onstructive work done. Many a wretched hovel, the abode of sorrow and
want, many a den of infamy, many a palace of pride, many a temple of
idols, will have to be pulled down yet, and men's eyes will be blinded
by the dust, and their hearts will ache as they look at the ruins. Be
it so. The finished structure will obliterate the remembrance of poor
buildings that cumbered its site. This Emperor of ours may indeed say,
that He found the city of brick and made it marble. Have patience if His
work is slow; mourn not if it is destructive; doubt not, though the
unfinished walls, and corridors that seem to lead nowhere, and all the
confusion of unfinished toils puzzle you, when you try to make out the
plan. See to it, my brother, that you lend a hand and help to rear the
true temple, which is rising slowly through the ages, at which
successive generations toil, and from whose unfinished glories they
dying depart, but which shall be completed, because the true Builder
'ever liveth,' and is 'a priest for ever after the order of
Melchizedek.' Above all, brethren! take heed that you are yourselves
builded in that temple. Travellers sometimes find in lonely quarries
long abandoned or once worked by a vanished race, great blocks squared
and dressed, that seem to have been meant for palace or shrine. But
there they lie, neglected and forgotten, and the building for which they
were hewn has been reared without them. Beware lest God's grand temple
should be built up without you, and you be left to desolation and decay.
Trust your souls to Christ, and He will set you in the spiritual house
which the King greater than Solomon is building still.

In one of the mosques of Damascus, which has been a Christian church,
and before that was a heathen temple, the portal bears, deep cut in
Greek characters, the inscription, 'Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an
everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all
generations.' The confident words seem contradicted by the twelve
centuries of Mohammedanism on which they have looked down. But though
their silent prophecy is unheeded and unheard by the worshippers below,
it shall be proved true one day, and the crescent shall wane before the
steady light of the Sun of Righteousness. The words are carven deep over
the portals of the temple which Christ rears; and though men may not be
able to read them, and may not believe them if they do, though for
centuries traffickers have defiled its courts, and