Go, in the reign of Israel's greatest King, to the heights of the forest of Lebanon. See that noble Cedar, the pride of its compeers, an old wrestler with the northern blasts of Palestine! Summer loves to smile upon it--night spangles its feathery foliage with dew-drops--the birds nestle on its branches--the wild deer slumber under its shadow--the weary pilgrim, or wandering shepherd, repose under its curtaining boughs from the mid-day heat or from the furious storm; but all at once it is marked out to fall,--the old denizen of that primeval forest is doomed to succumb to the woodman's stroke! As we see the unsparing axe making its first gash on its gnarled trunk--then the noble limbs stripped of their branches--and at last the proud "Tree of God" coming with a crash to the ground; we exclaim against the wanton destruction--the demolition of this noblest of pillars in the temple of nature,--and we are tempted to cry with the prophet, as if inviting the sympathy of every lowlier stem--invoking inanimate things to resent the affront--"_Howl, fir-tree, for the cedar has fallen!_" But wait a little!--follow that gigantic trunk as the workmen of Hiram launch it down the mountain side,--thence conveyed in monster rafts along the blue waters of the Mediterranean,--and last of all, behold it set a glorious polished beam in the Temple of God;--and then, as you see its destination,--gazing down on the very Holy of Holies, set in the diadem of the Great King;--say, can you grudge that the crown of Lebanon was despoiled, in order that this jewel might have so noble a setting? That cedar stood as a stately beam and pillar in _nature's_ temple, but the glory of the latter house was greater than the glory of the former. How many of our souls are like these cedars of God! His axes of trial have stripped and bared them,--we see no reason for dealings so dark and mysterious; but He has a noble end and object in view--to set them as everlasting pillars and rafters in His heavenly temple, to make them "a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of our God!"