I LIBRARY f CAUFOKWA SAN DIEQO THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY . THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY JANE T. STODDART AUTHOR OF "THE OLD TESTAMENT IN LIFE AND LITERATURE, "THE NEW TESTAMENT IN LIFE AND LITERATU1E " REVIEW HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO PREFACE. THE purpose of this book is to illustrate from life and literature the Scriptures appointed for use on the Sundays and Holy Days of the Christian Year. The plan covers the entire twelve months, from the opening of the Church Year on Advent Sunday to its close on the 25th Sunday after Trinity. The order followed is that of the Epistles, Gospels, and the Lessons as ordered in the Prayer Book. Illustrations are provided for the Proper Psalms. Ample space is allotted to the Festivals of Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, and to the solemn seasons of Advent and Lent. Illustrations for Saints' Days are in- cluded. While there is something here for every Sunday, no attempt has been made to secure a cut and dried uniformity. Sometimes, as on Quinquagesima, it is the Epistle, at other times the Gospel, at others again one of the Lessons, which lends itself most readily to illustration. Thus, on the Second Sunday in Lent there is read at Evensong the 28th Chapter of Genesis, which includes the story of Jacob's ladder. The "ladder-literature"' might almost fill a little volume by itself. While keeping as far as possible to a fair proportion through- out the volume, I have naturally laid most stress on the great Scriptures and the Holy Seasons. Now that the Church Festivals are so largely observed among Nonconformists in England, and also by Presbyterians PBEFACE in Scotland, while united services are becoming general through- out the country, I venture to hope that this book may be of interest to Christians of every name. My warmest thanks are due to Sir W. Robertson Nicoll, and to the Rev. T. H. Darlow, Literary Superintendent of the Bible Society, who have most kindly read the proofs. For any errors in the text they are not responsible. In a work of this nature it is almost impossible wholly to avoid verbal errors, and I shall gratefully receive and acknowledge any corrections. I thank Sir Ernest Hodder Williams for the very kind personal interest he has shown in the book. J. T. S. VI CONTENTS. PAGE OUR COMMON HERITAGE ix CHAPTER I. .THE ADVENT SKASON a CHAPTER II. CHRISTMASTIDE 33 CHAPTER III. THE EPIPHANY SEASON 51 CHAPTER IV. THE APPROACH TO LENT * 75 CHAPTER V. ASH WEDNESDAY 93 CHAPTER VI. FIVE LENTEN SUNDAYS 101 CHAPTER VII. HOLY WEEK TO MAUNDY THURSDAY ....... 121 CHAPTER VIII. GOOD FRIDAY 139 CHAPTER IX. EASTER EVEN 151 CHAPTER X. EASTER 157 vii CONTENTS CHAPTER XI. PAG* THE GREAT FORTY DAYS 171 CHAPTER XII. ASCENSIONTIDE 195 CHAPTER XIII. WHITSUNTIDE 207 CHAPTER XIV. TRINITY SUNDAY 219 CHAPTER XV. SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY 229 CHAPTER XVI. SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY (continued) 255 CHAPTER XVII. SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY (continued) 273 CHAPTER XVIII. SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY (continued) ....... 287 CHAPTER XIX. SOME ILLUSTRATIONS FOR SAINTS' DAYS 301 INDEX OF SCRIPTURES APPOINTED FOR SUNDAYS 321 INDEX OF SCRIPTURES APPOINTED FOR HOLY DATS * 328 GENERAL INDEX 333 Vlll OUR COMMON HERITAGE IN hours of danger and sorrow, and in the morning joy of a great deliverance, Christian hearts are strangely drawn towards united worship. We are told that in the age of Henry IV of France, at the close of the Wars of Religion, the village church bell used to summon Roman Catholics to their Mass and Huguenots to their simple service. Under the tyranny of James II, after the acquittal of the Seven Bishops, the Primate Sancroft, who from youth had been at war with the Noncon- formists, solemnly enjoined the Bishops and clergy " to have a very tender regard to their brethren the Protestant dissenters, to visit them often, to entertain them hospitably, to discourse with them civilly," and " to join them heartily and affection- ately in exertions for the blessed cause of the Reformation ". Sir Walter Scott, in " Waverley," shows us the Baron de Bradwardine, that good old careful officer, "after having sent out his night patrols, and posted his sentinels, engaged in read- ing the evening service of the Episcopal Church to the re- mainder of his troops". Fergus Mac- Ivor says to Waverley, as they approach the quiet scene, " I have confessed to-day, ere you were awake, yet I am not so strict a Catholic as to refuse to join in this good man's prayers ". A picture of cellar- worship in Reims in December, 3914, was given by a Roman Catholic writer in " Le Correspondant ". " More than any material comfort," he wrote, " we have ap- preciated the companions we have found in these cellars. Our own quarters are next to those of the Protestant pastor and his b ix OUK COMMON HERITAGE wife. Their house was completely swept away when their church was burned, and they were unable to save anything. Their two sons are in the Army. The eldest disappeared in a cavalry combat, and they have had no news about him. Not- withstanding these terrible trials, their grave serenity, their activity in the service of others, is the admiration of us all. . . . Protestants and Catholics get on very well together. Sometimes the pastor repeats aloud a prayer, to which the Catholics listen reverently, and when we on our side gather together for the Rosary or to repeat the Litanies of the Saints the Protestants lower their voices so as not to disturb our prayers. On Sunday, as his chapel no longer exists, the pastor conducted service in the crypt, all the Protestant colony taking part, seated on packing cases instead of benches. These prayers uttered aloud, these solemn hymns, sung in that cellar lit with candles as long as tapers, carried our thoughts to the distant ages of the cata- combs. Whether we were Catholics or Protestants, we prayed very well in our cellars." The Book of Common Prayer is one of the most precious possessions of the English-speaking race. Many passages of our literature must remain a sealed book to those who have never heard its music, never felt the influence of its " divining- wand ". Two may be cited in illustration of our meaning. De Quincey, in his "Confessions," tells of the impression made on his mind in youth by the Third Collect at Evening Service. " In that prayer, ' Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord ! ' the darkness and the great shadows of night are made symbolically significant : these great powers, Night and Dark- ness, that belong to original chaos, were made representative of the perils that continually menace poor afflicted human nature. With deepest sympathy I accompanied the prayer against the perils of darkness perils that I seemed to see, in the ambush of midnight solitude, brooding around the beds of sleeping nations ; perils from even worse forms of darkness shrouded within the recesses of blind human hearts ; perils from tempta- x OUK COMMON HERITAGE tions weaving unseen snares for our footing ; perils from the limitations of our misleading knowledge. Prayers had finished. The school had dissolved itself. Six o'clock came, seven, eight. By three hours nearer stood the dying day to its departure. By three hours nearer, therefore, stood we to that darkness which our English liturgy calls into such symbolic grandeur, as hiding beneath its shadowy mantle all perils that besiege our human infirmity." Take, again, the picture drawn by F. W. H. Myers of the closing years of Wordsworth : " One of the images which recurs oftenest to his friends is that of the old man as he would stand against the window of the dining-room at Rydal Mount, and read the Psalms and Lessons for the day ; of the tall bowed figure and the silvery hair; of the deep voice which always faltered when among the prayers he came to the words which gave thanks for those ' who have departed this life in Thy faith and fear '." World-wide Methodism claims its share in the Church's sacred patrimony. Congregationalists, like the late Charles Silvester Home, have made constant use in public worship of the Collects and the General Thanksgiving. The Lord's Prayer and the Te Deum provide a universal meeting-ground. Is there any Christian who does not feel with Hawker of Morwenstow that the Lord's Prayer is " not only the most perfect model of human entreaty ever breathed into words by God the Holy Ghost, but in itself the strongest compulsion on God the Trinity that earth can pour into heaven"? "The angels glide and gather like eagles," said the poet-preacher, " at the first faint signal ofite sound. The sevenfold supplications condense and deliver all that God can bestow. . . . God knows best how He wishes to be spoken to, and God gave with His lips of flesh this bound- less prayer." For the Te Deum we may quote the words of the learned Presbyterian divine, Dr. John Duncan, known to a former genera- tion of Edinburgh students as " Rabbi " Duncan : " The Te Deum is a grand piece of writing, by far the xi OUR COMMON HERITAGE finest fragment of post-apostolic devotion. I am particularly fond of these lines ' Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ. Thou art the Everlasting Son of the Father. When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou didst not abhor the Virgin's womb. When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers.' The Te Deum must be very old. It was sung at Augustine's ordination, but it must be much older. I think Hilary of Poitiers was probably the author. No one can tell the influ- ence of that hymn during the fourteen centuries it has been in use." Epistles, Gospels, Lessons, are all part of the common heri- tage. " The Gospels," says Dean Inge, " are the creation of faith and love ; faith and love hold the key to their interpretation." So it is with the other passages of Scripture appointed for the Christian Year. CHAPTER I. THE ADVENT SEASON. The Advent of our Lord will come some time, and may come at any time. ARCHBISHOP BENSON. Come again, and dwell with us, O Lord Christ Jesus : abide with us or ever, we humbly beseech Thee. And when Thou shalt appear again with power and great glory, may we be made like unto Thee in Thy glorious kingdom. SALVATOR MUNDI. Church of the Quick and Dead, Lift up, lift up thy head, Behold the Judge is standing at the door. Bride of the Lamb, arise ! From whose woe-wearied eyes My God shall wipe all tears for evermore. JULIANA HORATIA EWING. The soul is cast forward upon the future, and in proportion as its conscience is clear and its perception keen and true, does it rejoice solemnly that " the night is far spent, the day is at hand," that there are " new heavens and a new earth " to come, though the former are failing. J. H. NEWMAN. This Advent moon shines cold and clear, These Advent nights are long ; Our lamps have burned year after year, And still their flame is strong. " Watchman, what of the night ? " we cry, Heartsick with hope deferred : " No speaking signs are in the sky," Is still the watchman's word. We weep because the night is long, We laugh for day shall rise, We sing a slow contented song And knock at Paradise. Weeping we hold Him fast, Who wept For us, we hold Him fast : And will not let Him go except He bless us first or last Weeping we hold Him fast to-night ; We will not let Him go Till daybreak smite our wearied sight And summer smite the snow : Then figs shall bud, and dove with dove Shall coo the livelong day ; Then He shall say, " Arise, my love, My fair one, come away ' . CHRISTINA ROSSETTI CHAPTER I. THE ADVENT SEASON. WHEN autumn leaves are dropping amid fog and rain, the Advent trumpet bids Christians put off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light. Shadows flock in swift pro- cession towards the keystone of winter's arch, and there is danger for the soul in thick, silent weather. Bunyan's pilgrims are guarded in the van and the rear when mist denotes their near- ness to the Enchanted Ground. Collects and Scriptures of Advent warn us and plead with us. Take care, they seem to say, lest some fiend, or dragon, or giant, or thief, should fall upon you and so do mischief. Walk sword in hand, for this is a perilous place. Advent prepares us for the joy of Christmas. As Bishop Phillips Brooks says in one of his sermons for this season : " The Babe of Bethlehem came girt round with wonders, and He came so gently, so unnoticed save by the few who clustered nearest to His life, that the great surface of the world's existence was hardly rippled by the wonderful touch that had fallen upon it". Advent, also, is the time of far-sighted vision. The motto of the First Sunday, in the early Roman Church, was " Aspiciens a longe," " beholding from afar ". Saintly men, in a spiritual observatory above the clouds and " low visibility " of the earthly plane, have written of the coinings of God, past, present, and future. Every age of the Church has had its watchers for the Second Advent. Describing a storm at Morwenstow, R. S. Hawker wrote : " The storm came on while we were in church this morning and the roll of the thunder mingled with the backrake, as they call it, of the ground sea. The church was black with gloom, and the pale faces of the people were in solemn contrast It put me THE CHRISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STORY [i. in mind of ' The sea and the waves roaring, men's hearts'failing them from fear,' and also of Bossuet's Advent Sermon, wherein he said, ' What if this roof were at this very instant to cleave asunder, and we saw through the rent the Son of Man coming in the clouds ? ' It is said that all the congregation rose up suddenly and stood trembling." Dr. Scott Holland, in his memorial sermon for Canon Liddon, gave a vivid description of the scene in St. Paul's Cathedral during the preacher's Advent courses. " Many would remember," he said, "the motionless crowd of upturned faces in this house of God, as the yellow lights flickered and shone through the illuminated haze of some heavy December afternoon, while all the walls were yet tremulous with the lingering music of the service. And they will never forget how up and up there rose, higher and higher, filling all the misty hollow of the Dome, the piercing tones of that most beautiful of all voices, as with kindling figure and flashing eye, he 'reasoned of righteousness and of temperance and of judgment to come '." l Archbishop Benson wrote to Miss E. Wordsworth on Advent Sunday, 1869, that he wished to talk to the boys in Wellington College Chapel on the words of St. John vi. 17, " And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them ". " They have so little idea, these children," he wrote, " about what is meant by ' Jesus coming ' to them and I is my idea right? Who can tell me that? But, looking at the world, surely it has got very dark and can it be long ? " 2 I. Matthew Arnold speaks of the " glorious Collect for Advent Sunday," the Lesson, "that great chapter, the first of Isaiah," and " in the Epistle the passage which converted St. Augustine (Rom. XHI. 18)". The Collect dominates the Advent season, and through it the Christian Year. Psalm xxv. has from ancient times been used in the worship of Advent Sunday. While the beauty of the natural year is 1 J, O. Johnston, " Life of Henry Parry Liddon," p. 390. 2 " Life of Archbishop Benson," Vol I, p. 323. 4 i.] THE ADVENT SEASON fading, and leaves and flowers must say, " My soul cleaveth unto the dust," the soul of man looks upward and cries : " Unto Thee, O Lord, will I lift up my soul ; my God, I have put my trust in Thee ; O let me not be confounded, neither let mine enemies triumph over me ". Louis IX, the saintly King of France, was crowned on Advent Sunday (29 November, 1226). In his coronation prayer he said : " Lord God, I will lift up my soul unto Thee ; I trust in Thee ". The Sieur de Joinville, biographer of St. Louis, says, in recalling this scene, that from childhood unto death the good King Louis had a firm faith in God. 1 Dr. Johnson wrote in his manuscript diary for 1774 : " 27 Nov. : Advent Sunday. I considered that this day, being the beginning of the ecclesiastical year, was a proper time for a new course of life. I began to read the Greek Testament regularly at 160 verses every Sunday. This day I began the Acts." In the Missal the words of Romans xiu. 11 open the Epistle for the day. The English Prayer Book goes back to verse 8, 2 and begins the Christian Year with the practical warning, " Keep out of debt ". The wretchedness of debt is a favourite subject with English writers. Bassanio, in " The Merchant of Venice," comes out well at last, but even his light nature is shaken by the mortal peril in which his extravagance involves his generous friend Antonio. George Eliot, in " Middlemarch," shows how the career of Lydgate, a young surgeon of high character, original talent and large ambition, is " bound in shallows and in miseries" be- cause he has the misfortune to fall into debt : " Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and pur- pose within it can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing, soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances." Lydgate was saved by the practical kindness of Dorothea Casaubon, but his hair never became white. " He died when he was only fifty, leaving his wife and children provided for by 1 Wailly's edition of Joinville (Socie'te de PHistoire de France), p. 25. 2 Epistle for Advent Sunday : Romans xiu. 8-14. 5 THE CHKISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [i. a heavy insurance on his life. . . . He always regarded himself as a failure ; he had not done what he once meant to do." Some of the best men have scarcely tasted mental freedom till the first command of the Christian Year, " Owe no man anything," was made possible for their obedience. Sir James Paget wrote at the age of forty-two : "At the end of my financial year, I find, thank God, an excess of income over expenditure. It is the first time that such an event has ever happened to me. I do not know how to feel thankful enough for this prosperity ; and for the hope it brings with it that if God gives me health and strength I may yet work through to the ' owing no man anything ' but love." "I think," said Lord Macaulay, "that prompt payment is a moral duty ; knowing, as I do, how painful it is to have such things deferred." The Epistle has its keyword in verse 10 : " Love worketh no ill to his neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law ". Compare St. James n. 8 : "If ye fulfil the royal law accord- ing to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well ". In the ancient Roman religion, as Mommsen tells us, it was the general exoteric precepts of ritual that were known as "royal laws". The rules for their observance were fixed and promulgated by the pontifical college. 1 The Russian monk, Father Zossima, in " The Brothers Karamazov," speaks as follows in an address to his brethren : " Fathers and teachers, I ponder ' What is hell ? ' I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love. Once in infinite existence, immeasureable in time and space, a spiritual creature was given, on his coming to earth, the power of saying, ' I am and I love.' Once, only once, there was given him a moment of active living love and for that was earthly life given him, and with it times and seasons. And that happy creature re- jected the priceless gift, prized it and loved it not, scorned it and remained callous. Such a one, having left the earth, sees Abraham's bosom and talks with Abraham, as we are told in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and beholds heaven 1 " History of Rome," Vol. I, p. 219 (Prof. Dickson's translation). 6 I.] THE ADVENT SEASON and can go up to the Lord. But that is just his torment, to rise up to the Lord without ever having loved, to be brought close to those who have loved when he has despised their love. For he sees clearly and says to himself, ' Now I have understand- ing, and though I now thirst to love, there will be nothing great, no sacrifice in my love, for my earthly life is over, and Abraham will not come even with a drop of living water (that is the gift of earthly, active life) to cool the fiery thirst of spiritual love which burns in me now, though I despised it on earth ; there is no more life for me and will be no more time ! Even though I would gladly give my life for others, it can never be, for that life is passed which can be sacrificed for love, and now there is a gulf fixed between that life and this existence." 1 " The first lesson of Christianity," says Viscount Bryce, 1 " was love, a love that was to join in one body those whom suspicion and prejudice and pride of race had hitherto kept apart. Thus there was formed by the new religion a community of the faith- ful, a Holy Empire, designed to gather all men into its bosom, and standing opposed to the manifold polytheisms of the old world, exactly as the universal sway of the Caesars was contrasted with the innumerable kingdoms and republics that had gone before it." On the wall of the chapel which Moltke built in his grounds at Kreisau, over against his own coffin and that of his wife, is a crucifix, and above it is the text " Love is the fulfilling of the law ". The first Advent Gospel 2 echoes the promise of Zechariah ix. 9 : " Behold, thy King cometh unto thee ; He is just, and having salvation ; lowly and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass ". In Advent, 1494, Savonarola preached a course of sermons on Haggai. In the last of the series he announced that it was the Lord's will to give a new head to the city of Florence ; and after keeping his audience long in suspense, he finally declared : " This new head is Jesus Christ ; He seeks to become your King ! " He then discoursed on the happiness of that city which had no ruler or guide save Christ. " O Florence, then 1 "The Holy Roman Empire." a St. Matthew XXI. 1-13. 7 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [i. wilt thou be rich with spiritual and temporal wealth ; thou wilt achieve the reformation of Rome, of Italy and of all countries ; the wings of thy greatness shall spread over the world." To her Advent poem " Veni, veni Emmanuel ! " Dora Green- well prefixed these words from Bunyan's " Holy War " : "Then went out the inhabitants of the town of Mansoul with haste to the green trees and to the meadows, to gather boughs and flowers, therewith to strew the streets against their Prince, the Son of Shaddai, should come ; they also made gar- lands and other fine works, to betoken how joyful they were, and should be, to receive their Emmanuel into Mansoul ; they also prepared for his coming what music the town might afford, that they might play before him to the palace, his habitation." Katharine Tynan has these lines in her poem, "St Francis and the Ass " : "Consider, brethren," said he " Our little brother, how mild, How patient he will be, Though men are fierce and wild. His coat is grey and fine, His eyes are kind with love. This little brother of mine Is gentle as the dove. Consider how such an one Beheld our Saviour born, And followed him full-grown Through Eastern streets one morn. For this the cross is laid Upon him for a sign. Greatly is honoured This little brother of mine." ISAIAH, THE PROPHET OF ADVENT. The Christian Year opens with a long series of Lessons from Isaiah. English literature is full of tributes to the foremost of the prophets. Florence Nightingale wrote to her sister from Rome in 8 i.] THE ADVENT SEASON 1847 : " Oh, my dearest, I have had such a day my red Domini- cal, my Golden Letter, the 15 December is its name, and of all my days in Rome this has been the most happy and glorious. Think of a day alone in the Sistine Chapel . . . quite alone, without custode, without visitors, looking up into the heaven of angels and prophets. . . . There is Daniel, opening his windows and praying to the God of his fathers three times a day in defiance of fear. You see the young and noble head like an eagle's, disdaining danger, those glorious eyes undazzled by all the honours of Babylon. Then comes Isaiah, but he is so divine that there is nothing but his own fifty-third chapter will describe him. He is the Isaiah, the 'grosse Unbekannte ' of the ' Comfort ye, Comfort ye my people '. I was rather startled at first by finding him so young, which was not my idea of him at all, while the others are old. But M. Angelo knew him better ; it is the perpetual youth of inspiration, the vigour and freshness, ever new, ever living, of that eternal spring of thought which is typed under that youthful face." l Miss Nightingale said also : " There is a security of inspira- tion about Isaiah ; he is listening, arid he is speaking : ' that which we hear we declare unto you '." " One year goes, and then another, but the same warnings recur," writes Cardinal Newman. "The frost or the rain comes again ; the earth is stripped of its brightness ; there is nothing to rejoice in. And then, amid this unprofitableness of earth and sky, the well-known words return ; the Prophet Isaiah is read; the same Epistle and Gospel, bidding us 'awake out of sleep, and welcome Him that cometh in the name of the Lord ' ; the same Collects, beseeching Him to prepare us for judgment." When Lowell remarked to Tennyson, "Wordsworth was no more an artist than Isaiah," the poet answered, " I consider Isaiah a very great artist everything he says is complete and perfect." 2 Sir Walter Scott, in his last hours, was heard murmuring fragments from the prophecies of Isaiah. Mr. Lecky wrote of Carlyle: " He was the very greatest of 1 Sir E. T. Cook, " Life of Florence Nightingale," Vol. I, p. 71. 2 "Alfred Lord Tennyson : A Memoir," Vol. II, p. 356. 9 THE CHRISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STOEY [i. word-painters. It was always, as Sir Henry Taylor said, ' the vision which the prophet Isaiah saw '." Is. i. 8. 1 The ox knoweth his owner and the ass his mas- ter's crib, but Israel doth not know, my people doth not con- aider. Mystical writers apply these words to the ox and ass of the stable-stall at Bethlehem, whose patient heads look down upon us from many a piece of mediaeval sculpture, and from many an old painting. Is. i. 3. My people doth not consider. Principal Sir G. A. Smith, in his " Isaiah," quotes these words of Victor Hugo in " Les Miserables " : " A man is compelled to repeat to himself things he desires to be silent about, and to listen to what he does not wish to hear, . . . yielding to that mysterious power which says to him, Think. One can no more prevent the mind returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. With the sailor this is called the tide ; with the guilty it is called remorse. God upheaves the soul as well as the ocean." Is. i. 23. Thy princes are rebellious and companions of thieves. A Scottish historian, writing of the early years of King James V, says that one of the darkest features of the time were the "bands of manrent," which compelled the parties to defend each other against the effect of their mutual transgressions. " The task, therefore, of introducing order and respect for legal restraints among the fierce inhabitants of the marches, was one of extreme difficulty. The principal thieves were the border barons themselves, some of whom maintained a feudal state almost royal ; whilst their castles, often impregnable from the strength of their natural and artificial defences, defied every attempt to reduce or to storm them." a A literal illustration of these words may be found in Bulwer Lytton's " Rienzi ". Adrian di Castello, the flower of the great House of Colonna, enters the palace of his ancestors in Rome : " At the foot of the stairs grouped some dozen of the bandits Wesson for First Sunday. 3 Patrick Eraser Tytler, " History of Scotland," Vol. V, p. 192. 10 i.] THE ADVENT SEASON whom the old Colonna entertained. They were playing at dice upon an ancient tomb, the clear and deep inscription of which (so different from the slovenly characters of the later empire) bespoke it a memorial of the most powerful age of Rome, and which, now empty even of ashes, and upset, served for a table to these foreign savages, and was strewn, even at that early hour, with fragments of meat and flasks of wine. They scarcely stirred, they scarcely looked up, as the young noble passed them; and their fierce oaths and loud ejaculations, uttered in a northern patois, grated harshly upon his ear, as he mounted, with a slow step, the lofty and unclean stairs." Is. ii. 2. 1 And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills ; and all nations shall flow unto it. Jewish saints turned longing eyes towards the mountain of God on earth. " The hill of Sion is a fair place." 2 "He built His sanctuary like high palaces, like the earth which He has established for ever." 3 "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." 4 " They that trust in the Lord shall be as Mount Sion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever." 5 Christian nations, braced by the mountain air of Scripture, have built churches and monasteries on commanding heights, with stairs and pathways of ascent. We think of St. Hilda's Abbey at Whitby, on a cliff overlooking the grey North Sea. Visitors to Barcelona see the monastic buildings of Montserrat soaring up into the blue air. Hermits in past ages clung to the fastnesses of the rocks like eagles to their eyries. Mr. Hare, who visited Montserrat in winter, says that the view is sur- passingly magnificent. " The whole of Catalonia, tossed and riven into myriad fantastic forms of hill and cleft, lies beneath, bounded only by the snowy ranges and the sea. So tremendous are the gorges into which you look down, that the eye can scarcely fathom their awful depths, and the birds descending 1 Lesson for First Sunday. 2 Psalm XLVlll. 2 (Prayer Book version). 3 Psalm LXXVIII. 69. 4 Psalm cxxi. i. 8 Psalm cxxv. i. 11 THE CHKISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [i. into them, vanish away in the distance. Just beneath the summit is the ruined hermitage of St. Geronimo, the furthest, but one of the easiest of access, of the many now desolated re- treats which were so eagerly sought after by the devotional feeling of the Middle Ages, and where many of the proudest and noblest Spaniards passed their latter years in absolute solitude, attending to their own humble wants, and in a life of constant penance and prayer. Two little rooms remain here, with the paved terrace and stone seat of the hermit, and cer- tainly it would be hard for him to find a more heaven -inspiring place than this silent mountain peak, looking down through all the glories of nature upon the world he had renounced." * Visitors to the Adriatic coast will remember the " Madonna del Mare," the pilgrimage church of Fiume, which rises high above the Bay of Quarnero. It is approached by a path of 425 steps flanked with oratories or stations of the cross. The church of St Andrew at Kieff rises high above the river Dnieper, on a platform surrounded by a stone balustrade. It is approached from the west by a lofty flight of steps. The church is built on the spot where St. Andrew is said once to have preached. Almost every Christian land has its conspicu- ous shrines, like the Wurmlinger Kapelle near Tubingen, rising high above the surrounding country. In the exalting of the Lord's mountain the prophet sees the triumph of His spiritual kingdom. Isaiah n. 2-5 is a great missionary passage, and a watchword for the League of Nations. The heathen world is like that mountain towards which Mignon, in Goethe's song, turned reluctant steps. It was a dark and mist-wrapped peak, inhabited by the dragon's ancient brood. Travellers pressing upwards along the slippery path heard the crash of falling rocks and the thunder of distant avalanches mingling with the torrent's roar. But in the Mountain of the Lord the veils are rent asunder. " He will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people and the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory, and the Lord God shall wipe away tears from off all faces." 2 1 " Wanderings in Spain," pp. 33, 34. 2 Isaiah xxv. 7, 8. 12 L] THE ADVENT SEASON " He maketh peace in His high places." 1 " What tho' the morn be dim, and dark the night ? Wait, for at evening time it shall be light. Lo ! where they glide in fields above the storm, The prophet's mighty shade, the Apostle's radiant form." R. S. HAWKER of Morwenstow. II. The Second Sunday in Advent is known, from its Collect and Epistle 2 as " Bible Sunday ". Sermons on this date often take the form of exhortations to the love and study of the Holy Scriptures. To the inexhaustible stores of illustrations which bear upon the subject, we add some examples from different ages of the Church's history. One of the ancient Ganones Hippolyti lays down this rule : " On each day when there is no prayer in Church, take the Scripture and read in it, let sunrise find the Scripture spread open upon your knees " (" sol conspiciat matutino tempore Scrip- turam super genua tua "). 3 St. Louis of France is said to have caused candles to be made of three feet in length, and he continued to read the Bible while the candles lasted. 4 Christopher Columbus lived for a time at Valcuebo, a quiet grange about three miles to the westward of Salamanca. The country people have a tradition that on the crest of a small hill near the house, now called "Tero de Colon," the future dis- coverer used to pass long hours conferring with his visitors or reading the Holy Scriptures in solitude. A modern proprietor, Don Martin de Solis, erected a monument on this site, consisting of a stone pyramid rising from a masonry substructure, and surmounted by a globe. 5 The father of Sir Francis Drake wrote in his will, address- ing his youngest son : " Remember my wish to be new set in the beginning of the Romans, and so trim the book and keep in 1 Job. xxv. 2. 2 Romans xv. 4-13. 3 Pierre Batiffol, " History of the Roman Breviary," p. 43. 4 H. Wallon, " Saint Louis et son temps," Vol. I, p. 53. 8 "Life of Columbus," by Clements R. Markham, C.B., p. 49. 13 THE CHEISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOEY [i. bosom and feed upon. Make much of the Bible, that I do here send thee with all the rest of my godly books.'V In recommending the constant study of Holy Scripture, Archbishop Leighton wrote : " Different men have different views in reading the Book. As in the same field the ox looks for grass, the hound fora hare, and the stork for a lizard ; some fond of critical remarks, pick up nothing but little stones and shells : others search into deep mysteries, giving themselves but very little trouble about the precepts and instructions that are clear and evident, and these plunge themselves into a bottomless abyss. But the genuine disciples of the true wisdom are those who make it their daily employment to purify their hearts by the wisdom of these fountains, and bring their whole lives to a conformity with this heavenly doctrine. They do not desire to know these things only for the sake of knowing them, or that they themselves may become known thereby, but that their souls may be healed and their steps directed, so that they may be led through the paths of righteousness to the glorious happiness which is set before them." 2 Christopher Wren, the builder of St. Paul's Cathedral, spent his old age, as his grandson tells us, " in the consolation of the Holy Scriptures ; cheerful in solitude, and as well pleased to die in the shade as in the light ". When Lady Lawrence, the noble-hearted wife and faithful helpmate of Sir Henry Lawrence, was sinking under her last illness in 1854, she sent a tender message to John Nicholson, afterwards the hero of Delhi : " ' Tell him I love him dearly as if he were my son. I know that he is noble and pure to his fellowmen, that he thinks not of himself ; but tell him that he is a sinner, that one day he will be as weak and as near death as I am now.' She ended by begging him to ' read but a few verses of the Bible daily ' and to say the Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent. After 1 Quoted by Julian S. Corbett, " Drake and the Tudor Navy," Vol. I, p. 70. 2 Quoted by the Rev. D. Butler, in his " Life of Archbishop Leighton," pp. 269, 270. 14 i.] THE ADVENT SEASON her death Sir Henry sent him a New Testament inscribed with his wife's name." 1 When Lord Clyde (Colin Campbell) was dying, he asked that the Bible should be read to him in French, and made his comments in that language. 2 General Gordon's brother tells us that the soldier "from having lived so much in solitude, had come to care less for our ordinary Church services and sermons, drawing his hopes of salvation from the Bible alone. . . . He took his stand upon the Bible, and in distress of mind or in time of hesitation he turned to it for advice. His Bible was to him his friend and companion in time of trouble." Stonewall Jackson, a hero of the American Civil War, was a constant student of the Bible. His wife wrote : " The first book he took up daily was his Bible, which he read with a com- mentary, and the many pencil marks upon it showed with what care he bent over its pages. From his Bible he turned to his text-books. " 3 Of Bishop Christopher Wordsworth of Lincoln his daughter Elizabeth writes : " It is no exaggeration to say that the study of Holy Scrip- ture was the great happiness of his life. He lived in it ; he seemed to carry its atmosphere about with him, and no lover of natural beauty ever flew back more gladly to the hills and woods than he did to the open pages of his Bible." 4 In Bishop Harold Browne's biography, by Dean Kitchin, the following passage is quoted from the letter of a clergyman, who was one of the last that the Bishop ordained : " I shall never forget to-day, the quiet Church at Farnham, and the good Bishop, so ill that he could hardly kneel through- out the length of the service ; from the constant moving of his feet and legs you could see that it was pain to him ; and yet I shall never forget the interview with him in his study when all was over ; his calling for the Greek Testament he had given me," 1 " Life of John Nicholson,' 1 by Captain Lionel J. Trotter, p. 164. 2 " Life of Lord Clyde," Vol. II, p. 470. 'Colonel Henderson's " Life of Stonewall Jackson," Vol. I, p. 69 4 "Glimpses of the Past," p. 18. 15 THE CHKISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STOEY [i. and the legend, " Meditate upon these things ; giveithyself wholly to them." 1 Betsy Norgrove, nurse of Frederick Denison Maurice, was fond of telling how, whenever in his early childhood the boy was missing, she was sure to find him at full length under some big gooseberry bushes or tall -grown asparagus beds that gave a chance of privacy, always with some book, often with the Bible. 2 Dean Farrar wrote of his mother, for whom he cherished the deepest love and reverence : " My mother's habit was, every day, immediately after breakfast, to withdraw for an hour to her own room, and to spend that hour in reading the Bible, in meditation and in prayer. From that hour, as from a pure fountain, she drew the strength and sweetness which enabled her to fulfil all her duties, and to remain unruffled by all the worries and pettiness which are so often the intolerable trial of narrow neighbourhoods. As I think of her life, and of all it had to bear, I see the absolute triumph of Christian grace in the lovely ideal of a Christian lady." 3 When the artist J. F. Millet returned in mid-life to his Norman village home, he paused one evening at the door of the little church of Eculleville. The Angelus was ringing, and he went inside. Before the altar knelt an aged priest, in whom he recognised his first kind teacher, the Abbe Jean Lebrisseux. " 'Ah, it is you, my dear child, little Francois ! ' the good old man cried, and they embraced each other with tears in their eyes. " ' And your Bible, Francois, have you forgotten it ' ? asked the Cure presently. ' The Psalms you were so fond of do you ever read them now ? ' " ' They are my breviary/ replied Millet. ' It is there I find all I paint.' " Philip Spitta, the biographer of John Sebastian Bach, says that the musician's knowledge of the Bible, as shown by his church cantatas, was evidently as extensive as his acquaintance with hymns. " We see from his owning Bunting's ' Itinerarium 1 In Dr. Moffatt's translation : " Attend to these duties, let them absorb you ". 2 "Life of F. D. Maurice," Vol. I, p. 32 (edition of 1885). 3 Life of F. W. Farrar, pp. 5, 6. 16 i.] THE ADVENT SEASON Sacrae Scripturae ' that he must have tried to realise the Bible history as vividly and as picturesquely as possible. In this Itinerary all the travels of the Patriarchs, Judges, Kings, Prophets, Princes, and their peoples, of Joseph and the Virgin Mary, of the Wise Men from the East, Christ and His Apostles, were traced out and estimated in German miles ; it also con- tains a full description of all countries and towns mentioned in the Bible. Judge as we may the scientific value of such a work, it is at any rate an evidence that Bach did not regard his Bible merely as a repertory of texts for lyric verses, or even for dogmatic argument, but that he tried to make himself familiar with it in every sense." Mr. Gosse tells us, in his "Life of Swinburne," that the poet's mother, Lady Jane Swinburne, " insisted, and there was no need for her to urge on so ardent a pupil, that her eldest son should acquire an extended knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. This acquaintance with the text of the Bible he retained to the end of his life, and he was accustomed to be emphatic about the advantage he had received from the beauty of its language." When the first cartload of Bibles, sent by the British and Foreign Bible Society, arrived in Wales, " the Welsh peasants went out in crowds to meet it, welcomed it as the Israelites did the Ark of old, drew it into the town, and eagerly bore off every copy, as rapidly as they could be dispersed. The young people were to be seen consuming the whole night in reading it. Labourers carried it with them to the field." l Miss McNaughtan writes in her War Diary 2 : "To-day I have been thinking, as I have often thought, that the real power of the Bible is that it is a Universal Human Document. The world is based upon sentiment i.e. the per- sonality of man and his feelings brought to bear upon facts. It is also the world's dynamic force. Now, the books of the Bible especially, perhaps, the magical, beautiful Psalms are the most tender and sentimental (the word has been misused, of course) that were ever written. They express the thoughts and feelings of generations of men who always did express their 1 " The English Church in the Nineteenth Century," by Francis Warre Cornish," Vol. I, p. 41. 2 " My War Experiences in Two Continents," p. 101. 2 17 [I. thoughts and feelings, and thought no shame of it And so we northern people, with our passionate inarticulateness, love to find ourselves expressed in the old pages." Edward Bernstein tells us that the message of Socialism, in his early days, was received by many among the working-classes as a religious message. " It repeatedly happened to me, and no doubt to others also, that labourers or artisans, who had heard a Socialist speech for the first time, came to me at the close of a meeting, and explained to me that everything I had said was in the Bible, and that they could show me the passages text by text" The Gospel for the day is St. Luke xxi. 25-33. The words of our Lord, " Look up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh," must have comforted de- vout Jewish Christians after the fall of Jerusalem, while their non-Christian fellow-countrymen were groping in the dark. As the Italian historian Ferrero says : " Amid the accidents and the confusion of history, men criticise events from their imme- diate results ; they instinctively resent the loss of anything that is dear to them; and they stand continually in dread of an utter and final extinction, amid the suspense and vicissitudes of an age that is slowly dying and an age that is coming to birth. For the fitful and mysterious movements of history are like the alternations of night and day in the far northern summer a long, almost endless day, a long twilight, then the extinction of all the visible world in the total darkness of a brief midnight, then again the long twilight of morning, heralding the dawn of a new light over the world. But when he has lived through the splendour and sunshine of a familiar civilization and watched its slow decline in the darkness, man thinks that the light is quenched for ever, and turns back in a blind and instinctive de- spair to worship the sun of a vanished day." 1 Mysterious signs are recorded by ancient and modern chroniclers of the lives of princes. Pepys notes in his Journal that on the coronation day of Charles II (23 April, 1661) " it fell a-raining and thundering and lightning as I have not seen ^'Greatness and Decline of Rome," Vol. I, p. 41 (translation by A. E. Zimmern). 18 i.] THE ADVENT SEASON it do for some years ; which people did take great notice of; God's blessing of the work of these two days, which is a foolery to take too much notice of such things." Pepys' annotator, Lord Braybrooke, recalled Baxter's mention of this storm : " On April 23, was His Majesty's coronation-day, the day being very serene and fair ; till suddenly in the afternoon, as they were returning from Westminster Hall, there was very terrible thunders when none expected it, which made me remember his father's coronation, on which, being a boy at school, and having leave to play for the solemnity, an earthquake, about two o'clock in the afternoon, did affright the boys, and all the neighbourhood. I intend no commentary on these, but only to relate the matter of fact." l Dean Stanley, in his " History of the Eastern Church," says that in Russia the services of Christmas Day are almost obscured by those which celebrate the retreat of the invaders on the same day, the 25th of December, 1812, from the Russian soil ; the last of that succession of national thanksgivings, which begin with the victory of the Don and the flight of Tamerlane, and end with the victory of the Beresina and the flight of Napoleon. " How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning ! " This is the lesson appointed for the services of that day : " There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars ; and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity. Look up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh." Canon Barnett wrote in his last Advent season from the cloisters of Westminster Abbey to Sir William Markby : " My very dear friend, I was thinking of you this morning in the Abbey. The beauty was great as the sunlight gilded the stone work and the music glorified ' the coming of the Son of Man '. These earthen vessels, the old phrases and words, carry thoughts which are always living. The vessel is shaped out of the clay of the time and suits the time ; the vessel grows old but the thought remains. Thus it is with this phrase * the coming of the Son of Man ' or ' the second coming '. It carried the thought that He whose love and mercy were manifest would also be present on the Day of Judgment. People have paid much attention to the phrase, and all sorts of explanations are 1 Wheatley's edition of Pepys, Vol. II, p. 23. 19 [I. prevalent, but surely whatever the phrase has meant, the es- sential truth is that judgment is mercy. " I wonder whether meditation thereon may help you ; you have in your own experience felt the power of love, you feel comfort as you read and read again the tale of Jesus' life. You know that there is a Day of Judgment. Now does it not help you to remember that the truth which in its earthen vessels has survived the ages is that love is in the judgment, that because God is merciful therefore He is to be feared ? In the words of the Te Deum, 'We believe that thou shalt come to be our Judge'." 1 The lessons are from Isaiah v., xi. and xxiv. Is. v. 1. My wellbeloved hath a vineyard in a very fruit- ful hill. The ancient burying-ground of the Jews at Prague has been described by the late Principal Cairns and other writers. A. P. Stanley, who visited the city with Benjamin Jowett in 1844, wrote to his sister : "And lastly there was the burial-place of the Jews, from 1100 to 1600, and since disused ; the old alders twined amongst the yet older gravestones, and the symbols of the bunch of grapes of the vineyard of the house of Israel. It was the eve, too, of the Feast of Tabernacles, and in the old syna- gogue they brought out the palm branches which were to be given to the people, and which came, they said, from near Genoa." 2 Is. xi. 2, 3. The seven streamers which float backward from the golden candlesticks in Dante's " Purgatorio " " represent," says Dr. J. S. Carroll, " the seven ' gifts of the Spirit,' as named in the Vulgate of Isaiah xi. 2, 3, namely, Wisdom, Intellect, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety, and fear of the Lord." 3 Is. xi. 6. A little child shall lead them. Bishop Bury, in " Russian Life To-day," tells of his visit to 1 " Life of Canon Barnett," Vol. II, p. 374. ' " Dean Stanley's ' Letters and Verses,' " p. 84, edited by R. E. Prothero. ' " Prisoners of Hope," p. 403. 20 i.] THE ADVENT SEASON an elementary school in Siberia. The morning's work opened with prayer, " but how different from prayers in our own schools ! The master and teachers did nothing except pray with the rest. At a sign that all was ready a boy of twelve stepped out and took his place before the ikon in its corner, and then bowing with that inimitable grace which belongs alone to the Russian when at prayer, and making the sign of the Cross, he gravely led the simple prayers of the whole school, all singing softly and reverently in unison. It was inexpressibly touching and appeal- ing, and to be treasured up with those other things of which one says, ' I shall never forget'." 1 Is. xi. 6-9. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb . . . and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. . . . They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain. The story of Una and her protector the lion is familiar to readers of " The Faerie Queen ". " The Lyon would not leave her desolate, But with her went along, as a strong gard Of her chast person, and a faithfull mate Of her sad troubles and misfortunes hard : Still when she slept, he kept both watch and ward, And when she wakt, he waited diligent, With humble service to her will prepard : From her faire eyes he tooke commandement, And even by her looks conceived her intent." Is. xi. 9. The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. It is "the knowledge of the Lord " of which the prophet writes. As S. R. Gardiner says : " Knowledge may cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, order may be secured, and reverence may be shown where reverence is due, but unless the resolute will be there to struggle onwards and upwards towards an ideal higher still, the gift will have been bestowed in vain." 3 Is. xxiv. This chapter seems to be haunted with the breath of pestilence. A common suffering, like that of the Black Death in the fourteenth century, is indicated in verse 10 : 1 "Russian Life To-Day," p. in. 3 " History of the Great Civil War," Vol I, p. 9. 21 THE CHKISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [i. " Every house is shut up, that no man may come in " ; and also in verse 2, " As with the servant, so with his master ; as with the maid, so with her mistress ". Defoe tells how, in the worst periods of the Plague of London (1665) the knells ceased to sound. The number of deaths was so great that the authori- ties " had forbid the bells ringing for anybody, and people were all fetched away by the carts, rich as well as poor ". Bulwer Lytton, in his novel " Rienzi," pictures the awful spectacle of the plague pit : " There, too, the wild satire of the grave diggers had cast, though stripped of their gold and jewels, the emblems that spoke of departed rank ; the broken wand of the Councillor ; the General's baton ; the priestly mitre ! " Is. xxiv. 5. In October, 1915, King George V. issued a war message to his people. The " Glasgow Herald " called atten- tion to its Scriptural origin. The King wrote of "a highly organised enemy, who has transgressed the laws of nations, and changed the ordinance that binds civilized Europe together," language plainly drawn from Isaiah xxiv. 5 : " The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof ; because they have trans- gressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant". III. The Third Sunday in Advent is consecrated to the holy ministry. In the Epistle 1 St. Paul proclaims his independence of man's opinion : " With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you or of man's j udgment ". Humble souls have dared to echo the Apostle's words. The late Dr. John Watson (Ian Maclaren) in his story en- titled " A Probationer," tells of a Scottish divinity student who possessed rare learning and piety, but who lacked the gifts of the popular preacher, and was unable to obtain a church. He died early, and in his last hours he began to preach. " We could make nothing of the words till he suddenly stopped and raised himself in the bed. " ' Thou, Lord,' he cried with great astonishment, ' hearing me ... Forgive ... I am not worthy to declare Thy Gospel.' 1 1 Cor. iv. 5. i.] THE ADVENT SEASON " What was said by the Master none of us heard, but the astonishment passed into joy, and the light thereof still touched and made beautiful his face as the probationer fell asleep. " It was a spring day when we laid his body to rest, and any- one who cares may find his grave, (because a weeping willow hangs over it, and this is the inscription on the stone HIRAM CLUNAS Probationer " It is a very small thing that I should be judged of man's judgment" Thomas a Kempis wrote : " Although Paul endeavoured to please all in the Lord and made himself all things unto all men, yet with him it was a very small thing that he should be judged of man's judgment. He did for the edification and salvation of others what lay in him, and as much as he was able ; yet could he not hinder but that he was sometimes judged and despised by others. Therefore he committed all to God, who knew all ; and with patience and humility he defended himself against un- j ust tongues, and against such as thought vanities and lies, and spake boastfully whatever they listed." John Wesley wrote from Oxford to his father, in 1733 : " As for reputation, though it be a glorious instrument of advancing our Master's service, yet there is a better than that a clean heart, a single eye, a soul full of God ! A fair exchange, if by the loss of reputation we can purchase the lowest degree of purity of heart ! We beg my mother and you would not cease to work together with us, that, whatever we lose, we may gain this ; and that, having tasted of this good gift, we may count all things else but dung and dross in comparison of it." l J. H. Newman wrote in 1844, shortly before his secession from the Church of England : " When a man vividly feels that Time is the great arbiter of actions and corrector of judgments, why should he not leave the elucidation of his thoughts and notions to Time ? ' Leaving the thing for Time who solves all doubt, By bringing Truth, his glorious daughter, out.' 1 " Letters of John Wesley " ; notes by the Rev. George Eayrs, p. 53. THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [i. And, above all, if he dare look forward to that Day in which Time will end, or if now he is able to look beyond this world to judgment now passing out of sight (yes, now passed), and if the judgment within his own heart, after all drawbacks, gives him hopes that the unseen judgment is more gracious than the thoughts of men, he will feel very little disposed to put himself out of the way to do for himself what he trusts will one day be done for him." * Sir James Stephen wrote of his friend, Zachary Macaulay, father of the historian : " His earthward affections, active and all-enduring as they were, could yet thrive without the support of human sympathy, because they were sustained by so abiding a sense of the divine presence, and so absolute a submission to the divine will, as raised him habitually to that higher region where the reproach of man could not reach, and the praise of man might not pre- sume to follow him." The Gospel 2 directs our thoughts to the ministry of St. John the Baptist. William Hazlitt was in his twentieth year when he heard Coleridge preach at Shrewsbury. There was some notion at the time that Coleridge might succeed a Mr. Kowe in the charge of the Unitarian Chapel in that town. "It was in January, 1798," says Hazlitt, " that I rose one morning before daylight to walk ten miles in the mud to hear this celebrated person preach. Never, the longest day I have to live, shall I have such another walk as this cold, raw, com- fortless one, in the winter of the year 1798. . . . When I got there the organ was playing the 100th Psalm ; and when it was done, Mr. Coleridge rose and gave out his text, ' And He went up into the mountain to pray, Himself, alone '. As he gave out this text his voice ' rose like a stream of rich distilled per- fumes ' ; and when he came to the two last words, which he pronounced loud, deep, and distinct, it seemed to me, who was then young, as if the sounds had echoed from the bottom of the human heart, and as if that prayer might have floated in 1 " Correspondence of John Henry Newman with John Keble and Others," pp. 19, 20. 2 St. Matt XI. 2- ro. 24 i.] THE ADVENT SEASON solemn silence through the universe. The idea of St. John came into my mind, ' of one crying in the wilderness, who had his loins girt about, and whose food was locusts and wild honey '." The lessons are from Isaiah xxv., xxvi., and xxvtn. Is. xxv. 8. He will swallow up death in victory. Ruskin says, speaking of the death of our Lord : " It was not the mere bodily death that He conquered that death had no sting. It was this spiritual death which He conquered, so that at last it should be swallowed up mark the word not in life, but in victory. As the dead body shall be raised to life, so also the defeated soul to victory, if only it has been fighting on its Master's side, has made no covenant with death, nor itself bowed its forehead for his seal. Blind from the prison house, maimed from the battle, or mad from the tombs, their souls shall surely yet sit, astonished, at His feet who giveth peace." Miss Macnaughtan tells us that in Georgia the people have a curious custom, the result of generations of fighting. Instead of saying " Good-morning " they say " Victory," and the answer is, " May the victory be yours "- 1 Is. xxvi. 3. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee. Thomas Carlyle's mother wrote to him in 1836 : "Keep a good heart; may God give us all grace to stay our minds on Him who has said in His Word, He will keep them in perfect peace whose minds are stayed on Him, because they trust in Him." Is. xxvi. 20. Come, my people, enter into thy chambers and shut thy doors about thee ; hide thyself as it were for a little moment until the indignation be overpast. Robert Leighton, the saintly Archbishop of Glasgow, wrote his friend, the Rev. James Aird : " Methinks I find a growing contempt of all this world and consequently some further degrees of that quiet which is only subject to disturbance by our in- ordinate fancies and desires, and receding from the blessed centre of our rest ; for hurries of the world you know the way, Isaiah i "My War Experiences in Two Continents," p. 213. 35 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [i. xxvi. 20 ; and in these retiring rooms we meet and be safe and quiet". 1 The words of Isaiah xxvi. 20 were read, under the mediaeval Church, in the Exeter office for the enclosure of an anchorite. Is. XXVHI. 16. He that believeth shall not make haste. "That does not mean he that believeth shall never be hurried. This matter of haste is not a purely personal matter. We live in a hasting world a world full of conditions that we did not make and must accept. In the heart of a swaying crowd it is nonsense for a man to say ' I will not be swayed '. The crowd settles that for him. But he can say ' I will keep calm and collected/ and can make good his word." PEKCY AINSWORTH. IV. Collect and Epistle 2 for the Fourth Advent Sunday remind us that Christmas is at hand. Dr. Pusey celebrated Holy Communion at Pusey church on Christmas Day, 1828. " He preached," says his biographer, Canon Liddon, "on Phil. iv. 4, 'Rejoice in the Lord alway : and again I say, Rejoice' one of the sentences of St. Paul which were dearest to him throughout his life, and which he would repeat to himself again and again when ill, in his last years." 3 PHIL. rv. 5. Let your moderation be known unto all men. C. E. Norton wrote to Lowell at the beginning of the American Civil War about the departure of soldiers from New- port. They sailed with Captain Tew, a fisherman. " The company went without a flag, and it was resolved to send one to them. In a day or two it was made and sent to Providence, and presented with a speech and the usual formalities. When Captain Tew took it, he said, ' I thank you for this flag. I don't know how to make a speech, Let us pray.' So he made a prayer ending with words like these, ' If we are successful, give us, O Lord, the spirit of moderation ; if we be beaten, help us to stand firm unto death'." 1 " Life of Archbishop Leighton," by Rev. D. Butler, p. 260. Phil. iv. 4-7. 3 " Life of Dr. Pusey," Vol. I., pp. 191, 192. 26 i.] THE ADVENT SEASON " To be moderate, in any real sense of the word," says S. R. Gardiner, " requires the highest powers of the imagination. He who would reconcile adverse parties must possess something more than a love of peace and a contempt of extreme doctrines. He must have a clear and sympathetic perception of that which is best and noblest on either side ; and it was in the perception of anything good or noble in Puritanism that Falkland and his associates were entirely lacking." l PHIL. iv. 6. Be careful for nothing. Miss Alice Gardner quotes these words of the Emperor Julian to his friends : " Where is your courage ? A sorry thing it seemed to be ; you are ready to cringe and flatter from fear of death, when it is possible for you to cast all anxiety aside and to leave the gods to work their will, dividing with them the care of yourself, as Socrates did : thus in all things concerning yourself doing what you find possible ; leaving the whole in their hands ; seeking not your own gain ; seizing nothing for your own use ; you might receive in all security the gifts they bestow upon you." PHIL. iv. 6. In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. Harriet Beecher Stowe has these words on prayer : " There be many tongues and many languages of men but the language of prayer is one by itself, in all and above all. It is the inspira- tion of that Spirit that is ever working with our spirit, and con- stantly lifting us higher than we know, and, by our wants, by our woes, by our tears, by our yearnings, by our poverty, urging us, with mightier and mightier force, against those chains of sin which keep us from our God. We speak not of things con- ventionally called prayers vain mutterings of unawakened spirits talking drowsily in sleep but of such prayers as come when flesh and heart fail, in mighty straits; then he who prays is a prophet, and a mightier than he speaks in him ; for the ' Spirit helpeth our infirmities ; for we know not what we should pray for as we ought ; but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us, with groanings which cannot be uttered '." 2 1 " History of the Great Civil War," Vol I, p. 7. 2 " The Minister's Wooing," ch. XX. 27 THE CHKISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STOEY [i. PHIL. rv. 7. The eighth Duke of Argyll gave the following testimony after his meeting with Elizabeth Fry : " She was the only really very great human being I have ever met, with whom it was impossible to be disappointed. She was in the fullest sense of the word a majestic woman. It was impossible not to feel some awe before her as before some superior being. I understood in a moment the story of the prisons the words that came to my mind when I saw her were : 'The peace of God that passeth all understanding'." The Gospel l seems to foreshadow the words of the Christmas Gospel : " He came unto His own and His own received Him not ". ST. JOHN i. 26. There standeth One among you whom ye know not. In the annals of earthly sovereigns no legend is more ancient than that of the king in disguise. The Caliph Haroun-al- Raschid wanders as a private person through the lanes of Sir Walter Scott shows us the Crusading monarch, Richard I, riding over his kingdom in disguise as the Black Knight. Shakespeare represents his ideal hero, Henry V, as listening in disguise to the talk of soldiers on the eve of Agincourt. ST. JOHN i. 27. 7 am not worthy. These words are first used in the Bible by the patriarch Jacob : " I am not worthy of the least of all the mercies, and of all the truth, which Thou hast showed unto Thy servant ; for with my staff I passed over this Jordan ; and now I am become two bands " (Gen. xxxri. 10). They are spoken by the Roman centurion (Matt. vm. 8). " The centurion answered and said, ' Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come under my roof : but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed '." The words of St. John the Baptist are four times recorded (Matt. in. 11 ; Mark L 7 ; Luke m. 16 ; John i. 27). The prodigal son says to his father (Luke xv. 21) " I am no more worthy to be called thy son ". 1 St. John i. 19-28. 38 i.] THE ADVENT SEASON J. M. Neale says on this verse : " As we read in the Book of Ruth, it was a custom in Israel, that when a relation refused, as it was termed, to redeem an inheritance that is, when a brother, for example, refused to marry the widow of his brother, and to enter into his property then he loosed the latchet of his shoe. But our dear Lord came to this very end that He might redeem His inheritance ; that He might redeem us whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren ; and therefore it was that the latchet of His shoe was not to be unloosed." l The lessons for the Fourth Advent Sunday are from Is. xxx., xxxii., and xxxm. Is. xxx. 2. The shadow of Egypt. " Egypt was powerful with the kind of power that the world and the devil can fully appreciate. There is a might that calls to the world in the clang of iron and the thunder of horse- men and the clink of gold, and many there be that trust in it. There is a might that lifts not up its voice in the clamour of the world, but that pleads its rights and its power in the silences of thought, in the quiet inner places, where conscience dwells, in the depths of all true feeling, and on the lonely heights of the ideal and would to God that you and I had more faith in it." PERCY AINSWORTH. Is. xxxii. 2. The shadow of a great rock in a weary land. Ruskin compares a happy home to this rock of Isaiah : " So far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched over by Household Gods, before whose faces none may come but those whom they can receive with love so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only of a nobler shade and light shade as of the rock in a weary land, and light as of the Pharos in a stormy sea ; so far it vindicates the name, and fulfils the praise of Home." Is. xxxii. 20. Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters. The text of Coleridge's Lay Sermon (1817) which he des- cribed as " easy to be remembered from its briefness, likely to be remembered from its beauty ". 1 " Sackville College Sermons," Vol. I, p. 48. 