Jehovah is a covenant-maker. "And I will make with Israel a new and everlasting covenant," is the text that Joseph and Brigham have been working upon. Hence this temple building in America, to fulfill and glorify the new covenant of Israel. The first covenant was made with Abraham and the patriarchs _in the East_. The greater and the everlasting covenant will restore the kingdom to Israel. That covenant has been made _in the West_, with these veritable children of Abraham. God has raised up children unto Abraham to fulfill the promises made to him. This is Mormonism. The West is the future world. Yet how shall there be the new civilization without its distinctive temples? Certainly there shall be no Abrahamic dispensation and covenant unless symbolized by temples raised to the name of the God of Israel! All America, then, is Zion! A hundred temples lifting their towers to the skies in the world's New Jerusalem. Temples built to the name of the God of Israel. Mark this august wonder of the age; the Mormons build not temples to the name of Jesus, but to the name of Jehovah--not to the Son, but to the Father. The Hebrew symbol is not the cross, but the sceptre. The Hebrews know nothing of the cross. It is the symbol of heathenism, whence Rome received her signs and her worship. Rome adopted the cross and she has borne it as her mark. She never reared her cathedrals to the name of the God of Israel, nor has she taught the nations to fear his name. Nor has she prophesied of the New Jerusalem of the last days, which must supersede Rome and give the millennial civilization to the world. The reign of Messiah! Temples to the Most High God! The sceptre, not the cross! There is a grand Masonic consistency in the divine scheme of the Mormon prophet, and the sisters began to comprehend the infinite themes of their religion when they worked in the temple at Kirtland, and beheld in the service the glory of Israel's God. CHAPTER XII. ELIZA R. SNOW'S GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION OF THE TEMPLE AND ITS DEDICATION--HOSANNAS TO GOD--HIS GLORY FILLS THE HOUSE. The erection of the Kirtland temple was a leading characteristic of the work of the last dispensation. It was commenced in June, 1833, under the immediate direction of the Almighty, through his servant, Joseph Smith, whom he had called in his boyhood, like Samuel of old, to introduce the fullness of the everlasting gospel. At that time the saints were few in number, and most of them very poor; and, had it not been for the assurance that God had spoken, and had commanded that a house should be built to his name, of which he not only revealed the form, but also designated the dimensions, an attempt towards building that temple, under the then existing circumstances, would have been, by all concerned, pronounced preposterous.