The Building of the Soul

“Atid 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” — 1 Kings vi. 7.

One would think, from such words as these, that there was no room for struggle in the religious life, nor 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? Hast thou 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

DO

ere the light from heaven breaks upon his view — that 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 cross — that solitary walk wherein he feels deserted by the old and not yet convinced by the new. And marvellously comforting is this message which it brings 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 j 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 symmetry — the 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, 0 my soul.