39 [I. Is. XXXIIL 17. Thine yes shall see the King in his beauty. When Elizabeth Fry was Hearing the end of her holy and useful life, she expressed an earnest desire to attend the Friends' meeting for worship at Plaistow. She was taken to the hall in her wheeled chair, followed by her husband, her children and attendants. " Her son William seated himself closely at her side, and the rest near her. The silence that prevailed was solemn. After a time in a clear voice she addressed the meeting. The subject of her discourse was ' the death of the righteous' .... She urged the need of devotedness of heart and steadfastness of purpose ; she raised a song of praise for the eternal hope offered to the Christian, and concluded with these words in Isaiah ' Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty V Dr. Baedeker, who, like his friend Lord Radstock, did an apostolic work in Russia, passed away in 1 906 at Weston-super- Mare. During his last illness one sentence was continually upon his lips : " I am going in to see the King in His beauty ". Canon Liddon closed his last Bampton Lecture on "The Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ " with a reference to this text : " May you, sustained by His presence and aid, so pass through the valley of the shadow of death as to fear no evil, and to find, at the gate of the eternal world, that all the yearnings of faith and hope are to be more than satisfied by the vision of the Divine ' King in His Beauty '." 30 CHAPTER II. CHRISTMASTIDE. Blessed, blessed evermore With her virgin lips she kiss'd, With her arms, and to her breast, She embraced the babe divine, Her babe divine the virgin mother ! There lives not on this ring of earth A mortal that can sing her praise. Mighty mother, virgin pure, In the darkness and the night For us she bore the heavenly Lord ! J The village inn, the carpenter's household, the groups of peasants, all is as simple as the story of a peasant's childhood. With wonderful power, but with wonderful stillness, no noise, no tumult, surely such a de- scription falls in with the spiritual intention of the event. It is a spiritual miracle, and the miracles of spiritual life are always as still as they are powerful, as powerful as they are still. BISHOP PHILLIPS BROOKS. 1 S. T. Coleridge (Translated from Ottfried's metrical paraphrase of the Gospels). CHAPTER II. CHRISTMASTIDE. THE PROPER PSALMS. Six Psalms are appointed for the Christmas Festival. The first is xix., " The heavens declare the glory of God," a prelude to the words of the Morning Lesson, "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God ". Confucius once said to a disciple, " I would prefer not speak- ing". " If you, Master, do not speak," replied the young man, " what shall we, your disciples, have to record ? " The Master answered, "Does Heaven speak? The four seasons pursue their course, and all things are continually being produced, but does Heaven say anything ? " l So we read in v. 3, " There is no speech nor language ; their voice cannot be heard ". 2 The silence of Heaven was broken at the Saviour's birth. St. Augustine refers to this Psalm in the famous passage which he addressed to the vain seekers of his age : " Ye seek a blessed life in the land of death ; it is not there. For how should there be a blessed life, where life itself is not ? But our true Life came down hither, and bore our death, and slew him, out of the abundance of His own life : and He thundered, calling aloud to us to return hence to Him into that secret place, whence He came forth to us, first into the Virgin's womb, wherein He espoused the human creation, our mortal flesh, that it might not be for ever mortal, and thence like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, rejoicing as a giant to run his course. For He lingered not, but ran, calling aloud by words, deeds, death, life, descent, ascension, crying aloud to us 1 Quoted by Dr. Marcus Dods in " Erasmus and other Essays," P- 253. 2 Revised Version. THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [n. to return unto Him. And He departed from our eyes, that we might return into our heart, and there find Him. For He departed, and lo, He is here. He would not be long with us, yet left us not ; for He departed thither, whence he never parted, because the world was made by Him." We pass on to Psalm XLV., the Coronation and Wedding Chant of Kings. Christmas is a royal festival, and biographers of holy monarchs have sought inspiration from these lines. Thus Geoffroi de Beaulieu, confessor of St. Louis of France, applied to his master the words of verse 3 : " Full of grace are thy lips, because God hath blessed thee for ever". Modern historians do not refuse the claim. 1 On Christmas Day, A.D. 800, Charlemagne was crowned in the basilica of St. Peter in Rome. Viscount Bryce tells us that the bishop's throne, raised high above the multitude, was itself the curule chair of some forgotten magistrate. " From that chair the Pope now rose, as the reading of the Gospel ended, advanced to where Charles who had exchanged his simple Frank ish dress for the sandals and the chlamvs of a Roman patrician knelt in prayer by the high altar, and as in sight of all he placed upon the brow of the barbarian chieftain the diadem of the Caesars, then bent in obeisance before him, the church rang to the shouts of the multitude again free, again the lords and centre of the world. ' Karolo Augusto a Deo coronato magno et pacifico imperatori vita et victoria.' In the shout, echoed by the Franks without, was pronounced the union, so long in preparation, so mighty in its consequences, of the Roman and the Teuton, of the memories and the civilisation of the South with the fresh energy of the North, and from that moment modern history begins." a From verse 6, " Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever," Dr. Pusey preached his first University sermon at Christ Church, Oxford, on October 14, 1882. The Psalm, in the preacher's opinion, was of wholly Messianic import. Psalm XLV. is linked with the Epistle for Christmas Day, Hebrews i. 8, 9 : " But unto the Son He saith, Thy Throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of righteousness is the 1 H. Wallon, " Saint Louis et son Temps," Vol. I. p. 61. 8 "The Holy Roman Empire," chapter iv. 34 IL] CHEISTMASTIDE sceptre of Thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity; therefore God, even Thy God, hath anointed Thee with the oil of gladness above Thy fellows." The third morning Psalm is LXXXV. On Christmas Day we understand the meaning of Mrs. Browning's reference to verse 10, " Righteousness and peace have kissed each other" : " And in the tumult and excess Of act and passion under sun, We sometimes hear oh, soft and far, As silver star did touch with star, The Kiss of Peace and Righteousness Through all things that are done." The Christmas Evening Psalms are LXXXIX., ex., cxxxii. The second is, like XLV., a royal Psalm, and is quoted in the Epistle for the day : " But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool " ? In Psalm LXXXIX. we are reminded of the Divine promise to David and his seed. The words are repeated with emphasis: "Once have I sworn by my holiness ; I will not lie unto David ". l Verse 1 of this Psalm was St. Teresa's motto : " I will sing of the mercies of the Lord for ever ". Verses 15-18 are among the best-loved passages in the metrical psalmody of the Scottish Church : " O greatly bless'd the people are The joyful sound that know ; In brightness of thy face, O Lord, They ever on shall go." Vesper music for the closing winter day floats towards us from Psalm cxxxii. Canon Liddon preached one of his Christ- mas sermons from verse 6: "Lo, we heard of the same at Ephratah and found it in the wood ". Almost every verse has its place in history and literature. Royal David comes before us as a suppliant worn by sleepless nights of sorrow, haunted by the memory of vows yet unfulfilled. The strains of his harp reach us from beyond the river of death. " Music," says Thomas Fuller, "is sweetest near or over rivers, where the echo thereof 1 Psalm LXXXIX. 35 (R.V.). 36 THE CHKISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOEY [n. is best rebounded by the water. Praise for pensiveness, thanks for tears, and blessing God over the floods of affliction, makes the most melodious music in the ear of heaven." The chorus of the priests is raised : " Arise, O Lord, into Thy resting-place ; Thou and the ark of Thy strength," and, as the carols resound and children's voices join in praise of the Babe of Bethlehem, we hear the answer from Him whose de- lights are with the sons of men : " This shall be My rest for ever ; here will I dwell, for I have a delight therein ". l Christmas is a festival of the young, the prosperous and the happy, yet its gifts are not denied to the lowliest of mankind. Dostoevsky, in "The House of the Dead," describes the coming of Christmas in a Siberian convict prison. "Who knows," he writes, " what memories must have stirred in the hearts of these outcasts at the coming of such a day ! The festivals of the Church make a vivid impression on the minds of peasants from childhood upwards. They are the days of rest from their hard toil, the days of family gatherings. In prison they must have been remembered with grief and heart- ache. . . . Apart from their innate reverence for the great day, the convicts felt unconsciously that by the observance of Christ- mas they were, as it were, in touch with the whole of the world, that they were not altogether outcasts and lost men, not alto- gether cut off : that it was the same in prison as amongst other people. They felt that : it was evident and ea&y to understand." The service in prison was held in the military ward. " In the middle of the room they put a table, covered it with a clean towel, and on it set the ikon and lighted the lamp be- fore it. At last the priest came with the cross and holy water. After repeating prayers and singing before the ikon, he stood facing the convicts, and all of them with genuine reverence came forward to kiss the cross. Then the priest walked through all the wards and sprinkled them with holy water. In the kitchen he praised our prison bread, which was famous throughout the town, and the convicts at once wanted to send him two freshly- baked loaves ; a veteran was at once despatched to take them. 1 Psalm cxxxn. 1 5 (Prayer Book Version). 36 li.] CHKISTMASTIDE They followed the cross out with the same reverence with which they had welcomed it." l Some of these convicts may have seen Bethlehem. Devout scholars of many ages have longed to visit the place of the Saviour's birth. Bishop Christopher Wordsworth of Lincoln used to dwell, as his daughter says, with pleasure on St. Jerome's retirement at Bethlehem. Melanchthon, in the sixteenth century, wished to imitate St. Jerome, and spend his closing years in Palestine. Even to those outside the Churches the joy of Christmas penetrates. Sir Leslie Stephen, as one of his daughters mentions, loved Milton's " Ode on the Nativity," and said it regularly to his children on Christmas night. "This was indeed the last poem he tried to say on the Christmas night before he died ; he re- membered the words, but was then too weak to speak them." The Epistle for Christmas Day 2 is chosen from Hebrews, that unsigned letter of which Bishop Westcott wrote : " I cherish the thought of the richness there was in the first days of the Church, when even the writer of an Epistle such as this should be a forgotten man ". Coleridge said that the object of the Epistle to the Hebrews was to prove the superiority of the Christian religion ; that of the Epistle to the Romans was to prove its necessity. "The Epistle to the Hebrews," wrote Matthew Arnold, "is full of beauty and power." R. H. Hutton would have agreed with him. "Where," he asked, "can you find the mind of the Christian theologian of that early day better set forth than in the Epistle to the Hebrews, whoever may have been the writer ? " A few months after the death of his wife in 1845, F. D. Maurice wrote to a sister : " I think I have determined to make the subject of my Warburton lectures the Epistle to the Hebrews. I have long taken more interest in it than, I think, in any book of the Bible, and my thoughts were especially drawn to it last spring. ' ' Bishop Westcott declared that no work on which he had spent many years of continuous labour had for him the same " intense human interest " as the study of this Epistle. 1 Mrs. Garnett's translation, p. 125. " Hebrews I. 1-12. 37 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [n. James Smetham would have shared his view. The message for Christmastide is summed up in the open- ing words of the Epistle : " God hath spoken unto us by His Son ". As the late Principal T. C. Edwards wrote in his ex- position of the book : " The eternal silence has been broken. We have a revelation. That God has spoken unto men is the ground of all religion." "The subject of the treatise," he adds, " is ' The Son as Priest-King the Revealer of God '. ' The revela- tion is not in words only, nor in external acts only, but in love, in redemption, in opening heaven to all believers.' It is well termed a revelation. For the Priest-King has rent the thick veil and opened the way to men to enter into the true holiest place, so that they may know God by prayer and communion." HEBREWS L 11, 12. They shall perish, but Thou remainest ; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment ; and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up and they shall be changed ; but Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail. In contrast to the words of the Psalmist and the writer of this Epistle we may quote Mommsen's words on the religion of ancient Rome : " As earthly things come and go in perpetual flux, the circle of the gods underwent a corresponding fluctua- tion. The tutelary spirit, which presided over the individual act, lasted no longer than that act itself; the tutelary spirit of the individual man lived and died with the man ; and eternal duration belonged to divinities of this sort only in so far as similar acts and similarly constituted men and therefore spirits of a similar kind were ever coming into existence afresh. " As the Roman gods ruled over the Roman community, so every foreign community was presided over by its own gods ; but sharp as was the distinction between the burgess and the non-burgess, between the Roman and the foreign god, both foreign men and foreign divinities could be admitted by resolu- tion of the community to the freedom of Rome, and when the citizens of a conquered city were transported to Rome, the gods of that city were also invited to take up their abode there." 1 Every sentence of the Christmas 2 Gospel has its hallowed 1 " History of Rome," ch. xii., pp. 206, 207, in Prof. P. Dickson's standard translation. 2 St. John I. 1-14. 38 n.] CHRISTMASTEDE associations. The Divinity of our Lord is proclaimed in the opening verse. " There is no point I feel stronger on," wrote Canon Ainger, the eloquent Master of the Temple, " than the Divinity of Christ, being convinced that with it, Christianity must live or perish. If the Saviour of men were not identical with their Creator, I see no help in the Cross for the suffering millions of the world." Macaulay says in his essay on Milton : " It was before Deity embodied in a human form, walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, that the prejudices of the Synagogue, and the doubts of the Academy, and the pride of the Portico, and the fasces of the Lictor, and the swords of thirty legions, were humbled in the dust." The persecuted Waldensian Church of Italy took for its motto the words of verse 5, " The light shineth in darkness ". On verse 10, " The world was made by Him," we recall the comment of St. Augustine : " He departed, and lo, He is here. He would not be long with us, yet left us not, for He departed thither, whence He never parted, for the world was made by Him." John Bunyan preached his last sermon on the words of verse 13. St. Francis de Sales tells us that verse 14 brought comfort to St. Thomas Aquinas, who for all his learning and holiness, feared thunderstorms with an excessive shrinking. When assailed by this terror, he cheered himself with the thought, "The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us ". " On Christmas morn," wrote James Smetham in his Journal, "I know that they who sleep, but their hearts wake, will hear one full carol and feel the shining of the glory ; but it will not stay, only the music will linger in them all day, and the glory will brood over their heart, and some Divine sentence from the lips of the King will come up every hour to make them wonder at its depth and meaning. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Dr. Livingstone wrote on Christmas Day, 1866 : " May He who was full of grace and truth impress his character on mine ". 39 THE CHKISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [n. The First Lesson l for the Festival is chosen from Isaiah, the winter prophet of the Church's year. " Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given." Lamech, in the Book of Genesis, gave to his boy the name Noah, meaning "rest" or " comfort". "This same shall com- fort us," he said, "concerning our work and toil of our hands." Centuries later a seer of Israel pointed towards the manger of Bethlehem. We think of Wordsworth's lines, which were chosen by George Eliot as the motto of " Silas Marner " : "A child, more than all other gifts That earth can offer to declining man Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts." Dora Greenwell wrote : " In the life and death and rising again of Him who shall be called Wonderful the chain of the habitual, the accustomed, is broken, and yet there is no sense of disturbance, or confusion ; the soul finds itself still among facts, of a new, supernatural order, and upon these its new life is based ". Dr. John Brown, author of" Rab and his Friends," recalls the emphasis with which his father read this chapter at family worship. " Isaiah was his masterpiece, and I remember quite well his startling us when reading 'His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God,' by a peremptory, ex- plosive sharpness, as of thunder overhead, at the words ' the mighty God,' similar to the rendering now given to Handel's music, and doubtless so meant by him, and then closing with ' the Prince of Peace,' soft and low." The First Evening Lesson 2 contains the words quoted in St. Matthew i. 28 : " They shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us". Carlyle wrote to Emerson : " My brave father, now victorious from his toil, was wont to pray in evening worship, ' Might we say, we are not alone, for God is with us ! ' Amen ! Amen ! " The Second Morning Lesson (Luke n. 1-15) has a twofold place in missionary annals. Verse 10, "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people," was the text chosen by Samuel Marsden, " the Apostle of New Zealand " 1 Isaiah ix. to verse 8. 3 Isaiah vn. 10-17. 40 XL] CHBISTMASTIDE for his first sermon to the Maoris on Christmas Day, 1814. Dr. Eugene Stock describes the service as " one of the great historic scenes in the annals of missions indeed, one of the really great scenes in the history of the British Colonial Empire, for the very existence of the now flourishing Dominion of New Zealand is due to the courage and faith of Samuel Marsden in flinging him- self among the Maoris. The Mission he instituted on Christmas Day, 1814, tamed the race, and then, in poured the colonists." A parallel may be found in the story of Bishop Bompas of Athabasca, Mackenzie River and Yukon. This " Apostle of the North," reached his post of duty at Fort Simpson on Christmas Day, 1865. "One hundred and seventy-seven days had passed since leaving London ; and was he to lose, after all, and so very near his destination ? But still the dogs raced forward, nearer and nearer, till oh, joy ! on Christmas morning the fort hove into sight. There was the flag floating from its tall staff; there were the men crowding around to give their welcome, and among them .stood that dauntless pioneer, the Rev. W. Kirkby, with great surprise upon his face, as Mr. Bompas rushed forward and seized him by the hand." Mr. Kirkby wrote to the Church Missionary Society : " A more auspicious day he (Mr. Bompas) could not have had for his arrival. He was just in time for morning service, so that we had, at once, the happiness of par- taking of the Holy Communion together. Then followed the Indian service, in which he took great delight, and in the evening, like good Samuel Marsden of old, he began his work by preach- ing from St. Luke n. 10." 1 Edward Bowen wrote the following Christmas poem : SHEMUEL. " Shemuel, the Bethlehemite, Watched a fevered guest at night ; All his fellows fared afield, Saw the angel host revealed ; He nor caught the mystic story, Heard the song, nor saw the glory. 1 "An Apostle of the North," by H. A. Cody, pp. 39, 40. 41 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [n. Through the night they gazing stood, Heard the holy multitude ; Back they came in wonder home, Knew the Christmas kingdom come, Eyes aflame, and hearts elated ; Shemuel sat alone, and waited. Works of mercy now, as then, Hide the angel host from men ; Hearts atune to earthly love Miss the angel notes above ; Deeds, at which the world rejoices, Quench the sound of angel voices. So they thought, nor deemed from whence His celestial recompense. Shemuel, by the fever bed, Touched by beckoning hands that led, Died, and saw the Uncreated ; All his fellows lived, and waited." THE OXEN. " Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. ' Now they are all on their knees,' An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. So fair a fancy few believe In these years ! Yet, I feel, If someone said on Christmas Eve ' Come ; see the oxen kneel. In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know,' I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so." THOMAS HARDY. 42 ii.] CHEISTMASTIDE The Lessons for Christmas Day close with a short passage from the Epistle to Titus, reminding faithful worshippers that on this day " the kindness and love of God our Saviour towards man appeared ". Archbishop Alexander said on this verse : " The word which is translated ' kindness ' is a most expressive one. A living poet has unintentionally translated it, ' Lovely souls that softly look with helpful eyes '. Those are the three elements of the word translated ' kindness '. There is loveliness in it, there is softness in it, and there is helpfulness in it. ... Let us thank God for the sunshine of His words, and be grateful for the revealed sweet-naturedness and philanthropy of God our Saviour : thank God for that great truth that lifts away the mists from the heights of the crags." 1 THE SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. The Sunday after Christmas has for the Epistle Galatians iv. 1-7. Dr. J. H. Jowett writes on verse 7, " Thou art no more a servant but a son " : " I was one of a party who visited Chatsworth. We were allowed the privilege of going through the noble house. But our liberties were severely restricted. We were allowed to pass rapidly through what is called 'the show rooms/ but we were rigidly excluded from ' the living rooms '. In many places there were red cords stretched across inviting passages, and our progress was barred. If I had been a son of the house, I could have passed into the living-rooms, the place of sweet and sacred fellow- ships, the house of genial intercourse, where secrets pass from lip to lip, and unspoken sentiments radiate from heart to heart. ' Thou art no longer a bondservant, but a son.' Then I, too, am privileged to enjoy the fellowships of the living-rooms, and no barrier blocks my way to the secret place. As a son I, too, am permitted to enter into a gracious intimacy with my God." 2 The Gospel for the day is St. Matt. i. 18-25. Joseph Polwarth, in George MacDonald's novel, " Thomas Wingfold, Curate," speaks thus of his spiritual experience : "I 1 " Christian World Pulpit," Vol. LIV, p. 20. 2 " The Transfigured Church," p. 73. 43 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [n. said to myself that I would begin at the beginning and read the New Testament through. I had no definite idea in the resolve ; it seemed a good thing to do, and I would do it. It would serve towards keeping up my connection in a way with things above. I began, but did not that night get through the first chapter of St. Matthew. Conscientiously, I read the chapter of the gene- alogy, but when I came to the twenty-first verse and read ' Thou shaft call his name Jesus ; for He shall save His people from their sins,' I fell on my knees. No system of theology had come between me and a common-sense reading of the book. I did not for a moment imagine that to be saved from my sins meant to be saved from the punishment of them. That would be no glad tidings to me. My sinfulness was ever before me, and often my sins too, and I loved them not, yet could not free myself from them. They were in me and of me, and how was I to part myself from that which came to me with my consciousness, which asserted itself in me as one with my consciousness? I could not get behind myself so as to reach its root. But here was news of one who came from behind that root itself to deliver me from that in me which made being a bad thing ! . . . Suffice it that from that moment I was a student, a disciple." ST. JOSEPH AND THE CHILD. Michael Fairless, in her Christmas poem, " The Manifesta- tion ", thus imagines the feelings of Joseph on the sacred night : " Little One, Little One, Saviour and Child, Father and Mother, my Husband and Son ; Born of the Lily, the maid undefiled, Babe of my Love, the beautiful One. Little One, Little One, Master and Lord, Kings of the Earth come, desiring Thy Face, I, Thy poor servitor, lowly afford All that my life holds, for all is Thy Grace. Little One, Little One, God over all, Earth is Thy footstool, and Heav'n is Thy throne ; Joseph the carpenter, prostrate I fall ; Praise Thee, adore Thee, and claim Thee mine own." T 1 " The Grey Brethren," by Michael Fairless, p. 46. 44 IL] CHRISTMASTIDE THE LESSONS. Is. xxxv. 1 . The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. " The sandy tracts of the so-called Arabian deserts," writes the Rev. S. M. Zwemer, "are termed by the Arabs themselves nefud (drained, exhausted, spent), the name given on most maps. The general physical features of this " desert " are those of a plain clothed with stunted, aromatic shrubs of many varieties, but their value as pasture is very unequal, some being excellent for camels and sheep, others absolutely worthless. Some nefuds abound in grasses and flowering plants after the early rains, and then the desert 'blossoms like the rose-'. Others are without rain and barren all year ; they are covered with long stretches of drift- sand, carried about by the wind and tossed in billows on the weather side of the rocks and bushes. " 1 Is. xxxv. 6. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart. The Girondist Sillery, who was lame, threw away his crutches on hearing the sentence of death pronounced, exclaiming " This day is the finest in my life ". Twenty-one of the brilliant courageous Girondists were executed by the guillotine in the space of forty minutes. They sang the Marseillaise while waiting their turn to ascend the scaffold. " ' Then shall the lame man leap as an hart,' can only be true in the next world : the impotent man that was daily laid for alms at the Beautiful Gate of the temple entered into that temple at the very moment when he was set free from his infirmity for ever." J. M. NEALE. Is. xxxv. 7. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water. The Spanish river Guadiana "plunges at a certain point in its course below the ground, but throws up thereafter to the surface, at one place and another, certain bubbling pools, called by the natives with unconscious poetry the ' eyes of the Gu- adiana '. They are only pools, but they prove that the stately river is pursuing an uninterrupted course below." 2 Is. xxxv. 10. Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore were among the 1 "Arabia : the Cradle of Islam," p. 24. a R. Bosworth Smith, in "The Harrovian," 18 May, 1901 ; in an article on Edward Bowen, quoted in Bowen's " Memoir," p. 4. 45 THE CHEISTIAN YEAB IN HUMAN STOEY [n. many devout Jews of the last century whose hearts' home was in the Holy City. They visited Jerusalem for the first time in 1827, and Mrs. Montefiore (as she then was) wrote in her diary on their departure : " ' Farewell, Holy City ! ' we exclaimed in our hearts. ' Blessed be the Almighty who has protected us while contem- plating the sacred scenes which environ thee ! Thankful may we ever be for His manifold mercies ! May the fountain of our feelings evermore run in the current of praise and entire devo- tion to His will and His truth, till the time shall arrive when the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads.' " Is. xxxv. 10. The Book of Isaiah has its place in Brahms's Requiem,, which is rendered every Advent in St. Paul's Cathedral. " The first number," says a musical critic, "consoles those who mourn the death of a beloved one ; the second begins with the wonderful death-march of the race on its way to the grave, and places in opposition to the brevity of human life the fact that the Lord's word endureth for ever. As these words are uttered, the voices break out with the jubilant words ' The redeemed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs and ever- lasting joy upon their heads ' " l (Isaiah xxxv. 10). 2 Is. xxxvni. 8. Behold, I will cause the shadow on the steps, which is gone down on the dial ofAhazwith the sun, to return backward ten steps. So the sun returned ten steps on the dial whereon it was gone down (Revised Version). Charles Lamb, in his essay on "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple," speaks of the solemn associations of sundials : " What an antique air had the now almost effaced sun-dials, with their moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with the time which they measured, and to take their revelations of its flight immediately from heaven, holding correspondence with the fountain of light ! How would the dark line steal imperceptibly on, watched by the eye of childhood, eager to detect its move- ment, never catched, nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests of sleep ! 1 W. Fuller-Mai tland's " Life of Brahms," p. 204. 3 This chapter is the first Morning Lesson for the First Sunday after Christmas. 46 ii.] CHEISTMASTIDE " Ah, yet doth beauty like a dial-hand steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ! What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dulness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old dial ! It stood as the garden-god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost every- where vanished ? If its business use be superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance. It spoke of moderate labours, of pleasures not protracted after sunset, of temperance and good hours. It was the primitive clock, the horologe of the first world. Adam could scarce have missed it in Paradise." If there is a Second Sunday after Christmas, the Collect, Epistle and Gospel are the same as for the Feast of the Circum- cision. The Lessons are Isaiah XLII., XLIIL, XLIV. Is. XLIII. 1. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote of her im- mortal " Uncle Tom's Cabin " : " This story is to show how Jesus Christ, who liveth and was dead, and now is alive for ever more, has still a mother's love for the poor and lowly, and that no man can sink so low but that Jesus Christ will stoop to take his hand. Who so low, who so poor, who so despised as the American slave? The law almost denies his existence as a person, and regards him for the most part as less than a man a mere thing, the property of another. . . . He can do nothing, possess nothing, acquire nothing, but what must belong to his master. Yet even to this slave Jesus Christ stoops, from where He sits at the right hand of the Father, and says ' Fear not, thou whom man despiseth, for I am thy brother. Fear not, for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name, thou art Mine.' " l Is. XLIV. 20. Mrs. Beecher Stowe wrote of Colonel Burr in " The Minister's Wooing " : " When a finely constituted nature wishes to go into baseness, it has first to bribe itself. Evil is never embraced undisguised as evil, but under some fiction which the mind accepts, and with which it has the singular power of blinding itself in the face of daylight The power of imposing on one's self is an essential preliminary to imposing on others. The man first argues himself down, and then he is ready to put 1 " Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe," by Charles E. Stowe, p. 154. 47 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [n. the whole weight of his nature to deceiving others. Long habits of this kind of self-delusion in time produce a paralysis in the vital nerves of truth, so that one becomes habitually unable to see things in their verity, and realises the awful words of Scripture : ' He feedeth on ashes ; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, so that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand ? ' LUKE ii. 39. They returned unto Galilee to their own city Nazareth. " Vines branching stilly Shade the open door In the house of Zion's Lily, Cleanly and poor. O brighter than wild laurel The Babe bounds in her hand ! The King, who for apparel Hath but a swaddling band, Who sees her heavenlier smiling than stars in His command. Soon mystic changes Part Him from her breast Yet there awhile He ranges Gardens of rest ; Yea, she the first to ponder Our ransom and recall, Awhile may rock Him under Her young curls' fall, Against that only tender, love-loyal heart of all. What shall inure Him Unto the deadly dream When the Tetrarch shall abjure Him, The thief blaspheme, And scribe and soldier jostle About the shameful Tree ? When even the Apostle Demands to touch and see ? But she hath kissed her Flower where the wounds are to be." LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY. 48 CHAPTER III. THE EPIPHANY SEASON. In Christ Jesus the Gentiles are co-heirs, companions, and co- partners in the Promise. 1 The Kings of the East brought gold, frankincense and myrrh gifts which signify all that is beyond themselves and the givers. ARTHUR E. WAITE. Epiphany, says Cardinal Newman, is a season especially set apart for adoring the glory of Christ. " As great men of this world are often plainly dressed, and look like other men, all but as having some one costly ornament on their breast or on their brow ; so the Son of Mary in His lowly dwelling, and in an infant's form, was declared to be the Son of God Most High, the Father of Ages, and the Prince of Peace, by His star ; a wonderful appearance which had guided the wise men all the way from the East, even unto Bethlehem. Christ descends to the shadows of this world, with the transitory tokens on Him of that future glory into which He could not enter till He had suffered. The star burned brightly over Him for awhile, though it then faded away." 1 Ephes. HI. 6 (Dr. Moffatt's translation). CHAPTER III. THE EPIPHANY SEASON. IN the Epiphany message from Ephesians, 1 we see St. Paul the prisoner looking starwards. He was a watcher of the night heavens, as we know from 1 Cor. xv., and the star which led the Magi must have irradiated his dungeon. " He adds a pathetic urgency," says R. W. Dale, " by describing himself as ' Paul the prisoner of Jesus Christ ' the one whom Christ has put in chains ' in behalf of you Gentiles,' and this description sets his imagination on fire, and awakens in his heart a passion of gratitude. ' A prisoner of Christ ' he can desire no more honourable title ; ' on behalf of [the] Gentiles ' he can be appointed to no more honourable service." 2 The Epiphany Gospel 3 gleams like a jewelled missal in the hands of painters. To take one example only, the Adoration of the Magi was a favourite subject of Sandro Botticelli. An English biographer says : " Sometimes he places the scene in a rocky wilderness, sometimes in the heart of a pine- forest. In some instances he introduces Roman arches and monuments or wide landscapes with mountains and sea-shore. In the Uffizi altarpiece the legend of the three kings becomes an apotheosis of the house of Medici ; in a later work it is used as an opportunity for celebrating Savonarola's dream of the New Jerusalem on earth. Last of all, it is transformed into a mystic vision of the Celestial country, where bright-hued seraphs dance and sing on the clouds of heaven, and angels welcome martyred saints to their embraces." 4 It was an old Armenian myth, said Hawker of Morwenstow, 1 Ephes. in. 1-12 (Epistle for the Day). 52 " Lectures on the Ephesians," p. 221. 8 St. Matt II. 1-12. 4 Julia Cartwright (Mrs. Ady), " Sandro Botticelli," p. 35. 51 THE CHKISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOEY [in. that the wise men of the East were the three sons of Noah, and that they were raised from the dead to represent, and do homage for, all mankind in the cave at Bethlehem ! He wrote the following carol on this tradition : " Three ancient men in Bethlehem's cave With awful wonder stand : A voice had called them from their grave In some far Eastern land. They lived, they trod the former earth, When the old waters swelled ; The ark, that womb of second birth Their house and lineage held. Pale Japhet bows the knee with gold, Bright Shem sweet incense brings, And Cham the myrrh his fingers hold : Lo, the three Orient kings ! Types of the total earth, they hailed The signal's starry frame ; Shuddering with second life, they quailed At the child Jesu's name. Then slow the patriarchs turned and trod, And this their parting sigh, ' Our eyes have seen the living God, And now once more to die '." The vision of a star is tenderly pictured by Dickens in his description of the death of the weaver Stephen Blackpool, in "Hard Times". Stephen has been accused of robbing the bank at Coketown, has been informed by Rachael of the accusa- tion, and has hastened back across country to meet his accusers and clear his good name. He falls into a disused pit known as the Old Hell Shaft, and is fatally injured. Rachael and Sissy find his hat on the edge and so discover the tragedy. Help comes after long delay, and the dying man is brought to the surface. Rachael, whom he would have married if a divorce could have been obtained from his drunken wife, is close beside 52 in.] THE EPIPHANY SEASON him at the last, as he lies with his face turned up to the night sky. To her he says : " ' Look up yonder, Rachael ! Look above ! ' Following his eyes, she saw that he was gazing at a star. " ' It ha* shined upon me,' he said reverently, ' in my pain and trouble down below. It ha' shined into my mind. I ha' look'n at 't and thowt o' thee, Rachael, till the muddle in my mind have cleared awa', above a bit, I hope. ... In my pain and trouble, lookin' up yonder wi* it shinin' on me ! ha' seen more clear, and ha' made it my dyin' prayer that aw the world may on'y coom together more, an' get a better unnerstan'in' o' one another, than when I were in't my own weak seln '." Before the bearers carry him away on the litter, Stephen says again to Rachael, looking upward at the star : " ' Often as I coom to myseln, and found it shinin' on me down there in my trouble, I thowt it were the star as guided to Our Saviour's home. I awmust think it be the very star ! ' " They lifted him up, and he was overjoyed to find that they were about to take him in the direction whither the star seemed to him to lead. " 'Rachael, beloved lass ! Don't let go my hand. We may walk together t'night, my dear ! ' " ' I will hold thy hand, and keep beside thee, Stephen, all the way.' " ' Bless thee ! Will somebody be pleased to cover my face ! ' " They carried him very gently along the fields, and down the lanes, and over the wide landscape ; Rachael always holding the hand in hers. Very few whispers broke the mournful silence. It was soon a funeral procession. The star had shown him where to find the God of the poor ; and through forgiveness, and sorrow, and pity, he had gone to his Redeemer's rest." The first Epiphany Lesson is the ecstatic sixtieth of Isaiah, " Surge, illuminare, Jerusalem," " Arise, shine, for thy light is come ". Harriet Beecher Stowe, in her reminiscences of her grand- mother, tells how " on one occasion, after her hearing had be- come slightly impaired, a wordy battle had been raging round her for some time, which, as she could not understand what we said, and as we seemed to be getting more and more earnest, moved her solicitude very deeply. At last she called one of my 53 THE CHKISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOEY [in. brothers to her and said, ' There now, if you have talked long enough, I want you to read something to me,' and gave him that eloquent chapter of Isaiah which begins, 'Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee,' and goes on to describe the day when the whole earth shall be full of the glory of the Lord. Her face, while he was reading, was like a transparency, luminous with internal light. At the close she said, ' Bishop Heber tells in his " Memoirs " how, often in India, there were four ministers of Christ met together, all of different denominations, and they read the chapter together, and found then there was one thing they all agreed on exactly '." Josephine Butler writes : " Those beautiful questioning words of Isaiah about the Gentiles l often occur to me : ' Who are these that fly as doves to their windows ? ' A flock of doves speeding to their home, their ark of refuge. Noah's one dove, like the solitary Jewish Church, took refuge there from the wild waste of waters ; but all kindreds, people, tongues and nations shall fly to their stronghold in these latter times, their feathers of gold and their wings covered with silver, white and lovely, though they have lien among the pots." " The clouds themselves," says J. M. Neale, " are utterly colourless, mere collections of dark, unsightly vapours. But let the sun once touch them, and how gloriously beautiful they are ! into what liquid purple they melt ! in what vivid crimson they burn ! One of our most catholic old poets says ; " ' And if a sullen cloud, gloomy as night Upon the which the sun his rays doth shed, Deprived of all his dross, we see so bright Burning in liquid gold his living head, Or round with ivory edges silvered, What lustre supereminent will He Lighten on those that shall His glory see In that all-glorious Court, in which all glories be ! " " The Epiphany in the Eastern Church," says Dean Stanley, "is supposed to commemorate our Saviour's baptism, and the 1 Isaiah LX. 8. 3 "Sermons on Passages from the Prophets," Vol. I, p. 247. 54 in.] THE EPIPHANY SEASON Neva for the time is made to represent the Jordan. The Emperor and all the princes were bareheaded on the platform on the river, and the whole quay below was filled with a vast multitude of people, all bareheaded, and all looking upwards, and crossing themselves when the cannon from the fortress across the river (where Peter the Great and the successive sovereigns since his time are buried) announced that the benediction was completed. The mixture of popular devotion with vast im- perial pomp was very striking." l EPISTLES OF THK SEASON. The Epistles for the first four Sundays after Epiphany are taken from Romans xn. and xni. Bishop Westcott wrote in 1849 to his betrothed bride, Mary Whittard : " How desperate would our case be if we could not pray for one another. This is one of the glorious characteristics of our holy religion. ' Remember,' my dear Mary. May we not take Romans XIL as our guide ? and may we be enabled by God's spirit in some measure to keep its precepts." 2 From Bomans xu. 2, 3 Dean Colet preached at the meeting of Convocation, 6 February, 1511-12. The Dean's biogra- pher, Dr. J. H. Liupton, says that the sermon marks an epoch in the history of the Church of England. " More truly, perhaps, than any other single speech or act, it deserves to be called the overture in the great drama of the English Reforma- tion. It was a steady, deliberate appeal for reform, made to the rulers of the Church, not by some interested politician or ignorant Lollard, but by one holding a conspicuous position in the Church, and looked on, not without reason, as expressing the opinions of Archbishop Warham as well as his own." 4 1 " Dean Stanley's Letters and Verses," p. 385. 2 "Life of Bishop Westcott," Vol. I, p. 146. His first sermon was preached from Romans xn. I, and he used to say it contained all that he ever preached afterwards. (" Life," Vol. I, p. 167.) 3 " And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." 4 " Life of Dean Colet," p. 1 78. 55 THE CHKISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STORY [m. The Apostle's injunction to " think soberly" is emphasised by eminent writers. Charlotte Bronte says in " Villette " : " There is nothing like taking all you do at a moderate estimate ; it keeps mind and body tranquil ; whereas grandiloquent notions are apt to hurry both into fever." Dr. John Duncan reminded his students that God does not require of us a false humility. " We are to think soberly. We are to find out the truth about ourselves, and I think that then there will be no danger of our thinking too highly." l The learned American missionary, Dr. S. M. Zwemer, visited the town of Hassa in Eastern Arabia, once the chief centre of a powerful Moslem sect. In former days, he writes, there were gold and silver coins like the peculiar copper-bar coinage now in use "Some in silver can yet be found occasionally, inscribed with the noble motto in Arabic, ' Honour to the sober man, dishonour to the ambitious '." 2 The musician, John Sebastian Bach, was one of the most modest of men. To his chosen pupils, we are told, he was kind and genial, and full of encouragement. " You have five as good fingers on each hand as I have," was his answer to complaints of difficulty. He never set himself up as a model to which others could not attain: "I was obliged," he would say, "to be industrious ; whoever is equally industrious will succeed as well ". 8 The words " Not slothful in business," have numerous echoes in literature. Samuel Pepys wrote in his Diary for 1 November, 1665 : " Lay very long in bed in discoursing with Mr. Hill of most things of a man's life, and how little merit do prevail in the world, but only favour; and that, for myself, chance without merit brought me in ; and that diligence only keeps me so, and will ; living as I do among so many lazy people that the diligent 1 " Colloquia Peripatetica." 3 " Arabia, the Cradle of Islam," p. r 16. Professor Mofifatt transcribes Rom. xii. 3, as follows : " In virtue of my office, I tell everyone of your members who is self-important, that he is not to think more of himself than he ought to think ; he must take a sane view of himself, corresponding to the degree of faith which God has assigned to each ". '"Sebastian Bach," by R. Lane-Poole, p. 48. 56 in.] THE EPIPHANY SEASON man becomes necessary, that they cannot do anything without him." 1 Spenser speaks of " sluggish Idleness, the nurse of sin". 3 Thomas Fuller has this quaint passage: "Lord, I read of the two witnesses, And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and shall kill them. They could not be killed while they were doing, but when they had done their work ; during their em- ployment they were invincible. No better armour against the darts of death than to be busied in thy service. Why art thou so weary, O my soul ? No malice of man can antedate my end by a minute, while my Maker hath any work for me to do. And when all my daily task is ended, why should I grudge then to go to bed." 3 The diligent Christian is occupied in " serving the Lord ". Elizabeth Fry said on her death -bed : " I can say one thing, that since I was seventeen, when first my heart was touched, I have never wakened or gone to sleep, without my first and last thought being how best I might serve my Lord ". In quoting Mrs. Fry's words, Mrs. W. H. Brookfield remarked : " This as a deliberate death-bed assertion is very striking, as she had Mr. Fry and I don't know how many children who might have been expected to distract her thoughts occasionally ".* St. Paul's ideal Christian is seen by the world, " contributing to the necessity of saints ; given to hospitality ". Bishop Thomas Wilson wrote in his private memor- anda : " My children, if I don't live to tell you why I have saved no more for you out of my Bishoprick, let this satisfye you, that the less you have of goods gather'd from the Church, the better the rest that I leave you will prosper. For Church livings were never design'd to make Families or raise Portions out of them, but to maintain our Families, to keep up Hospitality, to feed 1 Wheatley's edition, Vol. V, p. 133. 8 "The Faerie Queen," Book I, Canto 4. 3 "Good Thoughts in Bad Times." 4 "Mrs. Brookfield and her Circle," Vol. II, p. 295. 57 THE CHKISTIAN YEAH IN HUMAN STOEY [m. the Poor, etc. And one day you'll be glad that this was my settled opinion. And God grant that I may act accordingly." i Gibbon remarks that in the early ages of the Church the bishop was its natural steward. A decent portion was reserved for the maintenance of the bishop and his clergy ; a sufficient sum was allotted for the expenses of public worship ; the rest was the sacred patrimony of the poor. " A generous intercourse of charity united the most distant provinces, and the smaller congregations were cheer folly assisted by the alms of their more opulent brethren. . . . The pagans, who were actuated by a sense of humanity, while they derided the doctrines, acknow- ledged the benevolence of the new sect. The prospect of immediate relief and of future protection allured into its hos- pitable bosom many of those unhappy people whom the neglect of the world would have abandoned to the miseries of want, of sickness and of old age. There is some reason likewise to believe that great numbers of infants who, according to the in- human practice of the times, had been exposed by their parents, were frequently rescued from death, baptised, educated and maintained by the piety of the Christians, and at the expense of the public treasure. " 2 The true disciple has forsworn revenge and has learned to overcome evil with good. " Has thy heart's friend carelessly or cruelly stabbed into thy heart ? " says Carlyle, " Oh, forgive him ! Think how, when thou art dead, he will punish himself." Samuel Rutherford, in a letter to Marion McNaught, writes thus : " Put on love, and brotherly kindness, and long-suffering, wait as long upon the favour of and turned hearts of your enemies as your Christ waited upon you, and as dear Jesus stood at your soul's door with dewy and rainy locks, the long, cold night. Be angry but sin not. I persuade myself that holy unction within you, which teacheth you all things, is also saying, Overcome evil with good. If that had not been spoken in your soul, at the tears of your aged pastor, you would not have agreed, and forgiven his foolish son who wronged you." 1 Keble's " Life of Bishop Wilson," Vol. I, p. 152. 2 "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," ch. xv., p. 50, in Vol. II, of Bury's edition. 58 in.] THE EPIPHANY SEASON Romans xin. was a favourite chapter of Dean Colet. In " The Oxford Reformers " Mr. Seebohm tells us that when the Dean was expounding this passage, he used to "take down his Suetonius in order to ascertain the state of society at Rome and the special circumstances which made it needful for St. Paul so strongly to urge Roman Christians to be obedient to the higher powers and to pay tribute also ". In the words of verse 4, " He beareth not the sword in vain," R. H. Hutton recognised Paul's " craving for some closer bond with the Gentile world, for some affinity with the keen philo- sophical intellect of the Greeks and the stately jurisprudence of Rome, as shown in a hundred passages, especially in Acts xvn., and not less certainly in that earnest respect for Roman legisla- tion which made him inculcate on the Roman Church the Divine sanction of all secular government, and speak to them of rulers as "ministers of God, not bearing the sword in vain ". "Humbleness of mind" is inculcated on God's elect in the Epistle for the Fifth Sunday. 1 Humility, says La Rochefoucauld, is the altar on which God wishes us to offer our sacrifices to Him. J. H. Newman writes of "the sweetness, the winning grace, the innocence, the freshness, the tenderness, the cheerfulness, the composure of the elect of God ". The Apostolic messages for the season reach their climax in the great words of St. John : '* Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is". 2 Dr. C. E. Appleton, founder of The Academy, wrote in words which seem almost prophetic of his own early death : " Wondrous miracle of Divine Omnipotence, that this poor flesh and blood I bear about me, often pained, always decaying, too weak, it may be, to bear up against the winters of threescore years and ten, shall be so purified, strengthened, glorified, as never to decay. We shall be like Him, not in His own unspeak- able glory, but still like Him. . . . " Is not an eternity of even the greatest happiness a fearful 1 Col. HI., 12-17. 2 Epistle for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, i St. John in. 1-8. 59 THE CHEISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOEY [in. thought ? . . . We can only lean upon the will of God, crying, with David, ' My times are in Thy hand. . . . Make Thy face to shine upon Thy servant, and save me, for Thy mercies' sake '." l "It is not to be wondered at," Dean Stanley writes in the tenth chapter of his biography of Dr. Arnold, " that the boys of his Form remarked with peculiar interest, that the last subject which he had set them for an exercise was Domus Ultima ; that the last translation for Latin verses was from the touching lines on the death of Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser's 'Ruins of Time ' ; that the last words with which he closed his last lecture on the New Testament were in commenting on the passage of St. John : ' It doth not yet appear what we shall be ; but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is '. . . . 'Yes,' he added, with marked fer- vency, 'the mere contemplation of Christ shall transform us into His likeness '." EPIPHANY GOSPELS. First among the Gospels for this season stands the account of our Lord's early visit to the Temple. 2 In the 15th canto of Dante's "Purgatorio" these lines occur : " There it appeared to me that in a vision Ecstatic on a sudden I was rapt, And in a temple many persons saw ; And at the door a woman, with the sweet Behaviour of a mother, saying : ' Son Why in this manner hast Thou dealt with us ? Lo, sorrowing, Thy father and myself Were seeking for Thee ' ; and as here she ceased, That which appeared at first had disappeared." " None of the peculiar developments of the female nature," says Harriet Beecher Stowe, " has a more exquisite vitality than the sentiment of a frail, delicate, repressed, timid woman, for a strong, manly, generous son. There is her ideal expressed; there is the out-speaking and out-acting of all she trembles to 1 " Life of Dr. Appleton," p. 107. 2 St. Luke n, 41-52. 60 IIL] THE EPIPHANY SEASON think, yet burns to say or do ; here is the hero that shall speak for her, the heart into which she has poured hers, and that shall give to her tremulous and hidden aspirations a strong and victorious expression. ' I have gotton a man from the Lord,' she says to herself; and each outburst of his manliness, his vigour, his self-confidence, his superb vitality, fills her with a strange, wondering pleasure, and she has a secret pride even in his wilfulness and waywardness. ' What a creature he is ! ' she says, when he flouts at sober argument and pitches all received opinions hither and thither in the wild capriciousness of youth- ful argument. She looks grave and reproving ; but he reads the concealed triumph in her eyes he knows that in her heart she is full of admiration all the time. First love of womanhood is something wonderful and mysterious but in this second love it rises again, idealised and refined : she loves the father and herself united and made one in this young heir of life and hope." l Ruskin wrote to a young girl : " Be your mother's true daughter in all needful service, and above all in educating your thoughts so as to love her as exclusively and deeply as possible. But be resolute in saying that you owe duty to others as well as to her. The ' Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business ? ' has to be spoken, I believe, to all parents some day or other." 2 "The mother's love," says George Eliot, " is at first an ab- sorbing delight, blunting all other sensibilities ; it is an expan- sion of the animal existence ; it enlarges the imagined range for self to move in ; but in after years it can only continue to be joy on the same terms as other long-lived love that is, by much suppression of self, and power of living in the experience of another." 3 1 " The Minister's Wooing," ch. XVII., 46 and 48. Dr. Moffatt translates verses 46-48 as follows : " Three days later they found Him in the temple, seated among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, rill all His hearers were amazed at the intelligence of His own answers. When His parents saw Him they were astounded." 8 " Life of Ruskin," by Sir E. T. Cook, Vol. II, p. 388. 3 " Felix Holt," I. 6 THE CHKISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STOEY [in. " First his parents said they lost him : No one knew where to accost him. Though his loss had made no showing : He was there, and yet no knowing Where he was ; he was but growing ; Yet his parents said they lost him And the secret to accost him." E. J. ELLIS. The Second Epiphany Gospel tells of the miracle at Cana. 1 Readers of Dostoevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamazov," will remember the chapter entitled "Cana of Galilee". The young novice Alyosha has lost by death his beloved " elder," Father Zossima, and late at night he kneels before the coffin and hears Father PaYssy reading, according to rule, the Gospel story in presence of the departed. Worn out with exhaustion, the boy gradually begins to doze, and hears dreamily the words " And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee." He dreams that his elder returns to him. " Yes, he came up to him, to him, he, the little, thin old man, with tiny wrinkles on his face, joyful and laughing softly. There was no coffin now, and he was in the same dress as he had worn yesterday sitting with them, when the visitors had gathered about him. His face was uncovered, his eyes were shining. How was this then ? He, too, had been called to the feast. He too, at the marriage of Cana in Galilee. . . . " ' Yes, my dear, I am called too, called and bidden/ he heard a soft voice saying over him. ' Why have you hidden yourself here, out of sight ? You come and join us too.' " It was his voice, the voice of Father Zossima. And it must be he, since he called him ! " The elder raised Alyosha by the hand and he rose from his knees. " ' We are rejoicing,' the little, thin old man went on. ' We are drinking the new wine, the wine of new, great gladness ; do you see how many guests ? Here are the bride and bridegroom, here is the wise governor of the feast, he is tasting the new wine. Why do you wonder at me ? I gave an onion to a beggar, so I, J St. John ii. i -i i. in.] THE EPIPHANY SEASON too, am here. And many here have given only an onion each only one little onion. . . . What are all our deeds ? And you, my gentle one, you, my kind boy, you too have known how to give a famished woman an onion to-day. Begin your work, dear one, begin it, gentle one ! . . . Do you see our Sun, do you see Him?' " ' I am afraid ... I dare not look,' whispered Alyosha. " 'Do not fear Him. He is terrible in His greatness, awful in His sublimity, but infinitely merciful. He has made Him- self like unto us from love and rejoices with us. He is chang- ing the water into wine that the gladness of the guests may not be cut short. He is expecting new guests, He is calling new ones unceasingly for ever and ever. . . . There they are bringing new wine. Do you see they are bringing the vessels. . . .' " Something glowed in Alyosha's heart, something filled it till it ached, tears of rapture rose from his soul. . . . He stretched out his hands, uttered a cry and waked up." 1 On the Terrace of Envy in Dante's "Purgatorio " voices in the air repeat examples of love to neighbours, to friends, to enemies. " The first example," Dr. Carroll points out, " is, as usual, drawn from the life of the Virgin. An unseen spirit flies past, repeating Mary's words at the marriage feast, Vinum non habent, until the sound is lost in the distance. It is a simple and homely act of kindly forethought to save her neighbours shame or confusion. Perhaps the suggestion is right that it is meant as a corrective of the envy with which women too often regard the lavish preparations and display made in other women's feasts. An envious woman would have a secret joy in the break- down of the arrangements ; to the Virgin's kind and neighbourly heart it causes only pain." 2 On the third Sunday we read of the healing of the leper and the centurion's servant. 3 This Gospel, it has been said, makes the first mention of leprosy in the New Testament, and the first mention of a sufferer who "worshipped" Jesus. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the 1 Mrs. Garnett's translation. 2 J. S. Carroll, " Prisoners of Hope," p. 188. a St. Matt, viii., 1-13. 68 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [HI. following tribute " To Mother Maryanne " after visiting the Guest House at the leper settlement in Molokai : " To see the infinite pity of this place, The mangled limb, the devastated face, The innocent sufferer smiling at the rod, A fool were tempted to deny his God. He sees, he shrinks. But if he gaze again, Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain ! He marks the sisters on the mournful shores ; And even a fool is silent and adores." Lepers in the Middle Ages were sometimes called " Christ's martyrs". " Their affliction was looked upon as a sacrifice an attitude which illuminated the mystery of pain. St. Hugh preached upon the blessedness of such sufferers : they were in no wise under a curse, but were ' beloved of God as was Lazarus '. . . . He bade them look for the consummation of the promise : ' Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body'. ... In the service appointed for the separating of the sick with leprosy from the whole, the priest endeavoured to show the sufferer that he was sharing in the afflictions of Christ. For his consolation this verse of Isaiah was recited, ' Surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we did esteem Him as a leper, smitten of God and afflicted '." Paul Bourget remarks on the centurion's words : " Lord, I am not worthy " : " He said to the rich, Abandon your riches. He did not say to the centurion, Abandon your regiment. And it is the centurion who has marked the Mass with his Domine, non sum dignus. . . . The soldier's words are repeated daily at the altar of the priest, before the Communion. The Army has the last word at the Holy Sacrifice." The Fourth Epiphany Gospel tells of the stilling of the tempest. 2 1 R. M. Clay, " The Mediaeval Hospitals of England," p. 68. The Vulgate version of Isaiah liii., 2 reads : " Nos vidimus cum quasi leprosum ". 3 St. Matt. vm. 23-34. 64 IIL] THE EPIPHANY SEASON In the Vercelli Codex, that ancient manuscript supposed to have been left at Vercelli by some early English pilgrim, and discovered in 1822, the following lines are contained in " The Legend of St. Andrew " : " So did it hap of old : We on the sea-boat, Over the striving surge, Riding the billows, Ventured the fords. Gruesome and grim to us Was the fell water's rage. Wildly the streaming tide Beat on the sea-board ; Flood back to flood again Answered the war ; While there arose From its deep, boiling breast, On to the boat's lap, Terror and dread. There the Almighty One, He who all men hath made, On the surge-cleaving ship Restfully waited. But our men became Filled with fear, And through the keel-ship Calling aloud Prayed for peace, Boon from the blessed. Soon rose the King, Bliss-giver to angels ; Stilled the waves, The weltering waters, Chode the wild wind, And the sea settled ; 5 65 THE CHEISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOEY [IIL The eddied tide-floods Waxed smooth. Joy our hearts cheered, When that we saw Neath the high sun-track, How that the winds and waves, How the dread water-flood, Was scathed and scared, Fearing the Lord. " l Joseph Conrad, in " Lord Jim " speaks of the " earnestness " in the anger of the sea, " There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest : which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he had seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated ; all that is priceless and necessary the sunshine, the memories, the future which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life." Dr. William Barry writes of Carlyle : " This great and noble spirit did not know Christ. . . . ' What can you say of him ' asked Ruskin, ' except that he lived in the clouds and was struck by lightning ? ' a beautiful and true summary of the man's spirit in deed as in word. But struck by lightning he was ; he could not wield it with impunity. How much less could he say to the storm raging all through his century, ' Peace, be still ! ' He spoke mighty words, but he had little in common with that dovelike, brooding spirit which drew forth strength out of sweetness, and was able to hush the great waters and rebuke the waves. Facta est tranquillitas magna. That is the miracle which Carlyle never wrought in himself or any man that sought his aid." 1 C. J. Abbey, " Religious Thought in Old English Verse," pp. 10, u. 66 in.] THE EPIPHANY SEASON This Gospel also speaks of men " possessed with devils". Dostoevsky tells us that in his childhood he often happened to see "possessed" women in the villages and monasteries. " They used to be brought to mass ; they would squeal and bark like a dog so that they were heard all over the church. But when the sacrament was carried in and they were led up to it, at once the " possession " ceased, and the sick women were always soothed for a time." J The parable of the tares forms the fifth Gospel for Epiphany. 2 Thomas Fuller remarked " How many general benefits do the very tares enjoy, because inseparably mingled with the wheat in the field of this world ". 3 Dora Green well writes in " The Patience of Hope " : " It is remarkable that our Saviour, while he does not explain this awful problem, does not explain it away. To the old ever-re- curring question, ' Whence these tares ? ' He answers simply, ' An enemy hath done this '. Man has striven to bridge over this chasm between his soul and God with theories contradictory to the reason they profess to satisfy and false to the moral sense they desire to soothe, but He who spake as never man spake does not reason upon this subject. He sees the great gulf set, He knows what its mouth has devoured of earth's best and noblest ; one thing most precious of all remains : He flings Himself within it." The last Epiphany Gospel glances back towards Advent. The words of St. Matthew xxiv. 27, recall a passage from Mrs. Oliphant's " Life of Edward Irving ". A Scottish minister gave the following reminiscence of his preaching at Perth. " His text was taken from the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, regarding the coming of the Son of Man. I remember nothing of the sermon, save its general subject ; but one thing I can never forget. While he was engaged in unfolding his subject, from out of a dark cloud which obscured the church there came forth a bright blaze of lightning and a crash of thunder. There was deep stillness in the audience. The preacher paused ; and 1 " The Brothers Karamazov," (Mrs. Garnett's translation). 