Church Building and Church Decoration
I. I only remember reading in the Old Testament of two collections being made, and both of these were for what we might call Church Building and Church Decoration. The one we shall find at the end of the Book of Exodus, and the other at the end of 1 Chronicles. To the glory of God and in grateful memory of all that God had done for them, were both the Tabernacle and the Temple erected, the freewill offering of a glad and thankful people. And God accepted it and them. The issue which the hypocrite Judas Iscariot tried to stir up about the gift of Mary, has been tried since his day and with equal success. It is a needless, false and injurious conflict; as if to give to the glory of God in the beautifying of his Church were to take so much from the poor, as if no portion of the Church's wealth was available for any purely devout and religious purpose, till all the wants of all the poor were met and satisfied; wants, be it remembered, that if they were all supplied today would come out in some new form tomorrow. The world, let us thank God for it, is not so poor that there is only one way for gratifying those generous impulses which visit the heart and prompt to acts of singular liberality. As a rule, you will find that those who spend large sums of money on the house of their God are equally generous and beneficent in relieving the wants of others. Can this with equal truth be said of those who criticise and find fault with such expenditure?
II. If we really believe that our Church is the house of God, if we really believe that it is the place where God vouchsafes His own special presence to His people gathered there in His name, then surely everything we put therein ought to be of the best. Nothing can be too beautiful or too costly which this earth can produce to offer in the courts of the house of God. It was in this spirit that our fathers built and adorned the churches of God in our land. They felt as David did, ashamed to dwell in ceiled houses, while the Ark of God was uncared for; ashamed to have things comfortable and elegant at home, while the place where Christ had promised to meet His people was left as if it were little thought of.
Canon Lloyd, Family Churchman,June 9th, 1886.
References: John 12:5. S. A. Brooke, Christ in Modern Life,p. 258. John 12:7; John 12:8. G. Dawson, The Authentic Gospel,p. 147.