"The Lord is in His holy Temple: let all the earth keep silence before
Him."--_Hab. 2:20._
[Illustration]
THE Jews had gone back to their old city of Jerusalem, but they found
it looking very sad and ruinous. The walls were broken down, and the
pleasant houses were heaps of ruins, and grass and brambles had come up
in the courts, and there were heaps of stone blackened with the fire
and smoke that had burnt down the city.
The first thing they did was to clear the place where God's holy Temple
used to stand, and to build it up again. But they were not rich and
powerful like King Solomon, who built the first Temple; they had no
gold and silver, and the new Temple they built was very small and poor
compared with the old one.
There were old men among them who remembered the first Temple as it
used to be, and they wept aloud as they saw how different the new one
was; but there were young men who were very glad to have a Temple at
all, and they shouted for joy; so there was a mixed sound of weeping
for sorrow and of crying out with joy.
Then God sent His Prophet Haggai to tell the old men not to be afraid,
for the glory of this latter House should be greater than that of the
former. The way this should be was that our Blessed Lord Himself would
come to the new Temple, as a little Babe at first and afterwards as a
grown Man; and when He was there, the honor and glory of the Temple
would be greater than ever it was before. Now there is no one Temple:
but God's Houses are Churches, and we have them everywhere to pray to
Him in, and meet Him there though we cannot see Him. Let us take care
to worship Him there very humbly and reverently.
[Illustration: RETURN OF THE JEWS FROM CAPTIVITY.--Ezra 1:5.]