re-echoed by such lips. The repetition of the word in both clauses
underscores, as it were, the remarkable concurrence.

II. The dedication of the Temple (vers. 16-18). How long the
dedication was after the completion is not specified. The month Adar
was the last of the Jewish year, and corresponded nearly with our
March. Probably the ceremonial of dedication followed immediately on
the completion of the building. Probably few, if any, of the aged men,
who had wept at the founding, survived to see the completion of the
Temple. A new generation had no such sad contrasts of present
lowliness and former glory to shade their gladness. So many dangers
surmounted, so many long years of toil interrupted and hope deferred,
gave keener edge to joy in the fair result of them all.

We may cherish the expectation that our long tasks, and often
disappointments, will have like ending if they have been met and done
in like spirit, having been stimulated by prophets and commanded by
God. It is not wholesome nor grateful to depreciate present blessings
by contrasting them with vanished good. Let us take what God gives
to-day, and not embitter it by remembering yesterday with vain regret.
There is a remembrance of the former more splendid Temple in the name
of the new one, which is thrice repeated in the passage,--'this
house.' But that phrase expresses gratitude quite as much as, or more
than, regret. The former house is gone, but there is still 'this
house,' and it is as truly God's as the other was. Let us grasp the
blessings we have, and be sure that in them is continued the substance
of those we have lost.

The offerings were poor, if compared with Solomon's 'two and twenty
thousand oxen, and an hundred and twenty thousand sheep' (1 Kings