II. FIRST STRENGTH, THEN BEAUTY. The constant emblem of our religion is the rock. The house built upon the rock, against which the winds blow and rains beat, but the house abides, for that its foundation standeth sure. The Church of God is built upon the rock, the Rock of Ages, that abideth for ever. Religion is not a matter of sentiment, of feeling, of changeful emotion. It is rooted and grounded in the everlasting Word of the living God. What triumphant strength is begotten within the soul when it can cry, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day." That first, always and everywhere — strength. Is there any. thing in the world more miserable than religion without any bones, a thing that you can squeeze into any shape you like? — religious sentiment that can talk piously and yet is not exact in its sayings and doings, that can be particular about its creed, and yet slipshod in business? There are some people who affect to despise beauty, and consider it a weakness. "Give me a brass pillar," say they, "solid and substantial. I don't want any nonsensical lily-work about the top of it." Now such people may do much harm in the world — more harm than good. Strength and beauty — how shall we combine the two? In one way, and in one way only. Love is both. He that loveth hath the secret. For is there any strength like love? Is there any endurance like love's? Is there any defiance like the defiance of love? Love is strength and love is beauty. And love is ours as nothing else could make it ours but the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here is love compelling love that sustains our strongest service and our tenderest thought. How graciously are these two combined in that word concerning Jesus Christ: "As many as received Him to them gave He power to become the children of God." Authority and strength to become children, simple, trustful, loving, obedient. Strong that we may be made beautiful. Thus doth our God seek to make us pillars in His temple, strong with His strength, beautiful with the beauty of the Lord our God.

(M. G. Pearse.)

II. THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST. In the Gospel are many mighty and massive truths which may be said to be the very pillars of the sacred edifice: such as the leading truth that "God Is a Spirit," etc.; but in close connection with these great and solid truths is that which is exquisite, delicate, beautiful. Such is the truth that the faintest whisper of prayer that comes from the lips of the little child may enter the ear and touch the hand of God, and bring down His benediction; or that the first sigh of the relenting human spirit is dearer to the Father's heart than the finest anthems of the angels; or that the cherishing of a pure feeling of forgiveness or the doing one act of real peace-making brings us further into the likeness and childhood of God than would the accomplishment of the most brilliant intellectual achievement.

III. CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. We have in our churches strong men, helpful, influential, sustaining — men who are pillars. They may be strong in virtue of adventitious aids, or of natural endowments, or of acquired, powers, or of spiritual acquisition: and these "pillars" may be either as beams m a mine, rude, rough, unpolished; or they may be as the fluted columns of a cathedral, as these pillars of Solomon's temple with lily-work on the top of them.

IV. CHRISTIAN SERVICE. The worship of God, the service of Jesus Christ, is the power for good in human society; it upholds the goodness and the happiness of the world. Its strength and its beauty are determined partly by the stage to which we here come in our Christian course.

1. The strength of service in age is in submission, willingness to decline, to take the lower place, to be of diminishing account; and the beauty of submission is cheerfulness of spirit.

2. The strength of service in prime is in activity, in usefulness, in putting out our "talents" for the glory of Christ and the well-being of the world; and the beauty of activity is thoroughness, regularity, punctuality, heartiness, doing effectively and continuously what has been undertaken.

3. The strength of service in childhood and youth is obedience and self-denial; and the beauty of this is alacrity, promptness, rendering it not tardily and reluctantly, but readily and sweetly, with willing feet and cheerful voice. It is well to have strength and beauty in our Christian buildings; it is far better, in the estimate of Christ, to have these two harmoniously combined in the character we are forming and the life we are living.

(W. Clarkson.)

(R. W. Davis.)