2 St. Matt. xm. 24-30. 3 " Pisgah Sight," Book IV, ch. II. 21. 67 THE CHEISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [in. from the stillness and the gloom, his powerful voice, clothed with increased solemnity, pronounced these words : For as the lightning conieth out of the east, and shineth even unto the west ; so shall the coming of the Son of Man be. You can imagine the effect." "The festival processions of the Eastern Church," wrote Mr. W. J. Birkbeck, " take a different direction from those of later Christendom. The latter always follow the course of the sun, no doubt in allusion to our Lord's life on earth from His Nativity to His Ascension, and thus the procession symbolises the Church following in His footsteps. The processions of the Orthodox Church, on the contrary, go to meet the sun, symbolising thereby that the Church goes forth to meet her Lord, whose First Coming was in the East, and whose Second Coming shall be ' as the lightning which cometh out of the East and shineth even unto the West '." a Archbishop Sancroft, one of the Seven Bishops of the reign of James II, died at the age of seventy-seven in his native village of Fresingfield in Suffolk. Over his head, by his own command, were inscribed the words of St. Matthew xxiv. 27 : " As lightning cometh out of the East, and shineth even unto the West, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be ". EPIPHANY LESSONS. The Old Testament Lessons are taken from the later chapters of Isaiah, from Job and from Proverbs. We give a few illustrations for the various Sundays. Is. LIL 15. 2 Kings shall shut their mouths at him. In the Life of Alexander Mackay, the pioneer missionary of Uganda, whom Lord Rosebery called " that Christian Bayard," we read that the heathen King Mtesa was sometimes so much struck with the explanation of a parable that he remarked to his people : " Isa (Jesus), was there ever any one like Him ? " Alexander Mackay's biographer says, " It seemed as if the 1 " Birkbeck and the Russian Church " (1917), edited by Mr. Athelstan Riley, p. 26. 2 First Sunday after Epiphany. 68 in.] THE EPIPHANY SEASON prophecy was about to be fulfilled, ' The kings shall shut their mouths at him ' ". Isaiah LIIL is used in the Church Year as an Evensong Lesson on the 1st Sunday after Epiphany, and as the first Evensong Lesson for Good Friday. In each case the words of chapter LII. from verse 13 are included. Dr. S. M. Zwemer says in his book on Arabia : "A Jewish family, en route for Taiz, were stopping with us at the caravanserai, and at night I spoke for over two hours with them and the Arabs about Christ. There was no interruption, and I was impressed to see the interest of a Jew and an Arab alike in what I told them from Isaiah LIIL, reading it in Arabic by the dim candle light, amidst all the baggage and beasts of an Oriental inn." l Is. LIV. 5. Thy Maker is thine husband. In the life of Christina Forsyth of Fingoland, a Scottish missionary, we are told that her married life was brief. Little more than a year after her marriage Mr. Forsyth was fording the Komati river on horseback, when his saddle shifted in mid-stream, and he was swept away by the flood waters and drowned. The news was broken to Mrs. Forsyth by two members of the Dutch Reformed Presbyterian Church, the elder of whom slipped into her hand a paper on which was written, " Thy Maker is thy Husband ". 2 Thomas Fuller quotes Isaiah LV. z in his " History of the Worthies of England," in a passage dealing with England's medicinal waters. "It is injurious in my judgment," he remarks, " to set them to sale, and make gain of God's free gift therein. I confess water was commonly sold in the land of Canaan, proved by that passage in the Prophet, ' Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money,' etc. Yea so churlish were the Edomites to the Israelites that ' they would not give,' that is 'afford them water for money ' (Deut. n. 28). But it is considerable ; well-water in these hot countries was acquired with vast pains and expense, it being dearer to sink a well than build a house, besides many 1 "Arabia, the Cradle of Islam," p. 66. a " Christina Forsyth of Fingoland," by W. P. Livingstone, p. 64. 3 Second Sunday after Epiphany. THE CHKISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [in. frustrations in that kind before their endeavours found full effect ; which made it the more equal for the owners, by such sales, to make profit, or rather to make up their reparations. But no such cost being expended in the case in hand, it may be accounted as a kind of simony in such as sell ease and health to poor people, though they may lawfully buy it, as passive and necessitated thereunto." Is. LV. 3. Hear and your soul shall live. During the Rev. Richard Cecil's ministry as rector of Chobham, in Surrey, a remarkable revival took place. One of the converts was a poor uneducated man, a miller's labourer, named Joseph Waller. " He was on his dying-bed, and the 55th chapter of Isaiah was being read to him. Though weak and faint and full of pain, yet when he heard the words, ' Incline your ear and come unto me ; hear and your soul shall live', he gathered up his strength to say, ' What a mercy, sir, that it is not, "Read and your soul shall live," for if it had been, I could not have been saved, for you know I am no scholar. But, blessed be God, it is, " Hear and your soul shall live". I have heard, and believed and I trust I shall be saved '." l Is. LXI. 1, 2 (with St. Luke iv. 18, 19). On the day after Lincoln read the message of Emancipation to his Cabinet (22 September, 1862) Charles Eliot Norton wrote to his friend George Curtis : " My dearest George, God be praised ! I can hardly see to write, for when I think of this great act of Freedom, and all it implies, my heart and my eyes overflow with the deepest and most serious gladness. I rejoice with you. Let us rejoice together, and with all the lovers of liberty, and with all the enslaved and oppressed everywhere. " I think to-day that this world is glorified by the Spirit of Christ. How beautiful it is to be able to read the sacred words under this new light : " ' He hath sent me to heat the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captive, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.' 1 Josiah Bateman, " Life of Bishop Daniel Wilson," Vol. I, p. 72. 70 HI.] THE EPIPHANY SEASON " The war is paid for." Is. LXII. 4. . . . thy land Beulah. l Bishop Thorold wrote of the last moments of Archbishop Tait : " Dr. Carpenter told me that he heard the Archbishop say, ' The gates of Beulah are open,' and he is sure he saw something ; after that he never complained again ; simply wished to go, and wondered why he was not allowed ".* JOB xxvur. 18. -No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls. 3 With St. Matt xm. 45. The kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls. W. G. Palgrave, the Arabian traveller, has these words : " ' We are all, from the highest to the lowest, slaves of one master Pearl,' said Mohammed bin Thanee to me one evening ; nor was the expression out of place. All thought, all con- versation, all employment, turns on that subject; everything else is mere by-game, and below even secondary consideration." JOB xxix. 1-3. Moreover, Job continued his parable and said, that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me. When His candle sfiined upon my head, and when by His light I walked through darkness. " Happy are they," says Hazlitt, " who live in the dream of their own existence, and see all things in the light of their own minds : who walk by faith and hope, not by knowledge : to whom the guiding-star of their youth still shines from afar, and into whom the spirit of the world has not entered ! They have not been ' hurt by the archers,' nor has the iron entered their souls. They live in the midst of arrows and death, unconscious of harm. The evil thing comes not nigh them. The shafts of ridicule pass unheeded by, and malice loses its sting. Their keen perceptions do not catch at hidden mischiefs, nor cling to every folly. The example of vice does not rankle in their breasts, like the poisoned shirt of Nessus. Evil impressions fall off from them, like the drops of water. The yoke of life is to them light and supportable. The world has no hold on them. They are in it, not of it; and a dream and a glory is ever about them." 1 Third Sunday after Epiphany. 2 " Life of Bishop Thorold," p. 225. 3 Fourth Sunday after Epiphany. 71 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [in. The Lessons for the 5th and 6th Sundays are taken from the Proverbs. "Read Proverbs," said Thomas Fuller, "that thou beest not made a Proverb." PEOV. in. 16. The Franciscan doctor, St. Bonaventura, says in Dante's " Paradise : " I am the life of Bonaventura Of Bagnoregio, who in the great offices Always set last the left hand care." "The reference," says Dr. Carroll, "is to Prov. in. 16. ' Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and honour ' the meaning being that he had made temporal affairs subordinate to his spiritual duty. The great offices were the Generalship of the order and the Cardinalate of Albano. The story was that when the Papal messengers arrived with his cardinal's hat, they found him in the garden of a little convent near Florence washing the dish from which he had just dined, and that he asked them to hang the hat on the branch of one of the trees until he had finished his humble task." l PROV. vin. Walter Pater was in his latter years a con- stant student of the Bible. He delighted in the " Sapiential, half-Platonic books" Proverbs and Ecclesiastes one of his favourite chapters being the eighth of Proverbs. 2 1 " In Patria," pp. 213, 214. 2 " Life of Walter Pater," by Thomas Wright, Vol. II, p. 201. CHAPTER IV. THE APPROACH TO LENT. (Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima). CHAPTER IV. THE APPROACH TO LENT. I. SEPTUAGESIMA. GREAT Scriptures are appointed for the three Sundays which precede Ash Wednesday. Septuagesima, says Dr. Batiffol, was for the ancient Church a Sunday of joy, a last look back upon Bethlehem, a day on which antiphons and responds still re- echoed the Alleluias of Christmas. After Septuagesima the Church entered on her period of sadness ; no more Alleluias. 1 The Epistle 2 shows the Christian life under the image of a race, and ends with the words " I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway." Robert Leighton, in writing to the Earl of Lothian after he had been appointed Bishop of Dunblane, said, " I shall live as monastically as ever I did ". " Within the Reformed Church," says Leigh ton's biographer, the Rev. D. Butler, " he maintained the strict discipline and self-denial of monasticism in its purest days, and always upheld as his binding law spirituality and rigour." St. Vincent de Paul said in an address to his Brothers : " We must turn to God in prayer to preserve in our own souls the love and fear of Him, for alas ! it is necessary that we should know that many who intend to ibring others to salvation come to destruction themselves. To avoid this we must be so closely united to our Lord that we cannot lose Him, lifting up heart and soul to Him constantly, and saying, ' Lord, do not suffer that I myself should fall in trying to save others. Lead me 1 " History of the Roman Breviary," p. 120. 2 i Cor. ix. 24-27. 75 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [iv. Thyself, and do not withhold from me the grace that by means of me Thou hast given to others.' " 1 Dr. Pusey wrote to one who had sought his spiritual counsel : " I should think that the fear of being a castaway was sent into many minds from time to time, or doubts whether they might not be falling back, to make them gird themselves up more strongly and press on more vigorously, and so eventually escape being castaways and obtain a brighter crown ". 2 The Septuagesima Gospel is the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, St. Matt xx. 1-16. The ancient chronicler, Orderic, to whom we owe our principal knowledge of the age of William the Conqueror and the rule of Norman monasteries, wrote near the close of his long life, from the cloisters of Ouche : " In this house for fifty-six years, by Thy favour, have I had my conversation, and by all the brethren and dwellers in it I have been loved and honoured much more than I deserved. Heat and cold and the burden of the day have I en- dured, labouring among Thine own in the ' Vineyard of Soreth,' 3 and the ' penny ' which Thou hast promised I have confidently waited for, for Thou are faithful." 4 Richard de Bury used this parable to illustrate the love of sacred learning among the Friars of his time. In the " Philo- biblon " he says : " Whenever we turned aside to the cities and places where the mendicants had their convents ... we found heaped up amidst the utmost poverty the utmost riches of wisdom . . . These men are as ants, ever preparing their meat in the summer, and ingenious bees continually fabricating cells of honey. And to pay due regard to truth, although they lately at the eleventh hour have entered the Lord's vineyard, they have added more in this brief hour to the stock of the sacred books than all the other vinedressers : following in the footsteps of Paul, the last to be called but the first in preaching, who spread the Gospel of Christ more widely than all others." 5 King Henry IV of France, in the perilous years at the open- 1 " Vincent de Paul," by E. K. Saunders, p. 397. 2 " Life of Dr Pusey," Vol. II, p. 48. 3 Is. v. 2. 4 Dean Church's " Life of Anselm," p. 106. 5 Quoted by J. W. Clark in " Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods," p. 18. 76 iv.] THE APPEOACH TO LENT ing of his reign, showed wisdom in accepting the service of the eleventh hour. He was ready at any moment, as historians tell us, to receive into his ranks his bitterest opponents of yesterday. Two of the four men who had the chief place in his councils, Villeroy and the President Jeannin, were Leaguers and ardent Catholics. He forgot their former enmity, remembered only their present services, and treated them as kindly as his oldest servants. Thus the former French parties were gradually broken up, and the king, without feeling hatred for the one side, or accepting too heavy a burden of gratitude towards the other, concerned himself solely with the interests of the kingdom and the dynasty. 1 On verse 14, " I will give unto this last even as unto thee," we may quote the words of Ruskin : " Luxury is indeed possible in the future, innocent and exquisite ; luxury for all, and by the help of all ; but luxury at present can only be enjoyed by the ignorant ; the cruellest man living could not sit at his feast, unless he sat blindfold. Raise the veil boldly ; face the light ; and if, as yet, the light of the eye can only be seen through tears, and the light of the body through sackcloth, go thou forth weeping, bearing precious seed, until the time come, and the kingdom, when Christ's gift of bread and bequest of peace shall be unto this last as unto thee ; and when, for earth's severed multitudes of the wicked and the weary, there shall be holier reconciliation than that of the narrow home, and calm economy, where the Wicked cease not from trouble, but from troubling and the Weary are at rest." The Gospel closes with the words : " So the last shall be first and the first last ". There is a chapter in " The Imitation of Christ " which reads like a fragment of autobiography. Men of genius, like Thomas a Kempis, or Eustace in Sir Walter Scott's " Monastery " must have felt it a bitter experience to humble themselves before stupid or unworthy superiors, who selected favourites of their own stamp. " That which pleaseth others shall go well forward ; that which pleaseth thee shall not speed. That which others say shall be heard ; what thou sayest shall be accounted nothing : others shall ask and shall receive ; thou shalt ask but shalt not obtain. Others shall be great in the praise of men, but about thee there shall be no word. To 1 See the Lavisse " History of France," Vol. VI, Part H., p. 24. 77 THE CHRISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STORY [iv. others this or that shall be committed, but thou shalt be ac- counted a thing of no use. At this nature will sometimes be troubled, and it is a great thing if thou bear it with silence. . . . But consider, my son, the fruit of these labours, the end near at hand and the reward exceeding great ; and thou wilt not grudge to bear them ; rather thou wilt have the strongest comfort of thy patience. For instead of that little of thy will, which now thou so readily forsakest, thou shalt always have thy will in heaven. . . . There none shall withstand thee, no man shall com- plain of thee, no man hinder thee, nothing come in thy way, but all things thou canst desire shall be thine altogether present and shall refresh thy whole affection, and fill it up to the brim " There will I give thee glory for the reproach which here thou sufferedst, the garment of praise for heaviness, for the lowest place a kingly throne for ever." l The Old Testament Lessons turn now to the Book of Genesis. Chapters i. and n. are appointed for this day. In the command " Let there be light," Ruskin sees " the ordering of intelligence as much as the ordering of vision ". On "the mighty sentence 'Let the dry land appear,'" he says, " we should try to follow the finger of God, as it engraved upon the stone tables of the earth the letters and the law of its everlasting form ; as, gulf by gulf, the channels of the deep were ploughed ; and, cape by cape, the lines were traced, with Divine foreknowledge, of the shores that were to limit the nations ; and, chain by chain, the mountain walls were lengthened forth, and their foundations fastened for ever ; and the compass was set upon the face of the depth, and the fields, and the highest part of the dust of the world were made ; and the right hand of Christ first strewed the snow on Lebanon, and smoothed the slopes of Calvary ". 2 The words of GENESIS i. 16, " He made the stars also," re- mind us of George Eliot's saying : " The best introduction to astronomy is to think of the mighty heavens as a little lot of stars belonging to one's own homestead ". 3 1 Book III, ch. XLIX. a " Modern Painters," Vol. IV, ch. VII. I, 2. 3 "Daniel Deronda," ch. ill. 78 iv.] THE APPKOACH TO LENT When Canon Carter of Clewer lay dying, in his 94th year, his delight in natural beauty was still awake : "At dusk, on the evening before his death, one of his daughters was about to draw the curtains. He stopped her, saying, ' I want to see the star,' and lay gazing at the planet which shone in unusual splendour through the window at the foot of his bed. A star appears in the background of the bronze placed in the parish church of Clewer to his memory, in re- membrance of this his last look on outward things." 1 As an illustration to i. 27, " So God created man in His own image," we quote the words of Mr. A. J. Balfour in " The Founda- tions of Belief" : "Those who think with me that though it is a hard thing for us to believe that we are made in the likeness of God, it is yet a very necessary thing, will not be anxious to deny that an effectual trust in this great truth, a full satisfaction of this ethical need, are among the natural fruits of a Christian theory of the world." GEN. n. 8. And the Lord planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. Macaulay in his Essay on Moore's " Life of Lord Byron " gives two pictures of the Garden of Eden as different minds have imagined it. "The correctness," he says "which the last century prized so much resembles the correctness of those pictures of the Garden of Eden which we see in old Bibles. We have an exact square, enclosed by the rivers Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel and Euphrates, each with a convenient bridge in the centre, rectangular beds of flowers, a long canal, neatly bricked and railed in, the tree of knowledge, clipped like one of the limes behind the Tuileries, standing in the centre of the grand alley, the snake twined round it, the man on the right hand, the woman on the left, and the beasts drawn up in an exact circle round them. In one sense the picture is correct enough. That is to say, the squares are correct ; the circles are correct ; the man and the woman are in a most correct line with the tree ; and the snake forms a most correct spiral. " But if there were a painter so gifted that he could place on the canvas that glorious paradise, seen by the interior eye of 1 " Life of T. T. Carter," by Archdeacon Hutchings, p. 330. 79 THE CHRISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STORY [iv. him whose outward sight had failed with long watching and labouring for liberty and truth, if there were a painter who could set before us the mazes of the sapphire brook, the lake with its fringe of myrtles, the flowering meadows, the grottoes overhung by vines, the forests shining with Hesperian fruit and with the plumage of gorgeous birds, the massy shade of that nuptial bower which showered down roses on the sleeping lovers, what should we think of a connoisseur who should tell us that this painting, though finer than the absurd picture in the old Bible, was not so correct ? It is finer because it is more correct It is not made up of correctly drawn diagrams ; but it is a correct painting, a worthy representation of that which it is intended to represent." GEN. n. 9. The tree of knowledge of good and evil. Sir Walter Scott, in "Quentin Durward," puts into the mouth of the astrologer, Galeotti, a comparison of the invention of printing with this tree. As he tells how this new art shall change the whole form of social life, establishing and overthrowing religions, erecting and destroying kingdoms, Louis XI breaks in, " ' Hold, Galeotti, shall these changes come in our time ? ' " ' No, my royal brother,' replied Martivalle; ' this invention may be likened to a young tree, which is now newly planted, but shall, in succeeding generations, bear fruit as fatal, yet as precious, as that of the Garden of Eden ; the knowledge, namely, of good and evil.' " Passages from the closing chapters of the Revelation are read on Septuagesima. F. D. Maurice wrote to his friend, R. C. Trench, in 1832 : " The most tender-hearted of all the Apostles, and he whose affections were most wrapped up in the Holy City, was permitted to behold its overthrow, because it was given him to see what its glorious fabric had concealed the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. Surely the law ' that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die ' is the law of all creation ; death and resurrection the key-note to the harmony of the universe ; and if we hear this note in that primary and central melody when it strikes with such joy upon the ear of sinful man, why should we dislike to have it re- 80 iv.] THE APPEOACH TO LENT peated to us in every winding and intricate, and, but for this, inexplicable, passage of the music ? " * The jewels of Revelation xxi. are celebrated in art and poetry. For instance the most famous mediaeval gem was the emerald of Genoa. The Sacro Catino, presented early in the twelfth century to the cathedral by the crusader Embriaco, had been brought by him from the siege of Caesarea. The relic, a huge single emerald of the purest water, was said to be the dish from which our Lord ate the last Supper ; it was believed by some to have been given by Solomon to the Queen of Sheba ; whilst others asserted that it was the vial in which Nicodemus preserved some of the Saviour's blood, the Holy Grail. Twelve knights, called Clavigeri, were appointed as its special guard, each being responsible during one month of the year for the safety of the tabernacle in which it was contained. Petrarch saw it and was charmed : " But we did not depart without seeing the basin of emerald, a priceless and wondrous vase ; they say it was used by the Saviour in the last supper ; be this so or not, it is in itself a right glorious relic ". The Sacro Catino was removed to the French capital during Napoleon's wars, and was discovered to be only an ancient piece of Venetian glass. It is still shown, much mended, in the cathedral of Genoa, whither it was returned by the French. The words of Revelation xxn. 1, " And he showed me a river," recall this passage by Henry Seton Merriman : " Men travel far to see a city, but few seem curious about a river. Every river has, nevertheless, its individuality, its great silent interest. Every river has, moreover, its influence over the people who pass their lives within sight of its waters. Thus, the Guadalquiver is rapid, mysterious, untrammelled breaking frequently from its boundary. And it runs through Andalusia. The Nile the river of ages running clear, untroubled through the centuries, between banks untouched by man. The Rhine romantic, cultivated, artificial, with a rough sub-current and a muddy bed through Germany. The Seine and the Thames shallow shallow shallow. And we who live upon their banks ! 1 " Letters and Memorials of Archbishop Trench," Vol. I, p. 121. 6 81 THE CHKISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOEY [iv. " The Volga immense, stupendous, a great power, an in- fluence two thousand four hundred miles long. Some have seen the Danube, and think they have seen a great river. So they have; but the Russian giant is 700 miles longer, a vast yellow stream, moving on to the distant sea slow, gentle, inexorable, overwhelming." * II. SEXAGESIMA. This is the Sunday of the Sower. 2 The Epistle 8 tells how St. Paul went forth bearing precious seed, " in labour and travail, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness". We think of the comment of Thomas a Kempis on the passage : " The saints and friends of Christ served the Lord in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, in labour and weariness, in watchings and fastings, in prayer and holy meditations, in many persecutions and reproaches. O how many and grievous tribu- lations suffered the Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors, Virgins, and all the rest that endeavoured to follow the steps of Christ ! For they hated their lives in this world, that they might keep them unto life eternal." The parable of the Sower can seldom have been read in a stranger company than that which George Borrow describes in the valley of Bembibre, " the Switzerland of Leon". Beneath spreading trees stood cars, the tired oxen prostrate on the ground, while their Spanish drivers were either cooking or en- joying a siesta. Borrow went up to one of the largest of these groups, and demanded of the individuals whether they were in need of the Testament of Jesus Christ. He read to them the parable of the Sower, but they stared at one another and said they were too poor to buy books. At last one young man rose and saying " Gaspita ! this is odd," snatched the book from the stranger's hand, and gave him the price he asked. 4 Dr. L. P. Jacks writes thus of the first sowing of thought in a child's mind : " A book absorbed by an imaginative child can give a life- i " The Sowers." * Gospel for the day : St. Luke vin. 4-1 5. 8 2 Cor. XI. 19-31. 4 See " The Bible in Spain," ch. XXIV. 82 iv.] THE APPROACH TO LENT long climate to the soul, lending its colours to the experience of the coming years, tempering the quality of moods, laying all values under debt to its influence. The atmosphere of the author's mind, which critics may never discover, is the first element the child appropriates, becoming thereby a visionary on his own account. In reading the letter he catches the spirit rather than the meaning, the sense rather than the idea ; he pierces to the secret springs of imagery ; he sees, hears, touches, tastes ; and so, following the innermost impulse of the written word, his own imagination becomes creative, and a new world is woven out of the living tissue of his sympathies. The book may sow no seed, neither of wheat nor of tares ; but air and weather are created for sowings that are to come ; broad limits drawn within which the spirit may wander and beyond which it cannot pass ; the region assigned which is to be the nursery of dreams, and the firmament stored with visions waiting to be born Delectable Mountains hung in air, and far-seen islands that shine like jewels in the circumambient waste." l The story of the Fall (Genesis HI.) is the first Lesson for the day. Canon Carter of Clewer wrote from Menaggio, on his visit in 1871 to the Italian lake country : " I found here the Holy Bible in Italian, French and English in the reading-room, and that they had been left by an English- man. The landlady, an intelligent woman, rather apologised for their being there, and said that a good Catholic ought not to read it ; that her priest would refuse her absolution if she was known to read it, and told me the story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit as a warning against seeking to read Holy Scripture, and was surprised to be told that this story was in the Bible." * J. F. Millet, the world-famous painter of humble men and women at their daily toil, used to say that he failed to grasp the meaning of Socialist doctrines : " My programme is work. That is the natural condition of humanity. ' In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread,' 1 "Among the Idolmakers," pp. 3, 4. 2 " Life of T. T. Carter," by Archdeacon Hatchings, p. 55. 88 THE CHKISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOEY [iv. was written centuries ago. What each one of us has to do, is to seek progress in his profession, to try and improve daily in his trade, whatever that may be, and in this way to surpass his neighbour, both in the superiority of his talent, and in the conscientiousness of his work. That is the only path for me. All else is a dream or a lottery." l Thomas Woolner, the sculptor and poet, must have forgotten this text when he wrote : " Why has no religion this command before all others : Thou shalt work ? See, my hands are rough with work I have not merely raised them in prayer. It is well for me that I can work. It is not joy nor repose which is the aim of life. It is work, or there is no aim at all." GEN. m. 8. They heard the voice of the Lord God walk- ing in the garden in the cool of the day. " We know nothing of the length of mornings or evenings before the Flood," says Mi's. Browning, " and I cannot, for my own part, believe in an Eden without the longest of purple twilights." GEN. m. 18. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee. Archbishop Leighton wrote to his friend, the Rev. James Aird : " I see there is no place, city, nor country, valley nor mountain, free from that sentence so early passed upon the earth for man's curse, 'Thorns and briars shalt thou bring forth '. But he that is well shod walks on the safelier till he comes where there are none ; seeing that is not here, we are to use the greater coolness and deliberation in our removes." GEN. in. 19. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread. Legend tells that St. Benedict restored to a Goth, who had become a convert at Subiaco, the tool which the zealous but unskilful workman had dropped to the bottom of the lake, and which the abbot miraculously brought forth. " Take thy tool," said Benedict to the barbarian woodcutter " take it, work, and be comforted." " Symbolical words," adds Montalembert, " in which we find an abridgment of the precepts and examples lavished by the monastic order on so many generations of con- quering races : Ecce labora ! " 2 1 Quoted by Julia Cartwright in her " Life of Millet," p. 169. J " Monks of the West," Vol. I, p. 397. 84 iv.] THE APPKOACH TO LENT GEN. m. 24. So he drove out the man. " Did any bird come flying After Adam and Eve, When the door was shut against them And they sat down to grieve? I think not Eve's peacock Splendid to see, And I think not Adam's eagle ; But a dove maybe. Did any beast come pushing Through the thorny hedge Into the thorny thistly world, Out from Eden's edge ? I think not a lion, Though his strength is such ; But an innocent loving lamb May have done as. much. If the dove preached from her bough, And the lamb from his sod ; The lamb and the dove Were preachers sent from God." CHRISTINA ROSSETTI. According to Moslem tradition, Arabia was the original home of Adam after the Fall, and the home of all the older patriarchs. "The story runs that when the primal pair fell from their estate of bliss in the heavenly paradise, Adam landed on a mountain in Ceylon and Eve fell at Jiddah, on the western coast of Arabia. After a hundred years of wandering they met near Mecca, and here Allah constructed for them a tabernacle, on the site of the present Kaaba. He put in its foundation the famous stone once whiter than snow, but since turned black by the sins of pilgrims. In proof of these statements travellers are shown the black stone at Mecca and the tomb of Eve near Jiddak" l 1 " Arabia : "ic Cradle of Islam," by the Rev. S, M. Zwemer, p. 17. 85 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [iv. GEN. vi. 14. Make thee an ark. "But he would have us linger still Upon the verge of good or ill, That on the Guiding Hand unseen Our undivided hearts may lean, And this our frail and foundering bark Glide in the narrow wake of His beloved Ark." JOHN KEBLE.* III. QUINQUAGESIMA. Illustrations for Quinquagesima are chiefly related to the Epistle, St. Paul's Hymn of Love. 2 " I am not an orthodox Christian, as the term is understood," wrote John Addington Symonds. "But when St. Paul says that our life must be built on faith, hope and love, I cordially accept the teaching. This is the end of everything that we should live triumphantly in faith, hope and love ; and hoping, believing and loving, wait the revelation of God." J. H. Newman wrote to John Keble : " Those who feel any love for a person will interpret his most perplexing words and deeds in a charitable way." 8 Professor James Moffatt remarks : " Even martyrdom may be spoiled by a spirit of ostentation, or by the absence, from whatever reason, of love. One of the most remarkable comments upon 1 Corinthians XIIL 3, is the un- conscious note furnished by the letter of the churches of Lyons and Vienne, more than a century later (Eus. HE., v. 1). In describing their martyrs during the recent persecution, they ex- pressly connect love with no fewer than three of the most pro- minent in the list. The first is the young aristocrat, Vettius Epagathus, ' filled with love for God and his neighbour '. He had a reputation for saintliness equal to that of John the Baptist's father ; the words of Luke i. 6 are applied to him. But the Church adds, he had more of the Spirit than Zechariah, and ' showed this by the fulness of his love in deciding willingly to lay down his life in defence of the brothers '. The next ex- 1 " The Christian Year." Sixth Sunday after Epiphany. 2 i Cor. XIIL s " Correspondence of Newman with Keble and others," p. 19. 86 iv.] THE APPKOACH TO LENT ample of love is the heroic slave-girl Blandina, ' through whom Christ proved that what men reckon mean, obscure, and con- temptible is adjudged great glory by God, on account of love to Him love shown in its strength '. Thirdly, the martyrdom of Alexander the physician is chronicled : ' he was well known to almost everybody for his love to God '. Here we have cases from both sexes and from different ranks in life, where martyrdom is distinctly connected with love." l The monk Eadmer wrote of Anselm, referring to lawsuits in the Norman courts : " So it happened that sitting among the contending pleaders, while his opponents were taking counsel by what skill or by what trick they might help their own cause or damage his, he, not minding it, was conversing with anyone who wished to address him, either about the Gospel or some other divine Scripture, or some point of right conduct And often, when he had no one to listen of this kind, quietly at peace in the purity of his heart, he would close his eyes and sleep. And often it came to pass that the cunning devices against him, when they came to his hearing, were at once exposed and torn to pieces, not as if he had been asleep all the while, but as if he had been fully awake and keenly watching. For charity, ' which envieth not, vaunteth not itself, seeketh not her own,' was strong in him, by which he saw at a glance the things that he ought to see ; for the truth was his guide." 2 1 COR. xin. 4. Charity envieth not. Mediaeval artists depicted envy as the ugliest of human faults. Giotto, in his famous picture on the wall of the Arena Chapel at Padua, represents envy as long-eared, that she may catch every breath of rumour that may hurt a neighbour ; as serpent-tongued, ready to poison names and reputations; and this serpent-tongue, coiling back on herself, stings her own eyes. The figure of envy stands in flames. 1 COR. XIH. 11 (R.V.) When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. In Turgenev's " Fathers and Children," the young doctor, Bazarov, speaks thus to his friend, Arkady : 1 "Expositor," August, 1914. " Quoted by Dean Church in his " Life of Anselm," p. 93. 87 THE CHEISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [iv. "That aspen-tree reminds me of my childhood ; it grows at the edge of the clay-pits where the bricks were dug, and in those days I believed firmly that that clay-pit and aspen-tree possessed a peculiar talismanic power; I never felt dull near them. I did not understand then that I was not dull, because I was a child. Well, now I'm grown-up, the talisman has lost its power." Bossuet tells us that when Conde was dying the hero was heard pausing in his prayers "as if occupied with some great thought". He said to his confessor, " We shall see God as He is, face to face," and added, in a kind of transport, " sicuti est, facie ad faciem ". 1 COR. xm. 12. Now we see through a glass, darkly. LUKE xviii. 41, 42. What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee ? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight. The late Archdeacon Groome said of Edward FitzGerald : " He was fond of telling a story of Handel, which I, at least, have never seen in print. When Handel was blind he composed his ' Samson,' in which there is that most touching of all songs, especially to anyone whose powers of sight are waning : ' Total Eclipse '. Mr. Beard was the great tenor singer of the day, who was to sing this song. Handel sent for him. ' Mr. Beard,' he said, ' I cannot sing it as it should be sung, but I can tell you how it ought to be sung.' And then he sang it, with what strange pathos need not be told. Beard stood listening, and when it was finished said with tears in his eyes, 'But, Mr. Handel, I can never sing it like that '. And so he would tell the story with tears in his voice, such as those best remember who ever heard him read some piece of his dear old Crabbe, and break down in the reading." 1 COR. XIIL 13. But now abideth faith, hope, charity these three. Hazlitt says in his essay, " On the Pleasure of Painting " : " My father was willing to sit as long as I pleased, for there is a natural desire in the mind of man to sit for one's picture, to be the object of continued attention, to have one's likeness multiplied ; and besides his satisfaction in the picture, he had some pride in the artist, though he would rather I should have written a sermon than painted like Rembrandt or like 88 iv.] THE APPKOACH TO LENT Raphael . . . Oh for the revolution of the great Platonic year, that those times might come again ! . . . The picture is left, the table, the chair, the windov/ where I learned to construe Livy, the chapel where my father preached, remain where they were ; but he himself has gone to rest, full of years, of faith, of hope and charity." In Canto VIII of Dante's Purgatorio, "three torches" appear at nightfall near the southern pole. "They are obviously the three theological virtues [Faith, Hope, Charity], which have taken the place, as Virgil explains, of the cardinal virtues [Prudence, Justice, Temperance, Fortitude], ' the four clear stars thou sawest this morning '. In other words, the rush and glare of the day are past, the stars of the Active Life are set, those of the higher life of contemplation have risen with the quiet twilight hour." * 1 COR. xni. 13. Hope. Miss Elizabeth Wordsworth repeats, in " Glimpses of the Past," some wise words spoken by Mrs. Selwyn, widow of the great Bishop George Selwyn : " I was talking rather despondently about the state of the world. 'Ah, my dear' (said Mrs. Selwyn) 'you must . . . sow a little hope-seed. There's faith, you know, and hope and charity,' ticking them off, I think, on her three fingers as she spoke. ' Well, we say a great deal about faith, and a great deal about charity, but poor hope, somehow or other we leave her out in the cold.' " 1 COR. xin. 13. (H.V). The greatest of these is love. " True love is a natural sacrament ; and if ever a young man thanks God for having saved what is noble and manly in his soul, it is when he thinks of offering it to the woman he loves." HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 2 The Gospel 3 for Quinquagesima tells of the calling of the Twelve. Edward Burne Jones wrote to Mary Gladstone : " Do you remember how unhappy I made your father by telling him how Scott (on whose name be peace) couldn't bear Dante (on whose name be peace). My dear, if twelve of these 1 J. S. Carroll, " Prisoners of Hope," p. 123. 3 "The Minister's Wooing," ch. I. * St. Luke xvm. 31-43. 89 THE CHEISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOKY [iv. men would hold together for one ten years the whole aspect of the world would be changed ; and twelve men did once hold together and the whole face of the world was changed." * ST. LUKE xvm. 31. Behold we go up to Jerusalem. Louis IX, the holy King of France, died at Treves on 25 August, 1270. On the night of his death the devout monarch was heard saying, " We shall go into Jerusalem ". His confessor, Geoffroi de Beaulieu, says that between nine o'clock and noon, when he seemed to have slept for half an hour, he opened his eyes and looking calmly up towards heaven, pro- nounced the words of the Psalmist, " Introibo in domum iuam, adorabo ad templum sanctum tuum, Psalm v. 7. In the Evening Lesson (Gen. xu. 6) we find the first mention of the camel in Holy Scripture. Genesis xxiv., through which the camels of Abraham move in stately procession, is not in- cluded in the Sunday lectionary, but later references of the Book of Genesis are familiar, and especially the words of Chapter xxxvn. 25 : [3rd Sunday in Lent] " Behold, a company of Ishmaelites came from Gilead with their camels bearing spicery and balm and myrrh, going to carry it down to Egypt ". William Hazlitt must have been thinking of these passages when he wrote : "It is delightful to repose on the Wisdom of the Ancients; to travel out of one's self into the Chaldee, Hebrew and Egyptian characters ; to have the palm-trees waving mystically in the margin of the page, and the camels moving slowly on in the distance of three thousand years ". GEN. xm. 18 (R.V.) : " And Abram moved his tent, and came and dwelt by the oaks of Mamre ". "Methinks an oak-tree never should be planted But near the dwelling of some noble race." TENNYSON. 2 1 ' Some Hawarden Letters ' p. 66. " From a poem written in boyhood. " Tennyson, a Memoir," Vol. I, p. 24. 90 CHAPTER V. ASH WEDNESDAY " Brother Ash is pure.-ST. FRANCIS of Assisi. 92 CHAPTER V. ASH WEDNESDAY. LENT opens with the mournful music of the Penitential Psalms. The sixth Psalm, which is the first " Proper " for Ash Wednesday, might, as Dr. Ker says, have a history to itself. " It has a wail of pain and sorrow, deepening into anguish, running through it, but comfort dawns at the close, like an angel turning the key of the prison." Calvin quoted verse 3 in an hour of trouble : " Tu Domine usquequo?" "Thou, Lord, how long?" Henry II recited these strains during his penance at Canterbury. Bishop Hooper, one of the Marian martyrs, commended this with other Psalms to his friends for their lessons of patience and consolation, at times " when the mind can take no understanding, nor the heart any joy of God's promises". Psalm xxxii. was St. Augustine's favourite. He wrote with reference to it, " The beginning of understanding is to know thyself a sinner ". Luther mentioned this as one of his " Pauline Psalms ". Izaak Walton wrote, in closing his biography of Bishop Sanderson : " 'Tis too late to wish that my life may be like his, for I am in the eighty-fifth year of my age; but I humbly beseech Almighty God, that my death may be ; and do as earnestly beg of every reader to say, Amen ' Blessed is the man in whose spirit there is no guile'." Hurrell Froude wrote in 1826 : " Whenever I get into fresh society I find fresh temptations to act wrong. I feel ashamed to let myself appear what I ap- prove before those who I think would ridicule it, and have an impulse to show off where I fancy I should be respected. But it is a great comfort to have confessed it all, and the other evening, when I had been summing up my account, I found in the Psalms 93 THE CHKISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STORY [v. for the evening ' Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth no sin, and in whose spirit there is no guile '. I wish I could be sure that this is my case, and that I am not now deceiving my- self about many things." Cardinal Newman wrote in his " Apologia " : " Mr. Keble used to quote the words of the Psalm : ' I will guide thee with mine eye. Be ye not like the horse and mule, which have no understanding, whose mouths must be held with bit and bridle, lest they fall upon thee.' This is the very dif- ference, he used to say, between slaves, and friends and children. Friends do not ask for literal commands ; but, from their know- ledge of the speaker, they understand his half-words, and from love of him they anticipate his wishes. Hence it is that in his poem for St. Bartholomew's Day, he speaks of the ' eye of God's word,' and in the note quotes Mr. Miller, of Worcester College, who remarks in his ' Bampton Lectures ' on the special power of Scripture, as having ' this Eye, like that of a portrait, uniformly fixed upon us, turn where we will '." Another Ash Wednesday Psalm is en. St. Augustine, in his "Confessions," has a solemn commentary on its lines : "For Thou art most high and art not changed, neither in Thee doth to- day come to a close ; yet in Thee doth it come to a close because all such things also are in Thee. For they had no way to pass away, since Thou upheldest them. And since Thy years fail not, Thy years are one to-day. How many of ours and of our fathers' years have flowed away through Thy ' to-day,' and from it received the measure and the mould of such being as they had ; and still others shall flow away, and so receive the mould of their degree of being. But Thou art still the same, and all things of to-morrow, and all beyond and all of yesterday, and all behind it, Thou hast done to-day." l The wail of the De Profundis (Psalm cxxx.) is heard at Evensong. Jeremy Taylor commends it as the choicest Psalm for the sick. Among those who have used it when life was passing away were Mary Queen of Scots and Richard Hooker. Phineas Fletcher (1581-1650) has this translation : 1 Dr. Pusey's translation. 94 v.] ASH WEDNESDAY " As a watchman waits for day, And looks for light and looks again, When the night grows old and grey, To be relieved he calls amain ; So look, so wait, so long mine eyes, To see my Lord, my Sun arise." 1 When John Sebastian Bach was declining in years, his sight gradually failed after two operations. He became totally blind, and the medical treatment he underwent broke his hitherto hale constitution. "For half a year," says Mr. Lane Poole, " he declined, until he found his rest on the evening of Tuesday, the 28th of July, 1750. Ten days before his death his eyesight for a short space suddenly returned to him. It was a few days after that strange illumination that he called Altnikol, his son- in-law, to him, and bade him write at his dictation the chorale, When we are in the depths of need. But death had become a new presence to him. Often had he lingered upon the idea in chorale and cantata ; but now he felt himself to have passed beyond the gulf. He bade Altnikol set other words at the head of the music. The words were these: ' Herewith I come before Thy throne '." The Ash Wednesday " Epistle " is from the prophet Joel (n. 12-17). Sir George Adam Smith writes on this passage : " Jehovah is near, His Day is about to break. From this it is impossible to escape on the narrow path of disaster by which the prophet has led up to it. But beneath that path the prophet passes the ground of a broad truth, and on that truth, while judgment remains still as real, there is room for the people to turn from it. If experience has shown that God is in the present, near and inevitable, faith remembers that He is there not willingly for judgment, but with all His ancient feel- ing for Israel and His zeal to save her. If the people choose to turn, Jehovah, as their God and as one who works for their 1 Quoted by the Rev. C. L. Marson, " The Psalms at Work," p. 203. 2 " Sebastian Bach," p. 117. 95 THE CHRISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STORY [v. sake, will save them. Of this God assures them by His own word."' 1 The Gospel (St. Matt. vr. 16-21) turns our thoughts towards "life as a perpetual fast". We are bidden not to lay up treasures upon earth, where moth and rust do corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal. Jacob Boehme, the German theosophist, was marked in youth, as Bishop Martensen says, by a certain visionary element, by inward visions which for himself assumed the character of outwardness and reality. Thus, as a shepherd boy, he once climbed to the top of a mountain called the " Land's Crown " ; and here he saw a vaulted entrance composed of four red stones and leading into a cavern. When he had toiled through the brushwood that surrounded the entrance, he beheld in the depth of the cave a vessel filled with money. He was seized with inward panic, as if at something diabolical, and ran away in alarm. Subsequently he often returned to the spot, ac- companied by other boys. But entrance and cavern had alike vanished ! 2 ASH WEDNESDAY LESSONS. Is. LVIII. Dr. George Matheson points out that the whole of this chapter is an exhortation to charity. The prophet is urging men to deeds of ministration to sympathy with the poor, compassion for the sorrowful, help for the needy. He says that such a life of sacrifice is of more value than the keep- ing of sacred days or the attendance at holy festivals. Verse 11, " A watered garden ". " 'A watered garden.' Cannot a garden water itself? No. that is the answer definite, cold, discouraging, encouraging, as we may take the term. Is it not enough to be a garden? what matter about the sunshine ? Who cares about the rain or the dew? Is it not enough to be a garden, a geometric form, pearled and diamonded with many a flower ? The king's gardens cannot do without rain ; Solomon's parterres wither away but for the morning dew and the summer shower. We need something from without." JOSEPH PARKER. 1 " The Book of the Twelve Prophets," Vol. II, pp. 409-10. " Jacob Boehme," by Bishop Martensen, p. 5. 96 v.] ASH WEDNESDAY JONAH in. Dr. Pusey wrote, in his introduction to Jonah : " The older of us remember what awful joy was felt, when after three days of mortal strife at Leipzig, in which 107,000 were killed or wounded, victory at length was won ; or when out of 647,000 men who swept across Europe (a mass larger than the whole population of Nineveh) only 85,000 escaped". Canon Liddon says in a note to his " Life of Pusey " : " The present writer can never forget Pusey 's solemn reference to the campaigns of Leipzig and Waterloo, in a Hebrew lecture more than forty years ago ; he was commenting on Psalm xxxvn. 37 ". HEB. xii. 4. Thomas a Kempis wrote : " What sayest thou, son ? Cease to complain ; when thou considerest my passion And that of other saints. Thou hast not yet resisted unto blood. It is but little which thou sufferest in comparison of those who suffered so much, who were so strongly tempted, so grievously afflicted, so many ways tried and harassed. Thou oughtest therefore to call to mind the heavier woes of others, that thou mayest the easier bear thine own small troubles." HEB. xn. 6. " We all want religion sooner or later," wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes. " I am afraid there are some who have no natural turn for it, as there are persons without an ear for music. . . . But sorrow and misery bring even these to know what it means, in a great many instances. May I not say to you, my friend, that I am one who has learned the secret of the inner life by the discipline of trials in the life of outward cir- cumstance ? I can remember the time when I thought more about the shade of a colour in a ribbon, whether it matched my complexion or not, than I did about my spiritual interests in this world or the next. It was needful that I should learn the meaning of the text, ' Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth '. Since I have been taught in the school of trial I have felt, as I never could before, how precious an inheritance is the smallest patrimony of faith." l 1 " The Poet at the Breakfast Table," ch. VH. 97 CHAPTER VI. FIVE LENTEN SUNDAYS. CHAPTER VI. FIVE LENTEN SUNDAYS. I. THE EPISTLES. ONE of St. Paul's most glorious passages opens the series of Lenten Epistles. 1 Every verse has historic associations. Macaulay tells us that on the evening of the Black Friday when the seven Bishops were committed to the Tower, they reached their prison at the hour of Divine service. " They in- stantly hastened to the chapel. It chanced that in the second lesson were these words : ' In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in patience, in afflictions, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments.' All zealous churchmen were de- lighted by this coincidence, and remembered how much com- fort a similar coincidence had given near forty years before, to Charles the First at the time of his death." Father Richard Meux Benson wrote of Keble, whose quiet and uneventful life resembled his own : " Perhaps it is a token of Keble's saintliness that his life is left hidden with Christ in all the obscurity of the original Apostles. We cannot now have a biography of him. Those who knew about his daily life, and could have pretended to sketch his character for us, are gone. His life was not before the world as Pusey's was. The secret power operating far and wide is what none can tell." 2 The Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe, may have been think- ing of 2 Cor. vi., as he lay on his deathbed. He was heard to murmur repeatedly that he trusted he should not be thought to have lived in vain (nefrustra vixisse videar). 2 COB. vi. 2. Behold, now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation. 1 2 Cor. VI. i -10 (Epistle for First Sunday in Lent). 2 " Letters of Richard Meux Benson," p. vi. 101 THE CHRISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STORY [vi. " I knew the time would pass away, And yet, beside the rose-tree wall, Dear God, how seldom, if at all, Did I look up to pray." E. B. BROWNING. " ' Would a man 'scape the rod ? ' Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, ' See that he turn to God The day before his death '. ' Ay, could a man inquire When it shall come ! ' I say. The Rabbi's eye shoots fire ' Then let him turn to-day ! ' " ROBERT BROWNING. J' M. Neale inscribed the text, " Through evil report and good report " (2 Cor. vi. 8) above his study door. Murillo selected the words " Vive moriturus " for his admoni- tory motto. "Live as one about to die" was the maxim of the Spanish painter. St. Paul said : " Dying, but here I am alive ". l The Epistle for the Second Sunday (1 Thess. iv. 1-8) has for its theme Christian sanctification. Dr. Alexander Whyte says : " Dr. John Duncan's daughter tells us in her diary that having heard a good sermon on one occasion on the words, ' For the will of God is your sanctification,' and having spoken well of it to her father, he at once replied, ' Did it begin with re- generation ? ' This question of Dr. Duncan's goes to the very root of the matter. For sanctification is no mere reformation or refinement of manners or morals. It is a maxim even in ethics, that the morality of the man must precede the morality of his actions. Much more is it a law of Christ and His church. 'Make the tree good.' Reformation and sanctification differ, says Dr. Hodge, as clean clothes differ from a clean heart. It 1 Dr. Moffatt's translation of ^ Cor. vi. 9. 102 vi.] FIVE LENTEN SUNDAYS is as essential to a truly holy life as it is to a good sermon on a holy life, that it begin with regeneration." l Dr. Whyte quotes the words of Luther : " Woe to him that is wholly renewed that is, that thinks himself to be so. That man, without doubt, has never so much as begun to be renewed, nor did he ever taste what it is to be a Christian." The Third Epistle is from Ephesians v. On verse 1, " Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children," Bishop West- cott writes : " We all are as children in God's household ; heirs, indeed, of a glorious inheritance, but yet children and then nearest Him when we realise most fully our childly duties at His feet" The text teaches a lesson of dependence, of trustfulness, of partial knowledge. Dr. Parker pointed out that in verse 8, " Ye were sometimes darkness," the word "darkness" means " living darkness, with- out ray or glint or beam of light, as far away from light as it is possible to be. ... Where the darkness is so dense God Him- self must handle the occasion, or there is nothing for it but fatal night." The Fourth Sunday in Lent is known as " Refreshment Sun- day ". The title may have its origin in the Gospel for the day, which describes the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness with loaves and fishes. The name liturgically given to it was " Laetare " from the first word of the Introit, " Rejoice ye with Jerusalem ". To English folk Mid-Lent is best known as "Mothering Sunday," probably from the words of the Epistle, "Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all ". Mr. Athelstan Riley, in the "Church Times," points out that " In the North of England, where there are many vast parishes, containing many daughter churches, the custom of going up at Mid- Lent to the Mother Church lasted longer than elsewhere. There were traces of its survival within sixty years from now. In other parts of England, the name only survived, and, in course of time, a new meaning was given to it, and a 1 " A Commentary on the Shorter Catechism," p. 88. 108 THE CHKISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STORY [vi. new custom grew up of returning to the parental home for a family reunion ". Principal Shairp says in his description of J. H. Newman's preaching at St. Mary's, Oxford : " About the service, the most remarkable thing was the beauty, the silver intonation of Mr. Newman's voice, as he read the Lessons. It seemed to bring new meaning out of the familiar words ; still lingers in memory the tone with which he read, ' But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all '." With the Fifth Sunday in Lent the Church turns her gaze towards Calvary. The Epistle opens with the words of Hebrews ix. 11 : " Christ being come an High Priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands ; that is to say, not of this building ; neither by the blood of goats and calves ; but by His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us ". " Such a tabernacle," writes Principal Edwards, " is not con- structed of the materials of this world, nor fashioned with the hands of cunning artificers, Bezaleel and Aholiab. When Christ destroyed the sanctuary made with hands, in three days He built another made without hands. In a true sense it is not made at all, not even by the hands of Him who built all things ; for it is essentially God's presence. Into this holiest place Christ entered, to appear in the immediate presence of God. But the Apostle is not satisfied with saying that He entered within. Ten thousand times ten thousand of His saints will do this. He has done more. He went through the holiest. He has passed through the heavens. He has taken his seat on the right hand of God. The Melchisedek Priest has ascended to the mercy-seat and made it His throne. He is Himself henceforth the manifested glory of the unseen Father. All this is ex- pressed in the words, ' Through a greater and more perfect tabernacle '." 1 II. THE GOSPELS. Our Lord's temptation in the wilderness forms the theme of the first Gospel for the Sundays in Lent. 2 Mary Cholmondeley says on this passage : 1 " The Epistle to the Hebrews," p. 154. 2 St. Matt. IV. i-i I. 104 vi.] FIVE LENTEN SUNDAYS " The marks of conflict and endurance on a young face who shall see them unmoved ? The Mother of Jesus must have noticed a great difference on her Son when she first saw Him again after the temptation in the wilderness." Ruskin writes in the fifth volume of " Modern Painters" : " High on the desert mountain, full descried, sits throned the tempter, with his old promise the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them. He still calls you to your labour, as Christ to your rest ; labour and sorrow, base desire and cruel hope. So far as you desire to possess, rather than to give ; so far as you look for power to command, instead of to bless ; so far as your own prosperity seems to you to issue out of conflict or rivalry, of any kind, with other men, or other nations ; so long as the hope before you is supremacy instead of love ; and your desire is to be greatest instead of least ; first, instead of last ; so long are you serving the Lord of all that is last and least." " If in the upper world we shall see ' the angel that came and ministered unto Him,' " wrote Rabbi Duncan, " I think the whole Church will be greatly interested in that angel ". l The woman of Canaan who sought our Lord on behalf of her afflicted daughter is commemorated on the Second Sunday. 2 Bunyan wrote : " The woman of Canaan also, that would not be daunted, though called dog by Christ (Matt. xv. 22), and the man that went to borrow bread at midnight (Luke XL 5-8) were great encouragements to me." Verse 22. "My daughter is grievously vexed with a devil." "I doubt," says Bishop Hall, " whether she had enquired after Christ, if she had not been vexed with her daughter's spirit. Our afflictions are . . . the files and whetstones that set an edge on our devotions." Verse 28. "O woman, great is thy faith," Bishop Phillips Brooks chose to be inscribed on the tombstone of his mother, for whose saintly character he had a true reverence. Sir Thomas Browne has these words : " To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. The Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name than Herodias with 1 " Colloquia Peripatetica." 2 St. Matt. xv. 21-28. 105 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [vi. one. And who had not rather have been the good thief, than Pilate ? " On St. Luke xi. 23, 1 William Blake wrote : " Christ is very decided on this point ; ' He who is not with Me is against Me '. There is no medium or middle state ; and if a man is the enemy of my spiritual life while he pretends to be the friend of my corporeal life he is a real enemy, but the man may be the friend of my spiritual life while he seems the enemy of my corporeal, though not vice versa" The late Professor J. M. Kettle, who fell at Ginchy in August, 1916, wrote thus of neutrality in the great war : " In such matters you cannot compromise. Neutrality is already a decision, a decision of adherence to the evil side. To trim is to betray. It will be an ill end of all our ' idealistic ' movements when their success so transforms the young men of this nation that in this world they shall consent to be neutral, and that nothing will offer them in the next save to be blown about by the winds." 2 On the Feeding of the Multitude, 3 J. H. Newman founded his sermon entitled, " The Gospel Feast ". " From the beginning," he wrote, " the great rite of religion has been a feast ; the par- taking of God's bounties, in the way of nature, has been con- secrated to a more intimate communion with God Himself." St. John VIIL 49 (Gospel for the Fifth Sunday) : " When the Jews accused our Saviour of having a devil," writes St. Francis de Sales, " He answered simply, ' I have not a devil '. If you are accused of any great or scandalous fault, of which you know that you are not guilty, answer simply and quietly to that effect." St John VIIL 61. In the Memoirs of Miss Havergal we read : " Another Sunday evening, not being able to go to church, she called Mary to read with her. Searching into the meaning of those words (John vm. 51.) ' If a man keep My saying, he shall never see death, ' her conclusion was, ' so, when we come to die, our eyes will so really see Jesus Himself that we shall not see death '." 1 Gospel for the Third Sunday in Lent (St. Luke xi. 14- 28) 2 "The Ways of War," pp. 70, 71. 3 St. John VI. 1-14 (Gospel for Fourth Sunday in Lent). 106 vi.] FIVE LENTEN SUNDAYS III. THE LESSONS. The Book of Genesis continues to furnish the Old Testament Lessons for this season, and chapters from Exodus are taken for the Fifth Sunday. We give some illustrations for the selected passages. GEN. xix. 17. Escape for thy life ; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain ; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed. The last words of Tolstoy were : "To escape to escape". GEN. xxn. In "The Abbot," Magdalen Graeme, a Catholic enthusiast, takes her grandson Roland to the nunnery of St. Catherine, and introduces him to the Abbess, in whose presence she consecrates the boy to the service of Queen Mary. " Thou art a happy woman, Sister Magdalen," said the Abbess, " that, lifted so high above human affection and human feeling, thou canst bind such a victim to the horns of the altar. Had I been called to make such a sacrifice to plunge a youth so young and fair into the plots and bloodthirsty dealings of the time not the patri- arch Abraham, when he led Isaac up the mountain, would have rendered more melancholy obedience." The grandmother of the consecrated boy hopes that " there will be a ram caught in the thicket," and that " the hand of our revolted brethren shall not be on the youthful Joseph. Heaven can defend its own rights, even by means of babes and sucklings, of women and beardless boys." GEN. xxn. 4. Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off. The poet-preacher, Hawker of Morwenstow, wrote of his own parish church : " Whereas the first building in every ancient parish was the church, they placed it afar off from the probable abode of men. Like the Altar of the patriarchs which was always ' yonder ' (cf. Abraham's three days' journey) and the church of the Jews a long way from eleven of the tribes, so the most primitive of our churches were evermore at an intentional distance from the future people. There was to be a church path to be trodden as the journey of the worship-day a road of quiet thought whereon a man might recall his transgressions and prepare to 107 THE CHKISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STOEY [vi. offer penitence at God's footstool, and to solicit pardon for the past. Along that church-path, too, the parent could lead his children by the hand, and instruct them whither they were going and what for so that the longer the way the better the preparation, and the farther the distance the more time for con- verse and for thought. An old proverb said, ' The more foot- steps that the Angels count in your church-path the better for your soul '. As far as my own remembrance goes, I have always found the most distant of my parishioners the most frequent and faithful worshippers of all." 1 GEN. XXIL 14. And Abraham called the name of the place Jehovah-jireh ; that is, the Lord will provide. " Abraham," says Dr. Alexander Maclaren, "christened the anonymous mountain-top not by a name which reminded him or others of his trial, but by a name that proclaimed God's deliver- ance. He did not say anything about his agony or about his obedience. God spoke about that, not Abraham. Many a bare bald mountain-top in your career and mine we have got names for. Are they names that commemorate our sufferings, or God's blessings ? " The Second Sunday in Lent is " Jacob's Ladder " Sunday. Illustrations abound for the great Evening Lesson (Gen. xxvm. ), and we take a handful of gems from the treasure-store. One of the old English paraphrases of Scripture, "The Story of Genesis and Exodus," (circa 1250) gives the following account of Jacob's dream : " At Luz he tamed out all night, A stone under his head set right, And slept, and saw in soothful dream From earth up into heaven's beam A ladder stand, and thereupon Angels down-coming and up-gone And the great God above on high. Then Jacob roused, and speedily He heard them speaking, ' God I am Of Isaac and of Abraham. 