The Thought for the Act

“And the Lord said unto David, Whereas it was in thine heart to build an house unto My name, thou didst well that it was in thine heart: nevertheless thou shalt not build the house.”

A most remarkable passage. David wants to build a temple to the Lord. God will not let him; He desires it to be reserved for other hands. But He tells him that by reason of the very thought he is counted one of God’s builders. David’s temple was never in stone and lime. It stood on no actual ground; it filled no visible space. It was only a cathedral in the heart. Its walls were in the imagination; its arches were in the fancy; its pillars were in the mind; its altars were in the soul. Yet God says that this cathedral of the heart shall be accepted as a real edifice. He says that this shadowy structure, this air-castle, this product of unfulfilled design, shall have the value of a house in stone and lime. It shall have a price put upon it in heaven equal to any finished building. The architecture of the city of God is not limited to houses made with hands. There are whole streets within it which never existed outwardly. There are temples which men meant to raise. There are hospitals which philanthropy intended to found. There are schools which benevolence planned to institute. The structures that God accepts are, for the most part, like Jacob’s ladder — built in a dream. We raise palaces in our hearts, when our hands can only erect mud dwellings; but God keeps His eye on the palaces not begun, and attributes not to us the finished tenements of clay. He measures my workmanship by the edifice in my soul.

Father, I have no temple built which is worthy of Thee. There is nothing which my hands have reared that I would be willing to live hj. Whenever I make Thee a cathedral, there rises up in my imagination another house which puts it to shame. Take that other house, oh, my Father. It is untouched by hammer, or axe, or chisel; it has as yet neither a local habitation nor a name. It is all in the spirit; it is what I mean to do. o 2

But Thou art the Father of spirits. The topmost towers in Thy city are towers of intention. My performance has never come up to my thought. Solomon built Thee a house, and David planned it; but David’s was a grander house than Solomon’s. My hand can but feebly represent the movements of my soul. Thou seest the “Paradise Lost” in the heart of Milton, and it is more beautiful than the one in the book. The temple in my heart is Thy house not made with hands. It is my true Babel; it reaches unto heaven; its spire touches the sky. It is Thy New Jerusalem; come and dwell therein; walk round about it; mark its bulwarks; consider its towers, and let the river of its pleasures glad Thee. Thou canst not be gladdened by what I do; but the river of Thy pleasures is the aspiring of my heart.