2. Beauty without strength. In our day there is a great desire for the lily work without the pillars, a vain longing for the graces of life and for the beauties of character without the supporting power of truth and duty. There are thousands of men who would like the virtues of the fathers, but who do not want the faith which made them virtuous. They would like to have reproduced in their life the qualities of soul which marked the early Christians, the Reformers, and the Puritans; but not their sturdy faith, nor their tenacity of conviction, not their majestic conscience or their tremendous hold on things unseen. They want the simplicity and affection of the Waldenses, but not their faith in God; the audacity and fearlessness of John Knox and Oliver Cromwell, without their vivid sense of the Divine Presence; the morality of John Robinson and Miles Standish, without their heroic creed; the integrity of Washington and Lincoln, without their trust in a sustaining and over-ruling God. Mothers are anxious that their daughters should shine in every social accomplishment; that their sons should be men of talent and of skill; that their homes should be beautiful with music and art and all kindly grace. But they are not so solicitous about the solid foundations of character. The spirit of the time is to dwell on the surface. To dig deep is to contradict the age. Glittering pinnacles on In. secure foundations! Remember all skaters are not navigators. It is one thing to skim the surface of a pond, and quite another to sail upon the angry deep. The twittering sparrow has as many wings as the eagle, but he cannot dip them in the glory which burns just beneath the sun. A candle is not a comet. The keels of mighty ships are not built of mushrooms. Depth of character first, not ornament, is to be sought for. In house building digging must precede decoration. You do not begin with the painter and the gilder, but with the stone-layer. A pasteboard hut is not a castle, it will be borne away by the mocking winds. It is dangerous to reckon the virtues of a man's character by buttons on his coat, for some are all coat and no character. The looking-glass is the only book some people read. They are splendid advertisements for their tailor, but a sorry disgrace to their schoolmaster. Never mistake the mystery of an echo for the originality of a voice.

3. The foundation of faith. I tell you the quickest way to produce a sweet and beautiful life, either individual or national, is by placing underneath it a strong, unwavering faith. "The Parthenon, which lifts toward the golden-tinted sky the whiteness of its untarnished front, must repose on the immovable Acropolis of truth and goodness." The modern professor of fine arts, who prefers form and finish to substance and thought, who, forgetting all that is greatest in architecture and sculpture, in painting and music and poetry, asserts that ethics and aesthetics have nothing in common, who prates about "art for art's sake," who scorns the teaching of Schelling that the aesthetic lies in character, and of Dante that art is a descendant of God, is the apostle of the unwholesome, the tawdry, and the lustful, the art of literary fops and the disciples of what Carlyle called the gospel and the philosophy of dirt. But the highest art, which lifts us to the joy of elevated thoughts as in imagination we watch the hand that pencilled Madonna, or the greater —

Hand that rounded Peter's dome,

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,

is always found the friend and promoter of truth and goodness, of aspiration and of faith. "The highest art," as Professor Blackie has said, "is always the most religious. A scoffing Raphael or an irreverent Michael Angelo is not conceivable." We must have the strength first, and beauty afterward. It is disaster to reverse this order — to try to get beauty and then have strength. The magnificent Brooklyn Bridge, when viewed at a distance, is a beautiful poem. But the beauty is dependent on the strength of mighty abutments which reach down far below the river bed, and take hold of the foundations of the earth. In everything, both artistic and moral, strength is the stalk; beauty is the flower that blooms on it.

4. Divine deliberation. The Almighty shows great deliberation in all His works. Haste, a hurry, fussy activity is always an evidence of weakness. The six days of creation may have been six sunsets or six millenniums; but the days moved slowly and majestically forward toward man as a child of God's infinite Spirit, and in that result the process finds its climax and its justification. If God pronounces each of these days of creation to be very good, it is because He beholds them in the unclouded light of that seventh glorious morning when He finds Himself not Creator merely, but, since He can commune with a spirit kindred to His own, finds Himself a Father of immortals. Study the bases of the mountains and the foundations of the everlasting hills. He who is girded with power has settled them in their sockets unchangingly. Then He gave the earth beauty, the forests and ferns, the waving grasses and the flowers. And the young woman who concentrates all her life on attitudes, effects, sensations, impressions, striving to get the ornamentation, oblivious to the sterling, splendid qualities that should be wrought into the womanly character — she asks only for lilies. But there are no lilies worth having that do not come out of columns. If you were to knock the pillars from under the globe, where would your flower-gardens be next morning? We have most excellent illustrations of strength and beauty in the study of two national characteristics — Hebraism and Hellenism. It is in the ultimate realisation of a union of the Hebraistic and Hellenistic elements that ultimate perfection is to be found; the son of Abraham is to join hands with the son of Hellas. The Hebrew furnished the indispensable basis of faith, of conduct, of self-control; the immovable foundation upon which alone the perfection aimed at by Greece was to come to bloom. The Hebrew Bible is not wanting in suggestions of the radiant beauty of God's thoughts and works, but there the beauty is subordinate to morality, it is a blossom on the stalk of strength. As the indestructible azure in sea and sky, as the golden ghory of the sunshine, so this characteristic of beauty shines forth from strength all through the Bible, immortal in God.

