Since 1633, when The Temple was first published, many notable Christians have testified of their love for George Herbert's poetry. The great nineteenth-century preacher C. H. Spurgeon and his wife would sometimes read Herbert's poetry together on Sunday evenings. Richard Baxter wrote, "Herbert speaks to God like one that really believeth a God, and whose business in the world is most with God." C. S. Lewis described Herbert as "a man who seemed to me to excel all the authors I had ever read in conveying the very quality of life as we actually live it from moment to moment . . ."