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Dedicated

ΤΟ

HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS

ALBERT EDWARD PRINCE OF WALES

DEDICATION.

SIR,

You will perhaps remember that, on one of the Sundays of our journey through Palestine, your Royal Highness was pleased to express a wish that the Sermons which I used to address to our little congregation should, on our return, be privately printed for their use.

This request is fulfilled in the accompanying volume. It contains the Addresses delivered before your Royal Highness on every Sunday during our Eastern Tour, with the exception of the three occasions (at Cairo, Jerusalem, and Constantinople) when we fell in with the usual ministrations of the English Church in those places. They are printed almost exactly as they were preached. Their brevity and their abruptness of style is left unaltered. Nor have I attempted to enlarge on the many topics which are too lightly touched; or to omit those which I have treated at length elsewhere. These peculiarities, which must be excused by the

circumstances of their composition and delivery, may, at least, have the advantage of recalling more fully to those who heard them the impressive scenes amidst which they were preached.

Of those who so heard them, one, whose approval I should have especially valued, has, since these lines were written, been taken from amongst us. This is not the place to speak of the great loss which your Royal Highness has sustained in the death of your faithful friend and counsellor, General Bruce. But in presenting to you these memorials of a time, with which he must be ever associated in the minds of his fellow travellers, I may be allowed to dwell for a moment on the thoughts suggested by an association so affecting and so endearing to all those concerned.

In one of the last of our Syrian Sundays, I ventured to express our joint thankfulness * for the health and happiness which had been granted to us, during our late expedition. I have left this expression unchanged; because I know that it represented his feeling at the time, and because I feel sure that he would not have wished his untimely end to have cast an undue shade over the remembrance of a

*See Sermon IX.

journey, in the success of which he had himself taken so deep an interest, planned as it had been by Him, whose loss clouded with so heavy a sorrow the commencement of our Tour. If other griefs overshadowed its continuance, this last visitation, which was to follow so mournfully on its close, was as yet veiled in the future. We may still be permitted, as we recall many a happy and many a serious hour during those four memorable months, to cherish unbroken the constant image of the noble figure of our beloved and gallant Chief, as he rode at our head, or amongst us, through the hills and valleys of Palestine; or the easy pleasantry with which he entered into the playful moods of our midday halts and evening encampments; or the grave and reverential attention with which he assisted at our Sunday Services; or the tender consideration with which he cared for every member of our party; or the example, which he has left to all, of an unfailing and lofty sense of duty, and of entire devotion to the charge committed to him. These things we can never forget, whenever we think of the days of that Eastern journey, of which the recollection will endure to the end of our lives.

For him it has been ordered otherwise. It was the famous desire of another of his name

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