5. God's love of beauty. There are qualities aside from strength and truth and courage that every life ought to cultivate. We see that He who setteth fast the mountains also garnishes the heavens and the hills. Charles Kingsley used to say, "Study matter as the countenance of God." "Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary." And God wants beauty incorporated into religion. Strength and beauty have been divinely joined — what God hath joined together let no man put asunder.

6. The transforming power of beauty. Beauty dwells in and finds its basis in strength, as sunshine breaks into glory through the mist, as life beats and blushes in the flesh, as an impassioned thought breathes out of a thinker's face. There are numberless analogies in human life — if we could stop to consider them — of the way in in which one life can influence another by the impartation of strength or beauty. Here is a man who has been always stern, truthful, moral, cold — a human pillar. Some day he loves a noble woman, full of all womanly and lovely graces. That transforms and transfigures him. Under her influence his sternness flowers into grace. And Tennyson shows us how the ideal union will be that one where —

The man is more of woman, she of man;

He gain in sweetness and in moral height,

Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;

Till at the last she set herself to man,

Like perfect music unto noble words.With every man the real man is the woman he carries in his heart. He is her strength; she is his grace. He upholds; she adorns. The one is the complement of the other. History is full of the names of men who had strength; how few there are who had both strength and beauty. I shall never forget the lessons I learned at the tombs of two men born in almost the same year, men equally though differently famous — Napoleon Bonaparte and Walter Scott. Napoleon was born two years before Scott, in the same month and on the same day of the month, August 15. The years passed by. Both do their work and die. I have stood under the "Column of Napoleon," built by himself from twelve hundred pieces of cannon taken from the Austrian and the Prussian, and crowned with a statue of the emperor in his imperial robes, and I could not help contrasting it with that noble monument in Edinburgh, not built by Scott to commemorate his own glory, but by the generosity and love of his fellow-countrymen to honour one they loved. And when I stood at the tomb of that great soldier, guarded by the stained flags of so many battlefields, arranged in his fated number of nine, I could but think how many burning cities had been laid waste, with suffering and starving populace, and all for one man's glory. How different from all this hollow mockery and fictitious grandeur is the hallowed peace of St. Mary's ruined aisle in the Abbey of Dryburgh. In May 1871 the "Column of Napoleon" was hurled to the ground by his own infuriated countrymen, though since rebuilt. And in the same year Scott's magnificent monument at Edinburgh was wreathed with flowers. Napoleon had only strength, and lives mainly in the recollection of the ruin he wrought and his blasted ambitions. Scott had both strength and beauty. He did something good and lasting for mankind. His life was a real blessing to humanity. He never wrote an impure or hateful or revengeful word. Amid crushing financial disaster he kept his temper and his faith in God.

