more important in the sight of God now than our present happiness. Our heavenly Father loves us enough to keep away from us all trouble and anxiety, but He knows that if all things were made pleasant to us here, we would soon forget Himand heaven. Those are very expressive words in the 55th Psalm, Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God. Their life here is so smooth and prosperous, they have no changes, it is always the same with them; therefore they fear not God.
There is more to be said about the nature of trial than that it is a test. The strain is not put merely to see who will stand and who will fail. We see this further use in it, that it is not merely to try good but to increase good. Strength comes through the strain. The bruising flails of Gods corrections are meant to thresh out the useless chaff, and give value to the wheat. Tribulation is not merely trial, but discipline, and occasion for growth, to deepen faith and enrich life. The first fresh rapture has to be transmuted into the crowning quality of endurance. Discipline is not exhausted either by the thought of punishment or by the thought of testing, but is itself a means of giving power. There comes the new strength of a surrendered life, gaining in power and in beauty.1 [Note: Hugh Black, Comfort, 63.]
I remember, when apprenticed to a draper as a very young lad, I complained that I was obliged to do all the drudgerythat I had to pull down the shutters, and dust the shop, and clean the windowswhile the other young men looked on. My mother, wiser than I, consoled me: They have all gone through the drudgery before you, and if you will only keep on, youll reach their position.2 [Note: E. H. Evans.]
Men continually quarrel with this world for being what God designed it to bea workshop, a timber-yard, a stone-quarry, a forge. When you go to a manufactory, you go prepared for noise and heat; you arm yourself to bear fatigue, and you seek to deaden the sensitiveness of your auditory nerves. Noise and dust you know to be inseparable from such places, and you make your arrangements accordingly for meeting them there. And shall I enter the solemn workshop of Life, and marvel that it is no summer arbour of delight, no shady bower of rest? Shall I complain that its dust turns me sick, and beg that its hammers would cease ringing, to rest my poor aching head? Verily no. The living stones of human hearts must be squared at any cost: the axe of affliction must fall, and the hammer of chastening ring, whether I am able to endure their piercing tones or not. The temple must be set up in Jerusalem, and, in order to it, here on Lebanon must be heard the groans of repentance, the wailings of bereavement, ay, and even the piercing death-cry itself.1 [Note: G. Dawson.]
We do best when we take it in faith, bearing as firmly as we may the bereavements, disappointments, the bodily afflictions, the mental strain, the spiritual oppression, doubt, loneliness, which God sees fit to use as the instruments of our discipline. We do best when we endure these patiently and in trustful simplicity, believing in the good which they are to accomplish. For
Life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batterd with the shocks of doom,
To shape and use.
(3) Lastly, there is the process of conveying to the destined place. The materials for this temple were collected from all parts. The workmen of the king of Tyre were cutting the cedar and fir in Lebanon, and squaring, boring, chiselling, and mortising all manner of beams. Thousands of men were quarrying stone, others were rafting the whole along the sea to Joppa, others teaming it up to Jerusalem. The huntsmen were gathering skins in the east, the miners searching for gold in Ophir, and the Jewish maidens preparing the hangings of silk in Jerusalem; each working at his or her own special work, but all for the Temple. When they were ready, they were to be brought from all parts to the builders on Mount Moriah. So to-day men and women are being got ready for Gods home above. Then, from all quarters of the globe, death bears them above. There is no making complete the family gathering, no finishing the heavenly temple, without the aid of death.
A man who occupied a prominent ecclesiastical position in the north of England, the late Dean of York, was lying on his death-bed. One day he said to me that the kindness of so many friends almost broke his heart. Well, I said, it would be strange if, considering what you have done for others, our hearts were not concerned for you. For a moment he seemed pleased, but almost instantly he said sternly, Never speak like that again! Why? I asked with surprise. When you come to lie where I am, you will know that there is nothing you have done worth looking at. The only comfort for a dying man is the infinite mercies of his Saviour. I thank God it is perfect peace.1 [Note: Canon G. Body.]
II
The House of God is Built Silently
We have already seen that in the New Testament sometimes the individual Christian and sometimes the Church is spoken of as the Temple of God. We shall accordingly speak first of the silent building up of character in the individual, and next of the silent progress of the Kingdom of God.
i. The Silent Building of Character
We know that in our midst are lives and characters immature and unshaped, but every day and every week they are adding something to themselves which will determine the quality and power of their maturity. Every father and mother, every Sunday-school and day-school teacher, has been made to feel over and over again how subtle, secret, and silent is the process by which the boy becomes the man, the girl the woman, and character takes its shape. We may do our careful utmost to bring that raw and malleable material under the best moulding influences we know, but with what result we can seldom or never see at the time. All that is given us are fleeting signs which sometimes encourage and sometimes depress, and which may be wholly illusive and unreliable; but all the time we know that the building of the house of life is going forward, and the young builders are gathering material from many quarries and incorporating it into the fabric. Silently and ceaselessly goes forward the shaping of life, as Troy in its legendary beginning
Like a mist, rose into towers.
