OUR DUTY TO THE HOUSE OF GOD 
 
 A SERMON 
 
 PREACHED 
 
 IN AID OF THE RESTORATION OF THE PARISH CHURCH 
 
 OP 
 
 J>t 09argarct , £, 3£>c£tmin£tct 
 
 On SUNDAY, Nov. 12, 18 70 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. F. W. FARRAR, D.D., F.R.S. 
 
 CANON OF WESTMINSTER ; RECTOR OF SAINT MARGARET'S J LATE FELLOW OF 
 TRINITY COLL., CAMBRIDGE ; AND CHAPLAIN IN ORDINARY TO THE QUEEN 
 
 PUBLISHED BY BEQUEST 
 
 Jjrinteb bn 
 SPOTTISWOODE & CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE, LONDON 
 
 1876
 
 All who read this Sermon are earnestly requested to 
 help in gaining the requisite funds, which will be grate- 
 fully acknowledged by the Rev. Canon Farrar, D.D., St. 
 Margaret's Rectory, Westminster.
 
 SERMON. 
 
 ' And who then is vdUing to consecrate his service this day unto 
 the Lord T — 1 Chron. xxix. 5. 
 
 It has been, my friends, in all ages an instinctive feel- 
 ing with men who had any sense of religion that tt 
 should do their very utmost for the Temples of their wor- 
 ship. Even among our savage forefathers the huge stoix z 
 of Druidic circles, dragged over distances of many miL s 
 with infinite labour, show that, since they could not com- 
 mand splendour, they would at least furnish to their sacred 
 places the grandeur of massiveness, the evidence of toil. 
 The Temples of Egypt were approached through avenm 
 graven obelisks and granite kings. The Temples of 
 Babylon towered stage above stage, and story above story, 
 amid their hanging gardens, up to the huge altar that 
 crowned the giddiest height. The Temples of Assyria 
 glowed with the images of the Chaldeans, gorgeous hoi 
 men on goodly horses. The Temples of Greece shone with 
 the white marble of Pentelicus, and charmed the eye with 
 the living processions of their incomparable sculpture. 
 The Temples of Hindostan are inlaid with ivory and
 
 mosaic, till they gleam far away like opals in the burning 
 sunlight. The Mosques of Islam are splendid with inscrip- 
 tions and arabesques. Every creed, every nation, above 
 the savage, has deemed it at once a duty and a pleasure to 
 Lavish its riches on the House of God. 
 
 2. Perhaps, however, you will say that this was a part 
 of idolatry. Well, there was one place of worship of 
 which God himself furnished the plan and inspired the 
 architect. It was reared by a nation of fugitive slaves in 
 l he barren wilderness. There, at least, might have been 
 Mime excuse for utter simplicity and absence of ornament. 
 Was it so ? The Book of Exodus will give the answer : 
 6 Thus saith the Lord, of every man that giveth willingly, 
 with his heart, shall ye take my offering' — gold, and silver, 
 and blue, and purple, and scarlet, spices, sweet incense, 
 onyx stones — ' and let them make me a Sanctuary.' And 
 when that became too mean for a wealthier nation, read 
 what David prepared in these chapters of Chronicles : 3000 
 talents of gold of Ophir, and 7000 talents of refined 
 silver to overlay the walls, and stones of divers colours, 
 and glistering stones, and all manner of precious stones, 
 and marble in abundance ; and the people, you are told, 
 offered willingly, and rejoiced in the nobleness of their 
 own liberality. And when, in its turn, that Temple, de- 
 st roved by Nebuchadnezzar, was rebuilt by Zerubbabel, the 
 old men wept because in their poverty they could not equal 
 the past magnificence. And, centuries afterwards, Herod 
 the (iieat knew no such way to win the hearts of the people 
 .- I.v decorating their Temple. Forty and three years was it 
 