1 " Life of R. S. Hawker," by C. E. Byles, p. 43- 108 vi.] FIVE LENTEN SUNDAYS This land I give unto thy seed, And in this place I bid thee rede, That I will bring them here again Among all peoples blest amain.' Jacob awoke, and said in fear ' God in this stead [place] is surely here, A place of dread is this, God's house, Here is the gate of heaven 'mongst us " > . 1 " Wings at my shoulder seem to play ; But, rooted here, I stand and gaze On those bright steps that heavenward raise Their practicable way." WORDSWORTH. In his poem " Jacob," A. H. Clough puts these words into the lips of the aged patriarch : " Think ye, my sons, in this extreme old age And in this failing breath, that I forget How on the day when from my father's door, In bitterness and ruefulness of heart, I from my parents set my face, and felt I never more again should look on theirs, How on that day I seemed unto myself Another Adam from his home cast out, And driven abroad unto a barren land Cursed for his sake, and mocking still with thorns And briers that labour and that sweat of brow He still must spend to live ? Sick of my days, I wished not life, but cried out, Let me die ; But at Luz God came to me ; in my heart He put a better mind, and showed me how, While we discern it not, and least believe, On stairs invisible betwixt his heaven And our unholy, sinful, toilsome earth Celestial messengers of loftiest good Upward and downward pass continually." Quoted by the Rev. C. J. Abbey, "Religious Thought in Old English Verse," p. 33. 109 THE CHEISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [vi. " The angels keep their ancient places ; Turn but a stone, and start a wing ! 'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces, That miss the many-splendoured thing. But (when so sad thou canst not sadder) Cry ; and upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross. Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, Cry, clinging Heaven by the hems ; And lo, Christ walking on the water Not of Gennesareth, but Thames ! " FRANCIS THOMPSON. When William Hazlitt was living at Winterslow, nine miles from Stonehenge, he painted a picture of " Jacob's Ladder," a subject which had always attracted him. To his wife he wrote : " I have got in a pretty good background, and a conception of the ladder which I learned from the upping stone on the down, only making the stone into gold, and a few other improvements. I have no doubt there was such another on the field of Luz, and that an upping stone is the genuine Jacob's Ladder. But where are the angels to come from ? " In his lecture on " Living Poets," Hazlitt said of Coleridge : " He talked on for ever . . . and you wished him to talk on for ever. His mind was clothed with wings, and raised on them, he lifted philosophy to heaven. In his descriptions you then saw the progress of human happiness and liberty in bright and never-ending succession, like the steps of Jacob's ladder, with airy shapes ascending and descending, and with the voice of God at the top of the ladder." Hawker of Morwenstow wrote to a nephew a remarkable letter on the claims of Science and Faith. In it the following passage occurs : " Behold the battalions of the Lord of Hosts ! the workers of the sky ! the faithful and intelligent vassals of God the Trinity ! We have named them in our own poor and meagre 110 vi.] FIVE LENTEN SUNDAYS language ' the Angels,' but this title merely denotes one of their subordinate offices messengers from on high. The Gentiles called them ' gods,' but we ought to honour them by a name that should embrace and interpret their lofty dignity as an inter- mediate army between the kingdom and the throne ; the Centurions of the stars, and of men ; the commanders of the forces and their guides. These are they that each with a delegated office fulfil what their * King Invisible ' decrees ; not with the dull, inert mechanism of fixed and Natural Law, but with the unslumbering energy and the rational obedience of Spiritual Life. They mould the atom ; they wield the force, and as Newton rightly guessed, they rule the world of matter beneath the silent omnipotence of God. ' And he dreamed and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to Heaven ; and behold the angels of God ascending and descending upon it. And behold the Lord stood above it.' Genesis XXVIIL 12. Tolle lege, my dear nephew." F. D. Maurice wrote to his mother in 1881 : " I do not know whether you will understand me, but my own experience, which has been perhaps, strange on this point, has led me to see more of the meaning of the Apostle, of all things being summed up in Christ, than I had any notion of previously. It seems to me that all relations acquire a signi- ficance, and become felt as actually living and real when con- templated in Him, which out of Him, even to the most intensely affectionate, they cannot have. At first each relation seems to be a step in a beautiful ladder set upon earth and reaching to Him, prefiguring that heavenly relation ; and afterwards, if that top step be apprehended, a descending ladder set in heaven and reaching to earth. But I am afraid I am growing incompre- hensible, though, thank God, I have a meaning." x GEN. xxvin. 12. He dreamed and behold a ladder set up on the earth. In the Middle Ages, holy men compared the erection of monasteries to the setting up of a ladder between heaven and earth. Montalembert quotes the saying of St Eloy to his master, " Give me this site, that I may construct there a ladder by which you and I shall mount to the celestial kingdom." 1 ".Life of F. D. Maurice," Vol. I, p. 131. Ill THE CHKISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STORY [vi. " Six centuries later," says Montalembert, " a Count of Orlamiinde, in endowing a monastery in Hamburg, inscribed this axiom upon its charter of foundation, * He who erects or repairs a monastery builds himself a stair to ascend to heaven '. And at the same period, one of the chiefs of the Norman nobility, then masters of England, the Count of Chester, saw in a dream his ancestor, who pointed out to him one of his domains, saying, ' Here must be erected a ladder by which the angels shall ascend every day to carry men's prayers to God, and descend with His blessings.' " 1 Bishop Lancelot Andrewes, in his first Christmas homily, ex- pounded the words of Hebrews n. 16: "For verily not of Angels doth He take hold, but He taketh hold of the seed of Abraham." (R.V.). "The only exceptions that may be made to these com- parisons," he says, "is that most- what they be odious; it breedeth a kind of disdain in the higher to be matched with the lower, especially to be overmatched with him. We need not fear it here. The blessed Spirits, the Angels, will take no offence at it ; they will not remove Jacob's ladder for all this, or descend to us, or ascend for us (Genesis XXVIIL 12) ever a whit the slower because He is become ' the Son of Man ' (John i. 51). There is not in them that envious mind that was in the elder brother in the Gospel ; when the younger was received to grace after his riotous course " (Luke xv. 28). Horace Bushnell wrote, after crossing the Simplon in 1845 : " I walked on in advance of the coach, alone, to get warm, and was so much delighted with the solitude and the scenery that I preferred to keep on. It was a most beautiful moonlight morning, and as I wound round the long sweep and circled the promontories, and saw the valley sleeping and softening under me, I felt that rising of emotion which is the greatest luxury of being to enjoy. Coming round a high promontory, in a gully cut into the face of the rock a thousand feet above the roaring gulf below, and two thousand above the valley, with a snow- covered pinnacle in front just across the gulf, I said, * Let this be my temple '. And I think I had some of that high and 1 " Monks of the West," Vol. I, p. 90. 112 vi.] FIVE LENTEN SUNDAYS unearthly joy which a solitary traveller of old had when he said, ' How dreadful is this place ' ! " 1 " There is a ladder to heaven," says Harriet Beecher Stowe, " whose base God has placed in human affections, tender instincts, symbolic feelings, sacraments of love, through which the soul rises higher and higher, refining as she goes, till she outgrows the human, and changes, as she rises, into the image of the divine. At the very top of this ladder, at the threshold of Paradise, blazes dazzling and crystalline that celestial grade where the soul knows self no more, having learned, through a long experience of devotion, how blest it is to lose herself in that eternal Love and Beauty of which all earthly fairness and grandeur are but the dim type, the distant shadow." GEN. xxvin. 20-22. This passage was quoted by Bishop Thomas Wilson in his memorandum book for Easter-day, 1698, after his appointment by the Earl of Derby to the Mastership of Lathom Almshouse. " It having pleased God," wrote the young clergyman (then aged thirty), " of his meer bounty and goodness, to bless me with a temporall income far above my hopes or deserts ; and I having hitherto given but one-tenth part of my income to the poor ; I do therefore purpose, and I thank God for putting it into my heart, that of all the profitts which it shall please God to give me, ... I do purpose to separate the 5th part of all my Incomes, as I shall receive them, for pious uses and especially for the poor. T.W." 2 Nicholas Ferrar of Little Gidding, recorded the following vow in 1613, when about to set forth on his foreign travels : " If the good Lord be merciful unto me and bring me safe home again, I will all the days of my life serve Him in praising His Holy Name, and in exhorting others ; yea, in His tabernacle, and in His holy sanctuary, will I serve Him, and shall account the lowest place in His house better and more honourable than the greatest crown in the world." GEN. xxxii. 24-28. Writing to Lord Justice Wood on patience and prayer, Dean Hook said : " There must be a knocking. The Prince Israel must wrestle 1 " Life of Horace Bushnell," p. 144. a Keble's " Life of Bishop Wilson," Vol. I, p. 63. 8 lid THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [vi. with God. Go into your room, lock your door, prostrate your- self before God cry aloud, it may be, for hours, but get not up till there is a spirit within, saying, ' Thy prayer is heard '. I have known persons comforted in an hour, I have known others weeping a whole night. Some will call this enthusiasm ; but I know it to be a means of peace and strength permanent peace and strength." l GEN. xxxn. 29. And Jacob asked him and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. Francis Thompson closes his poem, " The Veteran of Heaven," with these lines : " What is Thy Name ? Oh, show ! ' My Name ye may not know; "Tis a going forth with banners, and a baring of much swords ; But my titles that are high, are they not upon My thigh ? * King of Kings ! ' are the words, ' Lord of Lords ! ' It is written, ' King of Kings, Lord of Lords'." GEN. xxxvii. 35. [Jacob] refused to be comforted ; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourn- ing. Thus his father wept for him. One of the most pathetic passages in Russian fiction is Turgenev's picture of the parents of the young doctor, Bazarov, mourning at the grave of an only son of genius and singular promise. The novel " Fathers and Children " closes with these words : 2 "There is a small village graveyard in one of the remote corners of Russia. Like almost all our graveyards, it presents a wretched appearance ; the ditches surrounding it have long been overgrown ; the grey wooden crosses lie fallen and rotting under their once painted gables ; the stone slabs are all displaced, as though someone were pushing them up from behind ; two or three bare trees give a scanty shade ; the sheep wander un- checked among the tombs. . . . But among them is one un- touched by man, untrampled by beast, only the birds perch upon it and sing at daybreak. An iron railing runs round it ; two young fir trees have been planted, one at each end. Yevgeny 1 " Life of Dean Hook," Vol. II, p. 483. 2 Mrs. Garnett's translation. 114 vi.] FIVE LENTEN SUNDAYS Bazarov is buried in this tomb. Often from the little village not far off, two quite feeble old people come to visit it a hus- band and wife. Supporting one another, they move to it with heavy steps ; they go up to the railing, fall down, and remain on their knees, and long and bitterly they weep and yearn, and intently they gaze at the dumb stone under which their son is lying ; they exchange some brief word, wipe away the dust from the stone, set straight a branch of a fir tree, and pray again, and cannot tear themselves from this place, where they seem to be nearer to their son ... to their memories of him. . . . Can it be that their prayers, their tears, are fruitless ? Can it be that love, sacred, devoted love, is not all-powerful ? Oh, no ! However passionate, sinning, and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep serenely at us with their innocent eyes ; they tell us not of eternal peace alone, of that great peace of ' indifferent ' nature ; they tell us also of eternal reconciliation and life without end." GEN. XLII. 36. And Jacob their father said unto them, Me have ye bereaved of my children. GEN. XLIII. 14. If I be bereaved of my children, I am bereaved. Dumas represents Anne of Austria as mourning to her ladies over the neglect of her son, the young King Louis XIV. " When the three ladies had exhausted all the formulas of dissimulation and courtesy before reaching the point of saying that the King's conduct was breaking the heart of the Queen, the Queen Mother and all his relations ; when they had ful- minated their imprecations, all clothed in the choicest terms, against Mademoiselle de la Valliere, the Queen Mother wound up her recriminations with this ejaculation, so expressive of her own character and feelings, ' Estos hijos ! ' which means ' These children ! ' words of deep meaning on a mother's lips words of terrible meaning on the lips of a Queen who, like Anne of Austria, had buried such strange secrets in the depths of her soul." x 1 " Le Vicomte de Bragelonne." 115 THE CHBISTIAN YEAB IN HUMAN STOBY [vi. THE STORY OF JOSEPH. Dr. Scott Holland tells us that Professor James Mozley was stricken down some time before his death, and afflicted with a certain aphasia. " But his mind was evidently hard at work, behind the hindrance. He could not recall the name, one day, of a certain great Finance Minister. So he called him. He rejected all suggestions. Gladstone ? No ! No ! Goschen ? No ! Great Finance Reformer ! was it something about Egypt made those round him try ' Disraeli ' and the Suez Canal shares ? Oh no ! Not at all ! Great Land Beformer. Who was it ? A niece, by inspiration, said ' Joseph '. Exactly ! That was it. Joseph ! So, in the freshness of his intelligence, he was vivifying the old Biblical problems." 1 GEN. XLV. 26, 27. And [they] told [Jacob] saying, Joseph is yet alive, and he is governor over all the land of Egypt. And Jacob's heart fainted, for he believed them not. And they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said unto them ; and when lie saw the wagons, which Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries four great religious processions were held every year in Antwerp. An imposing feature were the wagons on which were represented scenes from Old and New Testament history and figures of saints with their emblems. The town painter usually supervised and controlled all the arrangements, designing the histories on the wagons, 2 and thus stimulating the faith of the populace. Elder Zossima, in Dostoevsky's novel, " The Brothers Karamazov," advises the Bussian village priest to pay great at- tention to the instruction of the young in Holy Scripture. " Let him read them about Abraham and Sarah, about Isaac and Bebecca, of how Jacob went to Laban and wrestled with the Lord in his dream and said, ' This place is holy ' and he will impress the devout mind of the peasant. Let him read, especially to children, how the brothers sold Joseph, the tender boy, the dreamer and prophet, into bondage, and told their father that a wild beast had devoured him, and showed him his blood-stained 1 "A Bundle of Memories," p. 38. s jervis Wegg, "Antwerp, 1477-1559," p. 85. 116 vi.] FIVE LENTEN SUNDAYS clothes. Let him read how the brothers afterwards journeyed into Egypt for corn, and Joseph, already a great ruler, unrecog- nised by them, accused them, kept his brother, Benjamin, and all through love : ' I love you, and loving you I torment you '. For he remembered all his life how they had sold him to the merchants in the burning desert by the well, and how, wringing his hands, he had wept and besought his brothers not to sell him as a slave in a strange land. And how, seeing them again after many years, he loved them beyond measure, but he harassed and tormented them in love. He left them at last, not able to bear the suffering of his heart, flung himself on his bed and wept. Then wiping his tears away he went out to them joyful and told them, 'Brothers, I am your brother Joseph!' Let him read them further how happy old Jacob was on learning that his darling boy was still alive, and how he went to Egypt, leaving his own country and died in a foreign land, bequeathing his great prophecy that had lain mysteriously hidden in his meek and timid heart all his life, that from his offspring from Judah will come the great hope of the world, the Messiah and Saviour." GEN. XLV. 24. So he sent his brethren away and they de- parted ; and he said unto them, See that ye fall not out by the way. Sir Alexander Simpson's will contained a codicil at the head of which were the words of Joseph's admonition to his brethren, " See that ye fall not out by the way ". Ex. in. 5. The place whereon thou standest is holy ground. " Where holy ground begins, unhallowed ends, Is marked by no distinguished line ; The turf unites, the pathways inter wina" 1 WORDSWORTH . Ex. in. 5. Miss Gertrude Toynbee tells us that when her father, the aural surgeon, Dr. Joseph Toynbee, took his children to visit Dr. Arnold's home at Fox How, in the Lake country, he quoted the verse " Take off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground ". Ex. in. 11. And Moses said unto God, Who am 7, that I should go f 1 On a Parsonage in Oxfordshire. 117 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [vi. The late Principal Story, in his memoir of his father the Rev. Robert Story of Rosneath, tells that when the young minister approached the scene of his life-long labours in the Gareloch village (December, 1815), his first impression of the place was so dismal that he made up his mind to leave as soon as his first Sunday's duties were over. He had come as assistant to the aged incumbent, Dr. Drummond. " From hill- top to water's edge a shroud of snow stretched cold and grim. Between the white and silent shores the loch lay bleak and sullen. He landed as the early twilight was deepening into night, and went up to the manse. The house was old, mouldy, and out of repair. Dr. Drummond was quite in his dotage. When the new-comer retired for the night, and went comfortless to bed, the sheets were damp and clammy ; from the bedroom walls the discoloured paper hung in tatters." Next day kind neighbours gave a welcome to the stranger, and he decided to stay, " not realising then that this pleasant spot was for forty years to be his home ".* Dr. Andrew Bonar wrote as follows to a friend who felt dis- couraged in his work : " While tunnelling the Alps, one of the workmen began one day to think upon his arm, and to speculate on its feebleness. Comparing it with the greatness of the work to be done, he forthwith sat down, sad and depressed. 'Stronger men are needed here. Who am I to bore through Mont Cenis ? ' He uttered this moan aloud, and a voice was heard, a voice from one who was watching over the work and the workmen. The voice said kindly, but at the same time half-upbraiding, ' Did I not know what your arm could do, and what it could not do, when I sent you to propel, by careful attention to your steam apparatus, that wedge of steel ? Think of that little wedge of steel tipped with diamond. Why moan over your feeble arm ? ' Up, up at once and forget your feebleness. Think of Him whose power accomplishes the mighty work, and how He asks you simply to see that the wedge of diamond-tipped steel be in its right place." 2 1 "Principal Story : A Memoir" by his daughter, pp. i, 2. 2 " Reminiscences," p. 40, 118 CHAPTER VII. HOLY WEEK TO MAUNDY THURSDAY. " Our life on earth should be indeed one long-continued watch-night of the Passion. If we knew our exile in its reality, it could be nothing else. But how soon it will be past ! Yes, the Psalmist himself says : ' As a watch in the night '. How strange it will be to look back upon it when the full day of the eternal love is shining in its bright manifestation all around." FATHER R. M. BENSON. Archbishop Trench sent to his son Richard these injunctions for Holy Week : " Do not let it pass over altogether unobserved or unimproved. Observe it with some small self-denials imposed en yourself; improve it by trying to think oftener than at other times of Christ's sufferings for us. I do not know whether you go to daily service, but read over seriously and devoutly on each successive day of the week, the Epistles and Gospels appointed for them ; and may God bless you with His grace and favour." 120 CHAPTER VII. HOLY WEEK TO MAUNDY THURSDAY. THE saintly Bengel wrote of the closing days of our Saviour's life on earth: " Habitabat in passione sua". The Church seeks to enter within the veil that hides the mysteries of her Lord's Passion. The words of Canticles : " I will go up unto the palm-tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof," are interpreted by devout men as referring to the Cross. " This true and living palm," says J. M. Neale, "this Cross, with its precious fruits, is set before us, and we must go up to it. ... ' I will take hold of the boughs thereof.' And how ? Surely by clinging to them as the only firm hold in the evil day. We have all read of shipwrecked men, when washed by some enormous wave on the shore, how they have grasped at some rock or stump, and held on to it as for very life during the recoil of the wave. So it is that in the shipwreck of this world, we must cling on to the Cross ; no one ever perished there yet ; the thief was saved that grasped it in the very last hour. Judas would there have been saved if he had cast himself at the foot, and had cried to Him that hung thereon, ' I will not let Thee go, except thou bless me '." Palm Sunday was highly honoured in the mediaeval Church. From a thirteenth century poem on The Passion of our Lord these lines are taken : " Then came He toward Jerusalem upon a Palm Sunday, He had no princely robe of fur, He wore no robe of grey. 1 He had no steed to ride upon. He had no palefray, But meekly rode upon an ass, as I to you may say, 1 Badger's fur. 121 THE CHRISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STOEY [vn. And as he came into the burgh, thus riding as a King, Forth came the children unto Him and sweetly they did sing, 'Yea, blessed must He be,' said they, 'that cometh in God's name,' Which filled the Jews and the Pharisees with anger and with grame." l In the Eastern Church, also, this is a solemn day. Lord Redesdale, who as a young man was attached to the British Embassy in Petrograd, describes in his " Memories " the ceremonial of Palm Sunday Eve, which he followed in the chapel of Prince Gortchakoff. " It was a singularly impressive ceremonial, not, of course, so steeped in tragic emotion as those which would follow later in the week, for symbolically we were celebrating a joy, not a death; the triumphant procession when the people shouted, Hosanna to the Son of David, welcoming with loud acclaim the entry of their King into His capital, ' coming in the name of the Lord '. " The first striking feature in the holy rite was the bringing in of a small table upon which were set out vessels containing oil, wine, grain and five loaves typifying the five barley loaves with which the Saviour fed the five thousand in the desert place near Bethsaida. Very reverently they were blessed by the priest, who at the same time offered up a prayer to God, that oil and wine and grain might not fail His people during the ensuing year. "The great moment was when the palm branches were produced, earned in a huge pot to be blessed, sprinkled with holy water, and incensed with the fumes of consecrated spices and gums. To each of the congregation a taper was given by an attendant, and one of the newly-blessed palm-branches was handed by the officiating priest to each of us. The priest then entered the Holy of Holies . . . and we symbolically followed the Son of David on his royal progress. The Gospel was read, the blessing delivered, and the service, which had lasted two hours, during which we remained standing, was at an end." 2 C. J. Abbey, " Religious Thought in Old English Verse," p. 36, a " Memories," Vol. I, p. 278. m viz.] HOLY WEEK TO MAUNDY THUKSDAY The Palm Sunday Epistle l has these mysterious and sacred words : " That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth ". When studying at Gottingen, Dr. Pusey used to attend the Lutheran Church. On one occasion " the preacher of the day was a Rationalist, and was engaged in showing but in language which the educated only would understand the general untenableness of some portion of the Gospel history. In doing this, he had occasion, of course, constantly to mention the Holy name of Jesus. The church was full of country people or simple townsfolk, and each time our Lord's name was mentioned they bowed their heads reverently, ' evidently making each mention of our Saviour the occasion of an act of devotion to Him '. Of the drift of the sermon to which they were listening they had no idea ; to them it was edifying on account of the frequent mention of the Saviour's name." 2 The Golden Legend tells how in a mediaeval Scriptorium, Friar Pacificus lays down his pen with these words : " It is growing dark ! yet one line more, And then my work for the day is o'er. I come again to the Name of the Lord ! Ere I that awful Name record, That is spoken so lightly among men, Let me pause awhile, and wash my pen ; Pure from blemish and spot it must be When I write that word of mystery." 3 Christina Rossetti told Katherine Tynan that she never stepped on a scrap of torn paper, but lifted it out of the mud lest perhaps it should have the Holy Name written or printed on it. * Stradivarius at Cremona marked every violin he made with the Name of Jesus. The Palm Sunday Gospel is St. Matt. xxvu. 1 Phil. II, 5-i i. a " Life of Dr. Pusey," Vol. I, p. 77- 3 Longfellow's "Golden Legend ". 4 " L.ife of Francis Thompson," p. 209. THE CHBISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOKY [vii. At the beginning it tells of the suicide of Judas, after he had cast down the price of his treason on the floor of the temple. " And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Wherefore that field was called, The field of blood, unto this day." MATT. xxvn. 8. The field of blood. Macaulay tells us that Judge Jeffreys traded largely in pardons. " His most lucrative transaction of this kind was with a gentleman named Edmund Prideaux. It is certain that Prideaux had not been in arms against the government ; and it is probable that his only crime was the wealth which he had inherited from his father, an eminent lawyer who had been in high office under the Protector. No exertions were spared to make out a case for the crown. Mercy was offered to some prisoners on condition that they would bear evidence against Prideaux. The unfortunate man lay long in gaol, and at length, overcome by fear of the gallows, consented to pay fifteen thousand pounds for his liberation. This great sum was received by Jeffreys. He bought with it an estate, to which the people gave the name of Aceldema, from the accursed field which was purchased with the price of innocent blood." The words of verse 42 : He saved others, himself he cannot save, recall an incident recorded by the Italian historian Ferrero. When the ivory couch bearing the murdered body of Julius Caesar appeared in the forum, borne upon the shoulders of his friends, the procession advanced to the lamentations of the singers who repeated a verse of Accius, aptly chosen by the organisers of the ceremony, " I saved those who have given me death". 1 MONDAY BE* ORE EASTER. ISAIAH LXHI. is chosen for the " Epistle " of Monday in Holy Week. The chapter opens with the words : Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ? this Ferrero, " Greatness and Decline of Rome," Vol. Ill, p. 26, 124 vii.] HOLY WEEK TO MAUNDY THURSDAY that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength ? In his poem, "The Veteran of Heaven," Francis Thompson has these lines : " O Captain of the wars, whence won Ye so great scars ? In what fight did Ye smite, and what manner was the foe ? Was it on a day of rout they compassed Thee about Or gat Ye these adornings when Ye wrought their overthrow ? 'Twas on a day of rout they girded me about, They wounded all My brow, and they smote Me through the side ; My hand held no sword when I met their armed horde, And the conqueror fell down, and the Conquered bruised his pride '." "Right on the border of man's higher life," says Bishop Phillips Brooks, " lies the hostile Edom, watchful, indefatigable, inexorable, as the old foe of the Jews. Every morning we lift up our eyes, and there are the low black hill-tops across the narrow valley, with the black tents upon their sides, where Edom lies in wait. . . . The Saviour comes out of the enemy's direction. His whole work had relation to and issues from the fact of sin. If there had been no sin, there would have been no Saviour." "I have trodden the winepress alone," says the Divine Traveller. " He died that we might never be lonely no, not in death. The loneliness was His, the sympathy is ours. The cross was His desolation, it is our comfort ; it is our ornament ; it is our 'joy and hope and crown of rejoicing'." l Mrs. Josephine Butler's portrait was painted in her declining years by G. F. Watts. After seeing the portrait for the first time she wrote : " When I looked at that portrait which you have just done, I felt inclined to burst into tears. I will tell you why. I felt so sorry for her. Your power has brought up out of the depths of the past the record of a conflict which no one but God knows of. It is written in the eyes and whole face. 1 C. J. Vaughan. 125 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [vn. Your picture has brought back to me all that I suffered, and the sorrows through which the Angel of God's presence brought me out alive." l Monday's Gospel is St. Mark xiv. The words of verse 8, " She hath done what she could," may have been in the mind of the Flemish painter, Quentin Matsys, who vas accustomed to sign his pictures with the three words : " As I can ". The betrayal of our Lord by Judas is described in this chapter. Thomas Carlyle says of that act of supreme wickedness : "The Battle of Chalons, where Hunland met Rome, and the earth was played for, at sword-fence, by two earth-bestriding giants, the sweep of whose swords cut kingdoms in pieces, hovers dim in the languid remembrance of a few ; while the poor police-court treachery of a wretched Iscariot, transacted in the wretched land of Palestine, centuries earlier, for thirty pieces of silver, lives clear in the head, in the hearts of all men ". Judas . . . kissed him. 2 George Eliot writes in " Theophrastus Such": "The deed of Judas has been attributed to far-reaching views, and the wish to hasten his Master's declaration of Himself as the Messiah. Perhaps I will not maintain the contrary Judas represented his wishes in this way, and felt justified in his traitorous kiss, but my belief that he deserved, metaphorically speaking, to be where Dante saw him, at the bottom of the Malebolge, would not be the less strong because he was not convinced that his action was detestable. I refuse to accept a man who has the stomach for such treachery as a hero impatient for the redemp- tion of mankind and for the beginning of a reign when the kisses shall be those of peace and righteousness." TUESDAY BEFORE EASTER. Tuesday's "Epistle" is from Isaiah u, which includes this utterance : " Therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed ". "The happiest of gifts for a man to be bom with," says 1 Isaiah LXIII. 9, " The angel of His presence saved them ". 2 St Mark xiv. 45. 126 VII.] Archbishop Benson, "is strength of will ; not that by it a man can avoid suffering and sin but for this that suffering especi- ally raises and heightens the strong will ; that when it forsakes sin it forsakes it without a sigh. Happiness within, attractive- ness towards others, ease of repentance and amendment, firm- ness against opposition, are the splendid dower which the strong will brings to the soul." Verse 10. Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God. " To some persons," writes Charles Kingsley, " it may seem strange advice to tell them, that in the hour of darkness, doubt or sorrow, they will find no comfort like that of meditating on the name of the ever-blessed Trinity. Yet there is not a prophet or psalmist of the Old Testament who does not speak of 'the name of the Lord ' as a kind of talisman against all the troubles which can befall the spirit of man." Archbishop Tait, in his " Recollections " of his wife, made the following reference to his serious illness of 1848 : " On Ash- Wednesday I was expected to die every half-hour. There were long days and nights of watching during that Spring of 1848, when kingdoms all over Europe went down with a crash, and England itself was by many supposed to be on the brink of a revolution. But my young wife kept watch be- side my bed. All through the worst days, and still more when I was recovering, she was ready to pray with me and to repeat helpful texts and hymns ; and her own spirit, as she often said afterwards, was stayed upon the text, Isaiah L. 10 : ' Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light ? Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God '." The Gospel is St. Mark xv., which tells the story of the Crucifixion. Towards the end of her life Mrs. Fry said to a friend : " I have passed through deep baptism of spirit in this illness. I may say, unworthy as I am to say it, that I have had to drink in very small measure of the Saviour's cup when He said ' My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken Me ? ' Some of my friends have thought there was a danger of my being exalted, but I believe the danger has been on the opposite side, of my being too low." 127 THE CHEISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [vn. WEDNESDAY BEFORE EASTER. Wednesday's Epistle (HEB. ix. 16-28) includes the words " Without shedding of blood is no remission ". The Abbe' Deguerry, Rector of the Madeleine in Paris, was one of the victims of the Commune in 1871. Near the spot in his church where his remains lie there is a monumental figure of the priest engaged in prayer, with a memorial notice in Latin. " While the extremity of peril was threatening," says the in- scription, " he was often heard to say, ' Without shedding of blood is no remission '." The Gospel is St. Luke XXJL, where we read the pathetic account of St. Peter's denial of his Lord. The words of verse 82: "I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not," have comforted many of the household of faith when deep waters seemed about to overwhelm them. One of the saintliest parish priests of our generation was Canon Henry Bromby, vicar of All Saints', Clifton. His bio- grapher speaks of " the brief clouding which came over his soul when he first learned that he must die. He had so great a longing to live. There was no doubt as to any doctrine of the church, but ' a silence in heaven ' was felt, a feeling of vague uncertainty, a fear lest his faith should fail, a cry, as it were, ' My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? ' Till then, he had never felt the presence of doubt. But he fell back on the prayers of others asking especially the prayers of children, of a small great-niece, that his faith might not fail. The cloud soon passed away, for he told those round him that one night he heard quite plainly the voice of our Lord, ' I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not V' 1 MAUNDY THURSDAY. Dean Church, in his " Life of Anselm," describes the cere- monies of Maundy Thursday in a Norman monastery : " On Maundy Thursday, the Dies Mandati, the Abbot and his brethren fulfilled the old custom, and as they considered it, the commandment of the Gospel, by washing the feet of the 1 " Henry Bodley Bromby," by the Rev. J. H. B. Mace, p. 162. 128 vii.] HOLY WEEK TO MAUNDY THUKSDAY poor after they washed one another's feet. . . . The ceremony is thus ordered by Lanfranc : ' While this is going on, the cellarer, and the almoner, and others to whom it is enjoined, are to bring the poor men into the cloister, and make them sit in order one by another. Before they come into the cloister they are to wash their feet with common water supplied by the chamberlains. Everything is to be prepared in its proper place, necessary for performing ' the commandment ' (mandatum, St. John xin. 14, 15) ; as warm water in fitting vessels, towefe for the feet, napkins for the hands, cups and drink and such like ; and the chamberlain's servants are to be ready to do what is wanted. Then when these things are in order, the Abbot shall rise, and the rest of the brethren rising shall make their due obeisance, and passing forth from the refectory, the children shall go aside into their school with their masters, and stand with them before their poor men ; and the rest of the brethren shall likewise come and stand before their poor men, each one according to his order before one of them, but the Abbot shall have two. Then the prior, at the Abbot's command, shall strike the board with three blows, and bowing down on their bent knees to the earth, they shall worship Christ in the poor. Then the Abbot is to wash and wipe the feet of the poor men before him, ' kissing them with his mouth and his eyes,' and so the rest of the brethren ; then he is to minister a cup of drink to them ; and at the signal given by the prior, by knocking three times on his board, the other brethren are in like manner each of them to give a cup of drink to the poor man before him, and receiving back the cup, to put in his hand twopence, or whatever money the Abbot may have ordered. 'The brethren also who have died in the course of the year are to have each their own poor for the fulfilment of the command- ment, and also those friends of the house for whom the Abbot shall order poor men to be set for this commandment.' Then, when all is over, they kneel down and say some versicles and a collect having reference to the commandment and example which have given occasion to the ceremony, and then proceed to the church chanting the Miserere Psalm (LI). The mandatum is then to be fulfilled by the brethren to one another, but in the chapter house ; and after the feet- washing, a cup of drink, 9 129 THE CHKISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOEY [vn. the ' loving cup,' the potus charitatis, or the charitas, as it was technically called, was distributed. And it enjoined on the Abbot that he should, if he were able to do so, by himself wash the feet of all his brethren on this day ; ' for, according to St. Benedict's witness, he bears the part of Christ in the monastery, and especially in this service '." 1 The Epistle (from 1 Cor. xi.) records the institution of the service of Holy Communion. Principal Story wrote of his venerated father, the Rev. Robert Story, Minister of Rosneath : " Through the memories of many years, and the recollections of many another church and scene and priestly ministrant, I look back and see as clearly as if it were only yesterday that my eyes had rested on it, the old church, with the laurel shadowing the tall window beside the pulpit, the open door flooded with the autumn sunshine, and just within it, at the head of the long table, my father standing with the consecrated bread in his hand, adding one more sen- tence of love and adoration before giving it to the elders at his side ; while on his face there brightened such a light of joy and heavenly communion with the Father and the Son, as helped me to realise the spectacle beheld of old in the Council Chamber in Jerusalem, when all that sat in the Council, looking steadfastly on the first martyr of the church, ' saw his face as it had been the face of an angel '." 2 Dostoevsky, in " The House of the Dead " tells how the Siberian convicts took the Sacrament in the sixth week of Lent : " The convicts prayed very earnestly, and every one of them brought his poor farthing to the church every time to buy a candle, or to put in the collection. 'I too am a man,' he thought, and felt perhaps as he gave it ; 'in God's eyes we are all equal. . . .' We took the sacrament at the early mass. When with the chalice in his hands the priest read the words, ' . . . accept me, O Lord, even as the thief,' almost all of them bowed down to the ground with the clanking of chains, ap- parently applying the words literally to themselves." The Gospel is from St. Luke xxm. Lord Blachford wrote, after visiting Padua and seeing 1 " Life of Anselm," pp. 50, 51. 8 " Principal Story : A Memoir," by his daughters, pp. 36, 37. 130 vii.] HOLY WEEK TO MAUNDY THUESDAY Giotto's frescoes : " I should like to see a series of heads of our Saviour taken from these frescoes. They would in themselves be almost a resume of the Gospel. Two which are almost con- tiguous are, I think, the most impressive ; the expression of our Saviour receiving Judas's kiss, and of our Saviour telling the women of Jerusalem to weep for themselves [St. Luke xxin. 28]. The first is like the sentence of the Last Judgment : our Saviour seems to look through and through Judas. . . . The other is all tenderness ; the expression of sorrow for their sorrow, and of seeing what was coming upon them more clearly than they did themselves, is perfect and beautiful, and also (I should say) quite Dantesque." 1 Bach's Passion Music is often solemnly performed in Holy Week. Of the Passion according to St. Matthew, Mr. R. Lane Poole writes in his biography of the musician : " The never-ending wail of the violins preludes to a tragedy which sums up all human suffering. The cry has slowly risen to its height when the daughters of Zion are shown to us, assembled to mourn, in the same piercing measures, the Bridegroom as He passes on bearing His cross. A chorus of believers, with wonder- ing question, first interrupts their lament, finally takes up their burthen and unites in the common sorrow. Meantime the listening ear detects a third choir, of a single voice, singing as from afar, and again strangely breaking off the chorale, Lamb of God. The art of the work is stupendous; but more wonderful still is the truthfulness with which it figures forth the immensity of the drama to which it is the prologue." 2 Among the great deeds of the war we must reckon that of a nameless Irish private, whose story is told by a wounded cor- poral of the West Yorkshire Regiment. That regiment was approaching a little village near Reims : " We went on through the long narrow street, and just as we were in sight of the end the figure of a man dashed out from a farmhouse on the right. Immediately the rifles began to crack in front, and the poor chap fell dead before he reached us. He was one of our men, a private of the Royal Irish Regi- ment. We learned that he had been captured the previous day 1 " Letters of Lord Blachford," p. 236. 3 " Sebastian Bach," by R. Lane Poole, p. 95. 131 THE CHKISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STORY [vn. by a marauding party of German cavalry, and had been held a prisoner at the farm where the Germans were in ambush for us. He tumbled to their game, and though he knew that if he made the slightest sound they would kill him, he decided to make a dash to warn us of what was in store. He had more than a dozen bullets in him, and there was not the slightest hope for him. We carried him into a house until the fight was over, and then we buried him next day with military honours. His identification disc and everything else was missing, so that we could only put over his grave the tribute that was paid to a greater : ' He saved others ; himself he could not save ' (St. Luke XXIIL 35). "* THE GREAT MfiECY. 2 " Betwixt the saddle and the ground Was mercy sought and mercy found. Yea, in the twinkling of an eye, He cried ; and Thou hast heard his cry. Between the bullet and its mark Thy face made morning in his dark. And while the shell sang on its path Thou hast run, Thou hast run, preventing death. Thou hast run before and reached the goal, Gathered to Thee the unhoused soul. Thou art not bound by Time or Space : So fast Death runs : Thou hast won the race. Thou hast said to beaten Death : Go tell Of victories thou once hadst. All's well ! Death, here none die but thee and Sin, Now the great days of Life begin. ^'Westminster Gazette," i October, 1914, J St. Luke xxni. 43 : " To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise ". 132 vii.] HOLY WEEK TO MAUNDY THURSDAY And to the Soul : This day I rise And thee with me to Paradise. Betwixt the saddle and the ground Was Mercy sought and Mercy found." KATHARINE TYNAN. LESSONS FOR HOLY WEEK. PALM SUNDAY. Ex. ix. 16. And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to show in thee my power. Lord Macaulay was a boy of fourteen when Napoleon was defeated by the Allies and sent to the island of Elba. He wrote to his mother on 11 April, 1814 : "I cannot conceive a greater punishment to Bonaparte than that which the Allies have in- flicted on him. How can his ambitious mind support it ? All his great projects and schemes which once made every throne in Europe tremble are buried in the solitude of an Italian isle. How miraculously everything has been conducted ! We almost seem to hear the Almighty saying to the fallen tyrant, ' For this cause have I raised thee up, that I might show in thee my power '." * PALM SUNDAY. Ex. ix. 84. And when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder were ceased, he sinned yet more. Bishop Hall remarks on this verse : " God hath no sooner done thundering, than Pharaoh hath done fearing. All this while you never find him careful to prevent any one evil, but desirous to shift it off, when he feels it ; never holds constant to any good motion ; never prays for himself, but carelessly wills Moses and Aaron to pray for him ; never yields God His whole demand but higgleth and dodgeth like some hard chap- man that would get a release with the cheapest." Ex. XL 10. 2 The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart. " The words of the text," wrote Archbishop Thomson in 1 " Life of Lord Macaulay," by G. O. Trcvelyan, Vol. I, pp. 49. 5- - Palm Sunday. 183 THE CHKISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [vii. his "Lincoln's Inn Sermons," "are not without their warning. They mean that God, who punishes sin with death, sometimes punishes sin with sin. At a certain stage in the sinner's dreary downward course, the Lord hardens his heart. God is not re- sponsible for his sin, but when he has repelled the voice of con- science, and the warning of his Bible, and the entreaties of friends, then grace is withdrawn from him, and sin puts on a judicial character, and is at once sin and punishment" THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE. ST. MATT. xxvi. 86-45 (with St. Luke xxn. 89-46) ^Caroline Fox wrote on 81 December, 1859, at the age of forty : " The old year is fled, never to come back again through all Eternity. All its opportunities for love and service gone, past recall. What a terrible thought ! Like that which must have flashed upon the disciples in their old age, when they remembered the Garden of Gethsemane and the gentle rebuke, ' Could ye not watch with me one hour ? ' and then afterwards, when all watch- ing was too late, all utterly vain, either for sympathy or for resolve, with what a tolling sound would those other words fall on their hearts, ' Sleep on now and take your rest ; behold he who betrayeth me is at hand '. How can I look back on these forty years in the wilderness without falling into such musings as these ! " 2 ST. LUKE xix. S8-48. 3 Dr. John Kelman writes on this passage: " Royalty and death are still before the world, in the great and eternal tragedy of the Cross. Royalty and death are in the heart of Christ, and we are called upon to reckon with that dread purpose of His, each of us for ourselves. The show will pass and be forgotten, but how do we stand in respect of mastery over self and the world and sin ? What share have we in the royal victory of the Cross ? " ST. LUKE xix. 34. The Lord hath need of him. On Palm Sunday, 17 April, 1884, Dr. George Ridding preached from this text his farewell sermon as Headmaster of Win- chester College. He had been offered by Mr. Gladstone the Bishopric of Southwell. The text was described as the " Farewell 1 Palm Sunday. 2 "Journals," Vol. II, p. 271. ' J Palm Sunday. 134 vii.] HOLY WEEK TO MAUNDY THUESDAY Password ". " The sermon," says Lady Laura Ridding, " was a revelation of the dominating spirit of all he had attempted and done at Winchester, and an unconscious prophecy of what he was to do at Southwell." The Book of Lamentations is used for the Lessons on the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Easter. In Jewish worship it is associated with solemn ritual. Judith, Lady Montefiore, told the following incident : " Once, on the fast-day for the destruction of Jerusalem, we were sitting, as is customary, in mourning attire, on low stools, reciting the Lamentations of Jeremiah. Suddenly the servant entered the room, closely followed by Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, and several other gentlemen. My sisters became somewhat embarrassed, not liking to be thus surprised in our peculiar position, but I quietly kept my seat, and when Sir Sidney asked the reason of our being seated so low, I replied, ' This is the anniversary of the destruction of Jerusalem, which is kept by conforming Jews as a day of mourning and humiliation. The valour exhibited by our ancestors on this sad occasion is no doubt well known to you, Sir Sidney, and to the other gentlemen present, and I feel sure you will understand our grief that it was unavailing to save the Holy City and the Temple. But we treasure the memory of it as a bright example to ourselves and to all following generations, how to fight and sacrifice our lives for the land in which we were born and which gives us shelter and protection." 1 ST. JOHN xiv. 23. 2 " It seems to me," wrote Josephine Butler, " that there is a treasure hid in such sayings as these, ' I will manifest myself unto Him,' ' We will make our abode with Him,' which few among us even guess at. We read the words as we might walk over the turf under which there is hidden gold." ST. JOHN xv. 16. 3 Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you. " In the mystery of the eternal marriage by which Jesus and we become as one soul, who made the first advances? Who took the first steps ? Who was always constant in His longing, I might almost say in His wooing ? Who never grew weary of 1 " Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore," Vol. I, p. 4. 2 Monday before Easter. 3 Tuesday before Easter. 185 THE CHRISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STORY [vii. loving with an infinite delicacy and also with an infinite patience ? Who but Jesus Christ, our Master and Lord ? It was not we chose Him, but He Himself who chose us. He preserved us, followed us on the paths where our hearts often strayed ; His hand was ever ready where there was a precipice, or where death was lurking. To what can we compare this excess of love? What possible image can we form of this generosity ? Would the King who sought a wife among the daughters of the poor attain to the summit-height of this truth." HENRI PERREYVK. 1 JOHN xvi. 9. 2 " All the words, institutions and judgments of God are levelled against sin, either that it may not be com- mitted, or that it may be abolished." JOHN WESLEY. JOHN xvi. 33. Dr. A. C. Bradley writes in his '" Oxford Lectures on Poetry " (p. 47) : " The words ' I have overcome the world ' are among the most sublime on record, and they are also the expression of the absolute power of the Spirit ". HOSEA xiii. and xiv. are the Old Testament passages for Maundy Thursday. Hosea, says Dr. Alexander Maclaren, is the Prophet of repentance and of pardoning love. " The Prophet presses into service the lily, the cedar, the olive, and the spring- ing corn and the blossoming vine, as symbols of what God is able and willing to do to penitents who come back and submit themselves to His influence." 1 " Lettres de 1'AbW Perreyve, pp. 245, 246. 2 Wednesday before Easter. 136 CHAPTER VIII. GOOD FRIDAY. " IT is strange how the great critical event of the world's life is a Death ; not a battle, nor a coronation, nor a new institution, nor a birth, but yet all these summed up in this dying. Obedience unto death. This the only real approach to God. You may crowd upon Him any other way and you do not reach Him. Only the great submission of the will blends our life with His." PHILLIPS BROOKS. " O thou that sinnest, grace doth more abound Than all thy sin ! sit still beneath thy load, And count the droppings of thy victim's blood, And seek none other sound ! " E. B. BROWNING. Nathaniel Hawthorne, in "The House of the Seven Gables," refers to the consensus of respectable Puritan opinion which condemned Matthew Maule to death as a wizard : " He was one of the martyrs to that terrible delusion, which should teach us, among its other morals, that the influ- ential classes, and those who take upon themselves to be leaders of the people, are fully liable to all the passionate error that has ever character- ised the maddest mob. Clergymen, judges, statesmen, the wisest, calmest, holiest persons of their day, stood in the inner circle round about the gallows, loudest to applaud the work of blood, latest to confess themselves miserably deceived." 138 CHAPTER VIII. GOOD FRIDAY. THE THIRD COLLECT. " Fetch them home, blessed Lord." LORD MACAULAY, in his essay on the Civil Disabilities of the Jews, refers to some " pious writers " of his day who considered it a monstrous indecency that the measure for the relief of the Jews should be brought forward in Passion Week. "One of these humourists," says Macaulay, "ironically recommended that it should be read a second time on Good Friday. We should have had no objection ; nor do we believe that the day could be commemorated in a more worthy manner. We know of no day fitter for terminating long hostilities, and repairing cruel wrongs, than the day on which the religion of mercy was founded. We know of no day fitter for blotting out from the statute-book the last traces of intolerance than the day on which the spirit of intolerance produced the foulest of all judicial murders, the day on which the list of the victims of intolerance, that noble list wherein Socrates and More are en- rolled, was glorified by a yet greater and holier name." THE CROSS. J. M. Neale writes : " Some of you know the lovely mediaeval legend concerning the Cross : That Adam, when he was fallen sick of the sickness whereof he died, sent Seth to the Cherub at the east gate of Eden, for healing medicine. The Angel gave him three seeds. ' Place these,' he said, ' in thy father's mouth, and when they shall come to their full growth he shall be healed." Seth, re- turning, found Adam dead. He did as he had been commanded, 139 THE CHRISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOKY [vm. and buried his father. Three trees sprang up, oak, aspen, box. When they came to maturity, they were cut down. Out of them was made the ridge beam of Noah's ark ; out of them Jacob's staff, with which he passed over Jordan before he be- came two bands, and towards which he afterwards adored ; out of them the rod of Moses ; out of them the handle of the spear of Joshua ; out of them the main beam of the temple ; out of them the door posts of the stable at Bethlehem. What was left, they say, was taken for the Cross. The oak ; thence its unconquerable strength ; the aspen ; thence its leaves tremble for horror ceaselessly ; the box (for the title) and thence the everlastingness of the title." l " There is a legend in the west," writes Hawker of Mor wen- stow, ' ' that the Cross was hewn from wood of the aspen-tree, which ever since hath shuddered with ' the terror of the Lord '. Another legend tells that when Lord Jesu died, the trees of the forest all trembled at the deed, except the aspen-tree. Then the Angel rebuked that hardness of heart and said, for a doom, ' Tremble evermore ! ' Another tale they tell that Judas hanged himself on that world-shuddering tree." The faithful in the early Church " took delight in associat- ing the commemoration of Christian mysteries with three points of time, which divided the day into three stages ; at the third hour (9 a.m.) the remembrance of the Saviour's condemnation ; at the sixth hour (noon) of His crucifixion ; at the ninth (3 p.m.) of His death. Each of these hours, as it sounded, was to recall to the faithful their obligation not to allow their hearts to lose their hold on the mysteries of the faith." 2 In the age of Charlemagne the Good Friday office was marked by a solemn act. In the church of Holy Cross at Rome, " all the lights were extinguished one after another, so that at the end of Benediction only one remained alight, which was then hid behind the altar, in token that the Light of the world was extinguished, and that darkness was upon the face of all the earth. The night office of Easter Eve was celebrated in the dark." 8 1 " Sermons on the Apocalypse," etc., pp. 273, 274. a Dr. Pierre Batiffol, " History of the Roman Breviary," p. 17. 3 Ibid., p. 124. 140 viii.] GOOD FRIDAY It was a dream of King Henry IV of England that he would lead the English army, " As far as to the sepulchre of Christ . . . To chase these pagans in those holy fields Over whose acres walked those blessed feet, Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed For our advantage on the bitter cross." 1 Francis Parkman describes the work of Father Gabriel Druilletes among the Indians in the forests of the northern boundary of Maine. The priest was accompanied by a group of converts who looked on him as a friend and brother. " They built their bark chapel at every camp, and no festival of the church passed unobserved. On Good Friday they laid their best robe of beaver-skin on the snow, placed on it a crucifix and knelt around it in prayer. What was their prayer ? It was a petition for the forgiveness and conversion of their enemies, the Iroquois. Those who know the intensity and tenacity of an Indian's hatred will see in this something more than a change from one superstition to another." : When Jean de Brebeuf, the heroic leader of the Jesuits' mission to the Hurons, was among the Neutral Nation, in the winter of 1640, he beheld the ominous apparition of a great cross slowly approaching from the quarter where lay the country of the fierce Iroquois, the enemy of the Hurons, cannibals and torturers. He told the vision to his comrades. "What was it like ? How large was it ? " they eagerly demanded. " Large enough," replied the priest, " to crucify us all ". Brebeuf at that time was "half-starved and half-frozen, driven with re- vilings from every door, struck and spit upon by pretended maniacs". That cross which moved onward through the air, above the wintry forests, was a prophetic vision. Nine years later Brebeuf died, amid unspeakable torments, at the hands of the Iroquois. His name ranks with those of the greatest martyrs. 3 1 " King Henry IV," Act I, Sc. i. 3 Francis Parkman, " The Jesuits in North America," pp. 416, 417. 3 Ibid., pp. 198, 236. 141 THE CHEISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STOEY [vm. We are told that Handel said in his last illness, ' ' I should like to die on Good Friday that I might be in heaven with my dear Lord on Easter Sunday ". His death actually took place on Good Friday. Mrs. James Martineau wrote on Good Friday, 1843 : " Mr. Thorn has done me a world of good to-day by a beautiful Good Friday sermon on Gethsemane Christ over His sleeping disciples, with His yearning heart and surrendered will and His oneness with God ! I love these occasional services and these Christian festival days, more and more intensely the older I grow. Never did I think the whole story more divine than in telling it to my four to-night, to my poor Herbert for the first time ; and, as Isabella said to me, ' Mamma reading the New Testament is not like anything else that one reads, for we always find something new, and are never tired of it '. Oh, for a picture of Herbert's little changing face as he heard for the first time the tale of the Crucifixion. It inspired me to tell it better, I think, than I ever did before ; and he went to bed in a delicious agitation which I envied from my soul." 1 THE PROPER PSALMS. Five proper Psalms are appointed for Good Friday. The first is Psalm xxn., which, as St. Augustine tells us, was sung in the North African congregation at the Easter celebration of the Lord's Supper. " It is impossible." said Coleridge, " to read that Psalm without the liveliest feelings of love, gratitude, and sympathy." Next is Psalm XL., the not less dear " Expectans Expectavi ". Dora Greenwell gave that title to a poem from which we take these closing lines : " I never heard Thee say ' Bring forth the robe for this My son, the best,' Thou gavest not to me, as unto guest Approved, a festal mantle rich and gay ; Still singing, ever singing, in the cold Thou leavest me, without Thy Door to stay ; Now the night draweth on, the Day is old, And Thou hast never said, ' Come in, my Friend,' 1 " Life of Dr. Martineau," Vol. I, p. 114. 142 viii.] GOOD FRIDAY Yet once, yea twice, methinks Thy love did send A secret message, ' Bless'd unto the end Are they that love and they that still endure.' Jesus, my Saviour, take to Thee Thy poor, Take home Thy humble Friend." The words Then said I, Lo I come (verses 9, 10) inspired the following passage in Bunyan's " Holy War " : " The King called to him Immanuel, his Son, who said, ' Here am I, my Father '. Then said the King, ' Thou knowest, as I do myself, the condition of the town of Mansoul, and what we have purposed, and what thou has done to redeem it. Come now, therefore, my Son, and prepare thyself for the war, for thou shalt go to my camp at Mansoul. Thou shalt also there prosper and prevail, and conquer the town of Mansoul ! " Then said the King's Son, ' Thy law is within my heart ; I delight to do thy will. This is the day that I have longed for, and the work that I have waited for all this while. Grant me, therefore, what force thou shalt in thy wisdom think meet ; and I will go and will deliver from Diabolus, and from his power, thy perishing town of Mansoul. My heart has been often pained within me for the miserable town of Mansoul ; but now it is rejoiced, but now it is glad.' And with that he leaped orer the mountains for joy, saying, ' I have not, in my heart, thought anything too dear for Mansoul : the day of vengeance is in my heart for thee, my Mansoul ; and glad am I that thou, my Father, hast made me the Captain of their salvation. And I will now begin to plague all those that have been a plague to my town of Mansoul, and will deliver it from their hand.' " Psalm LIV. verse 6, An offering of a free heart will I give thee, decided Popes and Councils to make it illegal to devote children of a tender age to the monastic life, unless they could give " a free heart "- 1 Psalm LXIX. has a verse very suitable for Good Friday : I looked . . . for comforters, but I found none (21). "Read the whole verse," says Dr. Parker, "It is like the falling of a great thunder-shower of tears. Say you that man wrote three thousand years ago. He wrote this morning, he is 1 " The Psalms at Work," by Charles L. Marson, p. 80. 148 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [vm with us now, he is in our hearts. A man takes his sorrow with him more surely than he takes his shadow." The words of verse 19, Draw nigh unto my soul and save it, were quoted by St. Boniface in the hour of his martyrdom, A.D. 755. 1 The last evening Psalm for Good Friday is LXXXVIII. In an early comment on verse 8, written by Didymus, is a traditional saying of our Lord's, " He that is near Me, is near the fire " (so Westcott translates). The words of verse 18, " Early shall my prayer come before thee," were used in the ancient Anglo-Saxon office of Prime. The Epistle is from Hebrews x. The words of verse 16, I will put my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them, remind us of Jeremiah xxxi. 33. Joseph Polwarth, in George MacDonald's novel, " Thomas Wingfold, Curate," tells of his marvellous vision of St. John the Evangelist. He had longed to see the original manuscript of the Fourth Gospel, in the very handwriting of the Apostle John. In his dream he visited an Armenian monastery, and on a table in the inmost cell saw the very book lying. " With sudden daring I made a step towards the table, and bending with awe, outstretched my hand to lay it upon the book. But ere my hand reached it, another hand, from the opposite side of the table, appeared upon it, an old, blue-veined, but powerful hand. I looked up. There stood the beloved disciple ! His countenance was as a mirror from which shone back the face of the Master. Slowly he lifted the book and turned away. Then first I saw behind him as it were an altar whereon a fire of wood was burning, and a pang of dismay shot to my heart, for I knew what he was about to do. He laid the book on the burning wood, and regarded it with a smile as it shrunk and shrivelled and smouldered to ashes. Then he turned to me and said, while a perfect heaven of peace shone in his eyes : ' Son of man, the Word of God liveth and abideth for ever, not in the volume of the book, but in the heart of the man that in love obeyeth Him '. And therewith I awoke weeping, but with the lesson of my dream." 1 " The Psalms at Work," by Charles L. Marson, p. roi. viii.] GOOD FEIDAY Verses 24, 25. On 12 February, 1832, Arthur Hallam wrote to R. C. Trench : "I thank God that at so critical a moment of my life He has brought me into daily intercourse with you. I feel more benefit from it than I fear I ever can repay. However, let us consider one another to provoke unto love and unto good works, not forsaking the meeting together, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as we see the day approaching." l ST. JOHN xix., verse 12. 