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There was at Baalbek ages since, a magnificent Temple of the Sun, some of whose pillars are yet standing. Near by is the quarry from which came the stones for the wonderful temple. In this quarry, almost detached from its rock, dressed and ready for its place in the temple, is an immense column, seventy feet in length. A vacant place in the temple is waiting for it, and for four thousand years this column has lain there in the quarry. It has never occupied the place for which it was designed.
There are many men like that useless monolith. Made for a noble destiny, with grand possibilities, they have missed it all for want of a lofty purpose and a worthy energy. They folded their talents away in the napkins of supposed humility, of self distrust, or of indolence and disobedience, and buried them in the earth. They will lie forever among the wastes and ruins of life, pale ghosts of glorious “might have beens,” while the places in God’s temple which they were meant to fill remain vacant. It is a glorious thought that each of our little lives is a plan of God that God made us for something definite and particular. Let our highest aim be to become what he made us to be. Let us never shrink from any task or duty to which he calls us. Let us train ourselves to obey every call of God, lest, in our hesitancy or disobedience, we fail of the mission for which we were made, and meet the doom of the useless in God’s universe.