1. Think first of the formative years. What is it you see when you look deep into the eyes of a child? You see the soul going out with an eager demand, asking of all things material for life. That is the childs demand. He asks life of thee. There is a perfect openness, a receptiveness, which will not be his in later years. This is the child mind, eager to learn, and with a vast hospitality to thoughts too great to be grasped, but which he will grapple himself to by the one fragment he can lay hold upon: an earnest pressing to the heart of things, and an unconsciousness of all human substitutes for the intimacy of personal knowledge. Worldly considerations are nothing to him, deference to prejudice he knows nothing of. He is just a living soul, loyal to question, impulse, aspiration, with a heart and mind that want to know and possess, and are always listening and always taking. And with this receptiveness there is a huge and pathetic confidence. He takes from anybody, he takes anything, quite unconscious that men often invent formulas only to cover ignorance, lay down dogmas only to shelter their hesitations, and set up conventions out of fear or indolence of investigation. The child knows nothing of this, and with a mighty confidence takes what is given; for as yet he has no experience to test it by. It is the plastic time, but it is the determinative time.
As the twig is bent, the tree inclines, runs the saying; and it is truer than most proverbs. We know that its philosophy is true, and yet we do not habitually recognize how true. Sometimes some accident or incident makes us realize how large a part of what makes us to-day became part of us in careless days of childhood. We gain experience and knowledge in manhood and womanhood, our estimates and standards change, our views broaden in some ways and contract in others, but when we come to regard ourselves closely, how often it appears beyond dispute that a very large and permanent part of our mental and moral furnishing became ours when we were children.1 [Note: T. Yates.]
I found a piece of plastic clay
And idly fashioned it one day,
And as my fingers pressed it still,
It moved and yielded to my will.
I came again when days had passed,
The piece of clay was hard at last;
The form I gave it still it bore,
But I could change that form no more.
I took a piece of living clay
And gently formed it day by day,
And moulded, with my power and art,
A young childs soft and yielding heart.
I came again when years had gone,
It was a man I looked upon;
He still that early impress bore,
And I could change him never more.
The time of suffering, when you were beaten on the anvil, is justified by the appearance of the result. Character has acquired a new power of endurance, and become tough and smooth as hammered steel. The natural man suffers, like those trees of Lebanon when the bark is peeled off, and he feels the edge of saw and chisel; but he is of no use in the spiritual temple till these have done their work. In short, the strength, the stability, the uprightness, the graces of charity, of sympathy, which form and adorn a human soul at its last and best, are ever prepared amid trial and pain, and put together in silence.1 [Note: W. Granger.]
2. Notice next the materials out of which character is made. The materials come from far. Other people have had much to do with making us what we are. The house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready at the quarry. To begin with, there is the ancestral quarry, the human stuff and stock out of which the child gets his first materials for the house of life. Think of the body. Happy the child who has as his birthgift a fit physical basis for the character he must build for himself, who starts with the five senses unclogged which are the gateways through which journey all earths sights and sounds and thoughts. But think more of the mind. The mind of the child is not a blank piece of paper; its history did not begin with its first conscious impression. The tabula rasa idea has vanished before a larger revelation of the store of past inheritance and experience which each child carries with it into the world.
(1) So there is first the quarry we call Heredity. The child does not start clear. It finds, like Solomon, materials left by its father. It is handicapped with poor stuff or enriched with capital piled up by the effort of many generations. The heir of all the ages, as he lies on his mothers knee, has in every eddy of his blood, in every pulsation of his heart, in every throb of his nerves, in every tremor of his brain, the memorial of a human past.
(2) There is also the quarry we call Environment. The child is building from the world outside self the fibre of its own being, the structure of the inner mind. Whittier describes in a poem the development of the universe in the mind of a child, and tells how, as the child goes forth from day to day, the wind and the sun, the procession of the cattle with their bells, the music and the salt scents of the sea, become not only memories of the child, but part of the child. The environment of the child in Whittiers poem contrasts greatly with that of most children. Most are town children, perhaps in some ways to their gain; but the gain is superficial, while the loss is deep and the perils are increased. The loss lies in the absence of real intimacy with Nature; the peril is that with too little of Nature there is too much of man.
Man is not the creature, but the architect of circumstance. It is character which builds an existence out of circumstance. Our strength is measured by our plastic power; from the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels; bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks, until the architect can make them something else.1 [Note: Carlyle.]