2 " If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend." Epictetus, in several passages, refers with gentle irony to the expression " Caesar's friend," a technical phrase for one who was received at court. The philosopher of Nicopolis had been ex- pelled from Rome under Domitian, and he enjoyed the personal favour of Hadrian. His words would therefore be received with respect by the mixed multitude who listened to the Greek ex-slave. Referring to the man who dreads to fall out with Caesar, Epictetus says : " He has gone out of his way, he has failed to apply his notions, he is in sore distress, he is seeking for what is nothing to the purpose ; for when he has got Caesar's friendship he has equally failed of his object. For what is the object of every man's search ? To have a quiet mind, to be happy, to do every- thing as he will, to be free from hindrance and compulsion. Very well : when he becomes Caesar's friend is he relieved from hindrance and compulsion, is he in peace and happiness ? Of whom are we to enquire ? Whom can we better trust than the very man who has become Caesar's friend ? " Come forward and tell us ! When was your sleep more tranquil, now or before you became Caesar's friend ? " At once the answer comes, ' Cease, by the gods I beg you, to mock at my fortune ; you do not know what a miserable state is mine ; no sleep comes near to me, but in comes some one to say, " Now he's awake, now he'll be coming out " ; then troubles and cares assail me.' "Tell me, when did you dine more agreeably, now or before ? " 1 " Letters and Memorials of Archbishop Trench," Vol. I, pp. 106, 107. 2 Gospel for the day. 10 145 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [vm. So the Socratic questioning goes on, and the philosopher con- cludes : " No one, I can swear, is so wanting in sense or feeling that he does not lament his lot the louder the more he is Caesar's friend." l ST. JOHN xix. 25. Now there stood by the Cross of Jesus His mother. Lockhart tells us that in Sir Walter Scott's last days he could be heard repeating some of the magnificent hymns of the Roman ritual, in which he had always delighted. " We very often heard distinctly the cadence of the Dies Irae ; and I think the very last stanza that we could make out was the first of a still greater favourite : 1 Stabat mater dolorosa, Juxta crucem lachrymosa, Dum pendebat Films'." ST. JOHN xix. 27. Then saith He to the disciple, Behold thy mother ! Dr. Pusey attributed the greatest blessings which he had received from Almighty God to his mother's influence. His biographer, Canon Liddon, remarks that no one could know Lady Lucy Pusey and not be sure that her son was right in the main. " Her life was a conspicuous example of love, disciplined by a sense of duty. Her tender love for himself used to remind him of St. Augustine's words about St. Monica : ' Non satis eloquor quid erga me habebat animi.' " 2 ST. JOHN xvm. 11 3 . The cup which my Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it ? From this text the Bishop of London preached to an im- mense congregation at St. Paul's Cathedral, London, on the Sunday following the declaration of war with Germany (9 August, 1914). The same text is consecrated in the experience of Christian hearts. Sir George Trevelyan, in " Cawnpore " quotes these words from a letter by the wife of Colonel Ewart, of the First Native Infantry : 1 " Epictetus : the Discourses and Manual," translated by P. E. Matheson, Vol. II, pp. 116, 117. 2 Life of Dr. Pusey, Vol. I, p. 7. s Second Morning Lesson. 146 viii.] GOOD FKIDAY " My dear child is looking very delicate. My prayer is that she may be spared much suffering. The bitterness of death has been tasted by us many times during the last fortnight, and, should the reality come, I hope we may find strength to meet it with a truly Christian courage. It is not hard to die oneself, but to see a dear child suffer and perish, that is the hard, the bitter trial, and the cup which I must drink, should God not deem it fit that it should pass from me." Colonel and Mrs. Ewart perished together on the day of the great treachery at Cawnpore. " Live, O for ever live and reign The Lamb whom His own love hath slain, And let Thy lost sheep live to inherit That Kingdom which this Cross did merit." RICHARD CRASH AW. 147 CHAPTER IX. EASTER EVEN. Deep in the rock's sepulchral shade The Lord, by whom the worlds were made, The Saviour of mankind, is laid. hearts bereaved and sore distress'd, Here is for you a place of rest ; Here leave your griefs on Jesus' breast. I. GREGORY SMITH. This is a sad and mysterious day ; the earth seems peopled with shadows and spirits. CANON HENRY BROMBY. 1 fell to musing of the time So close, the blessed matin-prime All hearts leap up at, in some guise One could not well do otherwise. ROBERT BROWNING, " Easter Day ". There is no Easter without Lent, no rising from the dead without entering through the gate of death ; you will not find Christ unless you first humble yourself before Him Dr. C. E. APPLETON. My root of life is in Thy grave. This flower that blooms above I have no care to keep or save ; Its hues are dim, its stay is brief, I know not if its name be grief, Oh ! let it pass for Love. Oh ! let it pass for Love, dear Lord, And lift it from Thy tomb, A little while upon Thy breast To yield its scent and bloom ; In life, in dying to be blest It needs but little room ! DORA GREENWELL, " Carmina Crucis ". 150 CHAPTER IX. EASTER EVEN. THE Vigil of Easter Eve belongs to the early history of the Church. Dr. Pierre Batiffol says in his " History of the Roman Breviary " : " The impression was formed at an early date that, as the night of the Holy Saturday which ushered in the first Easter was that on which the Saviour came forth alive from the tomb, on such a night also would he re-appear, like the destroying angel who on the night of the first passover had smitten the first-born of Egypt and avenged the children of Israel. On that night, then, it was meet that none should sleep, but watch and pray till dawn, awaiting the coming of the Lord. So, from the evening of Holy Saturday to cockcrow on Easter morning the faithful remained gathered together in prayer." An interesting relic of the Templars' Church in London is the bronze plate belonging to the early part of the twelfth century which was discovered during repairs and became the property of General Pitt Rivers. " It originally formed a portion of a pyx or small shrine in which the consecrated host was kept. It represents the soldiers watching the body of our Lord, who was in mystical form supposed to be enshrined in the pyx ; they wear skull-caps of the Phrygian form, with a nasal or nose-piece ; the rings of the hauberk appear, as in the armour, seven together. They bear kite-shaped shields with projecting bosses. The swords are very broad and the spear of the first figure obtuse in the head, a mark of its antiquity." l In the Treasury of Rheims Cathedial is preserved the "Holy Sepulchre" presented by King Henry II. of France, 1 T. Henry Baylis, "The Temple Church " (1893), p. 40. 151 THE CHEISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [ix. in which the Roman soldiers are starting up in astonishment beside the empty tomb. The Epistle for Holy Saturday is 1 Peter in. 17-22, where we find the mysterious words: " He went and preached unto the spirits in prison ". The apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus describes the " harrowing of hell ". On the approach of the Saviour, " the prince of Hell said to his impious officers : Shut the brass gates of cruelty, and make them fast with iron bars, and fight courageously, lest we be taken captives ". Virgil, in answer to a question of Dante, says that soon after his own arrival in Limbo " a mighty one with sign of victory crowned," came and rescued Adam, Abel, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, with his father, his sons, and his wife Rachel ; Moses, David, " And others many more, whom he to bliss Exalted. Before these, be thou assur'd No spirit of human kind was ever sav'd." ST. MATT. xxvu. 59, 60. 1 And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own tomb. " There is no more sacred duty incumbent on the Israelite," says Mr. Lucien Wolf, in his short biography of Sir Moses Montefiore, " than to perform the last offices for the dying and the dead ". There is an extra-synagogual society known as the Lavadores, who wash the dead and prepare the bodies for burial. " So highly is this duty esteemed that the discharge of it is held to be a privilege to which only the most blameless Jews may be admitted. Hence in every community a voluntary society exists charged with this function, and the most jealous care is exercised over the admission of members. The wealthiest Jews are frequently found among them, and, in former years, membership conveyed a higher distinction than wealth or rank. In foreign countries, when the Jews desire to render particular honour to an eminent non-Jew, they elect him an honorary member of their Chevra Kadisha of Prague, and whenever his name appears on the rota he never fails to 'From the Gospel ; St. Matt. xxvu. 57-66. 152 ix.] EASTER EVEN appoint a Jewish substitute to perform his duties. The English Jews established their society of Lavadores in 1723." 1 THE EASTER SEPULCHRE. In the " Nineteenth Century" for May, 1895, there is a curious article on " The ancient English Office of the Easter Sepulchre ". " The ceremony of the Easter Sepulchre," says the writer, Henry J. Feasey, " was one of the most beautiful and touching of the rites peculiar and appertaining to Old English Church ceremonial ; and although of the most simple, it was one of the most elaborate. The Sepulchre itself, though in use for a very short period, hardly two days in each year, was often an ornate and costly structure, surrounded by a wealth of adornment; and to judge from the many and various gifts to it, and its beautifying through a long series of years, it was the one of the Passion-tide ceremonies by which the minds of mediaeval churchfolk were most deeply affected. " The Cross, and later on the consecrated Host also, were buried in the Sepulchre from Good Friday until the dawn of Easter Day. A constant succession of watchers prayed and recited psalms and litanies before the tomb. " The original form of Easter Sepulchre, or Pascal, as it was sometimes called, was that of a simple arched recess generally ... in the north wall of the chancel, in the vicinity of the high altar. Many of the so-called aumbries may have been utilised for this purpose, as well as for the ordinary reservation where the suspended or hanging Pyx or Dove was not in use ; as, for example, the double recess, surrounded by a nail-head hood moulding, in the north wall of the beautiful early English chancel at Bottesford Church, Lincolnshire, where the marks of the hinges, bolts and locks of the doors may still be traced. "... Easter Sepulchres of permanent construction often contained the tomb of the founder of the church or of the builder of the Sepulchre itself, and upon these tombs as well as in the plain recesses, the carved, painted and gilded erections of wood were placed. . . . 1 " Life of Sir Moses Montefiore," by Lucien Wolf, p. 45. 153 THE CHKISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOKY [ix. "Thomas Windsor, the ancestor of the Earls of Plymouth, in his will dated A.D. 1479, writes : ' I will that there be made a plain tomb of marble of a competent height, to the intent that it may bear the blessed body of our Lord at the time of Easter to stand upon the same ; and mine arms and a convenient scripture to be set upon the same tomb '. "... Upon and about the Sepulchre was set the Sepulchre Light, and lights upon frames and beams of timber, or, as they were called at St Lawrence's, Reading, ' lofts for the Light '. These lights were tapers of wax, sometimes thirteen in number to represent Christ and His Apostles every taper of six pounds weight, ' to burn around the Sepulchre at Passiontide '. The Sepulchre Light itself symbolical of our Lord was usually 36 feet in height. . . . The Sepulchre Light burned continually before the Sepulchre up to the procession on the Lord's resurrection on Easter Day. It was extinguished with all other lights while the Benediction of the Tenebrae was sung, and also during the striking of the new fire on the vigil of Easter, until the Pascal candle was kindled. " In the great watching or regular guarding of the Sepulchre, kept up by a continuous succession of watchers, all classes took part in reparation for the watching of the perfidious Jews and blind heathen round our Lord's Sepulchre of humiliation in Jerusalem." ST. MATT. xxvu. 61. And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre. Gaius, John Bunyan's innkeeper, says : " I will now speak on the behalf of women. I read not that any man ever gave unto Christ so much as one groat ; but the women followed Him and ministered to Him of their substance. 'Twas a woman that washed His feet with tears, and a woman that anointed His body to the burial. They were women that wept when He was going to the Cross ; a woman that followed Him from the Cross, and that sat by His sepulchre when He was buried. They were women that were first with Him at His Resurrection morn, and women that brought tidings first to His disciples that He was risen from the dead. Women, therefore, are highly favoured by Him in return." 154 CHAPTER X. EASTER. Die nobis, Maria, quid vidisti in via ? Sepulchrum Christi viventis, et gloriatn vidi resurgentis : Angelicos testes, sudarium et vestes. Surrexit Christus spes mea. 1 Writing on the succession of fast and festival, Dr. Pusey said, " Our ancestors were right in preparing for Easter, as they did, by humiliation and earnest thought. The bright prospect to which the Christian world is elevated by the recurrence of Easter Day was the more exalted and exalt- ing from the previous passage through the gloomy valley of self-abase- ment" Has He, victoriously, Burst from the vaulted Grave, and ail-gloriously Now sits exalted ! Goethe in Faust. " Carlyle," says Dr. William Barry, " might have learnt from St. Paul the crowning, triumphant last word of the true doctrine ' Death is swallowed up in victory '. There is no sound of pessimism in that glorious cry." I got me flowers to straw Thy way I got me boughs off many a tree ; But Thou wast up by break of day, And broughtst Thy sweets along with Thee. GEORGE HERBERT. 1 What thou sawest, Mary, say, As thou wentest on the way. I saw the tomb wherein the living One had lain ; I saw His glory as He rose again ; Napkin and linen clothes and angels twain : Yea, Christ my hope, is risen. 166 CHAPTER X. EASTER. THE PROPER PSALMS. Matins. PSALM n., LVII., cxi. Evensong. PSALM cxv., cxiv., cxvni. VOICES of martyrs and confessors blend with songs of the faith- ful on earth at Easter's dawn. Psalm n. has been sung by dying Christians at the stake and by prisoners arraigned for conscience' sake. John Lambert, who was burned at Smithfield in 1538, addressed his remonstrance to Henry VIII in the words of verse 10, "Now, ye Kings, understand. O ye which judge the earth, be wise and learned. Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice in Him with trembling." Lambert's martyrdom was one of the most cruel of that time, and these words were spoken by him as he lifted his fingers flaming with fire : " None but Christ, none but Christ ". St Peter and St. John chanted this Psalm amid persecution from the Jews (Acts iv. 25, 26), and noble Jewish witnesses re- called its words during the siege of Jerusalem. Richard Baxter, preaching at Worcester Cathedral before the judges in 1654, wished "that each man present could, when he forgot Christ, see written on the wall ' Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and thou perish,' and on the tester of his bed, as often as he lay down in an unregenerate state ". 1 Bishop King of Lincoln wrote that two passages had been a great help to him. The first was that in Psalm n. " the heathen raging and God laughs them to scorn ". The other was St. John xix. 11, " Thou couldst have no power against me, except it were given thee from above". "The whole grip of 1 Quoted by the Rev. C. L. Marson in " The Psalms at Work," p. 2. 157 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [x. the Roman power was completely in the hands of the Almighty. T)ie Will will be stronger than the cord which holds body and soul together. God can carry out the work, even if we die in our attempt to fulfil it." Psalm LVII. is associated by the anthologists with the name of Bishop Sanderson, whose biography was written by Izaak Walton. This learned man used in his last illness to " say to himself very often these words, ' My heart is fixed, O God ; my heart is fixed where true joy is to be found V The Psalm, we cannot doubt, was chosen for the worship of Easter Day because holy men regarded it as representing the prayers and thanksgivings of our Lord at the first Easter. Verses 1-4 seem to be a cry from the darkness of Joseph's tomb. The joy of resurrection is expressed in verse 8 : " Awake up, my glory : awake, psaltery and harp, I myself will awake early ". Psalm cxi. was one of the ancient Eucharistic psalms of the Western Church. St Dunstan, restorer of the Benedictine Rule, died in May, 988, as he was giving thanks in the words of verses 4, 5, " The merciful and gracious Lord hath so done his marvellous works, that they ought to be had in remembrance. He hath given meat unto them that fear him ". l Psalm cxm. begins the Hallel, sung at the Jewish Passover. This Psalm and the next were sung before the discourse. Then the cup was blessed, and Psalms cxv., cxvi. and cxvn. were sung, and Psalm cxvm. at the end of the rite. 2 In the persecution of the Church in Western Japan, 1624, four martyrs were being burned three men and a woman. They were concealed by the smoke, when out of the midst of the fire rose that Psalm Laudate, pueri, the watchword, as it were, and rallying cry of so many Japanese martyrs ; but the singer's voice faltered in the mediation of that verse, " That He may set him with princes," and the last clause was sung, if sung at all, among the true " Princes of the People " in Heaven. 3 Psalm cxiv. Dante's " Prisoners of Hope " chanted the Psalm In exitu Israel de Egypto on board the Angel's boat as they were wafted towards the Mount of Purgatory. From very 1 Prayer Book version. a C. L. Marson, " The Psalms at Work," p. 170. * Ibid., p. 171. 158 x.] EASTEK early times this Psalm was sung by the priests as the dead were carried into the church. " Dante may have heard it," says Dean Plumptre, " at the death of father or mother, or in the Church of St. Lucia by the grave of Beatrice." Psalm cxvm. has been enriched by.a multitude of illustrations from Christian biography and literature. For its Easter use we take some words of J. H. Newman, in his sermon on verse 24 : " This is Easter Day. Let us say this again and again to ourselves with fear and great joy. As children say to them- selves, 'This is the spring,' or 'This is the sea,' trying to grasp the thought, and not let it go ; as travellers in a foreign land say, ' This is that great city,' or ' This is that famous building,' knowing it has a long history through centuries, and vexed with themselves that they know so little about it ; so let us say, This is the Day of Days, the Royal Day, the Lord's Day. This is the Day on which Christ arose from the dead ; the Day which brought us salvation. It is a Day which has made us greater than we know. It is our Day of rest, the true Sabbath. Christ entered into His rest and so do we. It brings us, in figure, through the grave and gate of death to our season of refreshment in Abraham's bosom. We have had enough of weariness, and dreariness, and listlessness, and sorrow, and remorse. We have had enough of this troublesome world. We have had enough of its noise and din. Noise is its best music. But now there is stillness, and it is a stillness that speaks. We know how strange the feeling is of perfect silence after continued sound. Such is our blessedness now. Calm and serene days have begun ; and Christ is heard in them, and His still small voice, because the world speaks not. Let us only put off the world, and we put on Christ. The receding from one is an approach to the other." EASTER TESTIMONIES. In an article which appeared at the first Eastertide of the war, 1 " The Times " remarked : " It is strange, surely, that the great festival of the Church ' our triumphant holy day '- should hold so scant a place in literature. The Holy Week, too, of which Easter is the crown, finds little emphasis, especially 1 Friday, 2 April, 1915. 169 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [x. since Puritanism repudiated forms." ..." Perhaps the strangest coincidence of Easter's life in literature," adds the writer, "is that the two geniuses of the nineteenth century who have en- shrined the Easter season are precisely those whom we might least expect. Goethe has done so most signally in ' Faust,' and Disraeli most effectually (as regards Holy Week) in ' Lothair '. Goethe, ' the pagan,' Disraeli, whose Christianity was his own these are those to whom Easter owes most in the nineteenth century." A correspondent reminded " The Times " a day or two later of Arthur Hugh dough's fine ode on Easter Day in Naples, and we may point also to Robert Browning's " Easter Day ". Before referring to the appointed Scriptures we set out some testimonies of a more general kind concerning the faith and hope of Easter. F. D. Maurice said in a memorial sermon preached in 1855 : " It is not more reasonable to believe that the egg becomes the caterpillar, and the caterpillar the chrysalis, the chrysalis the butterfly ; it is not more reasonable to confess any one of the most ordinary and recognised transformations of Nature, than it is to believe that every human creature formed in God's image, every one of those who have fallen asleep in Jesus, shall come forth with every beauty of soul and form that was latent here renewed and regenerated in the likeness of Him from whom the beauty came ; whose own face was marred more than any man's ; who returned Himself to show the very hands and side which had been pierced; who ascended to the glory of His Father." The late Lord Salisbury wrote : "To me, the central point is the Resurrection of Christ, which I believe. Firstly, because it is testified by men who had every opportunity of seeing and knowing, and whose veracity was tested by the most tremendous trials, both of energy and endurance, during long lives. Secondly, because of the marvel- lous effect it had upon the world. As a moral phenomenon, the spread and mastery of Christianity is without a parallel. I can no more believe that colossal moral effects lasting for 2,000 years can be without a cause than I can believe that the various motions of the magnet are without a cause, though I 160 x.] EASTEE cannot wholly explain them. To anyone who believes the Re- surrection of Christ, the rest presents little difficulty. No one who has that belief will doubt that those who were commissioned by Him to speak Paul, Peter, Mark, John carried a divine message. St. Matthew falls into the same category. St. Luke has the warrant of the generation of Christians who saw and heard the others." Professor F. Delitzsch, one of the foremost of modern Hebrew scholars, wrote : " Give me the Resurrection of Christ, and I will shatter in pieces the modern view of the world ". Lord Tennyson tells the following incident in the biography of his father : " We went for a three miles' walk, my father talking of the Passion-play at Ober-Ammergau, of religion, of faith, and of im- mortality. While touching on the life after death he spoke of Carlyle, and his dimness of faith in the closing years of his life. He said that when he was stopping at a coffee-house in London, Carlyle had come to smoke a pipe with him in the evening and the talk turned upon the immortality of the soul ; upon which Carlyle said : ' Eh ! old Jewish rags : you must clear your mind of all that. Why should we expect a hereafter ? Your traveller comes to an inn, and he takes his bed, it's only for one night, and he leaves next day, and another man takes his bed and sleeps in the place that he has vacated.' My father continued : I answered, ' Your traveller comes to his inn and lies down in his bed, and leaves the inn in the morning, and goes on his way re- joicing, with the sure and certain hope and belief that he is going somewhere where he will sleep the next night,' and then Edward FitzGerald, who was present, said, 'You have him there'." 1 1 COR. xv. 51. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. Nothing will die ; All things will change Thro' eternity. 'Tis the world's winter ; Autumn and summer Are gone long ago ; 1 "Alfred Lord Tennyson : A Memoir," Vol. II, p. 410. 11 161 THE CHRISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STOEY [x. But spring, a new comer, A spring rich and strange, Shall make the winds blow Round and round, Thro* and thro', Here and there, Till the air And the ground Shall be filled with life anew. TENNYSON. Phillips Brooks wrote at the age of 37 : " How hard it is to write an Easter sermon. The associations of the day are so dependent that it is really difficult to bring it close to people's lives. But it is remarkable how men like your friend who give up so much about Jesus, still cling to the truth of the Resurrection." EASTER IN RUSSIA. The one great festival of the year for all Russians is that of Easter. " Nowhere," says a recent writer, " is Easter celebrated with such tremulous intensity of feelings as in Russia." A village Easter is thus described : " The service begins about two hours before midnight. All the peasants of the neighbourhood are there, and the school- master, the village tradesman, the gentry of the parish and, it may be, a few passing artisans and tramps. Up till midnight the music is low and dreary. Then there is a restless movement. Every member of the congregation lights a candle. Youths fire off guns on the church steps. The priest and deacon ad- vance towards the door, peasants grasp the ikons and church banners, and with candles, ikons, and banners, and with singing, the congregation walks out into the churchyard and in proces- sion round the church. Before they re-enter the priest cries, ' Christ is risen '. The congregation answers, ' He is risen indeed '. The choir breaks into joyful singing, and the happy music of Easter morning begins. 1 1 H. W. Williams, " Russia of the Russians," p. 145. 162 x.] EASTEE THE EPISTLE FOR EASTER DAY.* Bishop Daniel Wilson, during an illness in his early ministry, asked a sister to read him the third chapter of Colossians. He said, " This is one of my favourite chapters. It contains the whole of the Gospel doctrine and practice." 2 COL. in. 2. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. " The things above," says Vinet, " are not precisely those of another world, but of another sphere than the habitual one of our thoughts. They are not the things above our heads, but those which are above our natural sentiments. To set our affections on things above is to set our affections on God Him- self; it is to subordinate our life to Him ; it is to seek and find God in everything." The text on Vinet's tombstone is from the Easter Epistle : " For ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God." " I sometimes feel," wrote Lanoe Falconer in her " Thought Notes," " through and beyond this earthly tabernacle, the wide aisles and unfathomable vault of the Home made wihout hands. Without this growing sense to fill the void and change that comes with years, one's heart must be benumbed or break over the days that are no more. Dear tender shadows, that which you veiled and represented your real essence and treasure is safe with Christ in God." F. D. Maurice wrote at the age of 25, to his sister Pris- cilla: "... the death of Christ is far, very far, more than a mere peace-making, though that view of it is the root of every other. But it is actually and literally the death of you and me, and the whole human race ; the absolute death and extinc- tion of all our selfishness and individuality. . . . Let us believe, then, what is the truth and no lie that we are dead, actually, absolutely dead ; and let us believe further that we are risen, and that we have each a life, our only life a life not of you or me, but a universal life in Him. 3 He will live in us, and quicken us with life and all love ; will make us understand the iCol. in. 1-7. 2 Josiah Bateman, "Life of Daniel Wilson," Vol I, p. 224. 3 Col. in. 1-7. 168 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [x. possibility, and as I am well convinced, experience the reality, of loving God and loving our brethren." THE GospEL. 2 ST. JOHN xx. 6, 7. " Dr. Arnold of Rugby, finding that one of his children had been greatly shocked and overcome by the first sight of death, tenderly endeavoured to remove the feeling which had been awakened, and opening a Bible pointed to the words : ' Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin that was about His head not lying with the linen clothes but wrapped together in a place by itself.' Nothing, he said, to his mind, afforded us such comfort, when shrinking from the outward accompaniments of death the grave, the grave-clothes, the loneliness as the thought that all these had been round our Lord Himself ; round Him who died and is now alive for evermore. ' ' 3 THE EASTER LESSONS. The First Morning Lesson (Exodus xri. 1-29) tells of the Institution of the Passover. In his pathetic speech on the scaffold, Archbishop Laud used these words : " I am going apace, as you see, towards the Red Sea, and my feet are now upon the very brink of it ; an argument, I hope, that God is bringing me into the Land of Promise ; for that was the way through which He led His people. But before they came to it, He instituted a passover for them. A lamb it was, but it must be eaten with sour herbs. I shall obey, and labour to digest the sour herbs as well as the lamb. And I shall re- member it is the Lord's Passover. I shall not think of the herbs, nor be angry with the hand that gathereth them ; but look up only to Him who instituted that, and governs these ; for men can have no more power over me than what is given them from above. I am not in love with this passage through 1 "Life of F. D. Maurice," Vol. I, pp. 106, 107. 2 St. John xx. i-io. 3 Stanley's " Life of Dr. Arnold," chap. iv. 164 x.] EASTEK the Red Sea, for I have the weakness and infirmities of flesh and blood plentifully in me. And I have prayed with my Saviour, Ut transiret calix iste, that this cup of red wine might pass from me. But if not, God's will, not mine, be done. And I shall most willingly drink of this cup, as deep as He pleases, and enter into this sea, yea, and pass through it, in the way that He shall lead me." The Old Testament Lessons tell further how the ransomed host of the Lord departed out of Egypt, and of the passage of the Red Sea. Father R. M. Benson, founder of the Cowley Brotherhood, wrote after visiting Niagara in 1871 : " In the Thursday Canticle at Lauds there seemed to be a special call to read the teachings of the waters in the light of the Exodus. The two great Falls moving, as it were, towards each other, as when the watery walls on either side fell down upon the Egyptians, and beneath where I stood the whole breadth of the stream covered over with thick blocks of ice and frozen snow, just as if it were the track of those who had passed by when the waters were congealed in the depths of the sea ! There was before one at once the power of God in letting loose the waters, and the power of God in binding them beneath the unseen touch of the frost. Even so He lets loose the powers of the world, and even so He arrests them." * MONDAY IN EASTER WEEK. On Monday in Easter Week we think of the disciples at Emmaus. 2 Edward FitzGerald wrote : " The best painter of the unideal Christ is, I think, Rembrandt : as one may see in his picture at the National Gallery, and that most wonderful one of our Saviour and the Disciples at Emmaus in the Louvre ; there they sit at supper as they might have sat." 3 Cowper wrote on this passage: "My friend, Sir William Russell, was distantly related to a very accomplished man who, 1 " Letters of Richard Meux Benson," p. 82. 2 Gospel : St. Luke xxiv. 13-35. 8 " Letters and Literary Remains of Edward FitzGerald, Vol. I, p. 45. 165 THE CHKISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [x. though he never believed the Gospel, admired the Scriptures as the finest compositions in the world, and read them often. I have been intimate myself with a man of fine taste who has con- fessed to me that, though he could not subscribe to the truth of Christianity itself, yet he never could read St. Luke's account of our Saviour's appearance to the few disciples going to Emmaus without being wonderfully affected by it ; and he thought that if the stamp of divinity was anywhere to be found in Scripture, it was strongly marked and vividly impressed upon that passage." LUKE xxiv. 18. Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days ? Dante, in the " Vita Nuova," has these lines in his Sonnet addressed to the pilgrim-folk : " Is your own land indeed so far away As by your aspect it would seem to be That nothing of our grief comes over ye Though passing through the mournful town midway ; Like unto men that understand to-day Nothing at all of her great misery ? " l LUKE xxiv. 32. And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures ? Gilbert Burnet wrote of Archbishop Robert Leighton : " I can truly say I never was with him but I felt within me a commentary on these words, ' Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us ? ' He led me into higher thoughts than I had formerly known, both of a more total deadness to the world, and of a more entire dedication of my whole life to the service of God, and to the good of souls. He quite emanci- pated me from the servility I was yet in to systems and received opinions, and spoke always of religion as a thing above opinions and parties, and that these things were of no consequence. He also spoke much to me of humility and abasement, of being nothing in one's own eyes, and of being willing to be nothing in the eyes of the world." 2 D. G. Rossetti's translation. 166 x.] EASTEE TUESDAY IN EASTEK WEEK. The Gospel * tells the story of St. Thomas' meeting with the Risen Lord. Dora Greenwell says of St. Luke xxiv. 39, " ' Behold My hands and My feet ! ' these testify to a necessity endured, an anguish shared. It is our brother's blood that cries unto us from the ground. ' A spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see He have.' ' " Michael Fairless," whose writings were known to many in the days of " The Pilot," and whose book " The Roadmender " is an English classic, died after long suffering in her 33rd year (August 1901). On the wooden cross that marks her grave there are these words : " Lo, how I loved thee ! " Near the close of her life she wrote ; " The dawn breaks, but it does not surprise us, for we have watched from the valley and seen the pale twi- light. Through the wondrous Sabbath of faithful souls, the long day of rosemary and rue, the light brightens in the East ; and we pass on towards it with quiet feet and opening eyes, bearing with us all of the redeemed earth that we have made our own, until we are fulfilled in the sunrise of the great Easter Day, and the people come from North and South and East and West to the City which lieth foursquare the Beatific Vision of God." 1 St. Luke xxiv. 36-48. 167 CHAPTER XI. THE GREAT FORTY DAYS. Credo videre bona Domini in terra viventium. PSALM xxvil. 13. R. S. Hawker of Morwenstow wrote in 1857 : " I used yesterday in my sermons one of the pious notions of old time. Said the Forefathers, ' Where did Lord Jesu abide during the forty days and forty nights ' ? Said some ' He went like thought from land to land He glided as angels glide all round the earth, and wheresoever he foresaw in His omniscience that there would afterward be a Church built and consecrated, there the Lord paused the sole of His foot and hallowed it.' Said I yesterday, ' What a thought to think that here the arisen Lord once stood still, and looked along the sea, and made benediction with the print of the nails on this most blessed ground '." 170 CHAPTER XI. THE GREAT FORTY DAYS. THE mind of the Apostolic band on the Octave of Easter is re- flected in these words of the Epistle for Low Sunday : " This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith," (1 St. John v. 4). The Risen One is with them on earth, and has uttered his gracious benediction, "Peace be unto you". The disciples of Jesus are ready for testimony and suffering. They have joined the procession of elder saints "who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions ". Forty days are granted them to dwell in peace, free from the malice of persecutors. A modern poet has imagined a calm season when the Saviour wanders over earth and sea, with His hands stretched out in benediction, and with the sacred Heart burning like the sun in His bosom, a light and fire for men. The business of towns is hushed as on a Sabbath morning. Men and women, clad in white and carry- ing palm-branches, pass along the street with solemn greetings, and from the ransomed race there rises the " canticle divine," " May Jesus Christ be praised ! " The five Sundays after Easter are " a season of calm weather" in the Church's year. This is the "sweet season" of which Dante writes, when the dry bough becomes like Aaron's rod which " brought forth buds and bloomed blossoms ".* April showers have " pierced to the root " the drought of March, and spiritual desires awaken in the hearts of men. THE EPISTLES. The Epistles are from St. John, St. Peter and St. James. 1 ST. JOHN v. 4. "The way of faith is the spirit of the 1 Numbers XVII. 8. Alternative Evening Lesson for First Sunday after Easter. 171 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xi- Church, and it is sufficient to bring us to a high degree of per- fection." BROTHER LAWRENCE. Sir John Seeley wrote in ' ' Natural Religion " : " He who has a faith, we know well, is twice himself. The world, the con- ventional order of things, goes down before the weapons of faith, before the energy of those who have a glimpse, or only think they have a glimpse, of the eternal or normal order of things." At the Church Congress of 1910, the Bishop of Durham (Dr. Handley Moule) told that Henry Venn the elder wrote to his father-in-law, Charles Elliott, in 1787 : " I had in past days a family very dear to me, and not enough for their maintenance from year to year ; and in case of my death they were to be destitute. I was, however, wonderfully free and cheerful in my heart. And my preservation was wholly this, ' He that hath the Son hath life ' " a St. John v. 12). The Epistle for the Second Sunday l is echoed in the Collect : " Almighty God, who hast given thine only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice for sin, and also an ensample of godly life ; Give us grace that we may always most thankfully receive that His inestimable benefit, and also daily endeavour ourselves to follow the blessed steps of His most holy life ; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." Mr. Gladstone received in the summer of 1878 a letter from a young man entirely unknown to him, seeking "some advice or guidance in the conduct of life". The statesman wrote a detailed letter under nine headings. The first was as follows : " Rely upon it that every mind has a work and every life a pur- pose, which earnest humble pains will not fail to discover ". The last : " In all matters, to take for guide such answer as you can best give to the question : ' How would Christ have acted ? ' ' The Rev. Joseph Moore, one of Livingstone's fellow-students at Ongar, tells us that every student had to conduct family worship in rotation. "I was much impressed," he says, "by the fact that Livingstone never prayed without the petition that we might imitate Christ in all his imitable perfections." 1 PETER IL 25. Dr. S. R. Gardiner has the following passage 1 I St. Peter 11. 19-25. 2 "Some Hawarden Letters." p. 4. 172 xi.] THE GEEAT FORTY DAYS in his description of the signing of the Covenant by the people of Edinburgh on 2 March, 1638 l : " Tradition long loved to tell how the honoured parchment, carried back to the Grey Friars, was laid out on a tombstone in the Churchyard, whilst weeping multitudes pressed round in numbers too great to be contained in any building. There are moments when the stern Scottish nature breaks out into an enthusiasm less passionate, but more enduring, than the frenzy of a Southern race. As each man and woman stepped forward in turn, with the right hand raised to heaven before the pen was grasped, everyone there present knew that there would be no flinching amongst the band of brothers till their religion was safe from intrusive violence. "Modern narrators may well turn their attention to the picturesqueness of the scene, to the dark rocks of the Castle crag over against the churchyard, and to the earnest faces around. The men of the seventeenth century had no thought to spare for the earth beneath or for the sky above. What they saw was their country's faith trodden under foot, what they felt was the joy of those who had been long led astray, and had now returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls ". The Third Sunday has these words in the Epistle : 2 " Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul ". Sir Arthur Helps says in one of his letters : "I must tell you an anecdote which I have found in Mackintosh's life, and for which you may find many an application in the course of your travels. A traveller remarks to a Carthusian monk who is showing him over the monastery, somewhere in Italy : ' What a fine situation for a residence'. ' Transeuntibus,' replies the monk. ' I have no doubt you have seen many noble sites whereon to build residences for passers by'." 8 In the diary of F. Coillard, of the Zambesi, for 23 March, 1860, there is this entry : " Everything with the Basutos is very simple. An ox skin covers them by day, and wraps them up by night; some reeds and a little grass suffice to make them a 1 " History of England," Vol. VIII, pp. 333-4. 2 i St. Peter n. 11-17. 8 " Correspondence of Sir Arthur Helps," p. 32. 173 THE CHKISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STOEY [xi. shelter against the changes of the weather. I remember how many remarks were made about my little cottage. . . . Some one observed that ' the white men built as if they were never going to die'. How very just and sensible I might even say Christian was this remark ! Certainly the Basuto style of build- ing is very well designed to remind us that we are only travellers, for when they move they take their houses with them, and if a woman dies they leave her house to fall to ruins." " When one is a wanderer," says Maurice de Guerin, " one feels that one fulfils the true condition of humanity ". "Honour all men" and "Honour the King" are further injunctions of this Epistle. Lanoe Falconer says : " The only kind of tact that is worthy of being cultivated by a Christian is that which is based on deep- laid, moral qualities. The reverence that honours all men the charity that loves them and suffers their faults and failings the humility that dare not judge them." l In Dumas's great novel " Twenty Years After," Athos takes his son, the Vicomte Raoul de Bragelonne, to the Church of St. Denis, and there solemnly dedicates him to the service of the Royal House of France. " The verger opened the grated door of the Royal tombs, and remained at the top of the stairs, while Athos and Raoul descended them. The depths of this sepulchral staircase were lighted by a silver lamp burning on the lowest step, and exactly underneath this lamp rested a coffin, supported on oak trestles, covered by a large mantle of violet-coloured velvet, sprinkled with golden fleur-de-lis." It was the coffin of Louis XIII, who was not to rejoin his ancestors till his successor came to rejoin him, " and who ap- peared to remain there merely to say to human pride, so ready to boast when on a throne, ' Earthly dust, I wait for thee ! '" Athos tells his son of the age of Richelieu, who dominated Louis XIII and was the real King of France. " I fancy," he says, " that I can discern your future as through a cloud. It is better than ours, I think. In direct opposition to us, who had a Minister without a King, you will have a King without a 1 " Life of Lanoe Falconer (Marie Hawker)," by Evelyn March- Phillipps, p. 283. 174 XL] THE GEEAT FOETY DAYS Minister. You may therefore serve, honour, and respect the King. Should this King become a tyrant for unlimited power has its intoxication, which impels it on to tyranny yet serve, love and respect Royalty. That is, the infallible principle that is, the spirit of God on earth that is, the heavenly spark which makes the dust so great and so sacred that we, gentlemen of high birth though we are, are as insignificant before that body stretched on the last step of this staircase as that body itself is before the throne of our Saviour." "'I will worship God sir,' said Raoul, 'I will respect Royalty ; I will serve the King ; and I will endeavour, if I die, that it may be for the King, for Royalty, or for God. Have I rightly understood you ? ' " Athos smiled, ' You have a noble nature,' said he. ' Here is your sword.' " 1 PETER n. 17. Honour the King. In the Church of St. Laurence, Ludlow, there is a memorial to the Salwey family, of Puritan fame, with their motto " Pro rege saepe, pro republica semper " " for the King often, for the country always". With this we may compare the words of Robert Atkins, one of the clergy ejected in 1662 : "Let him never be accounted a sound Christian that doth not both fear God and honour the King. I beg that you would not interpret our Non- conformity to be an act of unpeaceableness and disloyalty. We will do anything for His Majesty but sin. We will hazard anything for him but our souls. We hope we could die for him, only we dare not be damned for him. We make no question, however we may be accounted of here, we shall be found loyal and obedient subjects at our appearance before God's tribunal." The Epistle of St. James provides passages for the Fourth and Fifth Sundays. 1 Dr. Joseph Toynbee wrote to James Hinton from Rouen in 1857 : " I have had some delightful, thoughtful wanders, and to-day have enjoyed deeply the Epistle of St. James. Read the first two chapters. I wonder whether your soul and mind will be moved by them as mine have been." ! i St. James I. 17-21 and I. 22-27. a " Reminiscences and Letters of Joseph and Arnold Toynbee," p. 30. 175 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xi. JAMES i. 19. Let every man be swift to hear. It was said of Louis XIV in his early years, " qu'il ecoutait mieux qu' homrae du monde" "that he was the best listener in the world 'V JAMES i. 22. Be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only* Dean Hook, as we are told by his biographer, would often make comments on passages of Scripture he heard read in church. " I was once sitting next his stall when the 1st chapter of the Epistle of St. James was read, and after the verse, 'My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into diverse temptations,' he observed to himself, 'A very hard thing to do,' and after the precept, ' Be ye doers of the word, not hearers only,' he ex- claimed, ' Ah, that is just the difficulty '." 3 THE GOSPELS. The Gospels for these five Sundays are chosen from St. John. On the Octave of Easter 4 we read how the Risen Lord appeared to the disciples and said, " Peace be unto you ". Bishop Phillips Brooks wrote at the age of twenty-one in his private notebook : " What has become of all the blessing of Christ which He left with His people on earth on that ' first day of the week ? ' . . . Has it withered in the scorching heat of the world's fiery hopes and more fiery fears, and rage and scorn and ignorance and pride ? or is it still bright with the everlasting freshness of its miraculous youth, making humble hearts more holy and holy lives more happy wherever there is a clear eye, or better still, a clear heart to see its beauty and great power of making blessed ? When He sent it on earth in a few weak men's hands and it floated down on weak men's breath, as centuries before the hope of Israel had drifted on a bulrush cradle down the Nile, till some unthinking and unknowing hand could take it up and nurture it and make it strong and noble in the high places of the land, 1 Ernest Lavisse, " Histoire de France," Vol. VII, Part I, p. 120. a Fifth Sunday after Easter. 3 " Life of Dean Hook," Vol. II, p. 466. * Gospel : St. John xx. 19-23. 176 XL] THE GKEAT FOETY DAYS He sent it with a power to ensure its life, the everlasting power of comfort to the wretched and riches to the poor, and His own holy power to the weak, so long as there should be poor, weak and wretched men and women on His earth." l ST. JOHN xx. 19-21. He showed unto them His hands. Bishop Wordsworth, of Salisbury, preached from this passage at St. Paul's Cathedral on Tuesday, 25 July, 1911, at the con- secration of three Bishops. " Let us remember," he said, " the wonderful power of Christ's hand." He passed on to a very practical illustration the use of a Bishop's hands in letter- writing. " May I say one or two words on a particular point, the use of our hands in letter-writing ? It is surely no accident that we know Christ's Apostles mainly through their letters. Their ministry must always have been addressed to the absent almost as much as to the present. To all of us Bishops, especially to those who have wide jurisdictions, letter- writing must constantly be one of our most important, and yet one of our most difficult and even arduous tasks. After a long day, in great heat or great cold, when some single grave thought possesses us, or some dark shadow is upon us, or, it may be, when nature cries out for some relaxation from task-work, it is no easy thing to sit down to steady application to letters, some of them replies, some of them the hardest of all called forth by our own sense of duty. Many of them may be of the most varied and exacting character ; and to apply equal tact and sympathetic imagination to all is a work that demands ever fresh supplies of grace. I need not say that such supplies are only given to prayer. Even the manual labour and the strain on brain or nerve, through the close correlation of eye and hand, that make for that necessary act of courtesy, good penmanship, entail much exertion. To put off an absent friend with a coarse scrawl is nearly as ill-mannered as uncouth bluntness in present inter- course. But good writing is hard work. I have often felt real sympathy with those patient, unknown scribes with whom the study of manuscripts makes us familiar. No doubt others here have also listened to their groans expressed in rough Latin, when they cry out in a quaint and unexpected colophon : 1 " Life of Phillips Brooks," Vol. I. p. 192. 12 177 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [XL 1 Three fingers only grasp the pen, But the whole body aches again.' But such groans are the revolt against drudgery, and that only needs habit to make it tolerable. Our letters, indeed, have an element of drudgery, and the business habit of acknowledging cheques by return of post, and of banking them at once, and of letting correspondents know that we have received their letters, even when we must delay to answer them, is learnt with diffi- culty. But the greatest difficulty that meets us in our letters lies in their demand upon the heart and conscience, the memory, intellect and imagination the constant attempt to put ourselves into the place of their recipients, and to gauge their attitude not only when they read our words for the first time, but, it may be, in after years, or in company with some one else, or perhaps aloud to a congregation or Committee. Let us believe sincerely in the consecration of our hands, and half our diffi- culties will disappear. Let us believe that, as our Saviour sent James, Peter, John, Jude, and Paul to write their letters, private and public, as He commissioned St. John at Patmos to write seven letters for Himself to the Churches of Asia, so He is with us now in what we write to the absent, j ust as He is with us in direct addresses to those who are present to our eyes. The right hand as it moves across the body and begins to cross the page will touch the heart, and this may remind us that the heart must always have a share in what is written. Ruthlessly tear up, not once only, a letter that fails to express the heart's true motion." l "Good Shepherd Sunday" 2 has for its Gospel St. John x. 11-16. The Epistle closes with a reminder of Isaiah LIII : " All we like sheep have gone astray". "For ye were as sheep going astray but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls." The Gospel opens with the words, " Jesus said, I am the good Shepherd ; the good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." Archbishop Affre of Paris was murdered during the Revolu- tion of 1848. Horror-stricken by the slaughter which for three 1 The " Guardian'" 28 July, 191 1. 3 Second after Easter. 178 XL] THE GEEAT FOETY DAYS days had been going on, he resolved to try whether it would be possible to reconcile the contending parties. Dressed in his pontifical robes, carrying the Cross, and attended by two chaplains, he set out for the Place de la Bastille. The people, knowing his danger, fell on their knees and begged him to return. He answered quietly, " It is my duty. A good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." He was mortally wounded near the Bastille by a shot fired from a window. The insurgents, horror-stricken, carried him to a neighbouring hospital. When told he had only a few minutes to live, he said " God be praised, and may He accept my life as an expia- tion for my omissions during my episcopate, and as an offering for this misguided people". Then, repeating once more "A good shepherd giveth his life for his flock," he added, "and may my blood be the last that is shed ". With those words on his lips he passed away. 1 Dr. L. P. Jacks has created a shepherd of genius, " Snarley Bob ". That strange mystic often spoke of an invisible monitor and friend whom he called "The Shepherd". He was familiar with every passage in the New Testament where mention is made of sheep ; he knew, for example, the opening verses of the tenth chapter of St. John by heart ; and all these metaphorical passages were translated by him into literal meaning. That is to say, the Person to whom they refer, or by whom they were spoken, was one whom Snarley found it especially fitting to consult, and whose sympathy he was most vividly aware of, in doing his own duty as a guardian of sheep. For instance, it was his practice to guide the flock by walk- ing before them ; this he explained as " a way " the Shepherd had. He said that when walking behind he was invariably alone; but when going in front, "the Shepherd" was fre- quently at his side. And there were greater " revelations " than this. During the lambing season, when Snarley would often spend the night in his box, high up among the wilds, "the Shepherd " would commence his presence towards midnight by giving a signal which Snarley would immediately answer, and pass long hours with Him communing on the mysteries of their 1 Lewis C. Price, " Archbishop Darboy and some French Tragedies," pp. 68, 69. 179 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xi. craft. . . . One rule of life, and one only, Snarley professed to have derived from his invisible monitor that ' ' the Good Shepherd giveth his life for His sheep ". This rule, also, he ac- cepted in a strictly literal sense, and considered himself under orders accordingly. 2 Of the late Bishop Blunt of Hull one of his daughters wrote : " He was never tired of speaking of the simple faith of the early Christians, of their healthy views of death, comparing the ghastly representations of the Middle Ages with the simple figure of the Good Shepherd bearing the lamb in His arms, and of the sure and certain hope, which persecution even unto death could not quench. And so those who knew him best will appreciate his love for the 23rd Psalm, which it was his custom to repeat after every act of communion, and will underhand why ' The King of Love ' was " chosen for his funeral, as an ex- pression of their belief that the Good Shepherd, whose goodness and mercy had followed him all the days of his life, who had been with him in the valley of the shadow of death, had welcomed him into the house of the Lord to dwell with Him forever." 2 Mr. W. J. Birkbeck tells how in one the Russian monasteries he met a young man who was about to be ordained, and to devote his life to missionary work among the Mohammedans. " I asked the Abbot to have one of the popular services known as the molebens for the boy ; and accordingly, the Abbot took us from his lodgings across the peaceful monastery-yard under the shade of its trees, in which the rooks were at that time building, and which had just burst out into their summer foliage, into the splendid old church, built by the Saint [Germanus] himself, and full of frescoes, icons, and exquisite silver and gold work of the Russian sixteenth century style ; and there before the open shrine, with the book of the Gospels held by a deacon over the boy's and his mother's heads, one of the priests of the monastery read the Gospel for a confessor Bishop, beginning, ' I am the Good Shepherd ; the Good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep,' the Abbot standing 1 " Mad Shepherds and other Human Studies," pp. 159-161. 2 " Life of Bishop Blunt," p. 222. 180 XL] THE GEEAT FOETY DAYS by our side, while a few peasants in the church, some of them with unmistakably Tartar faces, joined in the responses made by the choir." * ST. JOHN x. 12. The hireling fleeth because he is an hireling. Percy Ainsworth has this picture : " We are among the sheep-folds. A shepherd is keeping watch. And, lo ! a gaunt and hungry wolf leaps into the flock before their shepherd's eyes. And in a moment the shepherd drops his heavy staff, wraps his long outer garment about his waist, and flees for his life. And the wolf has its cruel will of the deserted sheep. Surely Jesus set this shameful picture of the coward shepherd fleeing like the wind with the snarl of the wolf in his ears just where He did set it against a fair background of courage, love, and sacrifice to warn us against unfaithfulness in life's high task, and to teach us what manner of men we must be if we are to do that task as it should be done." ST. JOHN x. 16. " ' One fold and one Shepherd ' was the note of early Christendom. The Shepherd is still one and knows His sheep, but the folds are many ; and, without condemning any others, I am of opinion that it is best for us all that we should all of us be jealous for the honour of whatever we have and hold as positive truth, appertaining to the Divine Word and the foundation and history of the Christian community." W. E. GLADSTONE. In the life of Professor Viriamu Jones we are told that when he left his work for half an hour in the evening to read aloud to his intimate circle, he generally chose the 15th, 16th, and 17th chapters of St. John's Gospel, and very often chapter xxi. 15-17. Their spirit entered into his heart and soul, and he would say of his experience that, if a man puts himself in line with the Divine current, his work is accomplished without effort. ST. JOHN xvi. 14 2 was the text of Canon Liddon's last sermon, preached on Whitsunday, 1890, from the pulpit of St. Mary's, Oxford. The closing words were as follows : " ' He shall glorify Me.' All that wins for the Divine Re- deemer more room in the thoughts and hearts of men ; all that lu Birkbeck and the Russian Church," pp. 208, 209. 2 Fourth Sunday after Easter. 181 THE CHEISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STOKY [xi. secures for Him the homage of obedient and disciplined wills ; all that draws from the teaching of the past and the examples of the present new motives for doing Him the honour which is His eternal due, may be safely presumed to come from a source higher than any in this passing world, and to have in it the promise of lasting happiness and peace." JOHN xvi. 18. We cannot tell what He saith. Dr. Parker says in his exposition of this verse : " There are Scriptures we can hardly read ; let them alone for the time being. There are other Scriptures that we can only partially explain, and we go to them now and then to see if the buds be opening and if we can inhale fresh fragrance in the King's garden. There are other passages that mothers can speak to children, and children can understand by their hearts, and in these passages we read and triumph and hold sweet sacrament. Why do you not confine yourselves to those things that you can really take hold of and apply and profit by ? Why will you be endeavouring to read books you cannot read ? Let them alone ; not for ever, mayhap, but for the time being, and keep to your Psalm, your sweet Jesus words, to the smile of the Master, to the encouragement of the Apostles." ST. JOHN xvi. 33. l Be of good cheer ; I have overcome the world. " Courage, it shall be well ; we follow a conquering general, yea, who hath conquered already." ARCHBISHOP LEIGHTON. In the hour of his triumph at Cadiz in 1587 Francis Drake wrote to ask the prayers of the devout martyrologist, John Foxe. " To the right reverend godly learned father," the letter runs, " my very good friend, Mr. John Fox, preacher of the Word of God. Master Fox, whereas we have had of late such happy success against the Spaniards, I do assure yourself you have faithfully remembered us in your good prayers and there- fore I have not forgotten briefly to make you a partaker thereof." " The veteran divine was dead as the words were penned," says Drake's biographer, " but such prayers we may well believe were breathed with his latest sighs. Drake then gives him a short account of the operations, and ends with a renewed request for 1 Fifth Sunday after Easter. 182 XL] THE GEEAT FORTY DAYS his prayers ' that we may have continual praise in Israel,' and he signs himself ' Your loving friend and faithful son in Christ Jesus '. Then comes the pious postscript, ' Our enemies are many, but our Protector commandeth the whole world. Let us all pray continually, and our Lord Jesus will hear us in good time mercifully '." l Dr. A. C. Bradley writes, in his " Oxford Lectures on Poetry": "The words, 'I have overcome the world' are amongst the most sublime on record, and they are also the ex- pression of the absolute power of the Spirit ". Bishop Collins of Gibraltar wrote to a friend: "Don't try and fight too much against fatigue, or irritability if that comes, or pain or weakness either; we are not stones, are we? but Christians. We don't think we were put here to overcome the world, but we are to be of good cheer because He has overcome it. So be still and wait upon God, and make room for the Saviour who comes as a little child to lead us." THE LESSONS. The Books of Numbers and Deuteronomy supply the Old Testament Lessons for the season. On Low Sunday the words are read, And he stood bettveen the dead and living ; and the plague was stayed. 2 Bishop Blomfield, early in his clerical life, speaking of the disorganised and torpid condition of the Church, said : " It is not too late for us to put fresh incense into our censers, and to stand between the dead and the living ". As Bishop of London he was a great Church builder. Ruskin, in his comments on this chapter, remarks that Aaron is always subject to Moses. " All solemn revelation is made to Moses, the civil magistrate, and he actually commands Aaron as to the fulfilment of his priestly office, and that in a necessity of life and death : ' Go and make an atonement for the people '. Nor is anything more remarkable throughout the whole of the Jewish history than the perfect subjection of the Priestly to the Kingly authority." 1 Julian S. Corbett " Drake and the Tudor Navy " Vol. II, p. 105. 2 Numbers xvi. 48. 188 THE CHKISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOKY [xi. The feeling of the desert prophet 1 is interpreted by Browning : " He who smites the rock and spreads the water, Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him, Even he, the minute makes immortal, Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute, Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing. While he smites, how can he but remember, So he smote before, in such a peril, When they stood and mocked, ' Shall smiting help us ? * When they drank and sneered ' A stroke is easy ! ' When they wiped their mouths and went their journey, Throwing him for thanks ' But drought was pleasant '. Thus old memories mar the actual triumph ; Thus the doing savours of disrelish ; Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat ; O'er-importuned brows becloud the mandate, Carelessness or consciousness the gesture. For he bears an ancient wrong about him, Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces, Hears yet one time more the 'customed prelude ' How shouldst thou, of all men, smite and save us ' ? Guesses what is like to prove the sequel ' Egypt's flesh-pots nay, the drought was better '. Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant ! Theirs, the Sinai forehead's cloven brilliance, Right arm's rod sweep, tongue's imperial fiat, Never dares the man put off the prophet." 2 NUM. xx. 1-14. When Jeanie Deans, in "The Heart of Midlothian," sets out on her journey to England, she passes the house of her admirer, Dumbiedykes, and takes a farewell look at the cottages of Woodend and Beersheba, "the haunts and habitations of her early life ". " The recollections which the scenes brought with them were so bitter that, had she indulged them, she would have sat down and relieved her heart with tears. 