Page:Visions and Prophecies of Zechariah (Baron, David).djvu/212

 and wonderful as it may appear to us, that not only is the blessedness of man created in the image of God conditional on communion with his Maker, but the infinite and everblessed God, the Father of spirits, seeks communion with man. Indeed, it might be said that this was the chief object which God had in creating man that he might be a temple to contain His perfection and fulness; that the mind with which He had endowed him might comprehend and admire His infinite wisdom, and his heart respond to His love. In the Garden of Eden we get a beautiful glimpse of what was intended as the beginning of a fellow ship between God and man, which was to go on and unfold through limitless ages.

But soon sin that hateful and accursed thing in God's universe entered, and communion between God and man was interrupted. The outward token of this was the banishment of the man from the garden, and the placing of the cherubim with the " flaming sword which turned every way " to bar the way against his re-entering that blessed abode.

But the heart of God yearned for man, and in His infinite wisdom and grace He devised a means by which His banished be not for ever an outcast from Him.

He chose Israel, whom He suffered to approach to Him through the sprinkling of blood, which in His mind pointed to the blood of the everlasting covenant which the Messiah, who was to be " led as a lamb to the slaughter," was to shed as an atonement for sin; and to them His proclamation went forth, " Make Me a tabernacle, that I may dwell among you" The tabernacle was built, and then the Temple on Mount Moriah; but soon, alas! this Temple, too, was defiled, and sin in its progress made such rapid strides that it penetrated even into the Holy of Holies, and God was obliged entirely to withdraw His manifest presence even from His chosen dwelling-place.

After the destruction of the first Temple by the Chal deans under Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings xxv.) the Jews built another one after their restoration from Babylon; but the