So the best was for man, and the second-best for God! The cedar for
self-indulgence, and the curtains for the home of worship! It is a marked
sign of spiritual awakening when a man begins to contrast his own
indulgences with the rights of God. There are so many of us who are lavish
in our home and miserly in the sanctuary. We multiply treasures which
bring us little profit, and we are niggardly where treasure would be of
most gracious service.
"I dwell in a house of cedar," and yet I am thoughtless about God's poor!
For I must remember that the poor are the arks of the Lord. "I was naked,
and ye clothed Me not."
"I dwell in a house of cedar"; my liberties are many and spacious; and yet
there are tribes of God's people held in the tyranny of dark and hopeless
servitude. I dwell in England, but what about the folk on the Congo? I
dwell in a land of ample religious freedom, but what about Armenia? Do my
sympathies remain confined within my cedar walls, or do they go out to
God's neglected ones in every land and clime?