1 Numbers xx. 1-14 : Second Sunday after Easter. J " One Word More." 184 XL] THE GEE AT FOKTY DAYS " ' But I kenn'd ' said Jeanie, when she gave an account of her pilgrimage, ' that greeting would do but little good, and that it was mair beseeming to thank the Lord, that bad showed me kindness and countenance by means of a man that mony ca'd a Nabal and a churl, but wha was free of his gudes to me as ever the fountain was free of the stream. And I minded the Scripture about the sin of Israel at Meribah, when the people murmured, although Moses had brought water from the dry rock that the congregation might drink and live. Sae, I wad not trust myself with another look at puir Woodend, for the very blue reek that came out of the lum-head pat me in mind of the change of market-days with us '." NUM. xx. 24-29. "Mount Hor," wrote Dean Stanley, "is one of the very few spots connected with the wanderings of the Israelites which admits of no reasonable doubt. . . . The proofs of the identity of ' Gebel Haroren,' as it is now called, with Mount Hor are (1) the situation ' by the coast of the land of Edom,' where it is emphatically ' the mountain ' (Hor) (Num. xx. 23). (2) The statement of Josephus that Aaron's death occurred on a high mountain enclosing Petra. (3) The modern name and traditional sanctity of the mountain as connected with Aaron's tomb." NUM. xxi. 4. The soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way. Bishop Talbot names first among the cures for discourage- ment a firm reliance on the promises of God. "The promise of God's most ready and kind forgiveness, if we have got tar wrong, and begin, although feebly, to work backwards towards Him; the promise of God's sufficient grace, and of His mercy still going with us, although we keep stumbling, so long only as we do not stop or go back, but struggle on ; the promise for those who have long served God, that He will never leave them, that He will complete the good work which He has begun, that discouragement is only another trial through which they may be schooled for Him. The whole aim of God's work for us is to bring us to joy. It is a bold saying of Mr. Ruskin, that the only duty which God's creatures owe to Him, and the only service they can render to Him, is to be happy. But it is deeply true ; it echoes the Apostle's words, 'Rejoice alway '." ^ 185 THE CHRISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOKY [xi. NUM. xxi. 17, 18. The song of the well. Sir George Adam Smith has the following translation and comment : " Spring up, O well ! Sing ye back to her ! Well which princes digged, Which nobles of the people delved, With the sceptre and with their staves." NUMBERS xxi. 16-18, R.V. " The drawers who sang this song knew that their well was alive. They called to each other to sing back to it : the verb means to sing in antiphon, to answer the music of the waters with their own. . . . There is not a bit of routine, however cheap our unthinking minds may count it, but it was started by genius. In manual toil, in commerce, in education, in healing, and in public service, not a bit of routine rolls on its way but the saints and the heroes were at the start of it. Princes dug this well, yea the nobles of the people delved it with the sceptre and with their staves." l NUM. xxii. 2 The story of Balaam and his Ass. One of the victims of the " Bloody Assize " in the west under Jeffreys in 1685 was Abraham Holmes, a retired officer of the Parliamentary Army, and one of those zealots who would own no king but King Jesus. He had been taken at Sedgemoor. " His arm," says Macaulay, " had been frightfully mangled and shattered in the battle ; and as no surgeon was at hand, the stout old soldier amputated it himself. He was carried up to London, and examined by the King in Council, but would make no sub- mission. 'I am an aged man,' he said, 'and what remains to me of life is not worth a falsehood or a baseness. I have always been a Republican, and I am so still.' He was sent back to the west and hanged. The people remarked with awe and wonder that the beasts which were to drag him to the gallows became restive and went back. Holmes himself doubted not that the Angel of the Lord, as in the old time, stood in the way sword in hand, invisible to human eyes, but visible to the inferior animals. 'Stop, gentlemen,' he cried, 'let me go on foot. 1 " The Forgiveness of Sins and other Sermons," p. 218. 2 Third Sunday after Easter. 186 XL] THE GEEAT FOETY DAYS There is more in this than you think. Remember how the ass saw him whom the prophet could not see.' He walked manfully to the gallows, harangued the people with a smile, prayed fer- vently that God would hasten the downfall of Antichrist, and the deliverance of England, and went up the ladder with an apology for mounting so awkwardly. 'You see,' he said, 'I have but one arm '." NUM. xxni. 8. How shall I curse, ivhom God hath not cursed, or how shall I defy, whom the Lord hath not defied ? l Balaam might have said, like the hermit of Engaddi in " The Talisman " : t " God will not have us break into His council-house, or spy out His hidden mysteries. We must wait His time with watch- ing and prayer with fear and with hope. I came hither the stern seer the proud prophet skilled, as I thought, to instruct princes, and gifted even with supernatural powers, but burdened with a weight which I deemed no shoulders but mine could have borne. But my bands have been broken. I go hence humble in mine ignorance, penitent and not hopeless." NUM. xxiv. 16. Falling into a trance, but having his eyes open. Archdeacon Holmes, in his sermon, "Trance and Trench," has this illustration : " You may remember the oldest church in England, St Martin's, Canterbury. There, in days gone by, a woman knelt, praying that her husband's eyes might be opened, and that he might see the trance of Christianity which she had seen, and lo ! a vision, wondrous and beautiful, came to Ethel- bert, and he too had his eyes opened, and he saw the outward through the inward, became a Christian, and England was con- verted. Monica prayed for Augustine as he was dipping into all the depths of the sin of Carthage. His eyes were opened ; he, too, became the man of the trance and the man of the trench." DEUT. v. 22-33. Moses as Mediator. "This representation of Moses," says Professor Harper, "is not accidental. It is in complete accord with a characteristic of Israelite literature from beginning to end. In the earliest his- torical records we find that the chief heroes of the nation are 1 Third Sunday after Easter. 187 THE CHRISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STOEY [xi. mediators, standing for God in the face of evil men, and pleading with God for men when they are broken and penitent, or even when they are only terrified and restrained by the terror of the Lord. At the beginning of the national history we see the noble figure of Abraham in an agony of supplication and en- treaty before God on behalf of the cities of the plain. At the end of it, we see the Christ, the Supreme Mediator between God and man, pouring out His soul unto death for men ' while they were yet sinners,' dying, the just for the unjust, taking upon Himself the responsibility for the sin of man, and refusing to let him wander away into permanent separation from God." DEUT. v. 27. Go thou near, and hear all that the Lord our God shall say : and speak thou unto us all that the Lord our God shall speak unto thee ; and we will hear it, and do it. On the subject of " Hearing for Others," the late Rev. Percy Ainsworth writes: "There is a way of hearing for other people that is wholly meet and right, and that plays a necessary part in the religious education of the race. Think for a moment of music. It is a mediated treasure. There are a few great names, and we call them the masters. I think we might call them the listeners. They heard for duller ears the choral har- mony that is wherever God is. Did the great poets fashion their poems out of their own vibrant and sensitive souls ? If we could ask them I think they would say ' No, we heard these things '. The musician and the poet have been men with ears to hear. The music of the ' Messiah' was waiting for Handel, the message of the hills and vales of Cumberland was waiting for Wordsworth. And through them he may hear who will." THE LAW OF MOSES. * At the trial of Rebecca, in " Ivanhoe," the grand Master of the Templars says to the accused, " What has the law of Moses done for thee, that thou shouldest die for it ? " " It was the law of my fathers," answered Rebecca, "it was delivered in thunders and in storms upon the mountain of Sinai, in cloud and in fire. This, if ye are Christians, ye believe it is, you say, recalled ; but so my teachers have not taught me. ... I am a 1 Deut. IV. and v., Fourth Sunday after Easter. 188 XL] THE GREAT FORTY DAYS maiden, unskilled to dispute my religion, but I can die for it, if it be God's will." Rebecca also appeals to Rowena, in an earlier chapter of the novel, " by the revelation of the law upon Mount Sinai in which they both believed ". THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. Mommsen says in his chapter on the early Roman religion : " The original Roman worship had no images of the gods or houses set apart for them ; and although the god was at an early period worshipped in Latium, probably in imitation of the Greeks, by means of an image, and had a little chapel built for him, such a figurative representation was reckoned contrary to the laws of Numa and was generally regarded as an impure and foreign innovation ". THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. R. C. Trench wrote from Villeneuve in 1834, a letter in which he contrasted the continental Sunday with " the holy calm of an English Sabbath ". " When one considers what the Sabbath has done for man and is doing," he says, " and the simplicity of this means by which all these mighty effects are brought about, one is struck with admiration at the difference of God's work and man's works. With what ease He brings about His purposes, and how His work, His primeval work, yet stands and endures. I think one of the most beautiful aspects of the Sabbath is expressed in Ezekiel xx., ' Moreover, I gave them My Sabbaths as a sign be- tween them and Me, that I would sanctify them a pledge of sanctification, a when as well as a how '." 1 Harriet Beecher Stowe was between three and four years old when her mother died. " In my own childhood," she wrote, " only few incidents of my mother twinkle like rays through the darkness. One was of our all running and dancing out before her from the nursery to the sitting-room one Sabbath morning, and her pleasant voice, 1 " Letters and Memorials of Archbishop Trench," Vol. I, p. 172. 189 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xi. saying after us, ' Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, children '." * Mr. Stephen Graham tells us that when on a Saturday the Germans reached the Polish village of Augustof the Christians all fled. The poor Jews there are of the most pious type, who do not light their fires on the Sabbath, do no work and certainly do not travel. They appealed to their Rabbi for a reading of Holy Writ on the point. " The Rabbi not only sanctioned their departure, but showed them an example by going first. So, last of all, the poor Jews crept out with little bundles con- taining what they felt they must take with them. . . . The saddest sights in Warsaw and Vilna and Kief are the clusters of poor homeless Jews just come into the city with all that remains to them in their hands." 2 THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. When Brahms was leaving his parents' home after a visit to them (his own means having become comparatively ample for his needs) he put a number of bank-notes between the pages of his copy of Handel's " Saul," and said to his father when taking leave, " Dear father, if things go badly with you, the best consolation is always in music. Read carefully in my old ' Saul ' and you'll find what you want." 3 It is related that Sir Thomas More every day, before pre- siding in his own Court of Chancery, knelt for the blessing of his aged father, who was a judge of the King's Bench. DEUT. vi. 4. 4 Hear, Israel, the Lord our God, the L ord is One. " The great Shema," says the Rev. J. A. Robertson, " was the first word of religion the little Jesus took upon his lips. It was fastened in the Mezuzoth to the door-post of His home. It was possibly stitched into the corners of His little robe. The blue thread of the zizith the tassels on the robes of adults called it constantly to mind. It was spoken sometimes at meal hour. It was the morning and evening prayer in every Jewish 1 " Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe," by C. E. Stowe, pp. 2, 3. 2 " Russia and the World," p. 78. '"Brahms," by J. A. Fuller-Maitland, p. 31. 4 Fifth Sunday after Easter. 190 XL] THE GEEAT FOETY DAYS home. He lisped it in the quiet hour of the dawn when he awoke from slumber ; and in the deepening gloom of evening ere the light was covered He softly intoned it in the family circle. Familiar as the ' Allah Akbar Islam ' of the Muezzin's call to prayer from every Mohammedan minaret to-day, it was the great call to worship Israel's Creed with which every synagogue service was begun : ' Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.' " l DEUT. vi. 9. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates. Mr. Israel Cohen says, in his description of the Jewish home : " The first distinctive symbol greets one at the very threshold, namely, the Mezuzah (lit. ' door-post '), a small tubular case of wood or metal, fixed slant-wise on the upper part of the right- hand door-post. The case contains a rolled piece of parchment on which are written Scriptural verses enjoining love of God and obedience to His commandments (Deut. vi. 4-9 ; xi. 18-21), and there is a small opening showing the word Shaddai ( Almighty ) written on the back of the scroll. This symbol is prescribed in the words, ' And thou shalt write them upon the door-post of thy house, and on thy gates '. It is fixed not only on the street- door, but on the door of every living-room in the house, and whenever the pious pass the Mezuzah, they touch it and kiss their fingers." : DEUT. vi. 12. Beware lest thou forget the Lord, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. " ' The sense of greatness keeps a nation great.' Mr. William Watson's line comes true if ' greatness ' be the greatness of our calling and election in God's will, of our high privileges by God's grace, of our sacred charge and duty to be the standard-bearers of liberty and mercy and truth in the world. But if the sense of greatness only inflates us with a conceit of ourselves and con- tempt for other peoples, if we use our privileges selfishly and recklessly, and boast ourselves like Nebuchadnezzar over our imperial state and power then England's decay and downfall have begun already. For that insolent temper in any nation 1 " The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Jesus, p. 27. 8 "Jewish Life in Modern Times," p. 49. 191 THE CHEISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOKY [XL has its root in rottenness and its blossom in the dust." T. H. DARLOW, " The Upward Calling," p. 70. DEUT. x. 12. l And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee ? " It is a prejudicial but too common error among Christians," said Pascal, in a letter to Madame Perier, " and even among those who make a profession of piety, to believe that there is a measure of perfection sufficient for safety, beyond which it is not necessary to aspire. It is an absolute evil to stop at any such point, and we shall assuredly fall below it if we aim not to advance higher and higher." 1 Fifth Sunday after Easter. 192 CHAPTER XII. ASCENSIONTIDE. Now our heavenly Aaron enters, With His Blood, within the veil ; Joshua now is come to Canaan, And the kings before Him quail ; Now he plants the tribes of Israel In their promised resting-place ; Now our great Elijah offers Double portion of His grace. BISHOP C. WORDSWORTH. CHAPTER XII. ASCENSIONTIDE. BISHOP YVES DE CHARTBES in the twelfth century expressed the meaning of the Collect for Ascension Day when he wrote : " Neither the profoundest forests nor the highest mountains can give happiness to a man if he has not in himself the solitude of the soul, the Sabbath of the heart, the peace of conscience, the elevation of heart, ascensiones in corde ; otherwise there is no solitude which does not produce idleness, curiosity and vain- glory, with storms of the most perilous temptations ". l Holy souls who have risen with Christ are compared by J. H. Newman to persons who have climbed a mountain and are reposing at the top. "All is noise and tumult, mist and darkness at the foot ; but on the mountain's top it is so very still, so very calm and serene, so pure, so clear, so bright, so heavenly, that to their sensations it is as if the din of earth did not sound below, and shadows and gloom were nowhere to be found." B. F. Westcott (afterwards Bishop) wrote in 1865 to his friend E. W. Benson, (afterwards Archbishop) : "... What I meant to say as to the relation of the Resurrection and the Ascension was simply this, that for us the Ascension is the necessary complement of the Resurrection. We cannot think of the latter historic part without such a completion. The Ascension belongs to a new order of existence, of which at present we have and can have no idea in itself. It is not, so to speak, in the same line of life with the Resurrection. It becomes real to us now only by the present gift of the Holy Spirit. The Resurrection was the victory over death and potential entrance to life, but what that life was to which the Ascension 1 Quoted by Montalembert in " Monks of the West," Vol. I, p. 16. 195 THE CHBISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STOKY [xn. was the immediate entrance, is as yet a mystery. However much I may wish to maintain that the Resurrection and the Ascension are both facts, yet I am forced to admit that they are facts wholly different in kind, and for us the historical life of the Lord closes with the last scene on Olivet, though I do not forget the revelations to St. Stephen and St. Paul." l Father R. M. Benson, of Cowley, wrote : " Ascension Day seems to dwarf all distances upon earth. If the earth is but a speck when its diameter is measured from the sun, what is any number of miles upon its surface when measured from the eternal throne of our Ascended Lord ? All space shrivels up into a point in the presence of the Infinite." THE PROPER PSALMS. Matins : PSALM vin., xv., XXL Evensong : PSALM xxiv., XLVII., cvra. Ps. vin. Lord what is man that Thou art mindful of him ? is the cry of Hebrew piety as well as of modern science. -F. W. H. MYERS. Emerson wrote to Carlyle in 1842, " When I go out of doors in the summer night, and see how high the stars are, I am persuaded that there is time enough, here or somewhere, for all that I must do ". Bernard Palissy, the Huguenot potter, found comfort in this Psalm during his days of poverty. " I have fallen on my face," he says, " and, adoring God, cried out to him in spirit, ' What is man that Thou art mindful of him ? ' " Dean Stanley tells us that the pilgrims to the shrine of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury sang verses 5 and 6 of this Psalm as they mounted the steps to the platform of the eastern chapel. They uttered this prayer : " Fac nos Christo scandere Quo Thomas ascendit." Ps. xv. 3. He that hath used no deceit in his tongue, nor done evil to his neighbour (Prayer Book version). St. Augustine caused to be written over the table at which he entertained his friends these two lines : 1 " Life of Bishop Westcott," Vol. I, pp. 286-287. 196 xii.J ASCENSIONTIDE " He that is wont to slander absent men May never at this table sit again." Ps. xxi. 1, 2, 4. With these words F. W. H. Myers con- eluded his autobiography : " And now," he says, " let my last word of all be of reverent gratitude to the unimaginable Cause of all ; to whom my thanks ascend in ancient and solemn language, fuller, surely, of meaning now than ever heretofore throughout the whole story of the desires of men : 'The King shall rejoice in thy strength, O Lord : exceeding glad shall he be of thy salvation. ' Thou hast given him his heart's desire : and hast not denied him the request of his lips. ' He asked life of thee, and thou gavest him a Jong life, even for ever and ever '." Ps. xxiv. 1. St. Chrysostom wrote during his exile, " When driven from the city, I cared nothing for it. But I said to myself, ' If the Empress wishes to banish me, let her banish me,' ' The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof." Verse 3, 4. Dean Inge applies this passage to the Christian mystics. " These explorers of the high places of the spiritual life had only one thing in common they had observed the conditions laid down once for all for the mystic in the twenty-fourth Psalm : ' Who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place ? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart ; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceit- fully. He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation '." Ps. XLVII. 7. For God is the King over all the earth ; sing ye praises with understanding. This verse was chosen by Archbishop Parker as the motto for his metrical Psalms, which were his " exercise in his religious exile " A.D. 1557. The same motto has served for many Psalters, e.g. Helmore's. 1 Ps. cvm. 1. God, my heart is fixed ; I will sing and give praise. 1 Rev. C. L. Marson, " The Psalms at Work," p. 70. 197 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xii. Mr. Dan Crawford wrote, in " Thinking Black " : " In Africa a missionary is like steel, no use if he loses his temper. By every trick and device, the Devil tries to lure from you your song, and the only safe man is the Psalmist sort : My heart is fixed, Fll sing i.e. I am going in for singing as a habit of life in Africa. ' The happiness of duty ' is a blessed old re- lief, no doubt, but far, far better in Africa to reverse the motto and make it rim, ' The duty of happiness '. ' Chance sparks kindle chance tinder,' runs the proverb, ' so beware ' ! " THE " EPISTLE ". J " The feast of the Ascension," says Henri Perreyve, " is the feast of the desire for heaven. . . . Jesus has finished His life : He has redeemed the world by His sufferings, by His Cross ; the hour of His glory and of His eternal rest is come. He ascends before the eyes of the Apostles, and enters into His heavenly Kingdom. What an emptiness in the heart of the Apostles who were left alone upon earth ! What an emptiness above all in the heart of Mary ! The Scriptures show them to us with their eyes fixed upon that heaven into which their loved Master has just disappeared, and from which they are unable to with- draw their gaze. An angel has to come and dismiss them, so to speak, reminding them that they must work and suffer for Christ before they can share His glory." 2 THE GOSPEL. ST. MARK xvi. 17. Sorrows of the past rise to mind as we read the closing verses of St. Mark's Gospel. Macaulay tells us in the fourteenth chapter of his " History of England," that when our Sovereigns " touched " for the King's Evil, a passage from the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Mark was read. " When the words, ' They shall lay their hands on the sick and they shall recover,' had been pronounced, there was a pause ; and one of the sick was brought up to the King. His Majesty stroked the ulcers and swellings, and hung round the patient's neck a white riband to which was fastened a gold coin. The other sufferers were then led up in succession ; and as each was 1 Acts I. i- 1 1. 8 " Lettres de 1'Abbe Perreyve," p. 364. 198 xii.] ASCENSIONTIDE touched, the chaplain repeated the incantation: 'They shall lay their hands on the sick and they shall recover '. Then came the Epistle, prayers, antiphonies, and a benediction. The service may be found in the prayer-books of the reign of Anne. Indeed it was not till some time after the succession of George the First that the University of Oxford ceased to reprint the Office of Healing together with the Liturgy." Charles II in the course of his reign, touched near a hundred thousand persons. In 1684 the throng was such that six or seven of the sick were trampled to death. THE LESSONS. ST. LUKE xxiv. 49. Tarry until ye be endued with power from on high. " While our own piety is so weak and worthless that we are always in trouble about our own salvation, of course little can be done. Free, hearty, and earnest work for Christ is simply impossible while this state of things continues. Napoleon would never have swept the kings of Europe from their thrones if he had been the general of an army of invalids ; and the great battle of Truth and Holiness will never be won till there is a manliness, a courage, and a freedom about us, that at present we have little enough of." R. W. DALE. ST. LUKE xxiv. 52, 53. And they returned to Jerusalem with great joy ; and were continually in the Temple, prais- ing and blessing God. "Late found, early lost. This, perhaps," suggests Newman, " was the Apostles' first feeling on His parting from them. And the like often happens here below. We understand our bless- ings j ust when about to forfeit them ; prospects are most hope- ful just when they are about to be hopelessly clouded. Years upon years we have had great privileges, the light of truth, the presence of holy men, opportunities of religious improvement, kind and tender parents. Yet we knew not, or thought not of our happiness ; we valued not our gift ; and then it is taken away, just when we have begun to value it." But, as Newman continues, other feelings were uppermost with the disciples, joy and gratitude. " May we venture to surmise that this rejoicing 199 THE CHKISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STORY [xn. was the high temper of the brave and noble-minded, who have faced danger in idea and are prepared for it? They rejoiced not that their Lord had gone, but that their hearts had gone with Him." HEB. iv. 10. He that is entered into His rest, He also hath ceased from His own works, as God did from His. " There are three great Sabbaths. There is the Sabbath of the Father, when His work of creation is completed, and He rests on the seventh day from all His works. There is the Sabbath of the Son, when His state of humiliation is ended, when His work of travail and redemption is complete, when He dieth no more, when He also hath ceased from His own works, as God did from His. There is, lastly, the Sabbath of the Holy Ghost, when the Son has delivered up the Kingdom to God, even the Father, when He has put down all rule and all authority and power, when death is destroyed, when the Son Himself is made subject unto Him that did subject all things unto Him, that in the unity of the Eternal and Adorable Trinity God may be all in all. " Was it not true of John Wesley that for many years he abode in this Sabbath of the Son ? As I read his Journals, and especially the later volumes, I seem to see that he was not any longer a worker, but simply a fruit-bearer. From all his many journeys he carried and wore the white rose of rest. Nothing irked him, nothing disturbed him. He was at peace. Even here he had entered the Sabbath Rest that remaineth for the people of God. And I may venture to say that Dr. Andrew Bonar, both in his life and in his printed words, left on my mind the same impression. He was dead to the solicitations and even to the weariness of the flesh. He had ceased from his own works, and men gazed on him and marvelled at the fruit-bearing Tree of God." W. ROBERTSON NICOLL. HEB. iv. 15. We have not an High Priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. " Every believer," says James Smetham, '' realises by ex- perience that Christ is the only perfect sympathiser. ' I'm not perfectly understood,' says everybody in fact. But if you are a believer you are perfectly understood. Christ is the only one who never expects you to be other than yourself, and He puts 200 xii.] ASCENSIONTIDE in abeyance towards you all but what is like you. He takes your view of things, and mentions no other. He takes the old woman's view of things by the washtub, and has a great interest in wash-powder ; Sir Isaac Newton's view of things, and wings among the stars with him ; the artist's view, and feeds among the lilies; the lawyer's, and shares the justice of things. But He never plays the lawyer or the philosopher or the artist to the old woman. He is above that littleness." SDNDAY AFTEB ASCENSION DAY. THE EpisxLE. 1 1 PETEK iv. 10. The manifold grace of God. " Manifold in this case," says Dr. Parker, " means variegated, many in colour and light and bloom and beauty. Manifold is not in this relation a question of quantity or quality, but of variety ; every colour a poem, all the colours belonging to one another and totalling up into one ineffable whiteness. Every man hath received the gift, therefore let him minister the same, and let one give to another, and let every man bring his colour to every other man's colour, and let all the world see how variegated in charm and hue is the total grace or gift of God. Every man holds his own colour of grace as a steward." 1 PETER iv. 11. The ability which God giveth. Dr. Parker calls this kind of ability " a spiritual faculty, a way of looking at things and doing things that is not common, that traces itself back to the sanctuary and the altar, and comes forth with some redness of blood upon it. This is a mystery we cannot put into words, yet we feel it." THE GospEL. 2 ST. JOHN xv. 26. He shall testify of me. " Our Lord may come to us, and give us joy, while yet we see Him not. In eastern countries there is a certain bird called the Bird of Paradise, because its wings and feathers are gloriously beautiful, so that the neck of a peacock, by their side, would seem to have no colour at all. And they that dwell in those countries believe these birds to be the souls of doves. For, they 1 St. Peter iv. 7-1 1. 2 St. John xv. 26 xvi. 4. 201 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xn. say, when one of them comes near a dove, this dove is in a per- fect quiver of delight, though, as they believe, it cannot see the bird of Paradise ; but it feels and knows it to be near ; and that feeling and that knowledge is beyond all happiness. And so it might be with us. It may be a joy beyond all joy to feel our Lord near us ; though as yet we cannot see Him how He comes, or how He stays." J. M. NEALE. THE DEUT. xxx. 14. The word is very nigh unto thee. In one of his poems Lowell tells the story of an ancient prophet who made a pilgrimage into the wilderness until he reached Mount Sinai God's presence had deserted him, and he thought that there, if anywhere, he should find it again. As he engaged in prayer on Sinai, expecting some strange and startling answer, the moss at his feet unfolded, and a violet showed itself through the moss. Then he remembered that just before he left home his little daughter had come running to him, offering him a nosegay of these very flowers. They grew at his own door ; he saw them day by day ; he had travelled all that distance for a message that had been very nigh unto him all the time. DEUT. xxx. 15. When Sir Moses Montefiore was elected Sheriff of London and Middlesex, he feared greatly that the ceremonies in connection with his office might interfere with the scrupulous performance of his religious duties. "Very well," he said, " I will not deviate from the injunc- tions of my religion : let them call me a bigot if they like ; it is immaterial to me what others do and think in this respect. God has given man the freewill to think and act as he may think proper. He has set before him life and death, blessing and curse (Deut. xxx. 15). I follow the advice given in Holy writ and choose that which is considered life, which is accounted a blessing." 2 DEUT. xxxiv. 1. And Moses went up ... to the top of Pisgah . . . and the Lord showed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan. 1 Deut. xxx. and xxxiv., and Joshua I. 2 " Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore," Vol. I, p. 108. 202 xn.j ASCENSIONTIDE " There must be prospect places in the lone ascent of souk" F. W. H. MYERS. DEUT. xxxiv. 4. But thou shalt not go over thither. Max Miiller, the great philologist, while a young student in Paris, conceived the ambition of being enrolled amongst the members of the French Academy. He received that coveted honour and many another besides, for he was made a member of almost every learned society in Europe. When his youthful ambition was realised, he entered in one of his letters the words so full of pathos, coming from the pen of a man whose life was singularly fortunate : " The dream of the reality was better than the reality of the dream ". DEUT. xxxiv. 6. No man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day. Professor Harper thinks that the fact that the grave of Moses is unknown is indicative of truth. " Though it would be absurd to say that wherever we have the graves of great men pointed out, there we have a mythical story, it is nevertheless true that in the case of every name or character which has come largely under the influence of the myth-making spirit, the grave has been made much of. The Arabian imagination here seems to be typical of the Semitic imagination ; and in all Moslem lands the graves of the prophets and saints of the Old Testa- ment are pointed out, even, or perhaps we should say especially, if they be eighty feet long. Though a well-authenticated tomb of Moses, therefore, would have been a proof of his real exist- ence and life among men, the absence of any is a stronger proof of the sobriety and truth of the narrative." JOSHUA i. 12-16. The words of Joshua to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh were quoted by the Huguenot pastors to La Noue during the siege of La Rochelle in 1573. That heroic soldier, whose loyalty to his king and his religion had won for him the name of the Huguenot Bayard, entreated the defenders to yield to the royal army. Five ministers were sent as deputies from their Synod to the Town Council, and they argued against the acceptance of any peace in which all the Protestants of the kingdom were not included. The Reubenites and the Gadites, they declared, although safely settled beyond Jordan, had promised to " pass over before their 208 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xn. brethren armed and to help them ". They kept their promise to Joshua and refused to lay down their arms, until the Lord had given their brethren rest. The Council was impressed by this and other arguments from the Books of Joshua and 1 Sam- uel, and refused the proposals of La Noue for a settlement. The people, when consulted, declared that a righteous war was preferable to a shameful peace, and they executed certain traitors who had schemed to surrender the town to the Duke of Anjou. La Noue, himself, reproached as a traitor and deserter, left the fortress in March, and passed over to the Royalist camp. After a magnificent defence the people of La Rochelle triumphed. They suffered the miseries of famine but held out staunchly. The election of the Duke of Anjou as King of Poland led to their relief, and the siege was raised on 6 July, 1573. Liberty of conscience was granted to all the Protestants of France though freedom of worship was permitted only at La Rochelle, Nimes, and Montauban. 1 We are told that the Rev. William Jowett, the first Cam- bridge graduate who volunteered for the foreign service of the Church Missionary Society, and successsor of John Venn in the rectory of Clapham Rise, had some peculiar expedients for arous- ing the interest of a sleepy congregation. " And now I will read you a despatch from a great commander at the seat of war " ; this prelude was followed by a quotation from the Book of Joshua. 2 1 Ernest Lavisse, " Histoire de France," Vol. VI, Part I, p. 140 (by Prof. J. H. Marie>l). 2 "Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett," Vol. I, p. 6. 204 CHAPTER XIII. WHITSUNTIDE. WHITSUNDAY. Of all days it most affects us now : I mean, we all continually need the fresh coming of the Spirit BISHOP WESTCOTT. When the Huron Indians visited Quebec in 1633 and entered the Jesuit Chapel, they asked if the dove over the altar was the bird that makes the thunder. 1 F. D. Maurice wrote to a sister in 1845 : " Whitsunday, as connected with Trinity Sunday, and leading to it, seems to me to contain the most marvellous and blessed witness of the whole year, and that without which all the rest would be in vain." Maurice wrote to his wife in 1842 : " I have been thinking much about the will these last two days, and how much the power of God's Spirit is to be realised in it, how much a constant recollection of the words, ' I believe in the Holy Ghost,' is the energy we want to enable us to resolve and to act." 2 Professor James Stuart wrote to Miss Mary Gladstone on I June, 1884 : " This is Whitsunday, and of all the returning days of the calendar it is the one which is fullest of suggestion to me. The outpouring of the spirit of God ; the rivers of water in a dry place. It is not that this is the foundation of our religion, but it is its realisation, to a certain extent, and the peace of God, which we daily pray for as passing all understanding, is part of the general outpouring of the Spirit on that day." 3 When Jacob Boehme was compelled by his persecutors to go forth into the world as a travelling shoemaker, he comforted himself with the reading of Scripture, and especially with the words of St. Luke XI. 13, " How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him ! " " And thus it befell him," says Bishop Martensen, " when, during his wanderings, he was again engaged by a master, that, amid the labour of his hands, he was lifted into a condition of blessed peace, a Sabbath of the soul, that lasted for seven days, and during which he was, as it were, inwardly surrounded by a Divine light. Outwardly, there was nothing noticeable about him. But ' the triumph which was then in my soul I can neither tell nor describe. I can only liken it to a resur- rection from the dead.' It was a foretaste of the tranquility that was to be vouchsafed him in contemplation." 4 1 Francis Parkman, "The Jesuits in North America," p. 137. 2 " Life of F. D. Maurice," Vol. I, p. 324. 3 " Some Hawarden Letters," p. 141. 4 "Jacob Boehme," by Bishop Martensen, pp. 6, 7. 206 CHAPTER XIII. WHITSUNTIDE. THE PROPER PSALMS. Matins : xLvm., LXVIII. Evensong: civ., CXLV. PSALM LXVIII. is " Proper " for the day. There is a reference to verse 20 in the Letters of Dean Hole. " It was many months before his death and he asked Mrs. Hole to find for him the words, ' God is the Lord, by whom we escape death ' ; telling her it was his special wish that this should be his epitaph. On Whitsunday, 1904, he reminded her of this wish, and made us find and show him the text, which is in the Psalms for the day." He passed away in August of that year. Ps. LXVIII. 1. Caponsacchi in "The Ring and the Book" tells how this verse sprang to his mind as he fled towards Rome with Pompilia, who was escaping from the cruelties of her husband, Count Guido Franceschini : " We did go on all night ; but at its close She was troubled, restless, moaned low, talked at whiles To herself, her brow on quiver with the dream : Once, wide awake, she menaced, at arms' length, Waved away something ' Never again with you ! My soul is mine, my body is my soul's : You and I are divided ever more In soul and body : get you gone ! ' Then I ' Why, in my whole life I have never prayed ! Oh, if the God, that only can, would help ! Am I his priest with power to cast out fiends ? Let God arise and all his enemies Be scattered ! ' By morn there was peace, no sigh Out of the deep sleep." 207 THE CHKISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xm Ps. civ. 12. By them shall the fowls of the Jieaven have their habitation, which sing among the branches. In his early married life the great naturalist Audubon suffered from severe poverty. He had at one time scarcely enough to keep his wife and little ones alive. In his auto- biography he says : " One of the most extraordinary things among all these adverse circumstances was that I never for a day gave up listening to the songs of our birds, or watching their peculiar habits, or delineating them in the best way that I could ; nay, during my deepest troubles I frequently would wrench myself from the persons around me, and retire to some secluded part of our noble forests ; and many a time, at the sound of the wood-thrush's melodies have I fallen on my knees, and there prayed earnestly to our God ".* Ps. CXLV. 9. Ruskin says : " To declare that we have such a loving Father, whose mercy is over all his works, and whose will and law is so lovely and lovable that it is sweeter than honey, and more precious than gold, to those who can ' taste and see ' that the Lord is good this, surely, is a most pleasant and glorious good message and spell to bring to men ". THE "EPISTLE". The passage for the Epistle is Acts n. 1-11. On Whitsunday morning, 1738, John Wesley went to the church of St. Mary-le-Strand and heard the rector preach " a truly Christian sermon " on " They were all filled with the Holy Ghost " ; Wesley assisted the rector with the Communion. Soon after the sermon he heard the joyful news that his brother Charles, then lying ill in " Little Britain," had found spiritual rest. This was the text chosen by Wesley himself for his last Uni- versity sermon at Oxford in 1744. Pere Gratry says : " Do not let us forget this, to speak to every man in his own language is a gift of the Holy Spirit ; audiebat unusquisque lingua sua illos loquentes. The Spirit of love speaks all languages through that great law which causes a mother to speak the language of her new-born child." 1 "Audubon and his Journals," Vol. I, p. 38. 208 xin.] WHITSUNTIDE THE GOSPEL. l ST. JOHN xiv. 19. Because I live, ye shall live also. " Our Lord in His last solemn hour speaks of sanctifying Himself for the sake of those whom His Father had given Him, that they also might be sanctified through the truth ; and though we may be unable as yet to pierce to the heart of all that is included in those words, ' Because I live, ye shall live also,' we know enough even now to be aware that heaven and earth are drawn so much the nearer each other for every soul in living communion with Christ." DORA GREENWELL. ST. JOHN xiv. 26. He shall . . . bring all things to your remembrance. F. D. Maurice wrote in 1887 to his betrothed wife, Anna Barton : " I had been considering this morning how graciously it is promised that the Spirit shall bring all things to our remem- brance. How impossible it would be for us to remember one sweet word that had been spoken, or anything that had done us good, or even the dearest friend on earth, if He did not perform this work ; and how profitable it must be, with His help, to remember the love of God and to dwell in it, and to connect all other thoughts with the thought of Him." 2 ST. JOHN xiv. 27. Peace I leave with you. Maurice wrote in a letter of 1849 : " ' Peace I leave with you ' has always seemed to me nearly the most lovely and blessed sentence in the New Testament, our Lord's own word in the highest and fullest sense. That it should be peace itself not peace if our state of mind is fit to receive it, but the gift of the state of mind is very divine. It seems Christ giving Himself (indeed it must be this) is our Peace." 3 Mrs Drummond wrote to her aged stepmother Lady Russell in 1895 : " No doubt you find your great knowledge of Scripture a help in such hours. The Holy Spirit evidently uses our human knowledge and ordinary memory of His Word as a means of fulfilling His work as Comforter. I don't think I ever told 1 St. John xiv. 15-31. * " Life of F. D. Maurice," Vol. I, p. 231. 3 Ibid., p. 498. U THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xm. you a strange and beautiful thing that happened to me on 18 May, 1892. I was ill, and was at Hastings for my health. I had thought much about this coming first anniversary of dear Maurice's death, especially when I went to bed on the evening of the 17th. Just at daybreak on the 18th, I woke, and had j ust said to myself ' The day is come,' when it was said to me very clearly and distinctly, as it were inside my head, ' The day of death is better than the day of birth '. You may imagine what a comfort that was to me. The verse of which this sentence gives the spirit is the first of Ecclesiastes vu., a book I have not studied very much." 1 THE LESSONS. DEUT. xvi. 3. Sometimes the pious Jew leaves an unpapered patch on one of his walls as a sign of grief for the destruc- tion of Jerusalem, and he may nail a round piece of Matzah (Passover cake) above the mantelpiece as a constant reminder of the Exodus. 2 Is. XL 1. And there shall come a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots. Father Waggett, in a sermon on this text, gives an illustra- tion from the life of St. Patrick. The child was born when his parents were fleeing from the heathen persecutors of their race, fleeing from them somewhere in Wales or farther north ; and they were lost and panic-striken in a desert-place where there is no water, and behold, the child is born, and how shall he be baptised in a dry land where there is no spring? And the priest who is to baptize him is himself blind, and cannot go to seek or give any encouragement or leading to the bewildered train of fugitives. But the blind priest takes the little child's hand and with it blesses the dry soil, and up there springs in this land of fear and terror and loneliness, fresh water, in which the child is baptised who is to be the Apostle of Ireland. Is. XL 6. A little child shall lead them. "To me was shown no higher stature than childhood." JULIANA OF NORWICH. 1 " The Hon. Adelaide Drummond : Retrospect and Memoir," by- Basil Champneys, p. 14. a Israel Cohen, " Jewish Life in Modern Times," p. 49. 210 XIIL] WHITSUNTIDE EZEK. XXXVL 37. Thus saith the Lord God. For thit moreover will 1 be enquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them (R.V.). In the second part of the " Pilgrim's Progress," Reliever encourages the women to proceed : " To go back again you need not ; for in all places where you shall come, you will find no want at all, for in every one of my Lord's lodgings which He has prepared for the reception of His pilgrims, there is sufficient to furnish them against all attempts whatsoever. But as I said, He will be enquired of by them to do it for them, and 'tis a poor thing that is not worth asking for." ROM. vin. 16. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God. John Jowett, great-uncle of Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol, was a pillar of the Evangelical party in the Church of England, and a friend of John Newton. He died at the age of fifty-six in 1800, having shortly before assisted at the founda- tion of the Church Missionary Society. " His ' enthusiasm,' as it would then have been termed, was tempered, in a remarkable degree, with candour and moderation. On his death-bed, he told his relatives who surrounded him that he ' felt not rapture, but peace. The Scriptures speak of the Spirit bearing witness with our spirits, etc. I should like to feel that, but I am not anxious about it ; I leave the matter to God.' " ROM. viu. 17. Heirs of God. " At this time also I saw more in these words, Heirs of God, than ever I shall be able to express while I live in this world. Heirs of God ! God Himself is the portion of the Saints. This I saw and wondered at, but cannot tell you what I saw." BUNYAN, " Grace Abounding ". GAL. v. 21. Bion asked an envious man that was very sad : " What harm had befallen to him, or what good had befallen to another man ? " BACON. GAL. v. 22. In Francia's picture of the Virgin and Child Enthroned (in the National Gallery) St. Anne offers the Infant Christ a peach. Sir E. T. Cook, in his Handbook, notes that the peach is symbolical, as the fruit thus offered in these pictures 211 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xm. originally was, of " the fruits of the spirit joy, peace, and love". GAL. v. 26. Let us not be desirous of vain-glory, provok- ing one another, envying one another. This verse was chosen by Bishop Westcott, while a Cambridge undergraduate, as the motto of his life. ACTS xix. 19. When George Borrow found a Spanish servant girl in possession of Volney's "Ruins of Empires," he told her that " the author of it was an emissary of Satan and an enemy of Jesus Christ and the souls of mankind ". She listened to his exposure of the book, quietly. "She made no reply, but going into another room, returned with her apron full of dry sticks and brushwood, all which she piled on the fire, and produced a bright blaze. She then took the book from my hand and placed it upon the flaming pile ; then sitting down, took her rosary out of her pocket, and told her beads till the volume was consumed. This was an auto-da-fe 1 in the best sense of the word." MONDAY IN WHITSUN WEEK. ACTS x. 88. 1 Who went about doing good and healing. Dr. Homes Dudden says, in a sermon on this passage : "Our chief and most pressing interest is the restoration of the soul. This is our foremost business. This is our great concern. Here is the sphere in which the whole process of heal- ing must of necessity begin. Now it seems to me that the men of the twentieth century, no less than the men of the Roman imperial era, are keenly alive to the fact that their soul is in need of healing. ' Humanity up to this day, ' writes Maeter- linck, ' has been like an invalid tossing and turning on his couch in search of repose '. We are conscious in our nature of a radi- cal disorder. Our music is out of tune. Our flowers have lost colour and fragrance. Our sunshine is flecked with shadow. Maxim Gorky, speaking of the histories of his Russian outcasts, writes : ' Each story was unfolded before us like a piece of lace in which black threads predominated '. And the description might, perhaps, not unfairly be applied to all the story of the modern spirit. The black predominates. Through the sweet - For the Epistle : Acts x., 34-48. 212 XIIL] WHITSUNTIDE est melody of modern poetry, through the grandest achieve- ments of modern art, through the deepest utterances of modern science and philosophy, through the manifold different expres- sions of the spirit of the age, there run those threads those gloomy strands of ruin and of wrong. Can we really deny, then, that the soul of us is sick ? Surely the old lament of such a one as St. Bruno has not lost its force. ' It is not merely the weaker part of my nature which fails me,' he cries. 'It is the very strongest My understanding, will, and firmness, my spiritual might, all that is or may be virtue, is by my sin en- feebled.' But for us, as for the men of old, the Good Physician waits. For us, as for them, is the healing power of God put forth in Jesus Christ. Let us never forget that God wills us to be well. His purpose for us is perfection and life ; His work is salvation. ' This,' says Clement of Alexandria, ' is the greatest and most royal work of God, the saving of mankind.' ' THE GOSPEL. ST. JOHN IIL 16. 1 High over the Altar in St Paul's Cathe- dral are inscribed the words, " Sic Deus dilexit mundum ". During Bishop Butler's last illness, when Dr. Forster was one day reading to him the third chapter of St. John's Gospel, the Bishop stopped him at the sixteenth verse, and requested him to read it a second time. When this was done, after a pause, he said, " I never before felt those words to be so satis- factory and consolatory ". LESSONS. * The First Morning Lesson (Genesis xi. to verse 10) is the story of the Tower of Babel. The First Evening Lesson (Numbers XL 16-31) tells of the appointment of the seventy elders, and of the generous words of Moses, when he heard that Eldad and Medad were prophesying in the camp : " Enviest thou for my sake ? Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His spirit upon them." Thomas Fuller wrote on verse 26 : " Lord, Thy servants St. John HI., 16-21. 213 THE CHRISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STORY [xm. are now praying in the Church, and I am staying at home, detained by necessary occasions, such as are not of my seeking, but of Thy sending. My care could not prevent them, my power could not remove them. Wherefore, though I cannot go to church, there to sit down at table with the rest of Thy guests, be pleased, Lord, to send me a dish of their meat hither, and feed my soul with holy thoughts. Eldad and Medad, though staying still in the camp (no doubt on just cause) yet prophesied as well as the other elders. Though they went not out to the spirit, the spirit came home to them." 1 COR. xn. 4. Diversities of gifts. Ruskin says : " God appoints to every one of His creatures a separate mission ; and if they discharge it honourably, if they quit themselves like men, and faithfully follow the light which is in them, withdrawing from it all cold and quenching in- fluence, there will assuredly come of it such burning as in its appointed mode and measure shall shine before men, and be of service, constant and holy." 1 COR. xn. 5. There are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. Dora Greenwell makes this comment in " The Patience of Hope " : " Each individual soul, from the very constitution of our nature, will fasten upon that portion of Divine Truth which meets and answers to its own peculiar need ; and when we learn to look at Christianity as a living, organic whole made for man and corresponding with what he is, we shall the better under- stand that deep saying of the Apostle's : ' There are differences of administrations, but the same Lord ' ; and understand also how it is that Christianity assumes a distinctive character in certain ages, among certain races, even in certain individuals. Christ does not so unite Himself to humanity as to obliterate its native characteristics." 1 COR. XIIL, chosen as the alternative Evening Lesson for this day, is also the Epistle for Quinquagesima Sunday. TUESDAY IN WHITSUN WEEK. ST. JOHN x. 3. 1 He calleth His own sheep by name. " The faintest wish to be better, the feeblest troubling about Gospel : St. John x. i-io. 214 xiii.] WHITSUNTIDE our spiritual state, is the first distant echo of the Shepherd's voice, ' calling us by our name '. It is in earnest that He has begun to seek us, and will not rest till he has found us and borne us home on His shoulder rejoicing." FATHER TYRRKLL. ST. JOHN x. 7. I am the door of the sheep. Among the last words of Lacordaire this sentence is recorded, "I am unable to pray to Him, but I look upon Him". His very last words were, " My God, open to me, open to me". ST. JOHN x. 10. I am come that they might have life. The words, " Ego veni ut vitam habeant" are inscribed on the marble slab consecrated to the memory of Bishop Westcott and his wife at Bishop Auckland. 215 CHAPTER XIV. TRINITY SUNDAY. F. D. Maurice wrote to R. C. Trench in August, 1834 : " The day before his death Coleridge spoke to Green of the Trinity, entering into it as one who had indeed fellowship in the mystery, and ending with ' Remember, it is the foundation of all my philosophy '." l Maurice, whose father was a Unitarian minister, wrote elsewhere : " I not only believe in the Trinity in Unity, but I find in it the centre of all my beliefs ; the rest of my spirit, when I contemplate myself or mankind. But, strange as it may seem, I owe the depth of this belief in a great measure to my training in my home. The very name that was used to describe the denial of this doctrine is the one which most expresses to me the end that I have been compelled, even in spite of myself, to seek." 2 "This is Wellcombe Revel Sunday," wrote R. H. Hawker of Mor- wenstow in 1859. " The doctrine of the Trinity is the pearl treasured up in the casket of that simple country church. It was founded by Nectan, brother of Morwenna, about 950 A.D., and the day of its consecration has been celebrated for nine centuries of Christian time on the Trinity Sunday of each year. So it is something to say, that a lonely and rustic sanctuary here by the sea has kept or counted 900 Revel Days and this it may be with me the last ! " 1 "Letters and Memorials of Archbishop Trench," Vol. I, p. 164. 2 " Life of F. D. Maurice " (edition of 1885), Vol, I, p. 41. 218 CHAPTER XIV. TRINITY SUNDAY. FOR THE EPISTLE. 1 REV. iv. 4. And upon the thrones I saw four and twenty elders. "!N Brescia," says Professor Villari, during the Lent of I486, " Savonarola, with the Book of Revelation for his theme, found it easy to stir the sympathies of his hearers. His words were fervent, his tone commanding, and he spoke with a voice of thunder; reproving the people for their sins, denouncing the whole of Italy, and threatening all with the terrors of God's wrath. He described the forms of the twenty-four elders, and represented one of them as rising to announce the future calamities of the Brescians. Their city, he declared, would fall a prey to raging foes; they would see rivers of blood in the streets; wives would be torn from their husbands, virgins ravished, children murdered before their mothers' eyes ; all would be teiTor and fire and bloodshed. His sermon ended with a general exhortation to repentance, inasmuch as the Lord would have mercy on the just. The mystic image of the elder made a deep impression on the people. The preacher's voice seemed really to resound from the other world ; and his threatening predictions awakened much alarm. During the sack of Brescia, in 1572, by the ferocious soldiery of Gaston de Foix, when, it is said, that about six thousand persons were put to the sword, the inhabitants remembered the elder of the Apocalypse and the Ferrarese preacher's words." REV. rv. 8. They rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. William Blake wrote : " I assert, for myself, that I do not behold the outer creation and that to me it is hindrance and "- Rev. iv. i-n. 219 THE CHBISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STOEY [xiv. not action. ' What ! ' it will be questioned, ' when the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea ? ' Oh ! no, no ! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying, ' Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty ! ' I question not my corporeal eye any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through it, and not with it" " The whole state of man is a state of culture ; and its flower- ing and completion may be described as Religion or Worship. There is always some religion, some hope and fear extended into the invisible from the blind boding which nails a horseshoe to the mast or the threshold, up to the song of the elders in the Apocalypse." EMERSON. THE GospEL. 1 ST. JOHN HI. There is a Spanish legend, mentioned by Mr. Lecky in one of his early letters, that a crucifix in Burgos was carved by Nicodemus, and that it has raised ten men from the dead. ST. JOHN HI. 1 f. "Jesus does for Nicodemus the three things which every thorough teacher must do for every scholar. He gives him new ideas, He deepens with these ideas his personal character and responsibility, and He builds for him new rela- tions with his fellow-men. When Nicodemus goes away from Jesus he carries with him the new truth of regeneration ; he is trembling with the sense that, to make that truth thoroughly his, he himself must be a better man ; and by-and-by he is seen setting himself against the current of his fellow-judges to speak a word for the Master who had spoken such educating words to him." PHILLIPS BROOKS. ST. JOHN m. 2. The same came to Jesus by night. " Most blest believer he ! Who in that land of darkness and blinde eyes Thy long expected healing wings could see, When thou didst rise ; And, what can never more be done, Did at midnight speak with the Sun ! " HENRY VAUGHAN. 3 St. John in. 1-15. TRINITY SUNDAY ^ in. &.Thou canst not tell whither it goeth. The life of the Spirit-bora passes to inconceivable issues. 1 Thou canst not tell whither it goeth.' It is a life that cannot die. The rose-bush year by year brings forth its children to live their little time, and at last withers and dies like them ; but the fruit never fails on that Tree Whose Root and Head is God. Over the life of the Spirit-bom death has no power. We watch the tender fading glow, and feel that the sun sinks to rise. A flash of light breaks through the mist of tears, and testifies to the glory-sphere. ' Thou canst not tell whither it goeth' when the call comes to them to leave their beloved for the Beloved. We know not the destiny of any life that is born of the Spirit. We know not to what heights the life may rise here. We know not what manner of country that is on the other side of the river. ' He that hath found some fledg'd bird's nest may know At first sight if the bird be flown ; But what fair dell or grove he sings in now, That is to him unknown.' " J THE LESSONS. Is. vi. 8. Then said /, Here am I. " Here am I " (Labbayk !) is the cry of the Meccan pilgrim- age. The expression is constantly on the lips of all who journey to the sacred city of Islam. When the Ihram, or pilgrim's garb, is put on at the appointed place, the multitude exclaim : " Here I am ! O Allah ! here am I No partner hast Thou, here am I ; Verily the praise and the grace are Thine, and the empire No partner hast Thou, here am I ! " As the caravans draw near to Mecca, again the shout of " Labbayk ! " rings among the rocky passes of the desert. " About one A.M.," wrote Sir Richard Burton, " I was aroused by general excitement. ' Mecca ! Mecca ! ' cried some voices ; ' The Sanctuary ! O the Sanctuary ! ' exclaimed others ; and all burst into loud ' Labbayk,' not unfrequently broken by sobs. I looked out from my litter, and saw by the light of the Southern 1 W. Robertson Nicoll, " Sunday Evening," p. 243. THE CHKISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STORY [xiv. stars the dim outlines of a large city, a shade darker than the suirounding plain." After the sermon on Arafat, the culminat- ing event of the pilgrimage, the multitude " rushed down the hill with a ' Labbayk ' sounding like a blast, and took the road to Mecca ". Many other travellers besides Burton have described "the hurry from Arafat," and the wild volleys of "Labbayk" from the retreating crowds. The spirit of Islam, as of the prophet Isaiah, is that of submission to an Almighty Ruler. During the war, Mr. Massey, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, issued a stirring appeal for recruits. He urged every man of military age, whose responsibilities to dependents did not compel him to remain in the Dominion, to respond in a courageous, patriotic spirit to the urgent message from his kin across the seas and say to the military authorities of the Dominion, " Here am I. Send me." Is. vi. 8. Mr. A. C. Benson wrote of his brother Hugh : " It was on an evening walk at Addington with my mother that he told her of his intention to take Orders. They had gone together to evensong at a neighbouring church, Shirley, and as they came back in the dusk through the silent woods of the park he said he believed he had received the call, and had answered, ' Here am I, send me ! ' My mother had the words engraved on the inside of a ring, which Hugh wore for many years." 1 REV. i. " I like to think," wrote Bishop King, of Lincoln, "that the glorious visions of the Apocalypse were given in a time of suffering, at the end of a life. We may expect ' good wine ' at the last. How unlike the way of the world ! " 2 REV. i. 5. Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. (R.v.) " ' The Faithful Witness ' demands faith ; ' the First Begotten of the dead' incites hope; 'the Prince of the kings of the earth ' challenges obedience. Now faith may be dead, hope presumptuous, obedience slavish. But ' He that loved us ' thereby wins our love ; and forthwith by virtue of love faith lives, hope is justified, obedience is enfranchised." C. G. ROSSETTI. 222 1 " Hugh : Memoirs of a Brother." 9 "Spiritual Letters," p. no. TEINITY SUNDAY REV. i. 5. Unto Him that loved us. " I am in the habit," wrote Charles Simeon to a friend in 1827, "of accounting religion as the simplest of all concerns : ' To Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto our God, to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever,' expresses the very frame of mind in which I wish both to live and die." REV. i. 7. Behold, He cometh with the clouds and every eye shall see Him. " Earth must fade away from our eyes, and we must anticipate that great and solemn truth, which we shall not fully understand till we stand before God in judgment, that to us there are but two beings in the whole world, God and ourselves. The sympathy of others, the pleasant voice, the glad eye, the smiling countenance, the thrilling heart, which at present are our very life, all will be away from us, when Christ comes in judgment. Everyone will have to think of himself. Every eye shall see Him ; every heart will be full of Him. He will speak to every one ; and every one will be rendering to Him his own account." J. H. NEWMAN. GEN. xvni. 25. Shall not the Judge of all tJie earth do right ? The thought of the divine justice was constantly present to the mind of Hans Christian Andersen. " Are you certain," his friend Oehlenschlager asked him, " that there is a life after this life?" Andersen replied that he felt perfectly certain of it, adding that he founded his certainty on God's justice. " ' Why, man can demand it,' he hastily exclaimed in the heat of the debate. ' What ? ' said Oehlenschlager, ' is it not a piece of presumption on your part to demand an eternal life? Has not God given you no end of good things in this world ? I know what a boundless measure of benefits He has given me already, and when I close my eyes in death I shall thankfully praise and bless Him for it ; if after that He still grants me an eternal life, I shall accept it from His hands as an additional mercy.' 'That's all very well,' replied Andersen. 'I know that God has given you no end of good things in this world, and I can say the same of myself; but what about those who Ml THE CHBISTIAN YEAB IN HUMAN STOEY [xiv. have a very different lot, those who are cast upon the earth with sick bodies and feeble minds, or are the victims of the direst sorrow and need, through no fault of their own ? Why should they suffer so much ? Why should things be so unequally distributed ? That would be an injustice, and God cannot be unjust, so He will give compensation, and lift and loose what we cannot.' " 1 EPH. iv. 7. Unto everyone of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Henri Perreyve writes : " We must indeed admire that flexibility of the Christian faith, which makes it accessible, even in the practice of perfection, to souls of very different kinds. Thus the same faith, the same worship, the same morality lead to heaven the soul of a profound philosopher like Thomas of Aquinas and the soul of a poor village child." ' EPH. iv. 15. May grow up into Him. In his " Apologia '' (ch. i.) speaking of Thomas Scott's writings, Newman says that for years he used " almost as proverbs what I considered to be the scope and issue of his doctrine, ' Holiness rather than peace, and growth the only evidence of life '." ST. MATT. in. 10. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees. "Such as I am," said Ruskin in " Fors Clavigera," "to my own amazement, I stand so far as I can discern alone in conviction, in hope, and in resolution, in the wilderness of this modern world. Bred in luxury, which I perceive to have been unjust to others, and destructive to myself; vacillating, foolish, and miserably failing in all my own conduct in life and blown about hopelessly by storms of passion I, a man clothed in soft raiment ; I, a reed shaken with the wind ; have yet this message to all men again entrusted to me. Behold the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Whatsoever tree bringeth not forth good fruit shall be hewn down and cast into the fire." Of Trinity Sunday F. D. Maurice wrote : " It is to me the most sacred day of the year, the one which seems to me most significant of universal blessings, and also 1 R. Nisbet Bain, " Hans Christian Andersen," pp. 347, 348. 2 " Lettres de Henri Perreyve k un Ami d'Enfance," p. 252. 224 xiv.] TRINITY SUNDAY which blends most by strange and numberless links with my own individual experience and inward history. The idea of the unity of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit, as the basis of all unity amongst men, as the groundwork of all human society and of all thought, as belonging to little children, and as the highest fruition of the saints in glory, has been haunting me for a longer time than I can easily look back to. It seems to blend with every book I read and to interpret it, to connect itself with all the sick and dying people about me ; to direct all my thoughts about my children, and more than all others together, to bring my vanished saint l to me or me to her." 2 1 His wife, Anne Barton. 2 " Life of F. D. Maurice," Vol. I, p. 414. 