And yet when a greater and more perfect tabernacle is in building, not planned of mortal thought, and whose stones were too heavy to be moved by mortal hands, how little reference there is to the plan of the Founder, how few that are desirous of living according to the counsel and will of God, and to see in that will, not a mere legal skeleton of the structure, but a pattern, good and acceptable and perfect, with no detail wanting for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. Alas! that our lives should be lived so much at random instead of being so fashioned that it might be said over the completed structure at the last, "Whose architect and craftsman is God." In Christianity the ideal is to be the actual: there is to be no "shooting at the moon, because by that means you reach higher than by aiming at a tree" (a very doubtful statement even in mechanics); what God wants us to be that we must be; and if He says, "Be ye perfect," then let us go on to perfection and reach it. The Christian is called upon by his Master to live out and actualise God's ideal thought concerning him. Upon the map of his life is already marked out the road by which he is to reach the heavenly city; if, at least, he reaches it, as God intends, by the shortest way. There are no roundabout roads marked on the map in the Mount, and yet the Divine Plan of our life will be found inclusive of the minutest necessary details, just as an Ordnance map will tell you each feature of interest and importance as you go from place to place. It is of the utmost importance that we should take counsel's opinion about our lives, and that we should pray, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?" that we should, if need be, weep much, until the Lamb shall take off the seals from that book of life, which, in the archives of the celestial city, is entitled "The Life of ---- taken from the Pattern in the Mount"; that we should learn to conform ourselves to the Divine original, just as a manuscript, however deformed by glosses and traditions, is accurately and certainly emended by the discovery of the original text; that we should know, in some sense, as Christ did, whence we come and whither we go; that, as He said, we also might feel that for this end we were born and for this purpose we came into the world, that we might bear witness to the truth; that, with Him, too, we might in some measure be able to say, "The son can do nothing but what he seeth the Father do"; and that at our ending it might be said, "He lived out the secret thought and counsel of the Almighty."