 /*"% 
 
 „ UIUC r 
 
 •A** 
 
 /
 
 in building, and on the very last day of His public ministry 
 the Apostles asked Jesus to gaze at it. They called attention 
 to its nine gates, rich with precious metals ; those towering 
 porches ; those bevelled monoliths so astonishing hTtheir 
 massiveness ; those alternate blocks of red and white marble, 
 recalling the crest and hollow of the sea-waves; those vast 
 clusters of golden grapes which twined their splendid luxu- 
 riance over golden doors ; that platform crowned with build- 
 ings which, with its marble whiteness and glittering roofs, 
 looked like a mountain whose snowy summit was gilded 
 by the sun. It was true that the Temple was nothing 
 without sincerity of worship ; and no gold or marble — no 
 brilliant vermilion or curiously carved cedar-wood — no 
 delicate sculpture or votive gems could change for the 
 heart of Jesus a cave of robbers into a House of Prayer. 
 Yet that was the Temple in which, at Jerusalem, He had 
 always taught. Though His own mortal body was, in a 
 sense infinitely higher, the Temple of Clod; though He 
 might have taught on the green declivities of Olivet with 
 His feet among the mountain lilies and the blue canopy 
 of Heaven above His head ; though the whole outer world 
 was to Him a Temple not made with hands, wherein winds 
 and fires play the part of angelic ministers ; yet the Lord of 
 the Temple came to the Temple of the Lord ; He recog- 
 nised the solemnity of chambers consecrated by recurring 
 ordinances, and honoured the Holy Places where the very 
 air breathed and burned with songs and supplication. 
 
 3. But perhaps again you will say that the Temple 
 was Jewish ; that Christianity introduced a purer ideal ;
 
 6 
 
 that the need for splendour ceased when, neither in this 
 mountain nor vet in Jerusalem, but in all places men might 
 worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth. Well, but — 
 2 in I ask— is it so? At first, indeed, Christians were 
 forced to worship anywhere: on the bare heath, in the 
 mouldering catacomb, in the seaworn cave. And let us 
 freely admit that, where better is not to be had, there the 
 barest walls of the ugliest room may serve as well as 
 though they were inlaid with sapphires, and the floor of 
 the lowliest cottage be sacred as though it were the rocks 
 of Sinai to kneelers' knees. But where men have the 
 means they are not, they ought not to be content with 
 niggard Churches. When kings became the nursing fathers 
 of Christianity and queens her nursing mothers, how glo- 
 rious at once became the shrines and basilicas which rose 
 in honour of God and of the saints. Enter the Cathedrals 
 of Italy, with their imperishable mosaics; see St. Mark's, 
 at Venice, glowing like an illuminated Bible with immortal 
 picturings ; nay, step but into the neighbouring Abbey, 
 with its solemn aisles, its high-embowered roofs, its marble 
 floors, its painted windows ; and there, in these days, when 
 too often ' the honour of God is thought to consist in the 
 poverty of His Temple, and the colour is denied to the 
 casement and the marble to the altar, while wealth is 
 exhausted in the luxury of boudoirs and the pride of 
 reception rooms,' read, in that epic poem of Gothic archi- 
 tecture, that our forefathers were more generous than we, 
 and that 
 
 1 They dreamt not of a perishable home 
 "Who thus could build.'
 
 4. But perhaps even still some one will object that 
 ' God does not need our liberality.' My friends, an igno- 
 rant dogmatist once remarked depreciatingly to a learned 
 divine, that God had no need of human wisdom. ' Sir,' 
 was the answer, ' if God has no need of human wisdom, 
 He has still less need of human ignorance'; and I say 
 that, if God does not need our liberality, still less does He 
 need our meanness. He who sculptured the great moun- 
 tains, and studded the heavens with stars, and made the 
 curtains of sunset flame with unimaginable gold ; He 
 who pencilled with scarlet and crimson the petals of 
 wayside blossoms, and gave such exquisite opalescence to 
 the little pearly shell upon the sands, can gain nothing, 
 it is true, from the poor magnificences of human art. 
 But what is nothing as respects His glory is much as 
 respects our love ; and be the offering much or little, God 
 loves, God accepts, God, I say boldly, will reward the devo- 
 tion which gives the best we have. To hear some men 
 argue, one would think that anything beyond lath and 
 plaster, bare roof and wooden floor, were too good for the 
 ministry of the Sacraments and the preaching of the Word. 
 My friends, where this mean spirit triumphs there will 
 never be the beauty of holiness and the seat of religion. It 
 was not the mighty spirit of self-sacrifice which made David 
 waste on the barren sand the precious water from the well of 
 Bethlehem. It was not the spirit of the penitent woman 
 who broke the alabaster box of spikenard very precious, to 
 pour it on Jesus' weary feet. It ivas the sullen spirit of the 
 traitor Judas, who knew nothing of the truth that it is more
 
