Sword & Trowel 2016: Issue 1


ON RETURNING TO THE RENOVATED TABERNACLE


In 1867 the Tabernacle was renovated and services were held for fi ve weeks at the Agricultural Hall, Islington. Estimates ranged from 12,000 to 25,000 in attendance each week, with great blessing to many souls. This article is Spurgeon’s Monday evening address after returning to the fi nished Tabernacle.


I


T STRIKES ME that this build- ing, so thoroughly cleansed and chastely beautifi ed, has a lesson for us. The prophet Habakkuk spoke of stones crying out of the wall, and beams out of the timber answering thereto. Surely this roof and these pillars have heard the voices of our solemn assemblies long enough to be able to echo to us thoughts of truth and soberness. If there be indeed –


Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything,


rest assured there is a lesson for us in the cleaning and reparation of the house in which we delight to meet for the united worship of God. Do we not all need in our own souls every now and then just what this building required, namely, res- toration and renovation? In this our smoky city the most careful house- keepers fi nd cleanliness to be diffi cult. Do what they will, dingyness will get the upper hand. Gilt grows dim, gloss departs, the purest whiteness is discoloured, and dust and dirt are apparent everywhere, because our atmosphere is heavily laden with


elements op- posed to purity. Even so in


this crooked and perverse generation, the best of believers fi nd it diffi cult to main- tain the freshness of their piety, the closeness of their fellowship with the Lord, and the heavenliness of their conversation. Our fi rst love all too soon grows cold, and much of its fair promise perishes, for the infl uence of the world is, to renewed souls, as the night wind of winter to tender plants, pinching them with biting frosts. Heavenly-mindedness is subject to


secret, unceasing, and most power- ful assaults, like a vessel fl oating in equatorial seas. It is assailed by innu- merable minute enemies which seek to pierce its timbers of strength, and turn its solidity to rottenness. Holy zeal, like a sacred fi re, soon burns low, unless fed by the unseen hand of our Well-beloved, for the forests of earth yield no fuel for its fl ame. Even under the ordinary circumstances of spiritual life it is the easiest thing to lose our fi rst heat of love, and to


page 20 On Returning to the Renovated Tabernacle – by C H Spurgeon –


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