It should be recognized in conduct in reference to others. As "God's house," all of His children have a rightful place there. This right should be recognized by courtesy to others, especially to strangers and to people in humble station.
Wherever possible, the church should be open every day and all day for private prayer and meditation. Many must of necessity live in crowded dwellings, or in circumstances in which quiet and privacy are hard to obtain. But to all, whatever their circumstances, the open church offers opportunities not afforded at home. Sacred associations and objects greatly aid thought and devotion; and in the quiet church, where there is so much to remind of God and sacred things, and so little of the world and of sin, we can think and pray better than elsewhere. It has been found a very helpful thing in the Christian life to form the habit of stopping in the church, whenever in its neighborhood, for a few moments of prayer, and to use it also as a place of refuge in time of trial and temptation.
Symbolism of the Church Building
"As soon as the early Christians were at liberty to build churches according to their own mind, they took pains to make them significant of their religion. Probably at first the Christians took for the purposes of their worship such buildings as they could get, adapting them to their uses as best they might. But when they grew strong enough and independent enough to build as the heart and imagination dictated, then they showed themselves careful to make their houses of God in shape and dimension suggestive of what they believed." These old builders were Churchmen, and made their Churchmanship and their belief felt in their work. A deep and true symbolism was carried out in the plan and construction of their churches. Thus Christian churches at an early day came to be built in the form of a cross. This was not only the most ornamental form of structure; it was much more: it made the very fabric of the church the symbol of our faith in Christ crucified. Some chancels of old churches were even built with a slight deflection from the line of direction of the nave, thus representing the inclination of our Saviour's head upon the Cross. It made also the gathering together of each congregation of His Church—which is His mystical Body—the symbol of that body itself: that part in the nave representing His body, that in the transepts His outstretched arms, that in the choir His head. And so, also, "the united prayers and praises of the congregation make, as it were, in their very sound the sign of the Cross."
This plan of constructive symbolism affects not only the fabric of the church as a whole, but each separate part of the church has its religious character and meaning.
Let us linger for a moment on the outside. The spire points upward and teaches its lesson of aspiration. "Lift up your hearts," it seems to say, and holds up the Cross as that by which alone we are to be "exalted unto everlasting life." Whenever we lift up our eyes to it, it ought to repeat for us that lesson—rebuke downward thoughts and desires, and point up to spiritual and heavenly things.
In the tower are the bells, and what the spire with its uplifted Cross says to us in silent eloquence these say in sound and music.
The office of the bell in calling to prayer and holy worship was regarded in olden time with much reverence. The use of bells for the purpose of gathering people together in large numbers appears to be of Christian origin. "Large bells hung in a tower seem to have been unknown before A.D. 500. They were first made in Campania in Italy, whence the Italian name campana, a bell, and campanile, a bell-tower. Bells were anciently supposed to have considerable powers, especially against evil spirits. Their use for religious purposes probably originated this belief. The hand-bells of the British apostles, St. Patrick, St. Columba, St. David, etc., are said to have been long preserved, if not existing even now. They are four-sided bronze bells, sometimes of several plates fused into one. St. Patrick is said by an old legend to have dispersed a host of demons, who were too bold to be scared by the mere ringing of the bell, by flinging it into the midst of them.