For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm-trees, and went forth to meet Him, and cried, Hosanna! Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord. 361 SERMON I. THE DUTY OF BUILDING THE LORD'S HOUSE. HAGGAI I. 2. 4. Thus speaketh the Lord of Hosts: This people say, The time is not come, the time that the Lord's House should be built. Is it time for you, 0 ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste? THESE words, like all the rest of the prophecies of Haggai, which have come down to us in the Bible, relate to the building of the second Temple. The original Temple built by Solomon, which for its splendour and magnificence was the wonder of the world, and of which such a full and particular account is given in the First Book of Kings, was destroyed, when Jerusalem was taken by the army of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. A short time after the taking of the city, Nebuzaradan, the captain of Nebuchadnezzar's guard, came to Jerusalem, and burnt the House of the Lord, and the king's house; and all the houses of Jerusalem, and all the houses of the great men burnt he with fire (Jer. lii. 13). So mightily was the Lord's anger kindled against Judah, that He spared not His own House, but gave it up to the minister of destruction. So terrible. was the desolation which fell upon the stiffneckt and rebellious children of Israel by reason of their sins, that even VOL. II. B the church of their fathers, the Temple which had been the glory of the whole earth, was swept away; and they were no longer allowed to offer up their prayers, where their fathers and forefathers had prayed. With such an awful judgement does God at times visit the sins of an apostate people. May our sins never bring down a like judgement on our beloved country! As long as England lifts up her head among the nations of the earth, may her churches still be seen in all parts of the land, rising above the habitations of men, so that, whithersoever the eye turns, the first object it rests on may be the House of God! Therefore, lest we provoke God to depart from us, and to take away His dwellingplace from the midst of us, let us all be careful duly to prize, and rightly to make use of the great blessing vouchsafed to us, of having the Lord's House in every parish,-in which we are raised out of the corruption of our nature, and consecrated to the service of God, by our Baptism,-in which our whole lives through we meet together to pray to Him, to confess our sins to Him, to receive the assurance of His fatherly forgiveness, to sing His praises, and to worship Him in the beauty of holiness, to which we come for protection from the guileful wisdom of this world, to hear His word read and explained,—in which, whenever we have lost sight of Him amid the dazzling pleasures or the bewildering cares of life, we may always be sure to find Him amid the congregation of His people, in which we assemble round the Table of the Lord, and are fed with the Bread and Wine of everlasting life,-in which the most momentous and heartstirring act of our human lives, the act that is to make us husbands and fathers, is solemnized, and the favour of God is called down on the home where we are |