 8 
 
 blessed to give than to receive. Oh, believe me, that the 
 Church which, as St. Chiysostom says, is s the place of 
 angels and archangels, the Court of God, and the image 
 of heaven,' is not to be built, is not to be decorated, in 
 the spirit in which we build a manufactory or a ware- 
 house. The rich can show taste enough, luxury enough, 
 in their own houses ; there they grudge literally no 
 expense which may surround them with fair colours and 
 noble associations : are we, then, to suppose that He who 
 filled with His treasures the lap of earth meant them to 
 be squandered only on our own gratification, while He 
 reserved for Himself the unlovely and the vile ? If I read 
 the Bible aright, I say that where the heart is noble, 
 where the affections are generous, where the devotion is 
 sincere, there all that is loveliest in art, in the sound of 
 instruments, in the voices of men and women, will be 
 gladly given, nay lavished, in God's service, that, out of 
 the gratitude of full hearts, we may add some little unto 
 Him who has given so much to us. 
 
 5. My friends, if these remarks be just, if these 
 thoughts be true — and I know that they are true — what 
 must be our feelings when we look roimd us at this House 
 of God ? It was once as fair as it still is famous. Almost, 
 if not quite, the oldest Parish Church in England ; built 
 by St. Edward the Confessor ; rebuilt by Edward the First : 
 improved by Edward the Fourth ; the Mother Church of 
 all the Churches west of Temple Bar ; a sister of the great 
 Abbey ; the Church where Caxton and Raleigh lie buried, 
 where Milton was married, where Palmerston was baptised ;
 
 the Church where, with uplifted hands, the Parliament of 
 England swore to the Covenant ; where almost every 
 famous divine since the days of the Tudors — Latimer, 
 Lightfoot, Cudworth, Baxter, Stillingfleet, Sancroft, Til- 
 lotson, Atterbury, Tenison, and hosts of others down to 
 the days of Milman and Melville — have officiated and 
 preached ; the Church of the House of Commons mentioned 
 repeatedly in English history, with an East Window which 
 was a present of the Town of Dort to Henry VII. and is 
 the unique memorial of his son Prince Arthur ; I sav 
 unhesitatingly, no Church in London, no Church in 
 England, can even approach it in the celebrity of its 
 memories, in the stateliness of its associations. And it 
 was once beautiful. These arches are of exquisite pro- 
 portion, and its true outlines, when its defacements are 
 swept away, are elegant and spacious. Those deface- 
 ments are due partly to the very dullest epoch of 
 architectural incompetence, and partly to the very 
 deadest age of religious life ; when vulgarity triumphed 
 over spirituality ; when houses of God were constructed 
 in contemptuous defiance of every true principle of 
 religion ; when, in fact, a Church, instead of being 
 regarded as a beautiful and holy place, inspiring in all who 
 enter it the two solemn thoughts, Pemember God and 
 Pemember Death, was regarded as an assembly-room for the 
 fashionable, with pew-doors and a pulpit. I say distinctly 
 that this Church, with its wasted space and buried pews, is 
 incomparably more ugly and incomparably worse for 
 purposes of worship than the Church of many a nameless
 