15 225 CHAPTER XV. SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY I. TO VI. CHAPTER XV. SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY (I. TO VI.). MIDSUMMER WEEKS. IN the glory of midsummer we enter on that procession of " Sundays after Trinity " which covers nearly half the Christian year. When the words of the first Epistle, " Beloved, let us love one another," l are read in our churches, England is in the height of June loveliness. " Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon, Sweet- William with his homely cottage smell, And stocks in fragrant blow ; Roses that down the alleys shine afar, And open, jasmine-muffled lattices, And groups under the dreaming garden-trees, And the full moon, and the white evening star." 2 EPISTLES. The most beautiful passages of St. John and St. Peter pro- vide the Epistles for these long bright Sundays. Our thoughts are directed to such words as these, " There is no fear in love ; but perfect love casteth out fear ; because fear hath torment " (1 John iv. 18). Charles Kingsley's eldest son wrote : " ' Perfect love casteth out all fear ' was the motto on which my father based his theory of bringing up his children ; and this theory he put in practice from their babyhood till when he left them as men and women. From this, and from the interest he took in all their pursuits, 1 Epistle for First Sunday after Trinity : i St. John IV. 7-21. 2 Matthew Arnold : " Thyrsis ". 229 THE CHBISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xv. their pleasures, trials, and even the petty details of their everyday life, there sprang up a ' friendship ' between father and children that increased in intensity and depth with years." George Eliot says, in " Silas Marner : " "A shadowy concep- tion of power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain from inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men who have always been pressed close by primitive wants, and to whom a life of hard toil has never been illuminated by any enthusiastic religious faith. To them pain and mishap present a far wider range of possi- bilities than gladness and enjoyment : their imagination is almost barren of the images that feed desire and hope, but is all overgrown by recollections that are a perpetual pasture to fear. ' Is there anything you can fancy that you would like to eat ? ' I once said to an old labouring man, who was in his last illness, and who had refused all the food his wife had offered him. ' No,' he answered, ' I've never been used to nothing but common victual, and I can't eat that.' Experience had bred no fancies in him that could raise the phantasm of appetite." We are told that St. Francis Xavier feared superstition because of its real evil it saps courage. He says that when he was arranging to go on a journey from Cape Comorin to Malacca, "many of my devoted friends tried to persuade me against going to such a dangerous land, and, seeing that they could not keep me back, they gave me a number of antidotes against poison. I thanked them for their love and goodwill. But I omitted to take the antidotes which with such love and fears, they gave me. I did not wish to load myself with fear." So in George Eliot's novel " Romola," the armourer Niccolo says bluntly, as he hands the coat of mail, " fine work of Maso of Brescia," to Tito Melema : " Take the coat. It's made to cheat sword or poniard or arrow. But, for my part, I would never put such a thing on. It's like carrying fear about with one." Romola says, in a later chapter, when she discovers that her husband is wearing the armour : " Dearest Tito, it will make you very wretched ". Again, there are these words from the Epistles : " We know 230 xv.] SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY I. TO VI. that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren" (1 John in. 14) . l Canon Ainger wrote in a letter of 1868 : " How pleasant it is to love people. I often get a strong flash of comfort out of these great words : ' Hereby we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren '." Mr. Perceval Landon, "The Times" correspondent with Sir Francis Younghusband's expedition to Lhasa, says in his standard book, " Lhasa " (Vol. II, p. 48) : " It would be unjust not to record in the strongest terms the great radical difference that exists between Lamaism at its best and Christianity at its worst. There has never been absent from the lowest profession of our faith a full recognition of the half-divine character of self-sacrifice for another. Of this Tibetans know nothing. The exact performance of their duties, the daily practice of conventional offices and continual obedience to their Lamaic superiors, is for them a means of escape from personal damnation in a form which is more terrible perhaps than any monk-conjured Inferno. For others they do not pro- fess to have even a passing thought. " Now this is a distinction which goes to the very root of the matter. The fact is rarely stated in so many words, but it is the truth that Christianity is daily j udged by one standard and by one standard only its altruism ; and this complete absence of carefulness for others, this insistent and fierce desire to save one's own soul, regardless of a brother's, is in itself something that makes foreign to one the best that Lamaism has to offer." Principal Rainy wrote : " The expenditure of life for Him is not always in one brilliant act of sacrifice, but far oftener in the glad surrender of life's hours successively until all the years are full. I have thought a hundred times of trying to preach on that standing text once, I believe, I did try, and was ashamed of myself afterwards ' Hereby perceive we the love, because He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren ' (1 John in. 16). We ought we ought to lay it down that is the principle for every Christian. I 1 Epistle for Second Sunday after Trinity : i John III. 13-24. 281 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xv. confess I have been again and again fairly paralysed when think- ing of preaching on that text. But many Christian lives have in their degree been honest sermons upon it." On the Third Sunday after Trinity the Epistle bids us " Be clothed with humility ". 1 Horace Bushnell visited Milan Cathedral in 1845. He wrote : " The little chapel of St. Charles Borromeo ... is octagonal ; the walls are covered with silk embroidered with gold. Surrounding it, as a kind of panelled cornice, is a repre- sentation, all wrought in solid silver, of the acts of St. Charles. In a long case of gold glazed with crystal, his bones lie clothed in a cloth of gold, only the bones of the face appearing. By him lies a crozier of gold and precious gems. I asked the sacristan if he carried that crozier when alive, to which he replied, ' No,' and I added, ' that would be non humilitas,' to which he assented by a good-natured smile." Humilitas was the motto left by St. Charles for the crest of the Borromean family. 2 Archbishop Leighton said in a letter to his friend Mr. Aird (1676) : " I think them the great heroes and excellent persons of the world that attain to high degrees of pure contemplation and divine love ; but next to those, them that, in aspiring to that and falling short of it, fall down into deep humility and self-contempt, and a real desire to be despised and trampled on by all the world. And I believe that they that sink lowest into the depth stand nearest to advancement to those other heights. For the great King who is the fountain of that honour hath given us this character of Himself, that He resists the proud and gives grace to the humble." 3 1 PETER v. 8, 9. Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. Whom resist steadfast in the faith. John Nicholson, the hero of Delhi, was the child of " earnest, upright, Bible-reading Protestants, of a type still common in the north of Ireland ". " One day, Mrs. Nicholson found her little three-year old son furiously flicking a knotted handkerchief at 1 Epistle for Third Sunday after Trinity, i Peter v. 5-11. 2 " Life of Horace Bushnell," p. 148. 3 " Life of Robert Leighton," by Rev. D. Butler, p. 503. 232 xv.] SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY I. TO VI. some invisible object. ' What are you doing John ? ' was her wondering question. ' Oh, mother dear,' he gravely answered, ' I'm trying to get a blow at the Devil. He is wanting to make me bad. If I could get him down, I'd kill him '." l On the Fourth Sunday the Epistle is Romans vm. 18-23, where we read of the glorious liberty of the children of God. "All liberty is not liberty," writes Henri Perreyve. "There are blessed chains which we must know how to wear lovingly, and which, when once they are broken, leave the soul in a fatal and desolating freedom. No, our mind is not made to think with- out control and without measure ; our heart is not made to love without limits here on earth. We must wait for our full freedom till that happy time comes when our will shall be firmly fixed upon goodness, without the fear of wandering from it ever again. " Until then, Lord, I give Thee back my liberty ; I entrust it to Thy care. Do Thou Thyself appoint its limits. Give me chains. I desire them, I accept them, I love them since they come from Thy hand. I wish to be Thy captive. I wish to be the bondman of Jesus Christ ego vinctus in Domino. That means that I shall be chained to goodness, to peace, to the bitter joys of sacrifice here below, but to the immortal hope of better days to come." : ROM. vm. 19-21. The creation itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption. " It was an ancient saying of the Persians, that the waters rush from the mountains and hurry forth into all the lands to find the Lord of the Earth ; and the flame of the fire, when it awakes, gazes no more upon the ground, but mounts heaven- ward to seek the Lord of Heaven ; and here and there the Earth has built great watch-towers of the mountains, and they lift their heads far into the sky, and gaze ever upward and around, to see if the Judge of the World comes not. Thus in Nature herself, without man, there lies a waiting and hoping, a looking and yearning, after an unknown something. Yes ; when above there, where the mountain lifts its head above all others, that it may be alone with the clouds and storms of heaven, the lonely 1 " Life of John Nicholson," by Captain Lionel J. Trotter, p. 5. a " Lettres de 1'Abb^ Perreyve," p. 385. 233 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xv. eagle looks forth into the grey dawn, to see if the day comes not ; when by the mountain torrent the brooding raven listens to hear if the chamois is returning from his nightly pasture in the valley ; and when the soon uprising sun calls out the spicy odours of the thousand flowers the Alpine flowers, with heaven's deep blue, and the blush of sunset on their leaves then there awake in Nature, and the soul of man can see and comprehend them, an expectation and a longing for a future revelation of God's majesty." From LONGFELLOW'S " Hyperion," VL Dostoevsky may have been thinking of Rom. vnr. 19-22 when he wrote a famous passage in " The Brothers Karamazov ". Father Zossima tells of his meeting with a peasant lad who loved nature. The monk and his companion, who were collecting for their house, spent a night on the bank of a great navigable river with some fishermen. " The lad had to hurry back next morning to pull a merchant's barge along the bank. I noticed him looking straight before him with clear and tender eyes. It was a bright, warm, still, July night, a cool mist rose from the broad river, we could hear the plash of a fish, the birds were still, all was hushed and beautiful, everything praying to God. Only we two were not sleeping, the lad and I, and we talked of the beauty of this world of God's and of the great mystery of it. Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so marvellously know their path ; though they have not intelli- gence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it themselves. I saw the dear lad's heart was moved. He told me that he loved the forest and the forest birds. He was a bird-catcher, knew the note of each of them, could call each bird. ' I know nothing better than to be in the forest,' said he, ' though all things are good.' " ' Truly/ I answered him, ' all things are good and fair, because all is truth. Look,' said I, ' at the horse, that great beast that is so near to man ; or the lowly, pensive ox, which feeds him and works for him ; look at their faces, what meek- ness, what devotion to man, who often beats them mercilessly. What gentleness, what confidence and what beauty ! It's touching to know that there's no sin in them, for all, all except man, are sinless, and Christ has been with them before us.' " ' Why," asked the boy, ' is Christ with them too ? ' 234 " xv.] SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY I. TO VI. " ' It cannot but be so,' said I, ' since the Word is for all. All creation and all creatures, every leaf is striving to the Word, singing glory to God, weeping to Christ, unconsciously accom- plishing this by the mystery of their sinless life. Yonder,' said I, ' in the forest wanders the dreadful bear, fierce and menacing, and yet innocent in it.' And I told him how once a bear came to a great saint who had taken refuge in a tiny cell in the wood. And the great saint pitied him, went up to him without fear and gave him a piece of bread. ' Go along,' said he, ' Christ be with you,' and the savage beast walked away meekly and obediently, doing no harm. And the lad was delighted that the bear had walked away without hurting the saint, and that Christ was with him too. ' Ah,' said he, ' how good that is, how good and beautiful is all God's work ! ' He sat musing softly and sweetly. I saw he understood. And he slept beside me a light and sinless sleep. May God bless youth ! And I prayed for him as I went to sleep. Lord, send peace and light to Thy people ! " l R. C. Trench wrote to his wife in 1832 : " I have had a long interview with Coleridge. . . . ' The old man eloquent ' has been suffering very much, and is very infirm waiting for the redemp- tion of the body, longing, as he told me, to be redeemed from the body of this death ; ' for in this we groan,' he added, with mournful earnestness." 2 We return to First Peter for the Epistle of the Fifth Sunday. 3 1 PETER in. 8. Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another. " The nobler a soul is," said Bacon, " the more objects of compassion it hath." Lord Morley calls these words " Bacon's divine saying ". 4 "Compassion," says Butler, " is a call, a demand of nature, to relieve the unhappy ; as hunger is a natural call for food." Henri Bergson has the following remarks on pity : 1 Mrs. Garnett's translation. 2 "Letters and Memorials of Archbishop Trench," Vol. I, pp. 123, 124. 3 Epistle for Fifth Sunday after Trinity, i Peter in. 8-15. 4 " Recollections," Vol. I, p. 42. 235 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xv. " Pity consists first of all in putting ourselves in thought in the place of others, and in taking part in their suffering. But if it were nothing more than this, as some have maintained, it would induce us to fly from the wretched rather than to bring them aid, for we have naturally a horror of suffering. It is pos- sible that this feeling of horror lies at the original base of pity, but a new element is very soon associated with it a longing to help our fellow-beings and to solace their suffering. Shall we say, with La Rochefoucauld, that this pretended sympathy is a calculated thing, ' a clever prevision of evils to come ' ? It may very possibly be true that fear has some part in that compassion which we feel for the misfortunes of others ; but these are only the lower forms of pity. True pity consists less in fleeing from suffering than in desiring it. It is a slight desire which we should hardly wish to be realised, and which we form in spite of our- selves, as if nature were committing some great injustice, and as if we must guard ourselves from all suspicion of complicity with her. The essence of pity is therefore a desire to abase ourselves, an aspiration to descend. That painful aspiration is not without its charm, because it raises us in our own esteem, and makes us feel ourselves superior to those material goods from which our thoughts for the moment have detached themselves. The grow- ing intensity of pity consists then in a qualitative progress, in a passage from disgust to fear, from fear to sympathy, and from sympathy itself to humility." l The Sixth Sunday opens with the words of Romans vi. 3. 2 ROM. vi. 3. Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death ? " It was not for nothing," writes the late Bishop Collins of Gibraltar, " that baptism was always administered on Easter Eve at first ; that to this day in many parts of the East the font is built in the shape of a grave and is laid open on Easter Eve, even when there is no baptism, that every Christian present may once more be taught to recognise that he is baptized into the death of Christ." 1 "Essai sur les Donne"es Immediate* de la Conscience," pp. 14, 15. 2 Epistle for the Sixth Sunday : Rom. vi. 3-11. 236 xv.] SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY I. TO VI. GOSPELS. All but the last of the Gospels for the first six Sundays after Trinity are taken from St. Luke. First we hear the story of the rich man and Lazarus. l "There is a well-known picture by Gustave Dore," writes Dr. G. H. Morrison, " which portrays this parable of the rich man and the beggar. We are shown the rich man in the midst of Oriental luxury, and at the foot of the marble steps the diseased Lazarus. So far the picture is worthy of the genius ; but Dore has introduced one other feature which shows that he has misread the Saviour's story. Over the beggar an Eastern slave is bending with a scourge of twigs in his uplifted hand. He has been bidden drive Lazarus away, for his misery is as a death's head at the feast. And Dore is wrong in introducing that, for our Lord does not hint that Dives was .disturbed he was not consciously and deliberately cruel ; he was only totally and hopelessly indifferent. What wrought the ruin of that pleasure-lover was not inhumanity so much as inattention. The attitude of innumerable people toward the great questions of the religious life is just the inattentive attitude of the rich man to Lazarus at his gate." 2 Ruskin wrote in November, 1853 ; " My next birthday is the keystone of my Arch of life my thirty-fifth and up to this time I cannot say that I have in any way ' taken up my cross ' or ' denied myself ' ; neither have I visited the poor nor fed them, but have spent my money and time on my own pleasure or instruction. I find I cannot be easy in doing this any more, for I feel that if I were to die at present, God might most j ustly say to me, ' Thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things and likewise Lazarus evil things '. I find myself always doing what I like, and that is certainly not the way to heaven." The second Gospel is the parable of the great supper. 3 " When I had been long vexed with this fear," [of being too late for salvation], says Bunyan, " and was scarce able to take 1 Gospel for First Sunday after Trinity : St. Luke XVI. 19-31. 2 "The Wings of the Morning," p. 174. 3 Gospel for Second Sunday after Trinity : St. Luke xiv. 16-24. 237 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xv. one step more, these words broke in upon my mind, Compel them to come in, that My hvuse may be filled ; and yet there is room. These words, but especially them, and yet there is roomy were sweet words to me ; for, truly I thought that by them I saw there was place enough in heaven for me ; and moreover that when the Lord Jesus did speak these words, He then did think of me ; and that He, knowing that the time would come that I should be afflicted with fear that there was no place left for me in His Bosom, did before speak this word, and leave it upon record, that I might find help thereby against this vile temptation. This I then verily believe. In the light and encouragement of this word I went a pretty while ; and the comfort was the more, when I thought that the Lord Jesus should think on me so long ago, and that He should speak these words on purpose for my sake." The third Gospel includes the parable of the lost sheep and the lost piece of money. 1 " To follow is somewhat, yet that may be done faintly, and afar off; but to follow through thick and thin, to follow hard and not to give over, never to give over till He overtake that is it." BISHOP LANCELOT ANDREWES. 2 Cromwell wrote to his daughter, Mrs. Ireton, on 25 October, 1646 : " Your friends at Ely are well. Your Sister Claypole is, I trust in mercy, exercised with some perplexed thoughts. She sees her own vanity and carnal mind ; bewailing it ; she seeks after (as I hope also) what will satisfy. And thus to be a seeker is to be of the best sect next to a finder ; and such an one shall every faithful humble seeker be at the end. Happy seeker, happy finder ! " The Sermon on the Mount supplies the next Gospel. 3 A few days before the close of Abraham Lincoln's life, somebody said to him that the defeated President of the Southern Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, ought certainly to be hanged. Lincoln answered quietly : " Judge not, that ye be not judged ". 1 Gospel for Third Sunday after Trinity : St. Luke XV. i-io. 8 " Seventeen Sermons on the Nativity," No. I. 8 Gospel for Fourth Sunday after Trinity : St. Luke VI. 36-42. 238 xv.] SUNDAYS AFTEK TEINITY I. TO VI. The story of the miraculous draught of fishes follows next in order. 1 Of the fishermen Apostles Izaak Walton says : " Of which twelve, we are sure He chose four that were simple fishermen, whom He inspired and sent to publish His blessed will to the Gentiles ; and inspired them also with a power to speak all languages, and by their powerful eloquence to beget faith in the unbelieving Jews ; and themselves to suffer for that Saviour whom their forefathers and they had crucified ; and, in their sufferings, to preach freedom from the incumbrances of the law, and a new way to everlasting life : this was the employment of these happy fishermen. Concerning which choice, some have made these observations. " First, That He never reproved these for their employment or calling, as He did scribes and the money-changers. And secondly, He found that the hearts of such men by nature were fitted for contemplation and quietness ; men of mild, and sweet, and peaceable spirits, as indeed most anglers are : these men our blessed Saviour, who is observed to love to plant grace in good natures, though indeed nothing be too hard for Him ; yet these men he chose to call from their irreprovable employment of fishing, and gave them grace to be His disciples, and to follow Him and do wonders. I say four of twelve. " And it is observable, that it was our Saviour's will, that these our four fisherman should have a priority of nomination in the catalogue of His twelve apostles, Matt. x. 2, Acts L 13 ; as namely, first, St. Peter, St. Andrew, St. James, and St. John, and then the rest in their order. " And it is yet more observable, that when our blessed Saviour went up into the mount, when He left the rest of His disciples and chose only three to bear Him company at His Transfiguration, that those three were all fishermen. And it is to be believed that all the other apostles, after they betook themselves to follow Christ, betook themselves to be fishermen too ; for it is certain that the greater number of them were found together fishing by Jesus after His Resurrection, as it is recorded in the 21st chapter of St. John's Gospel verse 3 and 4." l 1 Gospel for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity : St. Luke v. i-n. a " Compleat Angler." 239 THE CHEISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xv. ST. LUKE v. 1. He stood by the lake. Mr. Balfour, in " The Foundations of Belief," pictures humanity as an endless procession winding along the borders of a sunlit lake. " Towards each individual there will shine along the surface a moving lane of splendour where the ripples catch and deflect the light in his direction ; while on either hand the waters, which to his neighbour's eyes are brilliant in the sun, for him lie dull and undistinguished. So may all possess a like en- joyment of loveliness. So do all owe it to one unchanging Source." Jesus, Source of beauty, Saviour of humanity, " stood by the lake ". From the Sermon on the Mount again comes the Sixth Gospel. 1 MATT. v. 22. I say unto you, That ivhosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. Ruskin bids us distinguish controversy from rebuke. " The assertion of truth is to be always gentle : the chastisement of wilful falsehood may be very much the contrary indeed. Christ's Sermon on the Mount is full of polemic theology, but very gentle : ' Ye have heard that it hath been said but / say unto you ' ; ' And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others ? ' and the like." LESSONS. We give some illustrations for the Lessons for these six Sun- days, which are chosen from Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1 and 2 Samuel. JOSH, in. 2 Jordan divided. " In the mosaics of the earliest churches of Rome and Ravenna," says Dean Stanley, " before Christian and pagan art were yet divided, the Jordan appears as a river-god pouring his streams out of his urn. The first Christian Emperor had always hoped to receive his long-deferred baptism in the Jordan up to the moment when the hand of death struck him at Nicomedia. . . . Protestants, as well as Greeks and Latins, have delighted 1 Gospel for Sixth Sunday after Trinity : St. Matthew v. 20-26. 1 First Sunday after Trinity. 240 xv.J SUNDAYS AFTEK TKINITY I. TO VI. to carry off its waters for the same sacred purpose to the re- motest regions of the West." JOSH. in. and iv. The carrying of the arJc. Stephen Graham compares the transport of the Ark to the carrying of sacred ikons into a Russian village. " The military band played an unearthly music whilst the coffin containing the relics changed bearers, and there was a great rush of mou- jiks to lend a hand to the carrying. At length I saw it rise into view above the heads of the crowd. It was an ancient case, covered with faded red cloth, itself as ancient as the Ikon, I should say, and they bore it on long wooden poles, as the Ark of the Covenant was carried in the hosts of the Israelites, and literally hundreds of peasant men and women pressed in and were able to give a hand to the triumphal carrying. . . . The Ikon moved forward, and the crowd underneath bore it gladly, as if they would like to take it at a run." l JOSH. v. 15. And the captain of the Lord's host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot, for the place where- on thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so. Dean Stanley wrote in 1857 a letter to Sir George Grove on the Oriental character of the Russian people. He mentioned, among other things, that on the head of the red staircase of the Kremlin, at the entrance of the Coronation Hall, there had been till very recently a picture of Joshua taking off his shoes before the Angel, to indicate that the nobles were there to take off their shoes before entering the presence of the Tsar. " The same pic- ture, too, for the same reason doubtless, often appeal's at the en- trance of churches, and even now the habit of wearing and taking off caloshes at the doors of houses is very common in the upper classes, far beyond what is required by the weather." 2 JOSH. vi. 4, 5. And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of rams' horns. . . . And it shall come to pass that when they make a long blast with the ram's horn, and when ye hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout ; and the wall of the city shall fall down flat. The wonders of the trumpet horn are entwined with legend 1 " Undiscovered Russia," p. 226. 2 " Dean Stanley's Letters and Verses," p. 281. 16 241 THE CHRISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STORY [xv. and poetry. In " The Faerie Queen " Arthur's Squire blows his horn as he approaches the closed gates of the giant's castle, where the Red Cross knight lies in prison. " Then tooke that Squire an home of bugle small Which hong adowne his side in twisted gold, And tassels gay. Wyde wonders over all Of that same homes great vertues weren told Which had approved been in uses manifold. Was never wight, that heard that shrilling sound, But trembling feare did feele in every vaine ; Three miles it might be easie heard around, And Ecchoes three answered it selfe againe ; No false enchantment, nor deceitful traine Might once abide the terror of that blast, But presently was voide and wholly vaine ; No gate so strong, no locke so firme and fast But with that percing noise flew open quite, or brast." x At the blast of the bugle every door of the castle flies open. The horn of Roland is famous in the annals of mediaeval chivalry. Scott sings in " Rob Roy " : " O for the voice of that wild horn On Fontarabian echoes borne, The dying hero's call." The magic horn of the fairies is the little sister of the mighty ram's horn trumpets at whose blast the walls of Jericho fell dowa " O sweet and far from cliff and scar The horns of Elfland faintly blowing." 2 JOSH. xxiv. 27. 3 This stone . . . hath heard. Dr. Parker has this commentary in his sermon on " Listening Stones " : " When did any farmer ever foresee a harvest that would be worth the sickle ? ' There will be no com this year ; such and 1 Burst. Tennyson's " Princess ". J First Sunday after Trinity. 242 xv.] SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITYI. TO VI. such was the condition of affairs in March, such and such were the conditions climatic in April, that there will be no harvest this year : there is no prospect of our having to wield the scythe or the sickle ; there is a poor look-out this year '. The stones heard it, and the soil registered it, and lo, August was aflame with the gifts of God. The stars were listening to what we said ; good or bad. They are a long way off, they are quite near at hand. Why, the sun is within whisper-reach, if we knew things as they really are ; and all the stars coming out, trooping forth, to bear witness for us or against us to God." JUDGES v. 1 " In the greatest war-song of any age or nation," says R. H. Hutton, "the exultation of Deborah over Sisera's complete defeat, and subsequent assassination by the hand of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite no doubt, personal revenge might seem to blaze high above Deborah's faith in her nation and her God, as the kindling or exciting spiritual principle which brings the scene in such marvellous vividness before her eyes. But though this feeling may add perhaps some of the fire to the latter part of the poem, it is clear that her faith in the national unity, and God as the source of the national unity, was the great binding thought of the whole. The song dwells, first, with the most intense bitterness on the decay of patriotism in the tribes that did not combine against the common foe. . . . And the transition by which she passes to her fierce exultation over Sisera's terrible fate shows distinctly what was the main thought in her mind." JUDGES v. 6. The travellers walked through by ways. The famous old roadway between Massachusetts and Con- necticut was known in the early history of the New England colonies as " the Bay path ' '. Dr. Holland says of it : " It was a path marked by trees a portion of the distance and by slight clearings of brush and thicket for the remainder. No stream was bridged, no hill graded, and no marsh drained. The path led through woods which bore the marks of centuries, over barren hills that had been licked by the Indian's bounds of fire, and along the banks of streams that the seine had never dragged. ... It is wonderful what a powerful interest was attached to the Bay path. That rough thread of soil, chopped 1 Second Sunday after Trinity. 243 THE CHEISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STOEY [xv. by the blades of a hundred streams, was the one way left open, through which the sweet tide of sympathy might flow. Every rod had been prayed over by friends on the journey and friends at home. If every traveller had raised his Ebenezer as the morning dawned upon his trusting sleep, the monuments would have risen and stood like milestones ". Hundreds of families toiled along that road to new homes in the wilderness. 1 JUDGES v. 6. The highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through byways. "The physiognomy of a deserted highway," says Thomas Hardy, " expresses solitude to a degree that is not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a tomb-like stillness more emphatic than that of glades and pools. The contrast of what is with what might be, probably accounts for this. " ! JUDGES v. 16. Why abodest thou among the sheep/olds, to hear the bleating of the flocks ? The " Spectator," for 26 December, 1914, quoted the follow- ing letter from a young shepherd who wished to join the Army : "'My master wont to know if i ham obliged to join your Army has he hav no one to put to look after the sheep. Please rite back to me and say yes, and then I will go up to Worcester, and then it will save all bother for your obedient servant ' ; and there is the postscript : ' Please mind wot you put in the letter so that I can show it to the master '." "The spirit of this Worcester lad," wrote the "Spectator," "is admirable. He evidently feels like every true shepherd the call of the sheep, but the call of his country is more to him. And what a picture we get of ' the master ' not a tyrant, we believe, as a hasty view makes him seem, but rather a good master, to be humoured if possible. It is the song of Deborah in English homespun : ' Why abodest thou among the sheepfolds, to hear the bleatings of the flocks ? For the divisions of Reuben there were great searchings of heart '. If the Recruiting Committee do not get that shepherd boy away from the sheepfold and give him the chance he wants, the chance of fighting for his country, they will have failed even if they get a million other recruits. 1 " The Huguenots in the Nipanuck Country," by George F. Daniels, P- 55- 2 "The Woodlanders," p. i. 244 xv.l SUNDAYS AFTEK TEINITY I. TO. VI. But of course they will not fail. The fact that they have allowed the letter to be made public shows they understand." 1 SAM. n. to v. 27 ; 1 SAM. in. 1 In chapter L. of " Vanity Fair " Thackeray tells us how Amelia decided, after a struggle, to give up her only son to be brought up by his rich grandfather, Mr. Osborne, in Russell Square. ' That night Amelia made the boy read the story of Samuel to her, and how Hannah, his mother, having weaned him, brought him to Eli the High Priest to minister before the Lord. And he read the song of gratitude which Hannah sang ; and which says Who it is who maketh poor and maketh rich, and bringeth low and exalteth how the poor shall be raised up out of the dust, and how, in his own might, no man shall be strong. Then we read how Samuel's mother made him a little coat, and brought it to him from year to year when she came up to offer the yearly sacrifice. And then, in her sweet, simple way, George's mother made commentaries to the boy upon this affecting story. How Hannah, though she loved her son so much, yet gave him up because of her vow. And how she must always have thought of him as she sat at home, far away, making the little coat ; and Samuel, she was sure, never forgot his mother ; and how happy she must have been as the time came (and the years pass away very quick) when she should see her boy, and how good and wise he had grown. This little sermon she spoke with a gentle, solemn voice, and dry eyes, until she came to the account of their meeting then the discourse broke off suddenly, the tender heart overflowed, and taking the boy to her breast, she rocked him in her arms, and wept silently over him in a sainted agony of tears." 1 SAM. in. 10. " The night is dark. No light Within the veil appeareth. Vain shadows cheat the sight : ' Speak, Ix>rd : Thy servant heareth '. 1 Third Sunday after Trinity. 245 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xv. Day breaks. Against the sky The soft pale mist upreareth Bright forms which fade and die : * Speak, Lord : Thy servant heareth '. Noon hours. The weary soul Nor past, nor future cheereth ; Toil failed to win the whole : ' Speak, Lord : Thy servant heareth '. The evening closes. Late Calm comes, no more he feareth Who now can rest and wait : * Speak, Lord : Thy servant heareth '. " B. F. WESTCOTT. 1 1 SAM. in. 20. And all Israel from Dan even to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established to be a prophet of the Lord. The honour of Samuel was revived, as Gibbon tells us, at Constantinople in the reign of Arcadius. " His ashes, deposited in a golden vase and covered with a silken veil, were delivered by the bishops into each other's hands. The relics of Samuel were received by the people with the same joy and reverence which they would have shown to the living prophet ; the high- ways, from Palestine to the gates of Constantinople, were filled with an uninterrupted procession ; and the Emperor Arcadius himself, at the head of the most illustrious members of the clergy and senate, advanced to meet his extraordinary guest, who had always deserved and claimed the homage of kings". 2 1. SAM. iv. 13, 15. And when he came, lo, Eli sat upon a seat by the wayside watching. . . . Now Eli icas ninety and eight years old ; and his eyes were dim, that he could not see. The sudden shock of long-awaited tidings, whether of sorrow or joy, has often proved fatal to aged persons. As a parallel to the case of Eli, we may take that of the Genoese Admiral, Prince Andrea d'Oria, who died on the 25th of November, 1560, a few 1 " Life of Bishop Westcott," Vol. I, p. 134. a "Decline and Fall " (Prof. Bur^s edition), Vol. Ill, p. 209. 246 xv.] SUNDAYS AFTER TKINITY I. TO VL days before reaching his ninety-fourth year. His adopted son and heir, the Admiral Giovandrea, led in that autumn the D'Orian galleys to battle against the infidel. " Of this expedi- tion," says a historian of Genoa, " there is little to be told, ex- cept disaster upon disaster. The galleys proved unseaworthy, men were waiting to man them ; at length Giovandrea D'Oria and his Spanish ally, the Duke of Medina Coeli, were pursued almost to the death by the Turks. The former managed to save himself with the loss of all his galleys on the island of Gerbe. Nevertheless the evil news soon spread that Giovandrea was himself no more ; and to old Andrea it was reported that the pride and hope of his life . . . had been defeated and per- haps slain. There was none to tell him that he was saved. For three long weary days the old veteran D'Oria sat huddled in his arm-chair, with his withered face sunk on his breast, his eyes closed ; men scarce knew that life was still in him, save by a faint heaving of the chest which told that the last spark had not fled. At length there arrived a message with the glad tidings of Giovandrea's escape, but none durst venture to arouse the dying man until his trusted admiral, Antonio Piscina, whispered in his ear, 'A messenger'. Prince Andrea then raised his hollow eyes and murmured, ' What news ? ' ' By the grace of God, good, 1 was the reply, and therewith he placed the letter in the old man's hands ; but his eyes could not now de- cipher the writing, so Piscina ventured to take it from him, break open the seal and read aloud of Giovandrea's safety. " With a bound the old prince raised his tottering frame from his chair to the amazement of those who stood around, and shouted ' Thanks be to God ! ' and with this final effort of exhausted nature he sank back fainting into his chair. For three days he lingered on, unable to rise, unable to eat, and unable to say aught but an incoherent wish that he might be spared to em- brace his beloved adopted son once again." l RUTH i. 16. J Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore visited Pales- tine for the second time in 1838-39. It was a dangerous season politically, for there were rumours that the Sultan was about to make an effort to recover Syria from Mehemet All 1 " Genoa," by J. Theodore Bent, pp. 301, 302. 2 Fourth Sunday after Trinity. 247 THE CHKISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xv. by force of arms. Plague had broken out in Palestine and the gates of Jerusalem were said to be closed. Sir Moses was warned also of the presence of brigands and of the perils of the Syrian heat. He suggested to his wife that he should proceed alone. " This I peremptorily resisted : " wrote Lady Monte- fiore ; " and the expression of Ruth furnished my heart at the moment with the language it most desired to use : ' Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee ; for whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge'." The devoted couple went and returned in safety. 1 1 SAM. xvi. 23. 2 And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp and played with his hand; so Saul was refreshed and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him. " . . . I looked up to know If the best I could do had brought solace : he spoke not, but slow Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it with care Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow : thro' my hair The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my head, with kind power All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do a flower. Thus held he me there with his great eyes that scrutinised mine And oh, all my heart how it loved him ! but where was the sign? I yearned ' Could I help thee, my father, inventing a bliss, I would add, to that life of the past, both the future and this ; I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages hence, As this moment, had love but the warrant, love's heart to dispense ! ' ' R. BROWNING : " SAUL ". 1 SAM. xvi. and XVIL De Quincey compared the story of David with that of Joan of Arc. " What is to be thought of her ? What is to be 248 *&* 1 " Life of Sir Moses Montefiore," by Lucien Wolf, p. 70. 2 Fifth Sunday after Trinity. xv.] SUNDAYS AFTEK TKINITY I. TO VI. thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that like the Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Judea rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings ? The Hebrew boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an act, by a victorious act, such as no man could deny. But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no pretender ; but so they did to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw them from a station of good-will, both were found true and loyal to any promises involved in their first acts. Enemies it was that made the difference between their subsequent fortunes. The boy rose to a splendour and a noonday prosperity, both personal and public, that rang through the records of his people, and became a by-word among his posterity for a thousand years, until the sceptre was departing from Judah. The poor, forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself from that cup of rest which she had secured for France. She never sang together with the songs that rose in her native Domremy as echoes to the de- parting steps of invaders. She mingled not in the festal dances at Vaucouleurs which celebrated in rapture the redemption of France. No ! for her voice was then silent ; no ! for her feet were dust. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl ! whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of truth and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest pledges for thy truth, that never once no, not for a moment of weakness didst thou revel in the vision of coronets and honour from man." 1 SAM. xvi. 14. But the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul. (With 1 SAM. xxvm. 15. God is departed from me and answer eth me no more.) Shakespeare tells us that on the night before Mark Antony's last battle the soldiers before the palace at Alexandria heard a strange music. Fourth Soldier. Peace ! what noise ? First Soldier. List, list ! Second Soldier. Hark ! 249 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xv. First Soldier. Music in the air. Third Soldier. Under the earth. Fourth Soldier. It signs 1 well, does it not? Third Soldier. No. First Soldier. Peace, I say ! What should this mean ? Second Soldier. 'Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony loved, now leaves him. 2 1 SAM. xvn. 55. Abner, the captain of the host. (With 2 SAM. in. 33. And the king lamented over Abner and said, Died Abner as a fool dieth /) The name of Abner recalls an incident in the life of Admiral Robert Blake. During the Civil Wars his younger brother, Captain Samuel Blake, rushed out alone to attack a Royalist officer who was levying men near Bridge water for the King. The array captain was attended by an armed party, and Samuel Blake was cut down. When Robert Blake heard the news, " he made the laconic and superficially heartless comment, ' Sam had no business there,' and went stoically about his duty. When the work was done, he returned to his quarters, and then the natural man let his grief have its way. When his door was shut his servant heard him break into weeping, exclaiming, ' Died Abner as a fool dieth ? '" 3 1 SAM. xvn. 37. The Lord that delivered me ... out of the paw of the bear. Dean Church tells us in his " Life of Anselm " that the Prior of Bee had a friend called Osbern who died early. Anselm watched over him in his last illness with a mother's tenderness, and when Osbern was dying, gave him a last charge. He bade him, speaking as friend to friend, to make known after his death, if it were possible, what had become of him. He promised and passed away. During the funeral Anselm sat apart in a corner of the church to weep and pray for his friend ; he fell asleep from weariness and sorrow, and had a dream. He saw certain very revered persons enter the room where Osbern had died, and sit round for judgment ; and while he was wondering what the doom 1 Is it a good omen ? a " Antony and Cleopatra," Act IV, sc. 3. 3 " Admiral Blake," by David Hannay, p. 1 5. 250 xv.] SUNDAYS AFTEK TEINITY I. TO VI. would be, Osbern himself appeared, like a man just recovering from illness, or pale with loss of blood. Three times, he said, had the old serpent risen up against him, but three times he fell backwards, and " the Bearward of the Lord (Ursarius Domini) had delivered him". Then Anselm awoke, and believed that Osbern's sins were pardoned, and that God's angel's had kept off his foes, " as the bear wards keep off the bears ". 1 SAM. xvn. 57. And as David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, Abner took him and brought him before Saul, with the head of the Philistine in his hand. (With xvin. 7. And the women answered one another as they played and said, Saul hath slain his thousands and David his ten thousands.) The passing gleam of favour shown by Saul towards David was followed by a bitter jealousy. The conqueror of Goliath was in the position described by Ventidius in " Antony and Cleo- patra," a position full of danger at a despotic Oriental court. Ventidius. O Silius, Silius, I have done enough : a lower place, note well, May make too great an act ; for learn this, Silius, Better to leave undone than by our deed Acquire too high a fame when him we serve's away. Who does i' the wars more than his captain can Becomes his captain's captain : and ambition, The soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss Than gain which darkens him. I could do more to do Antonius good, But 'twould offend him ; and in his offence Should my performance perish. 1 2 SAM. i. 24. 2 Ruskin quotes this verse in " The Story of Arachne," where he is describing the ideal home of the working man and his wife. Of the wives he says : " Pretty dressing in the afternoon means that they are to have an afternoon or an evening, at least, for the friends ; and that they are to have the pride and pleasure of looking as nice then for their lovers and husbands as rich girls 1 Act III, sc. i. * Sixth Sunday after Trinity. 251 THE CHEISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STOEY [xv. like to look for theirs ; each having indeed such dress as is suited for their rank in life, so that for kings now, no less than in old times, it may be one of the praises in their epitaph, that they clothed the daughters of their people in scarlet, with other de- lights, and put on ornaments of gold upon their apparel." 2 SAM. xii. 23. In David's Elegy on Saul and Jonathan some commentators have been disturbed by the absence of the name of God. Principal Sir G. A. Smith, in a sermon on this passage, 1 made the following reply : " The Lord who knew the worth and sorrows of the men there celebrated, was surely not jealous that His Name was not linked with theirs. He was not less magnanimous than the singer, and He took these verses out of the old ballad book, and set them here as a proof of the response in men's hearts to the calling of His Spirit." 1 2 SAM. xn. 23. / shall go to him, but he shall not return to me. William Fry, son of Elizabeth Fry, was stricken down in mid-life during an epidemic of scarlet fever. His little daughter Juliana was the first victim. On the day of the child's funeral, the father asked to have his door opened that he might see the coffin pass, and as it did so, he turned to his nurse and exclaimed, " I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me ". He gradu- ally sank, and with a bright smile exclaiming " God is so good," passed away. 1 Preached at Emperor's Gate Presbyterian Church, Kensington, 30 June, 1912. 252 CHAPTER XVI. SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY VII. TO XV. CHAPTER XVI. SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY VII. TO XV. HOLIDAYS AND HARVEST-TIME. " THOU openest Thine hand ; they are filled with good." The miracle of the feeding of the multitude x ushers in a restful period of the Church's year, a time when the modern world takes holiday ; when religious life expresses itself in open-air services and in mission meetings on the beach. The year glides onward like the river Oise in R. L. Stevenson's " Inland Voyage ". " In our earlier adventures," wrote the youthful traveller, " there was generally something to do, and that quickened us. Even the showers of rain had a revivifying effect, and shook up the brain from torpor. But now, when the river no longer ran in a proper sense, only glided seaward with an even, out-right, but imperceptible speed, and when the sky smiled upon us day by day without variety, we began to slip into that golden doze of the mind which follows upon much exercise in the open air." Epistles and Gospels of these Sundays have individual out- lines. One is marked, perhaps, in Prayer Book or journal : " Riffelalp, overlooking Zermatt. Chaplain preached from the Gospel ". Another : " Morning service at Miirren. Bishop spoke on ' the Rock that followed them '." "A line for a day," was Minor Canon Crisparkle's notion of diary-keeping, and on our best holidays, in the words of R. L. S., " the great wheels of intelligence turn idly in the head ". The wind of the Matterhorn or the Jungfrau will breathe, to our last hour, through some of these holiday Scriptures. Not less dear are the passages heard in village or seaside churches at home. " Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together " should be the traveller's watchword. " The river of God is full of water." 1 Seventh Sunday after Trinity. 255 THE CHEISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOKY [xvi. EPISTLES. The Epistles of St. Paul are in continual use during these summer weeks. ROM. vi. 19-23, 1 is a passage much noted in literature On the words " Your fruit unto holiness," we may quote the remark of Lord Morley : " By holiness, do we not mean some- thing different from virtue ? It is not the same as duty ; still less is it the same as a religious belief. It is a name for an inner grace of nature, an instinct of the soul, by which, though knowing of earthly appetites and worldly passions, the spirit, purifying itself of these, and independent of reason, argument, and the struggles of the will, dwells in patient and confident communion with the seen and the unseen Good." ROM. vi. 23. The wages of sin is death. We recall the words of Carlyle in " The French Revolu- tion " : " For the present, however, consider Longchamp ; now when Lent is ending, and the glory of Paris and France has gone forth as in annual wont. Not to assist at Tenebris masses, but to sun itself and show itself, and salute the Young Spring. Mani- fold, bright tinted, glittering with gold ; all through the Bois de Boulogne, in long-drawn, variegated rows ; like long-drawn living flower-borders, tulips, dahlias, lilies of the valley ; all in their moving flower-pots (of new-gilt carriages) ; pleasure of the eye and the pride of life. So rolls and dances the Procession : steady, of firm assurance, as if it rolled on adamant and the foundations of the world ; not on mere heraldic parchment under which smoulders a lake of fire. Dance on, ye foolish ones ; ye sought not wisdom, neither have ye found it. Ye and your fathers have sown the wind, ye shall reap the whirlwind. Was it not, from of old, written : The wages of sin is death ? " In the Epistle for the Eighth Sunday (ROM. vm. 12-17) we have the words " Heirs of God ". In the Epistle for the Ninth Sunday, 2 these words occur : Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall. 1 Seventh Sunday after Trinity. 2 1 Cor. x. 1-13. 256 xvi.] SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY VII. TO XV. " While there is life there is hope and there is fear," writes Mozley. " The most inveterate habits of vice still leave a power of self-recovery in the man, if he will but exert it ; the most confirmed habits of virtue still leave the liability to a fall." 1 COR. xv. 9. 1 Compare the closing sentences of Matthew Arnold's essay on " St. Paul and Protestantism " : "A theology, a scientific appreciation of the facts of religion, is wanted for religion ; but a theology which is a true theology, not a false. Both these influences will work for Paul's re-emergence. The doctrine of Paul will arise out of the tomb where for centuries it has lain buried ; it will edify the Church of the future. It will have the consent of happier generations, the applause of less superstitious ages. All will be too little to pay half the debt which the Church of God owes to this ' least of the Apostles, who was not fit to be called an Apostle, because he persecuted the Church of God '." 1 COB. xv. 10. During his last hours, John Knox woke from a slumber sighing, and told his friends that he had just been tempted to believe he had " merited heaven and eternal blessed- ness, by the faithful discharge of my ministry. But blessed be God who has enabled me to beat down and quench the fiery dart, by suggesting to me such passages of Scripture as these : ' What hast thou that thou hast not received ? By the grace of God I am what I am. Not I but the grace of God in me.' " 2 COR. in. 7. 8 . . . The children of Israel could not stead- fastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance. Bishop Bury, in " Russian Life To-day," describes a scene in a church after the Liturgy was over and the people had been dismissed : " The priest told me four old men had asked to have a few special prayers and a reading from the Gospels, and I stayed to share it. The prayers were said, petition and response, by all five standing before the screen, after which the four old men, with rough and rugged faces, shaggy hair and wide, flowing beards, closed up together, and as they stood back to back, the 1 Epistle for Eleventh Sunday after Trinity : i Cor. xv. i-ii. 3 Epistle for Twelfth Sunday after Trinity : 2 Cor. III. 4-9. 17 257 THE CHRISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STOKY [xvi. priest placed the beautifully bound copy of the Gospels upon their heads and began to read. The rough faces seemed at once to change their whole expression : their blue eyes sparkled, and there appeared that light upon every countenance which ' never was on sea or land,' or anywhere else except upon the face of one who is in communion with God. My thoughts went back to the story of Moses as he came down from Sinai, and veiled his face as he spoke to the people, lest they should find there that which they could neither bear to see or understand." GAL. v. 21. l Envyings. Spenser gives a terrible picture of " malicious Envie," who rides " upon a ravenous wolfe," and chews " betweene his cankred teeth a venomous tode ". His clothing is " a kirtle of discoloured say . . . painted full of eyes," and a snake lies in his bosom. " He hated all good workes and vertuous deeds, And him no lesse, that any like did use, And who with gracious bread the hungry feeds, His alms for want of faith he doth accuse ; So every good to bad he doth abuse." GAL. vi. 14. 2 But God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the first Canto of " The Faerie Queen," Spenser thus describes the badge of his " gentle knight " : " But on his brest a bloudie Crosse he bore, The deare remembrance of his dying Lord, For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore, And dead as living ever him ador'd : Upon his shield the like was also scor'd, For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had : Right faithfull true he was in deede and word, But of his cheere did seem too solemne sad ; Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad." 1 Epistle for Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity : Gal. v. 16-24. J Epistle for Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity : Gal. vi. 1 1-18. xvi.] SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY VII. TO XV. When the Knight Bayard received his mortal wound from an arquebus at Novara in 1524, he raised the hilt of his sword in the sign of the Cross, and cried aloud, " Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy great mercy ". He refused to be taken away, saying that he had never turned his back on the enemy, and his steward and squire lifted him from his horse, and placed him with his back to a tree, still facing the foe with a brave countenance, and thus he died. The Knight without fear and without reproach was buried in the Church of Notre Dame at Grenoble. l GOSPELS. The Gospel for the Seventh Sunday is St. Mark's narrative of the feeding of the four thousand. "The multiplication of readers," says Victor Hugo, "is the multiplication of loaves. On the day when Christ created that symbol, He caught a glimpse of printing. His miracle is this marvel. Here is a book ; with it I will feed five thousand souls, a hundred thousand souls, a million souls all humanity. In the action of Christ bringing forth the loaves, there is Gutenberg bringing forth books. One sower heralds the other." The Gospel for the Eighth Sunday is from the Sermon on the Mount. 2 For verse 16, Ye shall know them by their fruits, Montaigne's words are in place : " If the raie of Divinity did in any sort touch us," writes Montaigne, " it would everie where appeare : Not only our words, but our actions, would beare some shew and lustre of it. Whatsoever should proceed from us, might be scene inlightned with this noble and matchlesse brightnes. . . . And well might a man say: "Are they so just, so charitable and so good? Then must they be Christians." 3 Dora Greenwell says : " The tree is known by its fruits ; most truly so but it depends for the maintenance of those fruits, yea, even for its own existence, upon its root in the soil beneath. The Christian life is judged of (and this with the strictest propriety) by that part of it which is seen, but it 1 " The Story of Bayard," by Christopher Hare. 3 St. Matt. vn. 15-21. 3 Book II, Florio's translation. 259 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xvi. depends upon the part of it which is unseen for the hold it takes and keeps upon God." The Gospel for the Tenth Sunday includes the mournful passage of our Lord's weeping over Jerusalem. 1 ST. LUKE xix. 41. He saw the city and wept over it. This was the text of the last sermon Kingsley preached. He closed with the words, " Let us say in utter faith, Come as Thou seesi best but in whatsoever way Thou contest even so come, Lord Jesus." As soon as the Abbey service was over, he came home much exhausted, and went straight up to his wife's room. " And now my work here is done, thank God ! . . . and I finished with your favourite text." The Gospel for the Eleventh Sunday includes the prayer which for nearly two thousand years has been rising from peni- tent human souls " God be merciful to me a sinner ". 2 Bishop Daniel Wilson said : " When I look back on my life, I see so much sin, imperfection and corruption in every thought, word, and action, that my only hope of salvation is in coming simply to the Saviour as the poor publican did, with ' God be merciful to me a sinner ' ". 3 Principal Rainy, leader of the United Free Church of Scotland, said : " For myself, when I come to die, I think it will be with this prayer in my heart, ' God be merciful to me a sinner'". Brother Elias, the successor of St. Francis as head of the Order, was deposed from his high estate. He died in 1253 in enmity to the Order, but reconciled to the Church. At his last communion he asked to hear the penitential psalms, and after hearing them, exclaimed, " God have mercy upon me, for I am a sinner ". On his way to Sweden the celebrated scholar Grotius was overtaken by mortal sickness. On his death-bed a clergyman reminded him of his sins on the one hand, and on the other, not of his eminent services and world-wide reputation, but of the grace of God in Christ Jesus, with a reference to the publican (Luke xvni. 13). " I am that publican," replied Grotius, and then expired. iSt. Luke xix. 41-47. a St. Luke xvm. 9-14. - 3 Josiah Bateman, " Life of Daniel Wilson," Vol. I, p. 229. 260 xvi.] SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY VII. TO XV. Archbishop Ussher often confessed that he hoped to die with the language of the publican in his mouth. His wish was fulfilled ; for his last words were, " God be merciful to me a sinner ". It is related of Bishop Thomas Wilson, of Sodor and Man, that a short time before his death, whilst he was coming down from his bedchamber, a crowd of poor people were assembled in the hall waiting to receive his benediction and his alms, when he was overheard by them uttering the fallowing ejaculation, "God be merciful to me a sinner, a vile sinner, a miserable sinner ". George Eliot pictures an octogenarian Pharisee in Mrs. Patten, one of the parishioners of the Rev. Amos Barton, in " Scenes of Clerical Life ". " When Mr. Barton comes to see me," says the old lady to her tea-table companions, " he talks about nothing but my sins and my need o' marcy. Now, Mr. Hackit, I've never been a sinner. From the first beginning, when I went into service, I al'ys did my duty by my employers. I was a good wife as any's in the country never aggravated my husband. The cheese- factor used to say my cheese was al'ys to be depended on. I've known women, as their cheeses swelled a shame to be seen, when their husbands had counted on the cheese-money to make up their rent ; and yet they'd three gowns to my one. If I'm not to be saved, I know a many as are in a bad way." The " Ephphatha " passage (St. Mark vn. 31-37) is the Gospel next in order. 1 Bishop G. H. Wilkinson wrote to a friend in 1863 : " At the time when the body is worn, and faith weak, all seems commonplace and full of failure. We look back and say from our hearts, ' he hath done all things well '. I often think of the foreign cathedrals one used to see. They are so sur- rounded by little dirty houses and shops that the grandeur of the building is quite lost, but go out of the town and stand on the calm hilltop and look down upon the whole scene ; the old Cathedral rises in all its fair proportions and the little dirty buildings are scarcely visible, or if seen at all, only help to throw out the old Gothic pile. So is it with our life, when 1 Twelfth Sunday after Trinity. 261 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xvi. from the quiet of a still hour we look down upon its varied scenes." The parable of the Good Samaritan is read on the Thirteenth Sunday. 1 Dora Greenwell had it in mind in these lines from her poem " Expectans Expectavi " : " Thou gavest unto me No goodly gift, no pearl of price untold, No signet-ring, no ruby shut in gold, No chain around my neck to wear for pride, For love no token in my breast to hide ; Yea ! these, perchance, from out my careless hold Had slipped, perchance some robber shrewd and bold Had snatch'd them from me ! so Thou didst provide For me, my Master kind from day to day ; And in this world, Thine Inn, Thou badst me stay, And saidst, ' What Thou spendest, I will pay '." Mr. Justice Talfourd tells the following story of one of William Hazlitt's lectures : " He was enumerating the humanities which endeared Dr. Johnson to his mind ; and at the close of an agreeable catalogue mentioned, as last and noblest, ' his carrying the poor victim of disease and dissipation on his back through Fleet Street ' ; at which a titter arose from some, who were struck by the picture as ludicrous, and a murmur from others, who deemed the allusion unfit for ears polite. He paused for an instant, and then added in his sturdiest and most impressive manner, ' an act which realises the parable of the Good Samaritan,' at which his moral and delicate hearers shrank rebuked into deep silence." 2 On the Fifteenth Sunday the Gospel is chosen from the Sermon on the Mount. 3 MATT. vi. 24. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. That quaint fourteenth century writer, and famous book- collector, Bishop Bury of Durham, author of the " Philobiblon," 1 Gospel for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity : St. Luke x. 23-37. * Quoted by the Right Hon. Augustine Birrell in his " Life of Hazlitt," p. 121. 3 Gospel for Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity : St. MATT. VI. 24-34. 262 xvi.] SUNDAYS AFTEK TRINITY VII. TO XV. declared faith in books to be better than gold, and exclaimed that no one can serve books and mammon. "The best simili- tude of the Beatitude promised to us in the next world lies in the contemplation of the Scriptures, wherein we see both the Creator and the creature ; thence we may draw out fountains of perpetual gladness. Faith is established by the power of books ; Hope is strengthened by their cheerful aid ; and Charity, far from being puffed up, is edified by the right learning of these most happy books " MATT. vi. 26. Behold the fowls of the air. Canon Carter's biographer tells an anecdote to illustrate the quickness of his spiritual apprehension. " When he was driving through a Yorkshire lane, the plough was making furrows across the fields by his side, and as the earth was turned up, great birds followed the plough in eager pursuit of worms. As he watched them with their keen eyes and long sharp bills, ever absorbed in seeking food, he said, ' See their eagerness ! ' That was all, except the look he gave, which showed his mind was occupied with the lesson these creatures taught us, of eagerness for the Supreme Good." 2 , ST. MATT. vi. 26. Behold the fowls of the air ; for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns ; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Mr. G. M. Trevelyan thus describes the last moments of Garibaldi : " The end came in his white house at Caprera, on a June evening in 1882. The old sailor, farmer, and fighter was propped up on the pillows to watch for the last time the sunlight gild- ing the waves and the granite rocks. While his life was slowly ebbing out, two little birds whom he had taught not to fear him fluttered in from the moor, and sat chirping on the window-sill. The attendants were about to drive them away lest they should disturb him, when that voice was heard once more by men, bidding them let the little birds come in, and always feed them 1 " Seven Sages of Durham," by Dean Kitchin, p. 56. 2 " Life of T. T. Carter," by Archdeacon Hutchings, p. 308. 263 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xvi. after he was gone. And having given these orders, he went out upon his last expedition." 