'No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung, Like some tall palm the mystic
fabric sprung.'
Perhaps it was merely for convenience of transport and to save time
that the stones were dressed in the quarries, but more probably the
silence was due to an instinct of reverence. We may fairly use it as
suggesting two thoughts.
I. How God's house is mostly built in silence. 'The Kingdom of God
cometh not with observation.'
(1) In reference to its advance in the world. Destructive work is
noisy, constructive work is silent. God was in 'the still small voice,'
not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire. Christ's own career, how
silent it was! Drums are loud and empty. The spread of the kingdom was
unnoticed by the world's great ones--Caesars, philosophers, patricians,
and it silently grew underground. Hence may flow--
(a) An encouragement to those whose work is inconspicuous.
(b) A lesson not to mistake noise and notoriety for spiritual progress.
(c) Guidance as to our expectations of the advance of Christ's kingdom.
It will transform society by slow, often unnoticed, degrees, by radical
change of individuals' habits. The elevation of humanity will be slow,
like the imperceptible rise of the Norwegian coast. Sudden changes are
short-lived changes. 'Lightly come, lightly go.' What matures slowly
will last long.
(2) In reference to its growth in our souls.
Silence is needed for that. There must be much still communion and
quiet reflection. The advance in the Christian life is variously
likened to a battle, since there are antagonists and struggle is needed
to overcome; and to vegetable or corporeal growth, which the mysterious
indwelling life works without effort and almost without consciousness,
but it is also likened to the erection of a building, in which there is
continuity, and each successive course of masonry is the foundation for
that above it. That work of building is work that must be done in
silence. If we are to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus, we must
silently drink in the sunshine and dew, and so prosperously pass from
blade to ear, and thence to full corn in the ear.
Surely nothing is more needed in these days of noisy advertisement, and
measurement of the importance of things by the noise that they can
make, than this lesson of the place of silence in Christian progress,
both for individuals and for the Christian Church as a whole.