 10 
 
 village on the hills or in the fens. And just consider the 
 state and appearance of it. Of its exterior — wretched is 
 it- western porch — I will say nothing; but of its interior 
 judge for yourselves. Are you not distressed — I can only 
 Bay that 1 am daily distressed — would not anyone of 
 taste or feeling be distressed at the east end, at once so 
 tawdry and so tarnished; at these huge deep pews, in 
 winch I am sorry, but hardly surprised, that young people 
 >■ unetimes whisper and misbehave ; at the mean windows 
 of the aisles, which I find compared to those of a garret or an 
 almshouse ; at the dingy faded cloth, I know not how many 
 years old ; at these hideous receding galleries, so utterly 
 excluding light and air from the spaces below, that quite 
 naturally none will ever sit there, and room is worse than 
 thrown away which might and would be filled with 
 zealous worshippers ; at the service, of which, owing to the 
 structure, half is performed out of sight of one half of 
 the congregation, and the rest out of sight of the other 
 half, as though with the express object of making worship 
 listless and attention impossible? Can we wonder that the 
 Members of the House of Commons have almost ceased to 
 attend this their own Church, seeing that their pews have 
 been suffered to lapse into a condition unworthy of their 
 occupancy ? Look at the soiled altarcloth, of which the very 
 colour is undiscernible ; at the torn and spotted cushion on 
 which my hand rests, of which it is impossible to tell that 
 the tassels were once of gold. Look, lastly, at any of these 
 mean and corroded gas-standards; and, remembering that 
 in the wilderness it was ordered that the very tongs and
 
 11 
 
 snuflferdishes should be of pure gold, ask whether any one 
 of you would for one week tolerate in your own houses 
 the decrepit and mouldering furniture which you tolerate so 
 readily in the House of God ? Let the sad discreditable 
 truth be told, that one of the commonest remarks made 
 to the new Eector who has come among you is, that his 
 Church is too disheartening to attend ; that it is a damp 
 blanket to all effort. Parishioners of St. Margaret's and 
 worshippers in this Church, of which your predecessors and 
 your forefathers were so justly proud, are you content that 
 the commonest observation which I now hear about it should 
 be that it is one of the very dingiest and neglected-looking 
 Churches in all London ? 
 
 6. My friends, please God we will not long be liable 
 to this reproach. We can make this Church beautiful and 
 worthy, and we will make it so. For the sake of our 
 Father in Heaven ; for the sake of the Saviour whom we 
 worship ; for the sake of the generation to come ; to put 
 it on the lowest ground of all, for our own sakes — we will 
 do our duty, deny ourselves, and feel before we die that 
 in one good work at least we all have shared. To me, who 
 have come among you but so short a time; coming from 
 a very happy to a very trying life ; coming from a Chapel 
 which I had made radiant with fair colours — the present 
 state of this Church is utterly depressing. If so, what 
 should it be to you ? — to you, for some of whom tin's ( hurch 
 is surrounded by so many hallowed associations; who have 
 here worshipped God for years ; whose » hildren were here 
 baptised ; who stood here at the marriage altar ; who have
 
 12 
 
 seen their fathers or their loved ones carried hence to their 
 last Long home? Surely you will do something for it. It 
 is not I who began the work; it was Left you as a sacred 
 legacy by one whom you loved, and £1000 had already 
 been got together by your former Rector. Your new 
 Rector will do his best to get, if you will help him with 
 all your hearts, the £G000 that are still required. I 
 cannot, indeed, like St. Francis of Assissi, encourage you 
 to do the duty by carrying stone and mortar with my own 
 hands ; but I will do what to me is infinitely more dis- 
 agreeable — the begging for funds — in order mainly that 
 God's glory may be promoted, and His work done more 
 heartily and self-denyingly in this parish, and in order 
 too that a succeeding Rector, in coming to a parish where 
 the poor are so many and the workers so few, may not be 
 also and further distressed by the condition of that Holy 
 Place which ought to be for every clergyman his best 
 solace and his most powerful aid. And I ask you, if — as 
 is the case — all sorts of remote villages and obscure fishing- 
 places have raised sums as large as this by the zeal of 
 their parishioners seconding the efforts of their clergy ; if 
 some thousands of Churches have been restored or rebuilt 
 in the last twenty years, are we to fall so utterly behind our 
 brethren in zeal for God's service ? — are we to leave our 
 Church as an utter reproach to us in the very heart of this 
 great city, and under the shadow of the Abbey walls ? 
 .My IV Lei u Is, if any of you do not think that this work is 
 necessary ; if you do not think that God requires it as a 
 sacred duty at our hands ; if any of you love your money
 
