The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Chronicles — Section 438

ment and waste would be to add an incalculable amount to the growth of goodnes~ and to the benefit of the world. And the pattern good for religious devotion exhibited to us here shows the following characteristics:- 1. IT BEEKS AN INDIVIDUAL OBJECT, The house to be bnilded for the Lord, the temple, is now the thought of David's heart and the object of what remains to him of earthly life. And of this he might truly say in the language used long after by St. Paul, "This one thing I do." This was confessedly in David's time, and from the point of view of his nation, a very great enterprise; yet it was om thing to think of and another to do, How much time and feeling and earnestness are frittered away, countinu for nothing except mournful moral reflection in the retrospect, with those who wait t°o <lo anything until they might, as they fondly imagine, do all, or, if not all, might embrace a very large compas.s in their beneficent aspiration I Universal observation rebukes the large foible. The useful men have been those who have steadily and with determina- tion pursued one thing at the time. This is the first healthy sign of religious devotion, when with heart and hand it weds itself to one object of zeal and pursuit. Concentra- tion of purpose, of affection, of energy, is as much the secret of great usefulness directed to the very highest ends as it is of that poor travesty of it, earthly success, so often mistaken and mishonoured as the equivalent of usefulness. II. IT STUDIES ITS OBJEC'l' WITH DISCIIIMINATING, PAINSTAKING CARE. We are often tempted to buy off individual responsibility by doing just what others do, and giving just what others give, and suffering ourselves to be borne on the general stream of opinion, or on the old stream of opinion, as though no individual judgment, or con- science, or conviction were possible to us. This, however, is the very opposite of what we do when we feel our own individual interest to be concerned. If we are to give reality and honesty to God's work and grace and finish to our work for man, for L:hrist's sake, it must be by this latter "rule" that we are guided. And very lovingly and heartily must we resign ourselves to its methods. How carefully David bad sur- veyed in thought the whole and every part of the one work to which he had "set his affection" I The gold, and silver, and brass, and iron, and wood, and onyx stones, and glistering stones, and stones of divers colours, and all manner of precious stone~, and marble stones in abundance,-all the variety of them had been imagined and pro'l"ided for, or all the weight and purity of the metal had been measured and contracted for. Thought and discrimination and pains had been spared in nothing of all these. The circumspection and minuteness of care and fond anxiety which men know so well to spend on themseh•es and their own transient, temporal interests, David now spends on the work of God. Such exercise of religious devotion throws thrilling interest and unwonted animation into any holy work, and invokes with unerrin,q importunity Heaven's abounding blessing. III. IT PURSUES ITS ANXIOUS PREPARATIONS, AND, IF NECESSARY, PURSUES THEM FOR A LONG TI.ME IN SILENCE, OR IN COMPARATIVE SILENCE. Nothing less needs ostentation, nothing less warrants display, than our work for God. When any man is deeply conscious that it is God's work that he has in hand, then he feels it is God's glory that he has at heart, and this dispenses with all craving for notice and applause. '!'bis latter is poor food for any one whomsoever who has already known and tasted the other. Now, the case of David at the present time was such that what he was doing must needs have been known. It could not have been hidden in his own heart or anywhere else. Yet it is plain that he had for some time been patiently, and with no needless publicity, making his zealous preparations. He was certainly far from finding himself in the position of Noah when planning and building the ark-the object of ridicule, hindrance, and jeering of the people. No, nor, on the other hand, is he continually sounding the trumpet and calling attention to himself and his doings. But now the ripe moment had come when the loving and patient preparations of one must be handed over, not exactly to another, but into the trust of the representatives of a nation as well. It was a moment when it was needful that the deeds and the purposes of David should no longer simply escape into the knowledge of others, but be formally and solemnly announced to all a listening people. 'l'be work of Christ in the world loves silenco, patience, hiddenness long time. Neither he nor his kingdom nor his chiefest servants "come with observation," nor live" with observation;" yet the longer the delay an<.i. the humbler the obscurity, the more effective and heart-stirring will the final" mani•  44-2 THE FIRST BOOK OF TlIE CHRONICLES. [cu. utt. 1-30.