(3) There is the quarry of Christian Faith and Experience. We believe that the stone made ready at the quarry of Christian faith and experience is the material children need most, and that the issue will prove it both by its beauty and by its stability. The great attributes of God appeal naturally to the child; the life and character of Jesus are perfectly intelligible and endlessly fascinating to the child, and the attraction of the Gospels, if you do not mar its effect by doctrinal subtleties, is irresistible.
Souls are built as temples are
Sunken deep, unseen, unknown,
Lies the sure foundation stone,
Then the courses framed to bear
Lift the cloisters pillared fair,
Last of all the airy spire,
Soaring heavenward, higher and higher,
Nearest sun and nearest star.
Souls are built as temples are
Inch by inch in gradual rise
Mount the layered masonries.
Warring questions have their day,
Kings arise and pass away,
Labourers vanish one by one,
Still the temple is not done,
Still completion seems afar.
Souls are built as temples are
Here a carving rich and quaint,
There the image of a saint;
Here a deep-hued pane to tell
Sacred truth or miracle;
Every little helps the much,
Every careful, careless touch
Adds a charm or leaves a scar.
Souls are built as temples are
Based on truths eternal law,
Sure and steadfast, without flaw.
Through the sunshine, through the snows,
Up and on the building goes;
Every fair thing finds its place,
Every hard thing lends a grace,
Every hand may make or mar.
Which has the greater influence in the making of character, heredity or training?the influences before birth, or those after? The question has been asked by scores of persons. It is surprising how often it has been met with hesitancy, as though a thing not thought into. And surprising, too, how indecisive the replies usually are.
Yet careful thought makes it plain, and then plainer, that while heredity is great beyond any power of calculation, training is infinitely greater. Or it would be better said thus: training may be made infinitely greater. Training can be made the greater, yet with the vast majority, as a matter of fact, it is not. The bent before birth, and the chance, weedy growth after, actually make up the character of the great crowd, with training, properly so called, playing no part, because it has no chance.
Training is by far the greater in its possible power. Heredity, with the chance environment it has stumbled across, has actually been the most potent factor, and is. If the start be early enough, heredity can be wholly overcome by training, though it rarely is. In many instances it is partially overcome. With the vast crowd, the child runs wild like an unkempt vine, or rank weed, and so heredity plus whatever is absorbed by mere chance decides the life.
Bad blood is bad. Bad training is yet worse. Good blood is good, but good training is better. It is easier to train where there is good blood. But then most blood is good, though the pedigree is not recorded. It is rather startling to remember that good training with bad or not-good blood, if you can begin early enough, will give a better life than the best of blood with bad training, or with the shiftless, weedy no-training.1 [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Home Ideals, 236.]
ii. The Silent Building of the Church
The Church of God is spoken of sometimes as on earth, sometimes as in heaven. Let us take it in its entirety. The real end for which God hath chosen us in Christ Jesus before the world began, and fitted us on earth by His providential dispensations, is, that in the dispensation of the fulness of times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth, even in him.
This recapitulation of all things in Christ is to be effected by building all things on Christ as the sure foundation which God Himself has laid in Zion; and Christians, as living stones chosen of God and precious, are, in the language of St. Paul, built upon the foundation of the apostles, in whom all the building fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. This structure the same apostle designates in another place as a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
The spiritual temple will in its day of completion be far nobler than that of Solomon. It will never be pillaged, as that was when Shishak, king of Egypt, came and took away its treasuresfor of the unseen temple it is said no thief can break through and steal. It will never be polluted, as Zions Temple was by the wickedness of Manassehbecause there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither worketh abomination. And it can never be destroyed, as Solomons was when Nebuzaradan burnt the House of the Lordfor it is built of living stones which can never perish.
1. Now notice that for the building of the Church of God hewers are needed as well as builders.
(1) The building of the Temple of God is largely unseen work. Most of the work of Solomons Temple was done where it would not show for much. Workmen were in the quarry cutting and shaping those stupendous stones whose size is still the wonder of the world, and whose accuracy of fit is so exquisite that the blade of a knife can hardly be inserted between them. Other labourers in the plain between Succoth and Zarthan were forming clay moulds in which the molten metal might be shaped. Others were away in the forest of Lebanon, where axes were ringing, and giant trees were falling. Others, again, brought these down as lumber, some bearing burdens, and others placing the rollers on which the heavy masses of wood and stone were brought to their appointed places. The worshippers in the completed Temple probably never saw these men; their names were unknown to them as to us. Their work was like that of the sculptors of those marble figures which adorn the roof of Milan Cathedral, or like that of the carvers of stonework in the marvellous roof of Kings College Chapel, Cambridgesplendid work done by unknown workers.