 13 
 
 better than your duty to the House of God, then to such I 
 have no more to say. We want only cheerful givers, and 
 we do not want the grudging spirit which after all tendeth 
 only to poverty. But if you with me will put your 
 shoulder to the wheel ; if the more generous of you will 
 do as much as I think you ought to do ; if you will enjoy 
 the luxury of a little self-denial for God's service, then by 
 next August the reproach may be rolled away, and the 
 work begun. I will provide easy opportunities by which 
 even the poorest may swell the common fund by contri- 
 buting their mite ; and if others would write upon the 
 paper in the pews the amount which they are ready to 
 subscribe, and either send it to me or put it in the plate 
 with their offertory, it will save much trouble, anxiety, and 
 time. Will you promise me £1000 this morning? You 
 could easily do it. There must — if I be not much mis- 
 taken — there must be at least two hundred people at this 
 moment, in this congregation, who, without any sacrifice 
 worth mentioning, could write down their names on those 
 papers either for £5 or more ; there must be at least two 
 hundred more who could do it for less sums. And if each 
 of you would thus answer an appeal made to you in God's 
 name, you might this very morning, and at this very 
 moment, set a memorable example, and earn a royal 
 blessing. ' Who then is willing to consecrate his service 
 this day unto the Lord ? ' 
 
 7. I will add but very little. Some have argued that 
 this Church blocks up the Abbey, and ought to be pulled 
 down. That is, in plain words, nonsense. In the opinions
 
 14 
 
 of the best architects and highest authorities, it distinctly 
 and decidedly improves the view of the Abbey by throwing 
 out its grand proportions. My brethren, if you will do 
 your part, I can guarantee that the Church will not be 
 pulled down. In the days when the Lord Protector 
 Somerset tried to pull it down to get materials for his 
 palace, the parishioners rose in a body, tore away his 
 scaffold, drove off his workmen, and — all honour to 
 them for it ! — saved their Church. That was what the 
 parishioners of St. Margaret's did in 1546. What will 
 you do in 1876 ? If indeed you are content — I feel per- 
 fectly confident that you will not be content ; but if you 
 were content — to leave it as dingy, as ugly, as incommo- 
 dious, and as unworthy as it is, then I for one would not 
 lift one finger to save it. On the contrary, I would gladly 
 pull away the first stone, and say, ' Let an inscription be 
 placed here to record — Here once stood the most ancient 
 and famous Parish Church in England; but those who 
 worshipped in it, those whose Parish Church it was, did 
 not care enough for it to make its condition creditable : cut 
 it down ; why cumbereth it the ground ? ' 
 
 Let me then, my brethren, entreat you all to give in a 
 noble and munificent spirit, I ask you, by all the com- 
 forts and temporal gifts, by all the far higher and greater 
 spiritual blessings, which God has given you ; I ask you, 
 for the sake of that Church of England whose sons you 
 are, whose Sacraments you receive, into whose membership 
 you were baptised ; I ask you, by all sweet and silent com- 
 munion with Christ, by all hallowing influence of prayer,
 
 15 
 
 by all those pure and solemn voices of human praise, to 
 give up something for (rod, to show your love and your 
 liberality by the large-hearted readiness with which you 
 come forward to respond to this appeal. And may you so 
 learn, more and more, to raise your thoughts from earth, 
 and earth's treasures, to the incorruptible crowns of Heaven, 
 that when you pass away from the worship of earthly 
 houses, which are but poor and perishing at their brightest 
 and their best, you may, having made to yourselves friends 
 of the mammon of unrighteousness, pass to the golden 
 streets and jasper walls of that New Jerusalem, which, 
 though it burn with the unimaginable splendours of light 
 and love, yet is most unlike earth in this, that it hath no 
 need of any Temple therein ; ( for the Lord Grod Almighty 
 and the Lamb are the Temple of it ' : ( the glory of the Lord 
 doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.' 
 
 TO GEl AOZA. 
 
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