Gospel from Two Testaments; Sermons on the International Sunday-School Lessons for 1893 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: lessor? II. Jar?uary 8. REBUILDING THE TEMPLE. Ezra iii: 1-13. By Professor SHAILER MATHEWS, Watervilie, Me. AN interest not wholly wanting in pathos, belongs to the returning settlers on the deserted and impoverished hills of Judea. Few in numbers when compared with the rich bourgeoisie comfortably settled in their shops at Babylon, established by a far-sighted king as a buffer between Egypt and his own empire; the re-founders of Jerusalem united the devotion of enthusiasts with the dangers of a forlorn hope. The history of the first twenty-five years of these returned captives abundantly shows how the desperate circumstances into which they were thrust quenched their religious fervor and blurred the noble purposes with which they re-entered the promised land. But in the first few months of their struggle with poverty their life was marked by an energy that has made the world forget those later years which had need of the drastic reforms of Ezra. It was in the first flush of this early enthusiasm that the new settlers undertook the great object of their return?the re- establishment of their national faith. Nourished on the visions of Ezekiel, themselves the holy remnant, bearing as national vicars, the sorrows and grief of their entire people, their thoughts centered less on their political than on their religious future. The altar and the temple, not the walls and thepalaces, were the first objects of their care. Before they had been more than a few weeks in their new homes, the great altar of burnt sacrifice was rebuilt, with foundations double the dimensions of its predecessor. In October, 536 B. C., it was consecrated, and thereafter the morning and the evening sacri fices were offered regularly. Something less than a year later the foundations of the new Temp...