7. Goodness and grace. As all adornment of life finds its basis in truth, it is equally necessary that all truth should find expression in a noble life, that all the pillars should blossom at last in lily work. Nature is full of genuine reality as one true existence, yet manifested in the endless variety with which the earth teems. There is the solemn, stately mountain standing in its serene strength — but upon the mountain nature takes up endless incarnations of loveliness. The bird sings, the lily blossoms, the sunbeam dances, the brook flashes — and they are all one, while yet our eyes and ears and all our senses are tingling with the tidings of the difference which they always express. The mountain, the ocean, and the man — first strong each in its own way, and then each beautiful with the superadded things, great and gracious. That is what makes life so full of fascination to the man who has eyes — the eternal, undivided unity of strength, of permanence, of Divine stability, ever unfolding itself "into one glory of the sun, and another glory of the stars," and all together fill the radiant sky. And when Paul comes to speak of the flowering of Christian character, he shows how healthy and rational he is when he says it is a change from glory to glory.

(F. L. Goodspeed, A. B. , S. T. B.)

(W. Balgarnie.)

(Tytler's History.)

(W. Balgarnie.)

(H. W. Beecher.)

     5226   basin
     8437   giving, of talents

1 Kings 7:13-45

     5272   craftsmen

1 Kings 7:13-50

     4348   mining

1 Kings 7:38-45

     4312   bronze

1 Kings 7:40-42

     4450   fruit

1 Kings 7:40-45

     5211   art

Hiram, the Inspired Artificer
BY REV. W. J. TOWNSEND, D.D. The Temple of Solomon was the crown of art in the old world. There were temples on a larger scale, and of more massive construction, but the enormous masses of masonry of the oldest nations were not comparable with the artistic grace, the luxurious adornments, and the harmonious proportions of this glorious House of God. David had laid up money and material for the great work, but he was not permitted to carry it out. He was a man of war, and blood-stained hands were …
George Milligan—Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known

Whether any Preparation and Disposition for Grace is Required on Man's Part?
Objection 1: It would seem that no preparation or disposition for grace is required on man's part, since, as the Apostle says (Rom. 4:4), "To him that worketh, the reward is not reckoned according to grace, but according to debt." Now a man's preparation by free-will can only be through some operation. Hence it would do away with the notion of grace. Objection 2: Further, whoever is going on sinning, is not preparing himself to have grace. But to some who are going on sinning grace is given, as is …
Saint Thomas Aquinas—Summa Theologica

A Discourse of the House and Forest of Lebanon
OF THE HOUSE OF THE FOREST OF LEBANON. ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR. That part of Palestine in which the celebrated mountains of Lebanon are situated, is the border country adjoining Syria, having Sidon for its seaport, and Land, nearly adjoining the city of Damascus, on the north. This metropolitan city of Syria, and capital of the kingdom of Damascus, was strongly fortified; and during the border conflicts it served as a cover to the Assyrian army. Bunyan, with great reason, supposes that, to keep …
John Bunyan—The Works of John Bunyan Volumes 1-3

Adam and Zaretan, Joshua 3
I suspect a double error in some maps, while they place these two towns in Perea; much more, while they place them at so little a distance. We do not deny, indeed, that the city Adam was in Perea; but Zaretan was not so. Of Adam is mention, Joshua 3:16; where discourse is had of the cutting-off, or cutting in two, the waters of Jordan, that they might afford a passage to Israel; The waters rose up upon a heap afar off in Adam. For the textual reading "In Adam," the marginal hath "From Adam." You …
John Lightfoot—From the Talmud and Hebraica

That the Ruler Should be a Near Neighbour to Every one in Compassion, and Exalted Above all in Contemplation.
The ruler should be a near neighbour to every one in sympathy, and exalted above all in contemplation, so that through the bowels of loving-kindness he may transfer the infirmities of others to himself, and by loftiness of speculation transcend even himself in his aspiration after the invisible; lest either in seeking high things he despise the weak things of his neighbours, or in suiting himself to the weak things of his neighbours he relinquish his aspiration after high things. For hence it is …
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

Kings
The book[1] of Kings is strikingly unlike any modern historical narrative. Its comparative brevity, its curious perspective, and-with some brilliant exceptions--its relative monotony, are obvious to the most cursory perusal, and to understand these things is, in large measure, to understand the book. It covers a period of no less than four centuries. Beginning with the death of David and the accession of Solomon (1 Kings i., ii.) it traverses his reign with considerable fulness (1 Kings iii.-xi.), …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament