Religious building

“ The spirit of Temple-building seems to have taken possession of the people. One Temple has already been built, and it is designed to build three more. We are prompted by holy influences to embark in this labor. ”

“ That is the canon of church building as ordained by God himself—make the church as grand an offering as you can, but keep the ritual pure—fill the temple with all the emblems of his glory, but remember that it is he only who is to be worshipped. Such is the teaching of revelation; and now we turn to nature, that boundless temple which God has built up to himself with his own hands. ”

“ But what is this white conventicle-looking edifice which crowns its heights? Surely it is the refuge of some Mormon congregation—the temple, perchance, of some pagan fanaticism? Nay verily, good sirs,—assuage your indignation, for this is a Church of your own communion, a sort of Chapel of Ease to the parish of St. John. The architect was “abroad” when this building was designed; for one less becoming the outward character of a Church it is impossible to conceive. It is dedicated to St. Paul, and was opened for divine worship in 1830. ”

“ I will build a temple, a great illimitable temple, a second Pantheon, a church which shall unite all churches within itself, in which it shall be granted to every man to have his own altar, and adopt his own religious exercises. ”

“ Thus it may be well said that the past quarter of a century was the era of church-building as well as of increase. But the vast energy so displayed was not employed solely in one direction. While thousands of temples have arisen to the honor and glory of God, his afflicted creatures, the sick, unfortunate, and helpless ”

“ The temple is built of sun-baked brick, probably in accordance with hieratic tradition, which held to the ancient building material used in an age when the architects were unacquainted with the finer and more durable burnt brick. Small courts with side chambers lead into an inner holy of holies, where in a niche stood the symbol or effigy of the goddess. Behind the sanctuary there is a narrow blind passage where the priests could lurk behind the cult image and confound the common folk with mysterious sounds and hidden voices. ”

“ Facing the churchyard we discovered a most interesting relic of past times when religion was more to the fore than it is to-day. This was a pre-Reformation priest-house of the fourteenth century or thereabouts, an austere building of thick rough masonry, deep and narrow arched windows, and a great chimney-stack at one end, a building probably erected in this remote spot by the travelling monks who had not to live in it. I have, here and there, come upon an ancient fourteenth or fifteenth-century priest-house, for they have not all been improved away. ”

“ In looking still forward we find that there are other things ahead of us. One thing is the building of Temples, and that is a very important item, and ought to rest with force upon the minds of all good Saints. ”

“ For this is none other, as we read and sing, than the house of God in which to pray, the court of God to offer praise, the choir of God to sing unto Him, the altar of God whereon to celebrate, the gate of God whereby to enter heaven, the ladder of God to rise above the clouds. As a noble city is preserved with walls and gates and bars, so also is the monastery of the religious with many devout brethren, with sacred books, and with learned men. ”

“ The practical divorce of Art and Utility has told nowhere more disastrously than in the building of churches. Gothic buildings with 'long-drawn aisles and fretted roof,' designed and adapted for the processional and ritual worship of the Romish Church, have for three centuries been the dreary reverberating theatres of Protestant reading and preaching. Perhaps few of us could recall a more comfortless ideal than a rural parish church in winter, half the congregation excluded from seeing, and the other half from hearing the monotonous reader of prayers and sermons. ”

“ Such a church may well trouble the mind of the English student who thinks that no building is complete which has not its arcade, its triforium, and its clerestory. One of our puny churches would stand—nave, aisles, chancel, tower, and spire and all—within one of the bays of the nave and aisles here ”

“ Because the Church was not only the House of God but also the true centre of all common life, the building had to be different from anything that had ever been constructed by the hands of man. The temples of the Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans had been merely the shrine of a local divinity. ”

“ He frequently said, that if it were not for the covetousness of the people, the Lord would not give revelations concerning the building of temples, for we already knew all about them; the revelations giving us the order of the Priesthood make known to us what is wanting in that respect at our hands. If you should go to work to build a dwelling house, you know you would want a kitchen, a buttery, sitting rooms, bedrooms, halls, passages, and alleys. ”

“ There is also a pressing necessity for us to obtain fuller information, and come to a decision about the subject of church architecture, and all that relates to the exterior of divine worship. We are building cathedrals and churches in every style, and on principles which are as various as there are fancies and theories in the brains of architects. ”

“ The absolute sympathy of all the parts of this lovely building, the graceful arches, the diaper work in the spandrils of the choir arches, the loftiness and mysterious atmosphere of the ancient structure will appeal to all the highest aspirations of the individual. It is the temple of God, and also the shelter of those either of noble or lowly birth who have, according to their capabilities, furthered civilisation and promoted the common good; who, in fact, have done God’s work in this present world and endeavoured to make their fellow-men more worthy of the world to come. ”

“ These symbols are evidently taken from the temple and altar of Jewish worship, and represent corresponding analogies under the Christian dispensation.
To measure anything, is to examine and take notice of its parts and proportions; and that by which it is measured, is the standard or rule to which it should conform.
The temple, is a proper symbol of the church of God; which is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the Chief Corner Stone, in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord,” Eph. ”

“ Many of our churches defy Protestantism. Grand cathedrals are they, which make us shiver as we enter them. The windows are so constructed as to exclude the light and inspire a religious awe. The walls are of stone, which makes us think of our last home. ”

“ The cathedrals and churches are massive and liberally supplied with heavy buttresses; in fact, they look more like fortresses than places of worship; and there are so many of them that one might easily fall into the error of believing that the founders of the city and early inhabitants were a very religious community. ”

