Charles E. Cowman delivers a sermon on the transformative process of being shaped by God, drawing parallels between the stones used in construction and our own lives. He emphasizes how trials and challenges refine us, much like how stones are shaped and chiseled to fit into a greater purpose. Cowman encourages the congregation to trust in God's masterful hands, knowing that He is preparing them for a higher calling and a heavenly temple where their true beauty and purpose will be revealed.

"I will lay thy stones with fair colors" (Isa. 54:11). The stones from the wall said, "We come from the mountains far away, from the sides of the craggy hills. Fire and water have worked on us for ages, but made us only crags. Human hands have made us into a dwelling where the children of your immortal race are born, and suffer, and rejoice, and find rest and shelter, and learn the lessons set them by our Maker and yours. But we have passed through much to fit us for this. Gunpowder has rent our very heart; pickaxes have cleaved and broken us, it seemed to us often with out design or meaning, as we lay misshapen stones in the quarry; but gradually we were cut into blocks, and some of us were chiseled with finer instruments to a sharper edge. But we are complete now, and are in our places, and are of service. You are in the quarry still, and not complete, and therefore to you, as once to us, much is inexplicable. But you are destined for a higher building, and one day you will be placed in it by hands not human, a living stone in a heavenly temple. "In the still air the music lies unheard; In the rough marble beauty hides unseen; To make the music and the beauty needs The master's touch, the sculptor's chisel keen. "Great Master, touch us with Thy skillful hands; Let not the music that is in us die! Great Sculptor, hew and polish us; nor let, Hidden and lost, thy form within us lie!"