The Temple in Ruins Frederick Piercy (1831–1891) Steel engraving, Route from Liverpool, 1855 The London–trained artist Frederick Piercy traveled through Nauvoo while creating drawings for his illustrated book Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake. He wrote these lines: “The first objects I saw in approaching the city were the remains of what was once the Temple, situated on the highest eminence of the city.” At the cornerstone laying ceremony, President Boyd K. Packer recounted that the Nauvoo Saints finished the temple in time to receive the spiritual blessings therein before being forced to abandon it and depart. “And so the saints moved west, and then the temple was destroyed and burned, and the stones of the temple were scattered like the bones had been cremated and the temple, in effect, was dead. “So the temple died. But now, this day, it has come to a resurrection. The Temple stands here again.” Church News, “Bonding with an earlier era,” Church News, November 11, 2000, pp. 3 and 13.