The Monmouth inquirer. [volume] (Freehold, N.J.) 1865-1933, 1907-03-07

dren to love good pictures, Tor, mark
me, If you do not teach them to love
good pictures when they are young
they may learn to love bad pictures
when they are beyond your control.
Can you not buy for your children
some musical instrument, If it is only
o photograph, and haze that phono-
graph play some of the worlds best
classical music or some of the beauti-
full hymns which have come singing
down through the centuries?
II il Important to have beautiful
L0.ie IL which our children shall live.
Is it not also important to have a beau
tiful temple and beautiful church
service with which we shall worship
God Alright on the Sabbath day? Shall
not the door of our earthly sanctuaries
be engraved with cherubim and palm
trees and poisoning flowers? Shall
not the songs we sing from the choir
lofts be sung by the most beautiful
voices? Shall not the sermon which is
preached be something more than an
old fashioned camp meeting exhorta-
ton? Shall not our organs be deep
throated organs and our church win
dows whenever possible have in stain
ed glass pictures of Jesus as a good
shepherd caring for little lamb, or
Jesus as a tired, WORKOUT traveller
talking by the well of Samaria with a
social outcast, or Jesus as an ascending
Lord disappearing among the clouds
while his disciples are PROSTATE at
his feet? Cannot all these beautiful
sounds and beautiful symmetries in
glass and stone and the beautiful serv-
ices be means of spiritual blessing?
Spurgeon's Remark.
You ask, Does that mean that we
Not at all. | am in nowise casting a
slur upon the little meeting houses all
over the land God blesses a Wesley
preaching in the fields just as much as
he blesses any priest officiating in his
ecclesiastical robes. Indeed, when a
church puts its emphasis upon form
and not upon the conservation of the
human heart that church is bound to
be spiritually dead. Pastor Sturgeon
used to say: sAs Oliver Cromwell was
about to turn the members of parlia-
ment out of their chambers he pointed
to the mace and said, Take away that
bauble.' When Christ shall come, who
will effectually purge the church, he
will say much the same of many &C.
clesiastical ornaments now held In high
repute. Gowns and affairs and BAN
ners and painted windows will all go
at one sweep. Nor will the rhetorical
embellishments and philosophers Of
modern pulpits be any more tenderly
dealt with. Take away that baublev
will be the signal for turning many
folly into perpetual contempt"
But, though that is all true that Mr..
Spurgeon said, we must not apply his
words too literally. The end Of true
spiritual worship is not liturgy or
great cathedral or high priced choir.
We all know that. But we also know
that God never wants a man to live in
palace and worship Jesus in barn.
God directed the FIR tree doors of the
inner sanctuary of his Solomonic tenn
pie to be carved with cherubim and
palm trees and poisoning flowers, and
God wants us to build the best temple
to his glory that we can afford. He
wants us to build that temple In the
most conspicuous street. He wants as
to honor him with sweet songs, with
pure, true, noble worship and with al
tars as beautiful as we can afford to
make them. "And he carved thereon
cherubims and palm trees and open
flowers and covered them with gold
fitted upon the carved work"
But before I close want to empha
size one other fact. Every one of these
figures which were carved upon the fir
tree doors Of that inner sanctuary was
q symbol of everlasting life. Like the
evergreen tree, its branches are Gov
cred with green all the year round.
The cherubim are the symbol of the
great company Of the redeemed OF
heaven. OF course we know that the
word cherubim literally interpreted
means an order of celestial beings.
But this word taken as symbol means
the whole company of the redeemed Of
heaven. The palm tree is and always
has been the symbol Of victory by
grace, while the poisoning flowers
are the symbol Of profession or the
public yielding Of our will to Gods
will, and the gold Is the symbol Of
the divine being. Thus this gold covers
all. Yes, every figure engraved upon
that door Is symbol of spiritual tri-
umph. Thus, my friends, cannot we
find all our struggling after the beau
tiful the symbol of our consecrating all
the beautiful parts of our lives to the
service of the Divine Master, whose
name is not only Wonderful" but
who is the acme of all that is beauti-
full?
Beautiful Symbols.
Oh, that step by step in these beauti-
full symbols we can find our consecra-
ton to Jesus! May these symbols be
to us what the Lectures on Expert
mental Philosophy and Astronomy and
Chemistry" by g. Gregory, were to
Joseph Henry. After Mr.. Henry's
death this little book of Mr.. Gregory's