My guide and friend took me round the north-eastern angle of the Temple area and by the wall till nearly opposite the well-known gate of Jeremiaha hundred paces from the gate through which Stephen passed to die, two or three hundred yards at most from that Green hill far away, without a city wall, which is, even to-day, in shape so like a skull. He stopped close beside the wall that Saladin builtYou see that hole in the earth? A wounded partridge was the means of its discovery a few months ago. Follow me! We entered a long sloping gallery that led, or seemed to lead, right under the city walls in the direction of the Temple. Right and left, as the lamps flared and showed us the vast caverns, we saw evidences of the masons who had chipped their stones to size, detached them from their bed in the quarry, and worked them and tooled them into squares. Deeper and further we went into the cool darkness. Our guide put up his torch and showed us little nicks or niches in the still upstanding blocks, blackened with soot. You know what those were for? he said. Those were the niches hewn out by the men of Hiram and Solomon of old time, on which to place their little earthen lamps while they laboured at the stone.1 [Note: H. D. Rawnsley.]
I believe that much of the best work accomplished for the world, and for the Church, is never seen or heard of at the time. But the Lord is mindful of His own; He remembereth His children. And if He sent His angel to show us where true and lasting service is being done, possibly He would not lead us to magnificent buildings, or to stately worship, or to popular preaching. Perhaps He would draw aside the veil which hides a Christian home, and show us a mother patient with her wayward lad, pleading with him, praying for him; seeking by her gentle, watchful love to shape his character to true nobility, that she may present him at last as one of Gods polished stones. He might show us a Christian going up the creaking staircase to some wretched attic, where a smile lights up the face of a dying man to whom the visitor speaks of a Saviour who is loving and of a heaven that is near. In that foul miserable room rests the foot of the ladder whose top is in heaven. Or possibly the angel might point us to a writer for the press, working far into the night, pale and tired, but penning words which will affect the world on the morrowturning men from the love of war, rebuking iniquity in high places, and preparing the nation to choose the ways of righteousness, liberty, peace, and love.1 [Note: A. Rowland.]
The hands that do Gods work are patient hands,
And quick for toil, though folded oft in prayer;
They do the unseen work they understand
And findno matter where.
The feet that follow His must be swift feet,
For time is all too short, the way too long;
Perchance they will be bruised, but falter not,
For love shall make them strong.
The lips that speak Gods words must learn to wear
Silence and calm, although the pain be long;
And, loving so the Master, learn to share
His agony and wrong.2 [Note: William Ordway Partridge.]
(2) It is varied work. Had we been in Jerusalem, we should have noticed great differences between the kinds of work done. Some was arduous and mechanical, and some was very pleasant, giving opportunity for the exercise of artistic taste. Some was dignified and some was undignified. Still, every kind of work had its place. None could be neglected. The toil of the poor clay moulder was as necessary as the skill of the clever designer. It would be an onerous task even to mention all the forms of Christian activity. Suffice it to say that something can be done by every man, woman, and child for the establishment of Christs Kingdom. Nor ought we to disregard such service as is quite outside the organization of the Church. For example, as Christian citizens we should take our share of responsibility, and, if need be, of reproach, in the defence of the liberties of the people, and in the furtherance of all legislation which will put down the prevalence of vice and wrong.
I stood by fields and farms where men
Were working with a glad intensity
As works the swallow bent to feed her young.
All knew they did not spend their strength for naught,
That every action was a seed whose plant
Should bloom in Heavn and therefore used the spade
The axe, the saw, as tools wherewith to shape
Their individual hope. Although no minds
Were like, yet all were tempered to the whole
Intent of Godthe many wires of one
Well-tund dulcimer. Thus all who shaped
Their proper Paradise laid stones upon
The walls of new Jerusalem. The Sun
Diffused a sacrificial will among
The very birds and beasts, who lent themselves
With conscious pleasure to the ends of man.
The tiller of the soil was gladdened by
The brown earths charity, and he that hewed
The rock rejoiced together with the cliff
Whence it was hewn. The angels, lily fair
And swallow fleet, passed everywhere to help
Or guide at need.1 [Note: Anna Bunston, The Porch of Paradise.]
(3) All true work is after the Divine plan. The work of Solomons builders, however widely distributed, however secretly done, was all tending towards an appointed endthe completion of a Temple, in which God would be worshipped, and where He would reveal Himself. That building existed in the mind of the Master-Builder before it had an actual existence; for an architect not only draws plans, but makes a specification, and perhaps takes out his quantities; so that he thinks through the whole work and knows its minutest details. It is so with the Great Architect, the Originator and Upholder of all things. The Divine purpose is controlling our activities, is appointing to each of us his responsibilities, and God will at last bring out of what appear to be confused and contradictory events new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.
God is a great executive, the great executive of the universe. He planned the vast scheme of worlds making up the universe, and every detail. The whole universe in its immensity, and the intricacy of its movements, is kept in motion by Him. And every detail, down to the smallest, the falling of one of the smallest birds, is ever under His thoughtful eye and touch. And He is our God. He has each of us on His heart.1 [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Service, 214.]
This is the secret of giving dignity to trifles. As units they are insignificant; they rise in importance when they become parts of a plan.2 [Note: F. W. Robertson, Life and Letters, 209.]
(4) And all true work is painful work. The thing that must instantly occur to us, the moment that we have read about the silent way in which this temple-building was prepared for and accomplished, is that, after all, the noise was not got rid of; but simply separated from the ultimate construction. You cannot quarry a stone without noise. No huge boulder was ever lifted out of its primeval bed or riven from its parent rock without blows and sweat and strain and thunderous percussion. No tree was ever felled without that sharp smiting and steady thud of the workmans axe which has made ten thousand forests ring. In preparing the metals which we employ in rearing any lowliest temple, with what a heat and noise those metals must be forged! Nay, if we could have been among the craftsmen at Mount Lebanon where the timbers of the Temple were prepared, or in the quarries where the stones for its foundations were hewn and dressed, we should have found there no lack of clamour, and strife, and unrest. No least detail of that holy and beautiful house was made ready save at the cost of countless blows, of manifold discussion, of ceaseless weariness and fatigue. Doubtless there were all the catastrophes, the maladjustments, the sacrifice of individual life or limb to a great undertaking that there are in similar undertakings to-day. The reason why there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building, was because for days and weeks and months beforehand there had been incessant noise, untiring toil, infinite and undiscouraged pounding and smoothing and planing and hammering almost night and day. And do you suppose there was nothing more? The men who built the Temple were not angels, but children of a race trained by long bondage to the chain and the lash. Pharaohs taskmasters had beaten them when the tale of bricks was short. Is it likely that Solomons taskmasters were persons of such pre-eminent gentleness and infinite patience that they never struck a blow or spoke a harsh word? If we could have the unwritten history of that splendid building I presume we should find that its stones were moistened more than once with the salt tears of workmen who had always done their best, or who, striving to do it, had not always and instantly achieved the best result. This huge task was not accomplished without cost; and here, as always in the achievement of any great work, the costliest expenditure was not in money, but in human sweat and in human sorrow.
Your tears unheeded, and your prayers made nought,
Thus and no otherwise through all have wrought,
That if, the while ye toiled and sorrowed most
The sound of your lamenting seemed all lost,
And from my land no answer came again,
It was because of that your care and pain
A house was building, and your bitter sighs
Came hither as toil-helping melodies,
And in the mortar of our gem-built wall
Your tears are mingled mid the rise and fall
Of golden trowels tinkling in the hands
Of builders gathered wide from all the lands.
Is the house finished? Nay, come help to build
Walls that the sun of sorrow once did gild
Through many a bitter morn and hopeless eve,
That so at last in bliss ye may believe;
Then rest with me, and turn no more to tears,
For then no more by days and months and years,
By hours of pain come back, and joy passed oer
We measure time that wasand is no more.1 [Note: William Morris.]
2. But more especially we are expected to observe how silently the building proceeds. The silence amid which the building of Solomons Temple was carried on was partly due to the reverential feeling in which that holy work was undertaken. The deepest emotions in the human heart are generally the quietest. Our profounder feelings shrink from babble and noise. If we stand before a masterpiece of art and try to take in the harmonies of colour, or the symmetry of form, the frivolous remarks of a companion distress us. If we walk in the depths of a forest glade, or if we delight our eyes with the falling of gleams and of shadows upon the sward till we are lost in a pleasant day-dream, an incursion of jocund excursionists is resented as being almost a sacrilege. If we have to say farewell to friends we love, and the hour of parting, long-dreaded, has come at last, we feel that it is not a time for fluent talk, or for sparkling fun, but rather for the silent grip of the hand and the tearful God bless you! And when we enter some stately cathedral, rich in solemn associations, it is natural that we should be hushed and quiet.
Thus the rearing of the Temple is not so much an example for literal imitation as it is a prophecy of ultimate realization. There must have been a reason for that peculiar and exceptional method of building which was adopted in the case of the Temple, and that reason must have been a Divine one. It did not occur to this semi-barbarous people to build the Temple in this way. The method was revealed to them. What was its reason? Doubtless, in the first place, to educate a race with imperfect ideas of reverence into a higher conception of the sacredness of Divine things. The average Jew entered the Temple with a deeper awe when he remembered the august sanctities with which its erection had been hedged about
In silence mighty things are wrought,
Silently builded, thought on thought,
Truths temple greets the sky;
And like a citadel with towers,
The soul with her subservient powers
Is strengthened silently.
Soundless as chariots on the snow
The saplings of the forest grow
To trees of mighty girth;
Each nightly star in silence burns,
And every day in silence turns
The axle of the earth.
The silent frost with mighty hand
Fetters the rivers and the land
With universal chain;
And smitten by the silent sun,
The chain is loosed, the rivers run,
The lands are free again.
O Source unseen of life and light,
Thy secrecy of silent might
If we in bondage know,
Our hearts, like seeds beneath the ground,
By silent force of life unbound,
Move upwards from below.
And if our hearts well rooted be,
Their love, like sap within the tree,
With silent quickening moves;
Enlarged and liberated powers,
More light and balmier warmth are ours,
And God His presence proves.
O Saviour, who, that silence keeps,
But sometimes at the story weeps
Of all that he has known?
That we are what we are, how strange!
How gradual the silent change
By which our souls have grown!1 [Note: Thomas Toke Lynch, The Rivulet, 110.]
(1) There is a certain sacredness in silence; reverence is ever quiet. In a room where one is lying dying, whoever enters, by a natural instinct treads softly and speaks low. From our earliest years we have been taught that in a church, where reverence is due to the sacred functions and uses of the building, our behaviour ought to be the reverse of loud and boisterous. And this, which early training and habit have made a second nature to us even in respect of buildings which in themselves are not fitted to inspire awe, or even respect, is felt to be natural and instinctive when the church, by its structure, possesses that power. In an old Gothic church or cathedral, where the height, the gloom, the mass, the antiquity, all at once impress one, every reverent-minded person will experience an instinctive repulsion to frivolity or clamour. And as we, in Gods house, in recognition of His holy Name and worship, restrain ourselves from loud speech and secular noises, so on the other hand the vast and impressive silences of Nature may at times convey to us a sense of the presence of God. In mountain solitudes on an early summer morn, there is such a silence as may be felt. It is Nature paying her devotions to her Maker. Such sounds as there are do not break the silence, they only make it audiblethe whisper of a breeze in the grass, the murmur of water from among the trees. It is as if Nature were holding her breath, yet finding just voice enough to say, The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him.
When God created the heavens and the earth there was heard no sound of hammer or axe. The slow-revolving ages, the six grand epochs with their alternate lights and shadows, graduated one into the other, marking off His successive creative acts. We speak of the creative fiat as if God did, with an audible voice, call out of nothing the things which are.
He said, Let there be light!
Grim Darkness felt His might
And fled away.
Then startled seas and mountains cold
Shone forth all clad in blue and gold
And cried, Tis day! tis day!
One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,
One lesson which in every wind is blown,
One lesson of two duties kept at one
Though the loud world proclaim their enmity
Of toil unseverd from tranquillity;
Of labour, that in lasting fruit outgrows
Far noisier schemes, accomplishd in repose,
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.
Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring,
Mens fitful uproar mingling with his toil,
Still do thy sleepless ministers move on,
Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting;
Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil,
Labourers that shall not fail, when man is gone.1 [Note: Matthew Arnold.]
(2) This is Gods method everywhere, not only in Nature but also in History and in Grace. It is His method in History. History as written is for the most part the history of what made a noise. The sound of warriors rushing to battle, the clashing of armour, the groans of the conquered, and the shouts of the conqueror fill our ears. Take up any ordinary English History, and is it not so? Does it not concern itself mainly with the movements of kings and earls and generals, and a few prominent men in Church and State who did something illustrious? And yet it is evident that these were at no time the whole of life. The vast body of life is always unhistoric; the quiet world is not reported because it is quiet; and yet it is in this region that much of the best life has been lived.
The landing of Csar with his hosts in Britain was not so significant an event as the landing of St. Augustine bearing a white Christ on a silver cross. The marching forth to the Crusades of Richard Cur de Lion was not so important in its ultimate issues as the quiet demand of Stephen Langton in the meadow at Runnymede. The victories of Drake upon the high seas were of less real moment than the embarking of a few pilgrims from Delft Haven in search of religious freedom. The charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava was not so worthy of immortality in song as the play of a bare-legged lad in an English village, who at about that time was making clay engines furnished with hemlock sticks for pipes. The best history of Anglo-Saxon civilization is Greens History of the English People, which is constructed on the assumption that the victories of peace are more renowned than those of war.2 [Note: D. J. Burrell.]
The oak grows silently, in the forest, a thousand years; only in the thousandth year, when the woodman arrives with his axe, is there heard an echoing through the solitudes; and the oak announces itself when, with far-sounding crash, it falls. How silent too was the planting of the acorn; scattered from the lap of some wandering wind! Nay, when our oak flowered, or put on its leaves (its glad Events), what shout of proclamation could there be? Hardly from the most observant a word of recognition. These things befell not, they were slowly done; not in an hour, but through the flight of days: what was to be said of it? This hour seemed altogether as the last was, as the next would be.1 [Note: Carlyle, The French Revolution, bk. ii. ch. 1.]
(3) In Grace. The beginning of the Christian life is commonly without observation. It is true that Saul of Tarsus was felled to the earth, blinded by a sun-burst, and addressed by a voice from heaven. But even of this case it is written that those that were with him saw the light but heard not the voice. The operation of the Spirit in the human heart is not with violence. He cometh down as rain upon the mown grass. To the majority of believers their passing out of darkness into the light is as when the traveller crosses the tropics; he cannot mark the instant. We are not scourged but wooed into the Divine arms. I have drawn thee, He says, with the cords of a man.
The best penitents are those whose penitence does not wear out, but is always an under-current in their daily lives. You call him a fool who starts for a long race at his greatest speed, and he who is most demonstrative in his first repentance will often be found afterwards among the backsliders.
Prune thou thy words, the thoughts control
That oer thee swell and throng;
They will condense within thy soul,
And change to purpose strong.
As quietness is the mark of the true life, so will it mark its close. As the most beautiful sunset brings peace rather than excitement, even so will be the laying down of life. Nay, inasmuch as disease is painful and the physical wrench often keen, we may say that the afterglow is brighter than the sunset itself. But, in spite of pain, the death itself is peaceful. There is little triumph in the Christian death-bed, but there is peace.
And I would pass in silence, Lord,
No brave words on my lips,
Lest pride should cloud my soul, and I
Should die in the eclipse.
But when, and where, and by what pain,
All this is one to me;
I only long for such a death
As most shall honour Thee.
(4) And so, finally, in silence does the Kingdom of God come. It cometh not with observation. This is true of its progress in the world. God is in the still small voice, not in the wind or in the earthquake or the fire. Christs own career, how silent it was! The spread of the Kingdom was unnoticed by the worlds great onesCsars, philosophers, patriciansand it silently grew underground. So is it with the consummation of the Kingdom in glory. Earth is the Lebanon to which Heaven shall furnish the Jerusalem. Time is the noisy workshop of Eternity.
Literature
Brown (A. G.), Gods Full-Orbed Gospel, 216, 229.
Burrell (D. J.), The Gospel of Gladness, 281.
Dawson (G.), Sermons on Daily Life and Duty, 242.
Evans (E. H.), True and False Aims, 64.
Granger (W.), The Average Man, 47.
Hutton (W. R.), Low Spirits, 88.
Maclaren (A.), Expositions: 2 Samuel and Kings, 172.
Macleay (K. A.), The Never-Changing Creed, 165.
Matheson (G.), Moments on the Mount, 187.
Potter (H. C.), Sermons of the City, 325.
Roberts (E.), My Jewels, 42.
Rowland (A.), The Burdens of Life, 175.
Stevens (W. B.), Sermons, 123.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), vi. No. 630.
Williams (T. R.), Belief and Life, 344.
Woodford (J. R.), Sermons: Old Testament Series, 80.
Christian World Pulpit, xxxvi. 310 (Rawnsley); i. 299 (Ormsby); lxxvii. 347 (Yates).
Contemporary Pulpit, 1st Ser., iv. 1 (Body); vi. 190 (Burn).
Treasury (New York), xv. 921 (Chapin); xxii. 952 (Hallock).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
built of stone: 1Ki 5:17, 1Ki 5:18, Deu 27:5, Deu 27:6, Pro 24:27, Rom 9:23, 2Co 5:5, Col 1:12, 1Pe 2:5
neither hammer: Isa 42:2, Act 9:31, Jam 1:20, Jam 3:17, Jam 3:18
Reciprocal: 1Ch 22:2 – masons 2Ch 8:16 – General Eph 2:21 – fitly
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
LIKE SOME TALL PALM THE SILENT FABRIC SPRUNG
The house, when it was in building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither: so that there was neither hammer nor ax nor any tool of iron heard in the house, while it was in building.
1Ki 6:7
The building of the Temple on Mount Moriah is a parable of the present world. St. Paul applies the simile of the text to the building of the Church of God when, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, he says that this Church is built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, and that it groweth with a noiseless growth into a holy temple for the Lord. The text is a revelation of the twofold condition of the life of the Church of Christ as it is to-day.
