"Yes, it is very important," replied the gentleman. "The house we rented while ours was building, is an illustration of the folly of not having a plan. Mr. Longworth wished to build a house. He wanted one that would look handsomely outside; but his own family was small, and so he concluded to make a building with two tenements. He consulted Mr. Bond about it, and found that an exact plan of the building, and of framing, with specifications, would cost him sixty-five dollars. It was to be larger than mine. Sixty-five dollars was quite too much money, he thought, to pay for the plan of a house, when he could make one just as well himself. I told him he would find it would be a saving of money in the end. But he thought otherwise, and, having engaged the carpenters, set them to work. "As I was to have the tenement when it was ready, I felt an interest to watch the job. The workmen knew that they were to put up a frame forty-four feet front and forty deep; and so far they went on tolerably well, though even here there were some hard words about the size of timbers, &c. But after that, every thing went 'at sixes and sevens,' as old Mr. Carter used to say. The men would go on from day to day, receiving their directions from Mr. Longworth; but as he was a hatter, and not a mechanic, he did not make his plans aright, and the men used often to pull down one day what they had built up the preceding. "You know the consequences, for we all suffered from living in an ill-contrived, sham-built house; and we were glad enough to get away from it. Now, Mr. Longworth cannot rent it at all; and he told me, a few days since, that if he had followed my advice, and let Mr. Bond make a plan, he should have been a thousand dollars better off than he is at present. "Now, children, I am going to apply this to your lesson. More than six thousand years ago, before God had said,— "'Let there be light, and there was light.'— "He took counsel of himself, and determined to create a world; and, first of all, he made a plan, or, as the Catechism calls it, a decree. There should be in the new world a great light for the day, called the sun, and a lesser light for the night, called the moon. There should be trees, and fruits, and flowers, each in their season. There should be beasts, and birds, and fishes, and insects. He also determined to make a man and woman, with souls to think and feel. These would be at the head of a race of beings capable of worshipping him, and enjoying him forever. If I lived a hundred years, and talked all the time, I could not begin to tell you all the little minutiæ of God's plan, or decree, about his new world.