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day came when, in its majestic beauty, the Temple of God arose 

 complete. 



Here we have a striking image of the destiny of humanity. 

 God, the sovereign Architect, constructs throughout the ages a 

 vast and glorious edifice, whose plan we have never seen, but 

 which will be the Temple in which we all shall one day worship. 

 Far, far from heaven, far from the holy Zion, far from the abode 

 of peace and glory, here in the land of our exile, the materials 

 are being prepared ; for the noise of suffering and trial must not 

 penetrate the sky ; each of us must finish at his post the work 

 entrusted to him, renouncing all idea of comprehending the 

 place it shall occupy in the universal harmony ; for how can 

 we, workmen of a day, presume to understand or realize the 

 designs of an eternal God ? 



Enough for us to know that our work, however humble it 

 may be, is known to the universal Master ; that He has willed it, 

 and that He will accept it if honestly done. Enough for us to 

 believe that a day will come when the materials dispersed in a 

 seeming confusion, which is of course to us incomprehensible 

 now, shall be united in an order which shall ravish our delighted 

 intelligence ; then all human pain, sacrifice, and anguish shall 

 no longer seem to have been useless ; then shall be recovered 

 from oblivion all the noble deeds of heroism and hidden virtue 

 now seen by God alone ; nothing shall then seem to have been 

 the work of chance, or fate, in human history, or in our own in- 

 dividual existence. Chance shall rule no longer, and the edifice 

 that Divine wisdom by an earthly work has prepared, shall rise 

 in beauty, sovereign and sublime as the eternal sanctuary of 

 infinite love. Yet there is something wanting still ; doubtless it 

 is an incomparable consolation to know that all concurs in the 

 universal plan of God, that nothing is useless, nothing lost in 

 any human life ; but what is there to assure us it is anything 

 more than a lovely and taking theory ? How can we know that 

 love is indeed the centre and the end of all the Divine dispensa- 

 tion. Too many clouds hide it for me to believe in it ? Oh ! if I 

 could only for a moment hear the beatings of my Father's heart, 

 how would I say with Jacob, " Tell me Thy name ! or with 

 Job, " Oh, that I could find him ! or with Isaiah, Oh, that he 

 would rend the heavens and come down ! ^^Yes, between the 

 hidden God and myself the distance is too great to believe in 

 His love. I must see Him, and contemplate His glorious beauty 

 face to face. Well, to this desire of the soul God has responded. 

 The Incarnation! here is the best proof of God's providence. On 

 our earth we have seen appear and shine forth a holy love, the 

 like of which humanity never before beheld. His love is the 

 very foundation of the character of Jesus, the principle of all 



VOL. VII. P 