I. There are three conditions of the Churchs life: two present, one future.The Church is militant on earth; the Church is expectant in Paradise; the Church shall be glorified in Jesus Christ when He comes and she passes into Paradise. However chequered may be the Churchs course on earth, within the veil Jesus is realising His thought of His Church, not in the transitory conditions of time, but under abiding conditions in eternity. Jesus is the Builder of His Church in Paradise, for He is the true Solomon.
II. When Solomon built his Church, the first thing he did was to dig deep, that his foundations might rest upon a rock.Christ lays the foundations of His Church deep in His own wounded form. Upon the person of Jesus, as the crucified Redeemer, do the foundations of the Church rest.
III. Solomon laid the foundation stones of the Temple.The Bible tells us that the foundation stones of the Church are the twelve Apostles. Their influence is a living power with us to-day.
IV. We are not as yet in Jerusalem; we are in Lebanon.Gods great work is going on age after age; the purpose of the Church is to be the school of heaven, the place where men and women are made ready for eternity.
Canon Body.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
What Lebanon was to Zion, this world is to heaven. This world is the quarry and the work-field, heaven the temple. Gradually in its calm magnificence, far out of sight, that temple in Zion is rising and stretching on, in its preordained proportions, to its vast circumference. Another and another stone is being added to it, but not one that has not been hewn and fitted here.
I. God sends His stone-squarers to His children; afflictions ply their hammers, and unkind men their sharp chisels, until the heart, measured as with a plumb-line, is set to the whole will of God, and we are conformed to the heavenly and made correspondent to the Divine.
II. Here on earth the stones lie disjointed and isolated; they are good stones, but they want union. There, in that great spiritual structure, all will be gathered into a perfect oneness, and each shall bear his own proper and necessary part in the temple.
Rev. James Vaughan.
Illustrations
(1) Building of character is the great work of life. This goes on best in the quiet. A man who had been himself occupied in business for a great while, with scarcely a days rest or pause, was stricken down with a partial paralysis. He was compelled to lie still for months. His mind was clear and active while his body was inactive. One day he said to his pastor, I have grown more in these quiet months than I did in all my long years of rushing activity. He was now really building up the temple of God in his own soul. We ought not to wait for idleness to compel us to be still, we should get the quiet into our life even in our busiest times. We must have a restful spirit if we would build up the inner temple. There should be silent times in every days life. The secret of Daniels noble character, while carrying a great part of the burden of the kingdom of Babylon, was that he never forsook the quiet place of prayer. Not even fear of the lions den could make him neglect the season of devotion. There is no other secret of a true and noble life amid the worlds strifes and trials. We must keep quiet within, that we may build up in our hearts the temple of God.
(2) Building with us is noisy work. But there was neither hammer, nor axe, nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was building. It went up as a tree growssilently. Very beautiful and impressive that, for it was the silence of worship. As his servants moved about him silently, because of the reverence they had for him, so would he serve God silently, as knowing that God was a great King above all kings. Let us learn the lesson. Work should be worship. Do all in the Name.
(3) The silent building of the Temple suggests also that all truest and most beautiful work goes on silently. The greatest forces in nature operate without noise. The sun lifts billions of tons of water into the air, but there is no rattle of pumps. The force of gravitation holds worlds in their place, and yet there is no clatter of chains or machinery. Along telegraph and telephone wires flash messages all over the world, but no one hears even a whisper in the silent wires. The angels minister everywhere continually, and yet no one ever hears voice or footstep. The Holy Spirit works mightily in all the world, but His working is noiseless. Jesus was a quiet worker. His voice was not heard in the streets. The Christians who make the greatest impression upon the world are the quietest in their movements.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
1Ki 6:7. The house was built of stone made ready Hewed and squared, and so fitted for their several uses and places, according to the direction of the architect, that they might be joined together without any other labour than the putting them one by or upon another. So that there was neither hammer nor axe, &c. The stones were laid without any noise, there being nothing to be done but to join them together. Thus it was ordered, partly for the ease and convenience of carriage; partly for the magnificence of the work, and commendation of the workmens skill and diligence; and partly for mystical signification. And as this temple was a manifest type, both of Christs church upon earth, and of the heavenly Jerusalem; so this circumstance signified, as to the former, that it is the duty of the builders and members of the church, as far as in them lies, to take care that all things be transacted there with perfect peace and quietness; and that no noise of contention, or division, or violence, be heard in that sacred building; and for the latter, that no spiritual stone, no person, shall bear a part in that heavenly temple, unless he be first hewed, and squared, and made meet for it in this life.