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[From the Second Lesson,-in the Evening Service,
for the 9th of February; for the 9th of May; and
for the 7th of September.]

BISHOP HEBER'S WORKS.

I.

NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY THROUGH THE UPPER PROVINCES OF INDIA.

Fourth Edition, 3 vols. 8vo, 36s.

II.

SERMONS PREACHED IN INDIA.

8vo, 9s. 6d.

III.

SERMONS PREACHED IN ENGLAND.

8vo, 9s. 6d.

IV.
HYMNS

WRITTEN AND ADAPTED FOR

THE WEEKLY CHURCH SERVICE OF THE YEAR.

Ninth Edition, in a Pocket Volume, 2s. 6d.

V.

POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS.

A New Edition, 8vo, 6s.

THE LIFE OF BISHOP HEBER.

With selections from his Correspondence, and from his unpublished

Works.

BY HIS WIDOW.

2 vols. 4to, with a PORTRAIT and other Plates, price £3 13s. 6d.

SERMON I.

FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT.

ST. MATTHEW, xxi. 13.

My house shall be called the house of prayer.

THE circumstances, which gave rise to these words, and which have been shortly related in the Gospel of to-day, will be understood by you more clearly, when I shall have explained what the practice was, which our Saviour there strongly condemns.

The Temple of Jerusalem being different from our Christian churches, both in the multitudes which it was to contain, and the kind of worship which was practised there, was not, as we might fancy, a small roofed building like that in which we are assembled, but a vast square court, of three or four hundred feet every way, open over head to the sky, but surrounded with pillared walks and cloisters, and capable of containing many thousand worshippers together with

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their offerings. At the west end of this court was the sanctuary, or House of the Lord, a sort of chapel, into which the priests only were allowed to enter; and before this last, and in the midst of the court, was a large stone altar for the burnt offerings.

The outer court, therefore, and the cloister round it, were the places where the people stood and prayed; and common decency required that this, as the scene of their solemn assembly, and the spot where they were to offer up their petitions to the Most High, should be kept with neatness and propriety, and devoted to the service of God alone. Of this propriety, however, the Jews both are and always have been exceedingly regardless. I have been in one of their synagogues, where the greater number of those who were present were talking about their own concerns, and settling their private bargains; and many of their ancient rabbins complain heavily, and almost in the words of the Lord, of the impiety of those who made the synagogue a house of merchandise. But in the case of the Temple the offence was still greater, from the peculiar holiness of that one mountain which God had chosen to put His name there; from the positive laws of the ancient Jews, which forbad them so much as to enter it with their shoes on their feet, or with staves in their hands, or to carry any burthen or parcel through it; and

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