In her children's hearts must Zion first be built up and redeemed; "every man seeking the interest of his neighbor, and doing all things with an eye single to the glory of God." When the fig-tree of Israel's faith puts forth such leaves, then know that the summer is nigh.
"And this cannot be brought to pass, until mine elders are endowed with power from on high."
And yet were these same elders, unendowed, sent forth to redeem Zion? Surely the Lord did not design it then to be. Else, would he not have endowed them before-hand? This admitted, and what becomes of their "failure?"
Ah, there are many such failures in a sublime success. They are but steps in the stairway of triumph and victory.
What did Zion's Camp achieve? It cast the shadow of a coming event; struck the spark that shall kindle to a flame; fixed on the horizon of history a shining star, the herald of a glory yet to come.
CHAPTER X.
BUILDING THE TEMPLE—JOSEPH AND HEBER WORKING IN THE QUARRY—THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL—A LESSON ON FAITH—CALL OF THE TWELVE—HEBER C. KIMBALL ORDAINED AN APOSTLE.
The work now engaging, almost exclusively, the attention of the Church in Kirtland, was the building of the Temple. This edifice was begun in June, 1833. The walls were partly reared when, in the year following, the expedition for the relief of the Missouri Saints took from Kirtland nearly all the able-bodied men whose means and energies, otherwise, would have been employed upon the Lord's House.
But the sacred enterprise was not suffered to languish. The elders left in charge were untiring in their efforts to promote the work. The brethren labored day and night, and the sisters—among the foremost, as ever, in a good cause—were not one whit behind. Says Heber:
"Our women were engaged in knitting and spinning, in order to clothe those who were laboring at the building; and the Lord only knows the scenes of poverty, tribulation and distress which we passed through to accomplish it. My wife had toiled all summer in lending her aid towards its accomplishment. She took a hundred pounds of wool to spin on shares, which, with the assistance of a girl, she spun, in order to furnish clothing for those engaged in building the temple; and although she had the privilege of keeping half the quantity of wool for herself, as a recompense for her labor, she did not reserve even so much as would make a pair of stockings, but gave it for those who were laboring at the house of the Lord. She spun and wove, and got the cloth dressed and cut and made up into garments, and gave them to the laborers on the temple. Almost all the sisters in Kirtland labored in knitting, sewing, spinning, etc., for the same purpose; while we went up to Missouri to endeavor to reinstate our brethren on the lands from which they had been driven.