“ On the other hand, this mode sets forth a continual worship; the building itself seems a perpetual offering made to God; by day and night it pleads the Passion of His Son and the graces of His saints. I do not know whether this mute intercession is most striking when it is crowded with worshippers, or when, as we saw it at eight last night, two single lamps twinkled in its immense obscurity, and the last light of day was feebly visible through the coloured windows. As we were standing thus under the lantern, we heard a voice at the other end of the church, "si chiude, si chiude." ”

“ Our Temple building is of the same nature; we are living in the dispensation of the fulness of times, embracing all the powers, principles, doctrines and covenants since the world was, and among the rest is Temple building. ”

“ The foundation of the temple is laid, but the building does not go on. "Every man runs to his own house, to finish that, and to make that convenient and fine, and no care is taken about the Lord's house; and therefore it is that God crosses you thus in all your affairs, to testify his displeasure against you for that neglect, and to bring you to a sense of your sin and folly." ”

“ In the streets beyond, nothing but the foundations of the houses could be traced, the tall cocoa and the lank grass waving rankly over many a forgotten building. In the only edifices which superstition has hitherto saved, the churches, convents, and monasteries, a window or two, dimly lighted up, showed that here and there dwells some solitary priest. ”

“ Besides the mosque there is a fine building, the low roof of which is supported by innumerable columns, all of plain brick, resembling a crypt, which will be used for winter worship. In addition, a lavish endowment has provided on the grounds a theological college and a hospital, with most, if not all, of the funds needed for their maintenance; and on every part of the vast pile of buildings the architect has lavished all the resources of his art. ”

“ Outwardly the edifice, built of a combination of light brick, Scotch granite, and terra cotta, seemed but little "like a church", yet only, as it were, to impress upon the mind the absurdity of ever calling an edifice—a thing built by masons and carpenters—a "church", which is a company of human souls called to do God's will. Yet for such uses, and for such a company, and intended to be helpful to the education and training of the young in social holiness and for the worship of God, what could be better? ”

“ But a Church cannot be content only with a building sufficiently well-built to hold its worshippers and sufficiently in tone with its surroundings to express the unity of art and nature. It has a further form of expression that it must satisfy. ”

“ The great age of church-building flourished at a time when other arts and commerce were but just beginning. Whence, out of the dark ages, sprang the skill and knowledge to build such fine and sculpturesque edifices, when other trades were in their infancy, and civic and communal life scarcely organized? ”

“ The church as a lecture-room will interest only the cultivated few; the church as the temple of art sanctified by religion is the home of worship for the multitude.
Religion, if it be anything, must be popular, which science can never be, and which art always is. Then, in the name of the religion of the poor, let architecture advance to raise to God the temple of majesty and beauty, the democratic palace of the people, where the prince and the beggar sit side by side as brothers, a basilica prouder and loftier than that of the sceptred monarch. ”

“ The plan of the building is remarkable, containing a double nave, each complete with its aisles, choir, and high altar, the cause of this peculiarity being the fact that the miners were of sufficient wealth and importance at the time of its construction to insist upon having a separate church to themselves apart from the townspeople. ”

“ They are driven to set pillar against pillar in the same temple, while we can set city against city across the plains of the world. While for us a church rises from its foundations as naturally as a flower springs from a flower-bed, they have to bless the soil and curse the stones that stand on it. ”

“ If Jesus could not lay his head in an unholy, polluted temple, how can the Latter-day Saints expect that the Holy Spirit will take and abide its residence with them, in their tabernacles and temples of clay, unless they keep themselves pure, spotless, and undefiled?
It is no wonder that the Son of Man, soon after his resurrection from the tomb, ascended to his Father, for he had no place on earth to lay his head ”

“ I hardly know what is best there: the strange and impressive little collegial church, with its romanesque atrium or narthex, its doorways covered with primitive sculpture of the richest kind, its treasure of a so-called pagan altar, embossed with fighting warriors, its three pyramidal domes, so unexpected, so sinister, which I have not met elsewhere, in church architecture; or the huge square keep, of the eleventh century, - the most cliff-like tower I remember, whose immeasurable thick- ness I did not penetrate ”

“ The whole range of buildings is enclosed with walls, like a fortress. You see in this architecture the gloom and desolation which overspread the world. Churches are heavy and sombre; they are places for dreary meditation on the end of the world, on the failure of civilization, on the degradation of humanity,--and yet the only places where man may be brought in contact with the Deity who presides over a fallen world, exalting human hopes to heaven, where miseries end, and worship begins. ”

“ I expect, however, that by the time our building is finished we shall find that we shall want a little more room. "Mormonism" is growing, spreading abroad, swelling and increasing, and I expect it is likely that our building will not be quite large enough, but we have it so arranged, standing on piers, that we can open all the doors and preach to people outside. ”

“ This is to be a temple of universal religion, symbolizing in its architecture the unities of faith and humanity. "The temple with its nine doors will be set in the center of a circular garden symbolizing the all-inclusive circle of God's unity; nine pathways will lead to the nine doors and each one coming down the pathway of his own sect or religion or trend of thought will leave at the door the dogmas that separate and, under the dome of God's oneness, all will become one.... ”

“ The church is the waymark, for the walls of the old court are low, and it is only when the wind favours the sight of them, by causing the branches of near trees to bend beneath its sway, that even the church-tower can be discerned among the young green foliage of the spring. ”

“ The temple of God, now in the course of erection, being already raised one story, and which is 120 feet by 80 feet, of stone, with polished pilasters, of an entire new order of architecture, will be a splendid house for the worship of God, as well as an unique wonder for the world, it being built by the direct revelation of Jesus Christ for the salvation of the living and the dead. ”