“Learn too from this prayer, how holy is the place in which thou art, and in which thou shalt in future serve Jehovah. Pray to him in his temple, that his eyes may be open towards thee, and that he may make the light of his countenance to shine upon thee. Go now to the feast, and if thou desirest to hear more, come to the old man in the temple. There is his apartment.” The venerable man blessed him, and then crossed the court of the Gentiles. Helon watched him, till he disappeared, and then remained for a long time wrapt in thought, till some one came to summon him to the company. The feast concluded early, for the course of Malchia had to prepare, on the evening before the sabbath, for entering upon its office. About the ninth hour all labour had ceased, the trumpets had announced the sabbath, the Levites had baked the shew-bread, the twelve priests had carried it in solemn procession to the porch, and hence two of them had taken it into the holy place, and had deposited it upon the table of shew-bread: the old shew-bread had been removed, and the two censers of incense of the preceding week had been replaced by two new ones. The rest of the priests and the Levites laid themselves down betimes to sleep. Helon could not sleep. The past and the future were both too interesting. A feeling of mingled joy and awe shot through his frame when he heard the bars of the temple gates closed, and found himself shut in within the sanctuary of Jehovah; it seemed as if he were here protected from every earthly evil, as if nothing could now prevent him from fulfilling the law of the Lord, and becoming complete in his obedience. Often was he disposed to have cried aloud, “Better is a day in thy courts, than a thousand elsewhere!” At times lost in thought, at times wrapt in devotion, he passed the sleepless hours, while the priests slumbered around him. When he heard the step of the guard of Levites, in the court of the Gentiles, or when the guard of priests, as they went their rounds in the court of Israel, with lighted torches in their hands, approached the place where he lay, he envied the happy persons who were not only allowed, but whose duty it was, to traverse the courts and porticoes and palaces of the sanctuary, beneath the stars of heaven. When the two companies of the priests, uniting after their separate rounds, greeted each other with the words, “All is peace,” the sounds came to his mind with a significance that was indescribable.