In that magnificent imagery, St. John shows
us how the most terrible destruction which the Lord ever brought upon
a holy place and holy institutions was really a blessing to all the
world. Let us believe that it has been so often since; that it will
be so often again. Let us look forward to the future with hope and
faith, even while we look back on the past with love and regret. Let
us leave unmanly and unchristian fears to those who fancy that Christ
has deserted his kingdom, and has left them to govern it in his
stead; and who naturally break out into peevishness and terrified
lamentations, when they discover that the world will not go their
way, or any man's way, because it is going the way of God, whose ways
are not as man's ways nor his thoughts as man's thoughts. Let us
have faith in God and in Christ, amid all the chances and changes of
this mortal life; and believe that he is leading the world and
mankind to
'One far-off divine event
Toward which the whole creation moves;'
and possess our souls in patience, and in faith, and in hope for
ourselves and for our children after; while we say, with the Psalmist
of old: 'Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of
the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall
perish, but thou shalt endure.
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