restoration, surrounded though they were with foes, and little as was
their strength to fight. The trustful heart finds occasion for
unmingled praise in the most mingled cup of joy and sorrow.

There can have been very few in that crowd who had seen the former
Temple, and their memories of its splendour must have been very dim.
But partly remembrance and partly hearsay made the contrast of the
past glories and the present poverty painful. Hence that pathetic and
profoundly significant incident of the blended shouts of the young and
tears of the old. One can fancy that each sound jarred on the ears of
those who uttered the other. But each was wholly natural to the years
of the two classes. Sad memories gather, like evening mists, round
aged lives, and the temptation of the old is unduly to exalt the past,
and unduly to depreciate the present. Welcoming shouts for the new
befit young lips, and they care little about the ruins that have to be
carted off the ground for the foundations of the temple which they are
to have a hand in building. However imperfect, it is better to them
than the old house where the fathers worshipped.

But each class should try to understand the other's feelings. The
friends of the old should not give a churlish welcome to the new, nor
those of the new forget the old. It is hard to blend the two, either
in individual life or in a wider sphere of thought or act. The seniors
think the juniors revolutionary and irreverent; the juniors think the
seniors fossils. It is possible to unite the shout of joy and the
weeping. Unless a spirit of reverent regard for the past presides over
the progressive movements of this or any day, they will not lay a
solid foundation for the temple of the future. We want the old and the
young to work side by side, if the work is to last and the sanctuary
is to be ample enough to embrace all shades of character and