to rear a Temple in accordance with their faith. In remembrance of the director of the work, the restored Temple is known in history as the Temple of Zerubbabel. The foundations were laid with solemn ceremony; and on that occasion living veterans who remembered the earlier Temple, wept with joy.^[19] In spite of legal technicalities^[20] and other obstructions, the work continued, and within twenty years after their return from captivity the Jews had a Temple ready for dedication. The Temple of Zerubbabel was finished 515 B. C., specifically on the third day of the month of Adar, in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king. The dedicatory services followed immediately.^[21] While this Temple was greatly inferior in richness of finish and furniture as compared with the splendid Temple of Solomon, it was nevertheless the best the people could build, and the Lord accepted it as an offering typifying the love and devotion of His covenant children. In proof of this Divine acceptance, witness the ministrations of such prophets as Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi, within its walls.

About sixteen years before the birth of Christ, Herod I, king of Judea, commenced the reconstruction of the then decayed and generally ruinous Temple of Zerubbabel. For five centuries that structure had stood, and doubtless it had become largely a wreck of time. Many incidents in the earthly life of the Savior are associated with the Temple of Herod. It is evident from scripture that while opposed to the degraded and commercial uses to which the Temple had been betrayed, Christ recognized and acknowledged the sanctity of the temple precincts. The Temple of Herod was a sacred structure; by whatsoever name it might have been known, it was to Him the House of the Lord. And then, when the sable curtain descended upon the great tragedy of Calvary, when at last the agonizing cry, "It is finished," ascended from the cross, the veil of the Temple was rent, and the one-time Holy of Holies was bared. The absolute destruction of the Temple had been foretold by our Lord, while yet He lived in the flesh.^[22] In the year 70 A.D. the Temple was utterly destroyed by fire in connection with the capture of Jerusalem by the Romans under Titus.

The Temple of Herod was the last temple reared on the eastern hemisphere. From the destruction of that great edifice onward to the time of the re-establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ in the nineteenth century, our only record of temple building is such mention as is found in Nephite chronicles. Book of Mormon scriptures affirm that temples were erected by the Nephite colonists on what is now known as the American continent; but we have few details of construction and fewer facts as to administrative ordinances pertaining to these western temples. The people constructed a Temple about 570 B. C. and this we learn was patterned after the Temple of Solomon, though greatly inferior to that gorgeous structure in grandeur and costliness.^[23] It is of interest to read that when the resurrected Lord manifested Himself to the Nephites on the western continent, He found them assembled about the Temple.^[24] The Book of Mormon, however, makes no mention of temples even as late as the time of the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem; and moreover the Nephite nation came to an end within about four centuries after Christ. It is evident, therefore, that on both hemispheres temples ceased to exist in the early period of the apostasy and the very conception of a Temple in the distinctive sense perished amongst mankind.

For many centuries no offer of a sanctuary was made unto the Lord; indeed, it appears that no need of such was recognized. The apostate church declared that direct communication from God had ceased; and in place of Divine administration a self-constituted government claimed supreme power. It is evident that, as far as the Church was concerned, the voice of the Lord had been silenced; that the people were no longer willing to listen to the word of revelation, and that the government of the Church had been abrogated by human agencies.^[25]

When, in the reign of Constantine, a perverted Christianity had become the religion of state, the need of a place wherein God would reveal Himself was still utterly unseen or ignored. True, many edifices, most of them costly and grand, were erected. Of these some were dedicated to Peter and Paul, to James and John; others to the Magdalene and the Virgin; but not one was raised by authority and name to the honor of Jesus, the Christ. Among the multitude of chapels and shrines, of churches and cathedrals, the Son of Man had not a place to call His own. It was declared that the pope, sitting in Rome, was the vicegerent of Christ, and that without revelation he was empowered to declare the will of God.^[26]

Not until the Gospel was restored in the nineteenth century, with its ancient powers and privileges, was the Holy Priesthood manifest again among men. And be it remembered that the authority to speak and act in the name of God is essential to a Temple, and a Temple is void without the sacred authority of the Holy Priesthood. In the year of our Lord 1820, Joseph Smith, the prophet of the latest dispensation, then a lad in his fifteenth year, received a Divine manifestation,^[27] in which both the Eternal Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, appeared and instructed the youthful suppliant. Through Joseph Smith, the Gospel of old was restored to earth, and the ancient law was re-established. In course of time, through the ministry of the prophet, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized, and its establishment was marked by manifestations of Divine power.^[28]

It is a significant fact that this Church, true to the distinction it affirms—that of being the Church of the living God as its name proclaims—began in the very early days of its history to provide for the erection of a temple.^[