1 ST. MATT. vi. 26. Behold the fowls of the air. When the American naturalist Audubon was staying in Liverpool in 1826, he wrote in his Journal : "I begin to feel most powerfully the want of occupation at drawing and studying the habits of the birds that I see about me ; and the little sparrows that hop in the streets, although very sooty with coal-smoke, attract my attention greatly ; in- deed, I watched one of them to-day in the dust of the street, with as much pleasure as in far different places I have watched the play of finer birds." * ST. MATT. vi. 26. Behold the foiols of the air. " Ubi aves, ibi angeli." The Rev. R. S. Hawker, of Morwenstow, quoted these words in a letter to a friend, and thought that St. Basil was the author. For himself, wheresoever there were birds there were angels. " They were first seen," he reminds us, " in the soft sunlight of the fifth day, and as they floated through the silent air with their silver plumage and feathers like gold, the angels said one to another, ' Behold what beautiful images of the mind of God have come forth with wings'." He wrote again, "There is piety in the domestic wren and religion in her nest". He in- duced the rooks to settle in the churchyard of Morwenstow. " What years the birds of God have found Along these walls their sacred nest." Again, he wrote : " Our Blessed Saviour never gave us a lovelier image of trust in an unseen hand than when He com- manded us to consider the bird cared for by God Himself gathering in the fields its daily food, and resting at night, with its head beneath its wing, upon the peaceful bough, without one anxiety about the morrow, very sure that there is one who will give it to-morrow's bread. And for this reason it was that our ancestors of the Church, who selected the Gospels for the day 1 "Garibaldi and the Making of Italy," pp. 293, 294. a " Audubon and his Journals," Vol. I, p. 112. 264 xvi.j SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY VII. TO XV. chose to be read just as harvest closes in the Gospel of the Birds and the Flowers the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity." 1 ST. MATT. vi. 28. Consider the lilies of the field. In the "Life and Death of Bishop Andrewes " (1650) we read : " He would often professe that to observe the grasse, herbs, corne, trees, cattle, earth, waters, heavens, any of the creatures, and to contemplate their natures, orders, qualities, vertues, uses, etc., was ever to him the greatest mirth, content, and recreation that could be ; and this he held to his dying day ". LESSONS. Tbe lessons for these Sundays are chiefly from the historical books. THE BOOKS OF KINGS. Edward Burne-Jones wrote to his young son: "Read the Book of Kings . . . and the lovely stories will fix the history in your mind, and you will never forget those that are important to remember ; Ahab and Jehu, Ahaziah, Hezekiah, Josiah, and Manasseh those six only matter, after the division of the King- dom. But read the book itself as constantly as you can, for it's a glorious heap of antiquity, and if you ever need to learn a theology, you shall find it there for yourself the day you need it." 2 SOLOMON.* Dante places Solomon in Paradise. " The warning against last judgments (in Canto xm.) concerning the ultimate fate of any man, refers," says Dr. Carroll, " to the common tendency to set Solomon among the lost. " The last moment of life may be critical for either salvation or perdition, and may have power to reverse the apparent char- acter of a lifetime : 1 " Life and Letters of R. S. Hawker," by his son-in-law, C. E. Byles, pp. 103, 1 10. 2 " Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, Vol. II, p. 89. 3 I Kings in. (Eighth Sunday after Trinity). 265 THE CHKISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STOEY [xvi. ' For I have seen all winter long the thorn First show itself intractable and fierce, And after bear the rose upon its top ; And I have seen a ship direct and swift Run o'er the sea throughout its course entire To perish at the harbour's mouth at last.' " 1 KINGS x. 1-25. 1 The Queen of Sheba's visit to Solomon. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited the Emperor Napoleon III in Paris after the Crimean War. The future Bishop Blunt of Hull, who was in Paris at the time, aged 22, wrote in his diary, " Went to the Embassy Church in the Rue d'Aguesseau in the morning, and heard the chaplain preach on the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon ". 1 KINGS xn. 21. 2 Chosen men which were warriors. At the age of 24, Dante had already borne arms for his country. One of his early biographers quotes from a letter, now lost, in which Dante tells of the battle of Campaldino. " I found myself," he says, " no child in arms. ... I had much fear and in the end very great joy through the varying chances of that battle." 1 KINGS xvii. 5. 8 He went and dwelt by the brook Cherith. " Methinks that to some vacant hermitage My feet would rather turn to some dry nook Scooped out of living rock, and near a brook Hurled down a mountain-cove from stage to stage Yet tempering, for my sight, its bustling rage In the soft heaven of a translucent pool ; Thence creeping under sylvan arches cool Fit haunts of shapes whose glorious equipage Would elevate my dreams. A beechen bowl, A maple dish my furniture should be, Crisp yellow leaves my bed ; the hooting owl My night-watch ; nor should e'er the crested fowl From thorp or vill his matins sound for me, Tired of the world and all its industry." WOBDSWORTH, " Ecclesiastical Sonnets ". 1 Ninth Sunday after Trinity. 2 Tenth Sunday after Trinity. Ubid. 266 xvi.] SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY VII. TO XV. 1 KINGS XVIL 6. Major Bridgenorth, in " Peveril of the Peak," was seated one morning in his easy chair, thinking of former times, and recalling the feelings with which he was wont to expect the recurring visits of Sir Geoffrey Peveril, who brought him news of the welfare of his child. " Surely," Bridge- north said, " there was no sin in the kindness with which I then regarded that man ". Solsgrace, who was in the apartment, and guessed what was passing through his friend's mind, replied, " When God caused Elijah to be fed by ravens, while hiding by the brook Cherith, we hear not of his fondling the unclean birds, whom, contrary to their ravening natures, a miracle compelled to minister unto unto him". " It may be so," answered Bridgenorth, " yet the flap of their wings must have been gracious in the ear of the famished prophet, like the tread of Peveril's horse in mine. The ravens, doubtless, resumed their nature when the season was passed, and even so has it fared with him." 1 KINGS xvii. 4-6. I liave commanded the ravens to feed thee there. Saintly men in later ages, like Elijah, have drawn near, in their solitude, to the wild birds, and the birds have learned to love them. " Who does not remember," says Montalembert, " the raven who, according to St. Jerome, carried a half-loaf every day to the hermit Paul, and who brought him a whole one the day that Anthony was to visit him ? ... St. Gregory the Great, in his biography of Benedict, records that while still at his first monastery of Subiaco, a raven from the neighbouring forest came every day to the saint and was fed out of his own hand." 1 1 KINGS xvni. 2 In the narrative of Sir Moses Montefiore's journey to Palestine in 1839 we read : " Saturday, 29 June. The day was spent in repose, with prayers and reading the Sacred Scriptures. Being so close to Mount Carmel, our thoughts naturally turned to the prophet Elijah ; and in addition to the usual Sabbath prayers, Sir Moses read to us the 18th Chapter of 1st Kings in a most solemn 1 " Monks of the West," Vol. II, p. 218. 2 Eleventh Sunday after Trinity. 267 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xvi. manner, and with such fervour that everyone present was deeply affected." ] 1 KINGS xviii. " The history of the Jews," says Macaulay, " is the record of a continued struggle between pure Theism, supported by the most terrible sanctions, and the strangely fascinating desire of having some visible and tangible object of adoration." 2 1 KINGS xviii. Tennyson meant to introduce the figure of Elijah into his " Palace of Art ". " In 1890," says his son, " he wrote the following notes : " Trench said to me, when we were at Trinity together, 'Tennyson, we cannot live in art '. 'The Palace of Art ' is the embodiment of my own belief that the Godlike life is with man and for man. . . . When I first con- ceived the plan of the poem, I intended to have introduced both sculptures and paintings into it, but I only finished two sculp- tures. One was the Tishbite whom the ravens fed, As when he stood on Carmel-steeps With one arm stretch 'd out bare, and mock'd, and said, ' Come, cry aloud, he sleeps.' Tall, eager, lean and strong, his cloak wind-borne Behind, his forehead heavenly bright From the clear marble pouring glorious scorn Lit as with inner light." 3 1 KINGS xix. 4 F. W. H. Myers wrote in his " Saint Paul " more than one passage in honour of Elijah. " God, who was not in earth when it was shaken, Could not be found in fury of the flame, Then to his seer, the faithful and forsaken, Softly was manifest and spake by name ; Showed him a remnant barred from the betrayal, Close in his Carmel, where the caves are dim, So many knees that had not bowed to Baal, So many mouths that had not kissed him/' 1 "Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore," Vol. I, p. 190. a Essay on Milton. 3 " Tennyson : A Memoir," Vol. I, p. 1 19. 4 Eleventh Sunday after Trinity. xvi.] SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY VII. TO XV. On the Transfiguration of our Lord, the poet has these words : " Prophet and image of our Lord's transition, Where shall ye wait us, whither will ye tend ? Moses, Klias, on the Mount of Vision Shown with eyes silent, wist ye of the end ? Changed and the same and lost and re-arisen, What is the secret that ye fain would say ? Souls paradisal to the souls in prison Speak but a word while it is called To-day." 1 KINGS xix. 11-13. Thomas Hardy, in "A Pair of Blue Eyes " describes the reading of the first Evening Lesson in Endelstow Church : " The curate having already officiated twice that day in the two churches, Mr. Swancourt had undertaken the whole of the evening service, and Knight read the lessons for him. The sun streamed across from the dilapidated west window, and lighted all the assembled worshippers with a golden glow, Knight as he read being illuminated by the same mellow lustre. Elfride at the organ regarded him with a throbbing sadness of mood which was fed by a sense of being far removed from his sphere. As he went deliberately through the chapter appointed a portion of the history of Elijah and ascended the magnificent climax of the wind, the earthquake, the fire, and the still small voice, his deep tones echoed past with such apparent disregard of her ex- istence, that his presence inspired her with a forlorn sense of unapproachableness, which his absence would hardly have been able to cause." 2 KINGS IL 10. 1 // thou see me when I am taken from thee. "Do you remember," says Dora Green well, "an incident preserved in some of the patristic writings, where the faithful watching in prayer, after the death of the martyr Ignatius, are consoled by a thrice-repeated vision of the saint, who appears to them the first time as on a level with themselves, kindly em- bracing them, and taking them by the hand ; a second time, he 1 Twelfth Sunday after Trinity. 269 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xvi. has risen above them, and extends his hands as if at once to bless and intercede for them ; lastly, they see him further off, sweat-bedewed, and in an agony, standing beside his Lord ! " l 2 KINGS iv. v. 8 to v. 38. 2 The story told in this Lesson is paraphrased by Browning in "The Ring and the Book " : " Was not Elisha once ? Who bade them lay his staff* on a corpse-face. There was no voice, no hearing : he went in Therefore, and shut the door upon them twain, And prayed unto the Lord : and he went up And lay upon the corpse, dead on the couch, And put his mouth upon its mouth, his eyes Upon its eyes, his hands upon its hands, And stretched him on the flesh ; the flesh waxed warm ; And he returned, walked to and fro the house, And went up, stretched him on the flesh again, And the eyes opened. 'Tis a credible feat With the right man and way." 2 KINGS xni. 21 .* When the man was let down and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood up on his feet. The Rev. Gordon Calthrop preached from this text in West- minster Abbey three weeks after Livingstone's funeral. The congregation were actually sitting over Livingstone's fresh grave. " Let us be quickened," said the preacher, "into fresh life by contact with the bones of Livingstone, and let thousands of Africans, through the influence of his death, be revived and stand up on their feet." 1 " Two Friends." 3 Twelfth Sunday after Trinity. 3 Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity. 270 CHAPTER XVII. SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY XVI. TO XX. CHAPTER XVII. SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY XVI. TO XX. BUSY OCTOBER. IN this " season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," the life of cities and of churches resumes its activity. Harvest is past, summer ended. Now we welcome the drawn curtains and the autumn fires. " Where are the songs of Spring ? Ay, where are they ? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue ; The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft. And gathering swallows twitter in the skies." EPISTLES. St. Paul's intercessory prayer for the Ephesian saints forms the Epistle for the Sixteenth Sunday. 1 On the words of verse 19, " That ye might be filled with all the fulness of God," Dr. R. W. Dale has this illustration : " There are plants which we sometimes see in these northern latitudes, but which are native to the more generous soil and the warmer skies of southern lands. In their true home they grow to a greater height, their leaves are larger, their blossoms more luxuriant and of a colour more intense ; the power of the life of the plant is more fully expressed. And as the visible plant is the more or less adequate translation with stem and leaf and flower of its invisible life, so the whole created universe x Eph. HI. 13-21. 18 278 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xvu. is the more or less adequate translation of the invisible thought and power and goodness of God. He stands apart from it. His personal life is not involved in its immense processes of development ; but the forces by which it moves through pain and conflict and tempest towards its consummate perfection are a revelation of ' His eternal power and Godhead '. For the Divine idea to reach its complete expression, an expression adequate to the energy of the Divine life, we ourselves must reach a large and harmonious perfection. As yet we are like plants growing in an alien soil and under alien skies. And the measures of strength and grace which are possible to us even in this mortal life are not attained. The Divine power which is working in us is obstructed. But a larger knowledge of the love of Christ will increase the favour of every devout and generous affection ; it will exalt every form of spiritual energy ; it will deepen our spiritual joy ; it will add strength to every element of righteousness ; and will thus advance us towards the ideal perfection which will be the complete expression of the Divine power and grace, and which Paul describes as 'the fulness of God'." Coventry Patmore writes : " God usually answers our prayers according rather to the measure of His own magnificence than to that of our asking ; so that we often do not know His boons to be those for which we besought Him." From Ephesians again comes the Epistle for the Seven- teenth Sunday (ch. iv. 1-6). St. Paul writes in that passage as " the prisoner of the Lord ". The Abbe de Saint-Cyran shared the Apostle's spirit when he wrote from his prison at Vincennes : " I am careful to complain of nothing, knowing that God does all : I am His, free or in prison, and am grieved that I cannot be His in a third way by martyrdom which I have at heart, and which clears away in one moment all the rust of life. After this, do not pity my imprisonment. I am ready to remain here a hundred years ; to die here if God will." EPH. iv. 5. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. Francis Bacon wrote : " It is good we return unto the ancient bonds of unity in the Church of God, which was, one 274 xvn.] SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY XVI. TO XX. faith, one baptism ; and not, one hierarchy, one discipline ; and that we observe the league of Christians, as it is planned by our Saviour Christ, which is in substance of doctrine this : ' He that is not with us is against us ' ; but in things indifferent and but of circumstance this : ' He that is not against us is with us ' ". The Nineteenth Sunday continues Eph. iv. 1 Thomas Fuller has these words on anger (verse 26) : " Be not mortally angry with any for a venial fault. He will make a strange combustion in the state of his soul who, at the landing of every cockboat, sets the beacons on fire. To be angry for every toy, debases the worth of the anger ; for he who will be angry for anything, will be angry for nothing." - On the Twentieth Sunday the Epistle is Eph. v. 15-21. EPH. v. 15. Redeeming the ti/me. When Lovel is resting at the Antiquary's house after his bold adventure on Halket Head, he hears in the early morning a female voice singing, " with some taste and some simplicity, something between a song and a hymn," in words to the follow- ing effect : " Why sitt'st thou by that ruined hall, Thou aged carle so stem and grey ? Dost thou its former pride recall, Or ponder how it passed away ? " " Know'st thou not me ? " the Deep Voice cried ; " So long enjoyed, so oft misused Alternate, in thy fickle pride, Desired, neglected and abused ? Before my breath, like blazing flax, Man and his marvels pass away, And changing empires wane and wax, Are founded, flourish and decay. Redeem mine hours the space is brief While in my glass the sand grains shiver, And measureless thy joy or grief When TIME and thou shalt part for ever ! " 1 Epistle for the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity : Eph. iv. 17-32 2 "Holy State," Bk. Ill, cvn. 2. 275 THE CHEISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STOKY [xvn. " Nay, dally not with time, the wise man's treasure, Though fools are lavish on't the fatal Fisher Hooks souls, while we waste moments." l Dean Kitchin, in his " Life of Bishop Harold Browne," tells that in his Lampeter days, the future Bishop " learned Welsh, and also Arabic and Syriac, which he studied by fixing up notes on grammar and vocabulary above his washstand, so that he might commit them to memory while he dressed ". A greater scholar, the late Professor Robertson Smith, learned Italian while dressing in the morning. Frances Ridley Havergal put a list of Italian verbs above her washstand, that she might not lose a moment while getting ready for meals. EPH. v. 19. Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs ; singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. St. Jerome gave the following counsel for the religious education of the daughter of the wealthy Roman lady Laeta : " Accustom her to sing hymns every morning ; to stand in the ranks of Christ as a faithful warrior at the third, sixth, and ninth hours, and to offer her evening sacrifice at the time when the lamp is lit." 8 EPH. v. 19. In commenting on this verse St. Jerome says : " So should the servant of Christ chant, that not the voice of the singer but the words which he recites may cause delight ". Dr. Moffatt translates verse 19 : " Converse with one another in the music of psalms, in hymns, and in songs of the spiritual life ". The festive gatherings of Sebastian Bach's family during several generations, began, however jovial their purpose, with a chorale. A biographer remarks that " Sebastian himself, seeking for a definition of music, could find nothing more comprehensive to say than that ' Its final cause is none other than this, that it minister solely to the honour of God and refreshment of the spirit ; whereof, if one take not heed, it is no proper music, but devilish din and discord ' ". 3 1 Sir Walter Scott's motto to Ch. vm. of " The Monastery ". 2 Pierre Batiffol, " History of the Roman Breviary," p. 44. 3 "Sebastian Bach," by R. Lane Poole, p. 71. 276 XVIL] SUNDAYS AFTEK TKINITY XVI. TO XX. Edna Lyall wrote to a young friend : " I want our friendship to be on a high level, and it seems to me that nothing does keep at its best unless it is practical and in close touch with the Unseen. Will you use with me the collect for the twentieth Sunday after Trinity ? I don't mean pledging ourselves to use it every day (we might forget or be prevented), but using it when we can. I suggest that one be- cause, I like the ' cheerfully accomplish ' and the ' being ready ' idea, but if you prefer any other will you suggest it ? Or if for any reason you dislike the plan, then please tell me so plainly. On looking it out in the American Prayer-book I see they have altered our 'cheerfully accomplish those things that Thou wouldest have done ' into ' cheerfully accomplish those things which Thou commandest ' much the same thought, but I rather prefer our old-fashioned phrase." 1 GOSPELS. SIXTEENTH SUNDAY : THE MIRACLE AT NAIN. S LUKE vii. 14. Young man, I say unto thee, Arise. St. Augustine begins Book VI of his " Confessions " with this passage : " O Thou, my hope from my youth, where wert Thou to me, and whither wert Thou gone ? Hadst not Thou created me, and separated me from the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air ? Thou hadst made me wiser, yet did I walk in dark- ness, and in slippery places, and sought Thee abroad, out of myself, and found not the God of my heart ; and had come into the depths of the sea, and distrusted and despaired of ever find- ing truth. My mother had now come to me, resolute through piety, following me over sea and land, in all perils confiding in Thee. For in perils of the sea, she comforted the very mariners (by whom passengers unacquainted with the deep use rather to be comforted when troubled) assuring them of a safe arrival, because Thou hadst by a vision assured her thereof. She found me in grievous peril, through despair of ever finding truth. But 1 " Life of Edna Lyall," by J. M. Escreet, p. 184. 2 St. Luke vii. 11-17. 277 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xvn. when I had discovered to her, that I was now no longer a Manichee, though not yet a Catholic Christian, she was not overjoyed, as at something unexpected ; although she was now assured concerning that part of my misery, for which she hewailed me as one dead, though to be reawakened by Thee, carrying me forth upon the bier of her thoughts, that Thou mightest say to the son of the widow, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise ; and he should revive and begin to speak, and thou shouldest deliver him to his mother. Her heart then was shaken with no tumultuous exultation, when she heard that what she daily with tears desired of Thee, was already in so great part realised ; in that, though I had not yet attained the truth I was rescued from falsehood ; but, as being assured that Thou who hadst promised the whole, wouldest one day give the rest most calmly, and with an heart full of confidence, she replied to me, ' She believed in Christ, that before she departed this life she should see me a Catholic believer '." Seventeenth Sunday : ST. LUKE xiv. 1-11. ST. LUKE xiv. 1. It came to pass, as Jesus went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the Sabbath-day, that they watched him. The sternness of Jewish principle with regard to the Sabbath had been illustrated in the year 63 B.C. when Pompey besieged Jerusalem. The city itself was captured with the aid of Hyrcanus, but a number of the inhabitants obstinately defended themselves in the Temple. The historian Ferrero says that the surrender came about at last in a curious manner. " Once every seven days Pompey noticed that the besieged seemed to be stupified into inactivity, and allowed the Romans to work un- molested at their engines. He enquired of Hyrcanus, who told him that every seventh day was the Sabbath, the day on which the law obliged the faithful to abstain from all labour, which, as interpreted by the devout, included even self-defence. Pompey ordered his soldiers to work only on the Sabbath ; he was thus enabled, within three months, to raise his towers up to the height of the walls and to move to the attack. . . . Curious to inspect the sanctuary which had cost him so much pains, Pompey made his way into the inmost shrine of the Temple, where none but the high priest was allowed to enter. But he looked in vain 278 XVIL] SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY XVI. TO XX. for a statue or a picture of the Godhead. He admired the strange seven-branched candlestick, which the Jews seemed specially to venerate, the table of gold, the huge store of incense for worship, and, hidden away in the cellars, the store of treasure which should have served to recompense the Roman legionary for his labours. But the God of the Bible then gave not the least striking proof of that power whose fear was soon to be spread so far throughout the world. Alone of all the gods of the Orient his gold was respected by a Roman adventurer. Pompey was so overcome by the weird fanaticism of his Jewish surroungings that he dared not lay hands on the treasure. 1 ST. LUKE xiv. 7. He marked how they chose out the chief seats. In his treatise of the Holy Spirit, St. Basil the Great inveighs against the contemporary ambition of the Christians around him. " Every one is a theologian, even he whose life is stained with countless pollutions. Self-appointed individuals with a keen appetite for place reject the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, and then divide among themselves the high offices of the Church. There is an indescribable pushing and elbowing for precedence, everyone who is eager to make an appearance straining every nerve to put himself forward prominently." ST. LUKE xiv. 10. Friend, go up higJier. In the letter to Napier, in which he refuses to republish his reviews, Macaulay protests : " I will not found any pretentions to the rank of a classic on my reviews. I will remain, according to the excellent precept in the Gospels, at the lower end of the table, where I am constantly accosted with ' Friend, go up higher," and not push my way to the top at the risk of being compelled with shame to take the lowest room. If I live twelve or fifteen years, I may perhaps produce something which I may not be afraid to exhibit side by side with the performance of the old masters." Cardinal Perraud, in his " Life of Pere Gratry," describes his last watch by the death-bed of his friend. " My dear father," he said, " it was you who called me to the service of God, and to you, after Him, I owe my vocation. Do you remember, how 1 "The Greatness and Decline of Rome " (translated by A. E. Zimmern), Vol. I, pp. 260, 261. 279 THE CHRISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STORY [xvn. twenty-five years ago, at the Normal School, you so often re- peated to me the words of the Saviour in the Gospel, "Amice ascende superius ? " He pressed my hand, to show me that he heard and understood." LUKE xiv. 11. In his sermon at Westminster Abbey when the Cardinal's hat was conferred on Wolsey, Dean Colet urged upon this prince of the Church the duty of humility. He quoted among other passages these words of our Lord : " Whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted ". EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY : ST. MATT. xxn. 34-46. MATT. xxn. 39. The second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. " Whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud." WALT WHITMAN. MATT. xxn. 39. As thyself. " He who carries self-regard far enough to keep himself in good health and high spirits, in the first place thereby becomes an immediate source of happiness to those around, and in the second place maintains the ability to increase their happiness by altruistic actions. But one whose bodily vigour and mental health are undermined by self-sacrifice carried too far, in the first place becomes to those around a cause of depression, and in the second place renders himself incapable, or less capable, of actively furthering their welfare." HERBERT SPENCER. NINETEENTH SUNDAY : ST. MATT. ix. 1-8. "And here such as brought the man sick of the palsy not finding a door on the floor made one on the roof (love will creep, but faith will climb where it cannot go) let him down with cords, his bed bringing him in, which presently he carried out, being perfectly cured." THOMAS FULLER, " A Pisgah-Sight of Pales- tine," Book II, ch. iv. 15. LESSONS. JER. v. 1 Ruskin wrote in 1867 : " Read the last seven verses of yesterday's first Lesson. They are literally, as in every 1 Seventeenth Sunday. 280 xvii.] SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY XVI. TO XX. syllable, true of England, and the weapons with which such evil may be stayed before ' the end thereof ' are not camel's hair pencils. Camel's hair raiment might do something." The Lesson includes these words : " Your iniquities have turned away these things and your sins have withholden good things from you. . . . They are waxen fat, they shine. The prophets prophecy falsely and the priests bear rule by their means ; my people love to have it so, and what will ye do in the end thereof? " l JER. v. 6. Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, a wolf of the evenings shall spoil them, a leopard shall watch over their cities. It is this text which Dante had in mind, no doubt, when in the first Canto of the " Inferno " he tells how his ascent of the lonely mountain was withstood and repelled by three wild beasts, a swift leopard, a raging lion, and a greedy wolf. The three enemies were driving him back when Virgil appeared to his aid. The most terrible^of the beasts to the pilgrim was the gaunt she- wolf, which critics have identified with the Papacy. The leopard, to this school of interpreters, stands for Florence, and the lion for the royal house of France. Other commentators take the leopard or panther as the symbol of sensuality, the lion of pride or ambition, and the wolf of avarice. EZEKIEL ii. 3 Bishop King wrote to a friend : " I am very fond of the Prophets. Among other things, they seem to have suffered a great deal. ' Sat down astonished,' or 'dumb,' or 'sat in silence seven days,' all implying the strain consequent upon a higher and wider vision. So no doubt St. James is right in telling us to take the Prophets as examples of Patience. At first one fancies they had a brilliant time of it, but I expect not really. Do you know Ezekiel ? He is the prophet of hope to me, the rainbow and brightness round about. The prophet Ezekiel, with his vision of the dry bones, and the water increasing, flowing from the Temple, is full of progress and hope. The Prophets are a great help to me." 3 EZEK. n. 1. And he said unto me, Son of man. 1 " Life of Ruskin," by Sir E. T. Cook, Vol. II, p. 127. * Eighteenth Sunday. 3 " Spiritual Letters." 381 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xvii. " Lord, I find that Ezekiel in his prophecies is styled ninety times and more by his appellation, Son of Man, and surely not once oftener than there was need for. . . . Amongst other revelations it was needful to reveal him to himself, Son of Man, lest seeing many visions might have made him blind with spiritual pride. Lord as thou increasest Thy graces in me, and favours on me, so with them daily increase in my soul the monitors and remembrances of my mortality " THOMAS FULLER. K/i K. xvni. 29. * Robert William Dale was a schoolmaster's assistant in 1845 at Andover, in Hampshire. Cottage preaching had been for many years a habit among the Nonconformists of the district. Robert Dale's first sermon was delivered in a room at Providence Cottage, Lower Clatford, from the words of Ezekiel xvni. 29 : " O house of Israel, are not my ways equal?" His son and biographer, Sir Alfred Dale, tells us that the sermon of the youthful theologian of fifteen was a defence of Calvinism, coupled, however, with an assertion of universal redemption. EZEK. xxxiv. 25. They shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods? In the graveyard of the English Church at Zermatt a tomb- stone bears this inscription : " To the beloved, abiding memory of James Robert Cooper, of Durdans, Reigate, Surrey, (aged 79), who was lost on Midsummer Day, 1897, and found in the Wittiwald on 27 October of the same year, beneath the Shadow of a Rock, as if sleeping. ' I will seek that which was lost . . . and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness and sleep in the woods.' ' EZEK. xxxvii. The hand of the Lord . , . set me down in the midst of the valley. 3 The word " valley " has a sacred place in literature. Sir Sidney Colvin tells us that among the marginal notes to a copy of " Paradise Lost " given by Keats to a friend, the following words are inscribed against the passage : " ' Or have ye chosen this place After the toil of battle to repose Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven.' 1 Nineteenth Sunday. 3 Twentieth Sunday. 3 Ibid. 282 xvii.] SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY XVI. TO XX. "There is cool pleasure in the very sound of vale. The English word is of the happiest chance. Milton has put vales in heaven and hell with the very utter affection and yearning of a great poet. It is a sort of Delphic Abstraction a beautiful thing made more beautiful by being reflected and put in a Mist. The next mention of vale is one of the most pathetic in the whole range of Poetry : ' Others more mild, Retreated in a silent valley, sing With notes angelical to many a harp Their own heroic deeds and napless fall By doom of battle ! ' How much of the charm is in the valley ! " l THE VALLEY OF DRY BONES. " One Power too is it, who doth give The food without us, and within The strength that makes it nutritive : He bids the dry bones rise and live, And e'en in hearts depraved to sin Some sudden gracious influence, May give the long-lost good again, And wake within the dormant sense And love of good ; for mortal men, So but thou strive, thou soon shalt see Defeat itself is victory." ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH. EZEK. xxxvn. 1-3. From this passage Dean Stanley preached at St. Mary's, Oxford, on 25 February, 1872, soon after the abolition of religious tests at the Universities. He made a thrilling appeal to the rising generation to lift them- selves to the level of their great vocation. " You have in- herited this beautiful, this soothing past, you must inherit also that bright, that inspiring future. Prophesy not only over the dry bones of a dead antiquity, but over the living souls of this living generation. Prophesy, O Son of Man, and come 1 Sir Sidney Colvin's " Life of Keats," p. 1 52. THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xvn. from the four winds of heaven, from East and West, from North and South, O Breath of God, O Spirit of Truth, of Charity, of Eternal Progress. Come, () Spirit of holy hope and high humility, 'Give unto us made lowly wise the spirit of self- sacrifice '. Come from the ages that are dead and buried and from the ages that are yet in store for us, and breathe unto these heirs of all the ages the mind to understand and the heart to love and the will to do what is true and right. ' And they shall stand on their feet, an exceeding great army, who shall follow Him that is called Faithful and True, who was dead and is alive for evermore.' " l EZEK. xxxvn. 3. Can these bones live ? The Rev. Richard Cecil was appointed in 1800 rector of the united parishes of Chobham and Bisley, in Surrey. "These small livings," we are told " had been offered as affording the prospect of some respite from the arduous duties of St. John's Chapel, Bedford Row, of which he was the minister. . . . At his first coming he found everything in disorder. Religion was neither valued nor understood. The people were rude and irreverent ; and on the first Sunday of his appearance amongst them, so great was the uproar and so loud the talking in church before service that, as he sat in the vestry, he burst into teal's, and said, ' Can these dry bones live ' ? But this was soon changed for the better." 2 1 " Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett," Vol. II, p. 25. 2 Josiah Bateman, " Life of Bishop Daniel Wilson," Vol. I, p. 71. 284 CHAPTER XVIII. SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY XXI. TO XXV. CHAPTER XVIII. SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY XXI. TO XXV. THE WANING CHURCH YEAB. THE Christian Year is drawing to its close amid rain and dark- ness, but eyes are lifted like those of travellers who see in the distance the snow-peaks of Alps or Pyrenees. School children are counting the days to " Stir-up Sunday " l (so called from the first words of the Collect, " Stir up, we beseech Thee, O Lord, the wills of Thy faithful people ") for when that date is over, they feel that holidays are at hand. There is expectation in the air, as when Joseph said to his brethren " I die ; and God will surely visit you " ; or when dying Cromwell said, " I would be willing to live to be further serviceable to God and His people, but my work is done. Yet God will be with His people." The journey over the plains is ending ; before us rise the summit heights of Advent, Christmas, Easter all the glories of another year. " So far as it is possible to express the unsearchable heart of the universe," writes the wise mystic, Arthur E. Waite, " the whole mystery lies in the Venite Adoremus, and it is enshrined after another manner in the Pange Lingua, because every- where the latens Deitas passes into expression in life ". TWENTY-FIKST SUNDAY : THE COLLECT. " Grant, we beseech thee, merciful Lord, to thy faithful people pardon and peace, that they may be cleansed from all their sins, and serve thee with a quiet mind ; through Jesus Christ our Lord." 1 Twenty-fifth after Trinity. 287 THE CHEISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xvm. " Lanoe Falconer " wrote : " The exquisite conciseness and comprehensiveness of the Collect (Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity) suggests that among the things that improve with the age of the observer are the Collects. And my thoughts, drift- ing from one point to another, brought back how at the time of my mother's illness I felt when looking at her : il nous fallait absolument un Dieu, if not for ourselves, then for our cherished ones." * THE EPISTLES. EPH. vi. 10, 11. Put on the whole armour of God* Mommsen tells us that in ancient Rome the New Year month belonged to Mars (March). The principal solemnities of the festival were the shield-forging, the armed dance at the Comitium, and the consecration of trumpets. " As, when a war was to be waged, it began with this festival, so after the close of the campaign in autumn there followed a further festival of Mars, that of the consecration of arms." Milton thus describes the recreation of those angelic warriors who composed the cohort of Gabriel : " About him exercised heroic games The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads Celestial armoury, shield, helm, and spear Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold." Montalembert, in his " Monks of the West " opposes the idea of Chateaubriand, that religious houses in ancient times were chiefly refuges for sick souls. " The idea is poetical and touching, but it is not true. Monasteries were never intended to collect the invalids of the world. It was not the sick souls, but on the contrary, the most vigorous and healthful which the human race has ever produced, who presented them- selves in crowds to fill them. The religious life, far from being the refuge of the feeble, was, on the contrary, the arena of the strong." . . . 1 Life of " Lanoe Falconer " (Marie Hawker) by Evelyn March- Phillipps, p. 226. 2 Epistle for Twenty-first Sunday : Eph. vi. 10-20. 288 XVIIL] SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY XXI. TO XXV. " St. Francis of Assisi, in the dreams of his youth, saw the shop of his father, a wool-merchant, full of bucklers, of lances, of military harness a prophetic vision of the war which he should wage with the enemy of the human race ; and in the decline of his life, the stigmata of the Passion, the marks of which he received, seemed to the eyes of his contemporaries the badge and emblazonry of Christ, whose invincible and valiant knight he was "- 1 St. John Chrysostom said, " Come and see the tents of the soldiers of Christ, come and see their order of battle ; they fight every day, and every day they defeat and immolate the passions which assail us ". John Wesley began his published journal on 14 October, 1735, and its last entry is under date Sunday, 24 October, 1790, when in the morning he explained to a numerous congregation in Spitalfields Church, "The whole Armour of God," and in the afternoon enforced to a still larger audience in St. Paul's, Shadwell, the great truth, "One thing is needful," the last words of the journal being : " I hope many even then resolved to choose the better part ". 2 EPH. vi. 16. The shield of faith. The shield of Arthur, in Spenser's " Faerie Queen " was made of one great diamond. " His warlike shield all closely covered was, Ne might of mortall eye be ever seene ; Not made of steele, nor of enduring bras, Such earthly mettals soon consumed bene : But all of Diamond perfect pure and cleene It framed was, one massie entire mould, Hewen out of Adamant rocke with engines keene, That point of speare it never percen could, Ne dint of direful! sword divide the substance would." EPH. vi. 18. With all perseverance. Thomas a Kempis says : " When one that was in anxiety of mind, often wavering between fear and hope, did once, being 1 " Monks of the West," Vol. I, pp. 18, 22. 3 See Mr. Augustine BirrelPs " Miscellanies," pp. u, 12. 19 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY, [xvm. oppressed with grief, humbly prostrate himself in a church be- fore the altar, in prayer, and said within himself, ' O if I knew that I should yet persevere ! ' he presently heard within him an answer from God, which said, ' If thou didst know it, what wouldst thou do ? Do now what thou wouldst do then, and thou shalt be secure.' And being herewith comforted and strengthened, he committed himself wholly to the will of God, and his anxious wavering ceased." PHIL. in. 17-21 1 (with Jeremiah rx. 1). St. Louis longed for the gift of tears. In the Litanies, when the verse was sung, " Give us a fountain of tears," Ut fontem lacrymarum nobis dones, he said, " Lord, I dare not ask Thee for a fountain of tears, but only for a few drops to refresh my dry and arid heart ! " 2 PHIL. in. 18. Of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping. It is said of Abubekr, successor of Mohammed, who performed service in the mosque at Medina when the prophet was ill or absent, that he was almost unfitted for this public office, being unable to read the Koran without weeping. Sainte-Beuve says that the pious Bishop Eudes, the original founder of Port Royal, had what is called the gift of tears. "Even as a child, he used, it is said, to water with his tears the alms which he distributed to the poor." COL. i. 10. That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing. 3 St. Vincent de Paul, in his extreme old age, offered this prayer, " Ruinez en moi, Seigneur, tout ce qui vous y deplait," 4 ''Destroy within me, O Lord, all that displeases Thee ". THE GOSPELS. ST. JOHN iv. 46. There was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum* 1 Epistle for Twenty-third Sunday, Phil. in. 17-21. 2 H. Wallon, " Saint Louis et son Temps," Vol. I, pp. 60, 61. 3 Epistle for Twenty- fourth Sunday : Col. I. 3-12. 4 Quoted by G. K. Sanders, " Vincent de Paul," p. 7. 5 Gospel for the Twenty-first Sunday. 290 xvm.] SUNDAYS AFTEE TEINITY XXI. TO XXV. Canon Harford-Battersby, founder of the Keswick Conven- tion, traced a crisis in his spiritual life to an address on this passage by the Rev. Evan Hopkins. From the story of the nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum, he realised the difference between seeking faith and resting faith. The words, "Thy son liveth. And the man believed" . . . impressed him deeply. " I said to myself," wrote Canon Battersby, " Has not my faith been a seeking faith when it ought to have been a resting faith ? and if so, why not exchange it for the latter ? And I thought of the sufficiency of Jesus, and said, I will rest in Him and I did rest in Him. I said nothing to anyone of this, and was afraid lest it should be a passing emotion, but I found that the presence of Jesus was graciously manifested to me in a way that I knew not before, and that I did abide in Him. In the morning I woke with a sweet sense of His blessed presence and indwelling, which has continued in measure since." 1 The parable of the unjust steward forms the Gospel for the Twenty-second Sunday. 2 ST. MATT. xvm. 33. Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee. " Nothing," says Charlotte Bronte, of her sister Emily, " moved her more than any insinuation that the faithfulness and clemency, the long-suffering and loving-kindness which are esteemed virtues in the daughters of Eve become foibles in the sons of Adam. She held that mercy and forgiveness are the Divinest attributes of the Great Being who made both man and woman, and that what clothes the Godhead in glory can disgrace no form of feeble humanity." MATT. ix. 24. The maid is not dead, but sleepeth. 3 This text is associated with the family history of Bishop Harold Browne. When he had tidings in 1879 of the death of his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Barrington Browne, he wrote : "It was very remarkable that about two hours after her death we were reading in our chapel service in the lesson for 1 " Memoir of Canon Harford-Battersby," p. 138. 3 St. Matt. xvm. 21-35. "Gospel for Twenty-fourth Sunday : St. Matt. IX. 18-26. 291 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xvm. the day, ' The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth,' and next morn- ing we received the telegram, ' Helen fell asleep last evening '. A similar coincidence happened to me twenty-two years ago, when my eldest daughter died at the age of sixteen. I had to read next morning in our family prayers, ' Weep not, she is not dead, but sleepeth '. The words are engraved on her coped coffin-tomb in Trumpington Churchyard." l JOHN vj. 12. Gather up the fragments.' 2 A literal illustration of our Lord's words may be found in the experience of Dr. Pusey. Canon Liddon tells us that when Pusey sat for the Oriel Fellowship examination in 1823 he had one of his bad headaches and broke down. " He tore up his essay, saying that there was no good in going on with it." The Rev. Henry Jenkyns, then Fellow of Oriel, and afterwards Canon of Durham, " picked up the bits, put them together, and showed the essay to the Fellows. It was a capital essay." Before the end of the week the young candidate's election was secure. 3 THE LESSONS. DAN. in. 27. 4 . . . Upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was a hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed upon them. Sydney Dobell had this verse in mind when he wrote in " Balder " of Dante's work : " The great Florentine, who wove his web And thrust it into hell, and drew it forth Immortal, having burned all that could burn, And leaving only what shall still be found Untouched, nor with the smell of fire upon it, Under the final ashes of this world." DAN. iv. 32. 5 They shall make thee to eat grass as oxen. Spenser imagines that Nebuchadnezzar was actually changed into an ox, and describes him in the unseen world : 1 " Bishop Harold Browne," by Dean Kitchin, p. 504. 2 Gospel for Twenty-fifth Sunday : St. John VI. 5-14. 3 " Life of Dr. Pusey," Vol. I, p. 57. 4 Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity. 5 Ibid. 292 XVIIL] SUNDAYS AFTER TRINITY XXI. TO XXV. " There was that great proud king of Babylon, That would compel all nations to adore, And him as onely God to call upon, Till, through celestial doom thrown out of dore, Into an Oxe he was transformd of yore." l DAN. iv. 38. Mr. W. E. H. Lecky wrote at the age of twenty-four : "As a writer I have failed so egregiously, hopelessly and utterly that I have lost almost every particle of hope and con- fidence I ever possessed. . . . An idle life is all very well for people of the dining-out class, but I have no patience for that kind of life and besides, such people are denounced in Scripture as putting their talents in a napkin or for those who have (or can buy) great country places and take to farming though these, again, I have always maintained to be represented by Nebuchadnezzar becoming a beast and eating grass." 2 DAN. vi. 3 In the Life of Mary Slessor of Calabar, the Scottish missionary whom the natives called " The Great White Ma," the following passage occurs : " She had frequently to take journeys through the forest with the leopards swarming around her. ' I did not use to believe the story of Daniel in the lions' den,' she often said, ' until I had to take some of these awful marches, and then I knew it was true, and that it was written for my comfort. Many a time I walked along praying, " O God of Daniel, shut their mouths," and He did.'" 4 " JOEL n. 28. 5 " It is worth while," says Dr. J. S. Carroll, " to examine Dante's view of dreams, which is substantially that of his Church. They may be agents of temptation or means of grace, according to their source. When, as in the case of many dreams in Scripture, they come from God, they are regarded as an inferior form of revelation, given, as a rule, in a comparatively low state of spiritual knowledge. In the words of Joel (n. 88) ' Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see 1 The " Faerie Queen " Bk. I, Canto 5. 2 A Memorial of W. E. H. Lecky," by his Wife, p. 30. 3 Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity. 4 " Mary Slessor of Calabar," by W. P. Livingstone, p. 106. 5 Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity. THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xvm. visions,' it has been thought that dreams mark the decay, visions the flower of strength. . . . Dante regards them as a means of grace in the comparatively low moral state in which he has lived up to this time." Amos. 1 Dr. William Barry writes, in his essay on Carlyle : " He was nothing if not a religious teacher. His vocation, as he viewed it, is found in Amos : ' I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son ; but I was an herdsman and a gatherer of sycomore fruit. And the Lord took me as I followed the flock ; and the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel.' Like Amos, he beheld the burden of the nations, especially of that England which had overthrown Napoleon." ' AMOS. ix. Ruskin, in "Mending the Sieve," writes as follows of the monk of St. Benedict's order : " He is the apostle, first, of the peasant's agriculture, and secondly, of the squire's agricultural machines for whatever good there is in them. The corn and the corn-sieve are alike sacred in his eyes. And, once understanding that, and considering what part of the ' library ' of his day, the Bible of St. Jerome's giving, would either touch him- self most closely, or would be looked to by others as most de- scriptive of him, you will feel that the especially agricultural prophecy of Amos would become the guide of Benedictine expectation. . . . " For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn as sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth. " Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that the ploughman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes, him that soweth seed, and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall meet " And I will bring again the captivity of my people, and they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them, they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them, and I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be plucked up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord their God." 1 Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity. * " Heralds of Revolt," p, 72. 294 xviii.] SUNDAYS AFTEE TEINITY XXI. TO XXV. MICAH v. 2 1 (R.V.). But thou, Bethlehem-Ephrathah, which art little to be among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall one come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel ; whose goings forth are from of old, from everlasting. With ST. MATT. n. 6 (R.V.). And thou, Bethlehem, land of Judah, art in no wise least among the princes of Judah : for out of thee sJiall come forth a governor, which shall be Shepherd of my people Israel. In his speech at the Queen Hall, London, on 19 September, 1914, Mr. Lloyd George referred to the part taken by little peoples in the history of the world. He said : " All the world owes much to the little five feet high nations. The greatest art of the world was the work of little nations. The most enduring literature of the world came from little nations. The greatest literature of England came from her when she was a nation of the size of Belgium fighting a great Empire. The heroic deeds that thrill humanity through generations were the deeds of little nations fighting for their freedom. Ah, yes, and the salvation of mankind came through a little nation. God has chosen little nations as the vessels by which He carries the choicest wines to the lips of humanity, to rejoice their hearts, to exalt their vision, to stimulate and to strengthen their faith ; and if we had stood by when two little nations were being crushed and broken by the brutal hands of barbarism our shame would have rung down the everlasting ages." MICAH vi. 8. In his " Nineteenth Century " article " Proem to Genesis " (January, 1886) Mr. Gladstone wrote : " Theology is ordered knowledge ; representing in the region of the intellect what religion represents in the heart and life of man. And this religion, Mr. Huxley says ... is summed up in the terms of the prophet Micah (vi. 8) : 'Do justly and love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God '. . . . I will not dispute that in these words is contained the true ideal of religious discipline and at- tainment. They richly import that identification of the will which is set out with such wonderful force in the very simple words of the ' Paradiso ' : 'In la sua volontade e nostra pace,' and which no one has more beautifully described than (I think) 1 Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity. 295 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xvin. Charles Lamb : ' He gave his heart to the Purifier, his will to the will that governs the universe '. It may be still found that Christianity itself is in some sort a scaffolding, and that the final building is a pure and perfect theism : when the kingdom shall be ' delivered up to God,' ' that God may be all in all '. Still I cannot help being struck with an impression that Mr. Huxley appears to cite these terms of Micah, as if they reduced the work of religion from a difficult to a very easy performance. But look at them again. Examine them well. They are, in truth, in Cowper's words ' Higher than the heights above Deeper than the depths beneath.' " Do justly, that is to say, extinguish self: love mercy, cut utterly away all the pride and wrath and all the cupidity, that make this fair world a wilderness ; walk humbly with thy God, take His will and set it in the place where thine own was wont to rule. ' Ring out the old, ring in the new.' Pluck down the tyrant from his place ; set up the true Master on His lawful throne." MICAH vi. 9. Hear ye the rod and who hath appointed it. In 1857, the year of the Indian Mutiny, a day was set apart by Royal Proclamation for solemn fast, humiliation and prayer, and to seek the Divine blessing on our arms. On that occasion Mr. C. H. Spurgeon preached to a vast congregation at the Crystal Palace, numbering about 24,000 people, from Micah vi. 9 : " Hear ye the rod and who hath appointed it". HAB. ii. 4. The just shall live by his faith (with Romans i. 17). 1 Mrs. Browning wrote, in the Preface to the first collected edition of her poems : " The tendency of the present day is to sunder the daily life from the spiritual creed to separate the worshipping from the acting man and by no means to ' live by faith '. There is a feeling abroad which appears to me (I say it with deference) nearer to superstition than to religion, that there should be no touching of holy vessels except by consecrated fingers, nor any naming of holy names except in consecrated places. As if life 1 Twenty-sixth Sunday. 296 XVIIL] SUNDAYS AFTER TEINITY XXI. TO XXV. were not a continual sacrament to man, since Christ brake the daily bread of it in His hands ! As if the name of God did not build a church, by the very naming of it ! As if the word God were not, everywhere in His creation, and at every moment in His eternity, an appropriate word ! " ECCLES. xn. 12. 1 Of making many books there is no end. Benjamin Whichcote, the Cambridge Platonist, says in one of his letters : " Truly I shame myself to tell how little I have been acquainted with books. I have not read many books, but I have studied a few. Meditation and invention hath been rather my life than reading." ECCLES. xu. 18. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter : Fear God, and keep his commandments ; for this is the whole duty of man. Montalembert tells of an obscure Prior of Solesmes who found it necessary to maintain the privileges of his order against the Lord of Sable. The nobleman, having met him one day upon the bridge of the town, said to him, " Monk, if I did not fear God, I would throw thee into the Sarthe ! " " Mon- seigneur," answered the monk, " if you fear God, I have nothing to fear ". 2 MAL. iv. 2. 3 But unto you that fear My name shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings. St. Gregory the Great, in the second Book of his Dialogues, says that St. Benedict, shortly before his death, saw one night in vision the whole world gathered together under one beam of the sun.* In his "Easter greeting to every child who loves Alice," Lewis Carroll wrote :< " This Easter sun will rise on you, dear child, feeling your ' life in every limb,' and eager to rush out into the fresh morning 1 Sunday next before Advent. The Old Testament Lessons for the Sunday next before Advent are Eccles. XI. and XII. ; Haggai II. to verse 10, or Malachi in. and iv. a Monks of the West," Vol. I, p. 24. 3 Sunday next before Advent. 4 E. L. Taunton, " The English Black Monks of St. Benedict," Vol. I, p. i. 297 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [XVIIL air and many an Easter day will come and go, before it finds you feeble and grey-headed ; creeping wearily out to bask once more in the sunlight but it is good, even now, to think some- times of that great morning when ' the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in his wings '." 298 CHAPTER XIX. SOME ILLUSTRATIONS FOR SAINTS' DAYS. What hath this day deserved, what hath it done, That it in golden letters should be set Among the high tides in the calendar ? King John, Act III, sc. i. 300 CHAPTER XIX. SOME ILLUSTRATIONS FOR SAINTS' DAYS. CHARLES LAMB in his Essay on " Oxford in the Vacation," says : " 1 must have leave, in the fulness of my soul, to regret the abolition, and doing away with altogether, of those con- solatory interstices, and sprinklings of freedom, through the four seasons the red-letter days, now become to all intents and purposes, dead-letter days. There was Paul and Stephen and Barnabas Andrew and John, men famous in old times we were used to keep all their days holy, as long back as when I was at school at Christ's. I remember their effigies, by the same token, in the old Baskett Prayer Book. There hung Peter in his uneasy posture holy Bartlemy in the troublesome act of flaying, after the famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti. I honoured them all, and could almost have wept the defalcation of Iscariot so much did we love to keep holy memories sacred : only methought I a little grudged at the coalition of the better Jude with Simon clubbing (as it were) their sanctities together, to make up one poor gaudy day between them as an economy unworthy of the dispensation. " These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a clerk's life ' far off their coming shone ' I was as good as an almanac in those days. I could have told you such a saint's day falls out next week, or the week after. Perad venture the Epiphany by some periodical infelicity, would, once in six years, merge in a Sabbath. Now am I little better than one of the profane. Let me not be thought to arraign the wisdom of my civil superiors, who have judged the further observation of these holy tides to be papistical, superstitious. Only in a custom of such long standing, methinks, if their Holinesses the Bishops had in decency, been first sounded but I am wading out of my depths." 301 THE CHEISTIAN YEAK IN HUMAN STORY [xix. ST. ANDREW'S DAY. There are memories of St. Andrew at Kieff, the ecclesiastical capital of Russia. " The Church of St. Andrew," wrote the late Mr. W. J. Birkbeck, "stands on a platform surrounded by a stone balustrade, raised high above the upper town, and ap- proached from it on the west by a long flight of steps, while on the east it overhangs the steep slope (I may almost say cliff) down to the lower town several hundred feet below. It is built on the spot where St. Andrew is said to have once preached ; and there is a tradition that in the time of St. Vladimir, a cross, which the Apostle had left, was found here." l ROM. x. 9. If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. (Epistle.) David Stratton, brother to the Baron of Laurieston, was one of the Scottish martyrs in the persecution of 1534, under James V. " It is related, that listening to the Scriptures, which were read to him by the Laird of Laurieston, he came upon the pas- sage where our Saviour declares He will deny before His Father and the holy angels any one who hath denied him before men ; upon which he was deeply moved, and falling on his knees, im- plored God, that although he had been a great sinner, He would never permit him, from the fear of any bodily torment, to deny Him or His truth. The trial soon came and was most coura- geously encountered. Death in one of its most terrible forms was before him ; he was earnestly exhorted to escape by abjur- ing his belief, but he steadfastly refused to purchase his pardon by abjuring a single tenet, and encouraged his fellow-sufferer Gourlay to the same resolution." Both were burned in Edin- burgh on 27 August, 1534. ST. THOMAS'S DAY. ST. JOHN xx. 25. Except 1 shall see ... I will not believe. " That was the saying of an Apostle, I confess," writes J. M. Neale, "but it was not said like an Apostle. See how 1 " Birkbeck and the Russian Church" (1917) edited by Mr. Athelstan Riley, pp. 4, 5. 2 " History of Scotland," by Patrick Fraser-Tytler, Vol. I, p. 207. 302 xix.] SOME ILLUSTRATIONS FOR SAINTS' DAYS foolish this is in worldly matters. An English traveller was once talking to the Emperor of Burmah (which is a very hot country) and telling him of different things in England. He spoke about our railroads and our newspapers, and our shops, and our manufactories ; and the Emperor, though he was very much surprised, believed everything. At last the traveller happened to say something about skating, and the Emperor would listen no longer. He said, " You have told me many wonderful things, but I was willing to believe them, because you said them. But I never will nor can believe that water becomes hard enough to be walked on. If the whole world told me so, I would not believe it I see that you are trying to deceive me, and I will listen to you no more.' We are ready to smile at the Emperor, but we do exactly the same thing ourselves." 1 Dostoevsky : says in "The Brothers Karamazov": "Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle, but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also. The Apostle Thomas said that he would not believe till he saw, but when he did see he said, ' My Lord and my God ! ' Was it the miracle forced him to believe ? Most likely not, but he believed solely because he desired to believe, and possibly he fully believed in his secret heart even when he said, ' I do not believe till I see '." Dean Stanley tells us that the verse " Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed " had taken a deep possession of Dr. Arnold's heart for some time before his death. " He was always very fond of dwelling on the confession of Thomas, and within the last month, he selected it as the subject for the last painted window in the chapel, with that verse to be in- scribed underneath it." 2 The Irish historian, Mr. Lecky, wrote as a young student : " The evidences of Christianity are irresistible. ... I believe that it is a man's duty to prove his creed, to seek for truth reverently, humbly, sincerely, praying for the guidance of the enlightening Spirit and seeking by good works the fulfilment 1 " Sermons in Sackville College Chapel," Vol. IV, p. 82. 2 " Dean Stanley's Letters and Verses," edited by R. E. Prothero, p. 70. 303 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xix. of the promise, ' He that doeth the will of my Father shall know the doctrine, whether it be of God '. I believe that he who does so may commit himself fearlessly into the Almighty's hands, having done his part, and I believe that this is the belief generally held by Christian men." l ST. STEPHEN. Of the martyred Bishop Patteson, his native pupil Edward Nogale told the following incident : "On the 20th September, 1871, as we were going to the island where he died, but were still in the open sea, he schooled us continually upon Luke n., in. up to vi. ... And he preached to us continually at prayers in the morning every day, and every evening on the Acts of the Apostles, and he spoke as far as the seventh chapter, and then we reached that island. And he had spoken admirably and very strongly indeed to us about the death of Stephen, and then we went up ashore on the island Nukapu. Shortly after his landing when he had lain down in a hut to rest, a man crept in and killed him with one blow of a club." ST. JOHN THE EVANGELIST. 1 JOHN i. 7. The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.' 2 R. W. Dale wrote at the age of 25 : "The whole process and movement of the interior life seems in my eyes day by day more mysterious. Seasons of depression, heavy, terrible, overwhelming, come over me apparently without any very definite cause ; stay in spite of means which seem most powerful to effect their removal ; and then suddenly break off and depart at the bidding of a single text of Scripture perhaps or a single prayer, or a single word from a Christian friend ; or a single train of commonplace reflections. . . . Why, even that blessed text, ' The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin,' which sometimes comes down on the heart like a whole heaven of peace and joy and glory, will at other times be as meaningless as the darkest sayings of the prophets, or as power- less as the vainest utterances of human folly. And then just 1 " Memoir of W. E. H. Lecky," by his Wife, p. 22. 3 Epistle. 304 xix.] SOME ILLUSTRATIONS FOB SAINTS' DAYS as one is bemoaning its darkness, it will suddenly blaze out in astonishing brightness, and almost startle the heart by its re- velations of safety and strength." 1 The Hon. Adelaide Drummond, step-daughter of Lord John Russell, writes in her " Memoirs " of the love which she and her brother felt in childhood for the poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott. " We both loved the lines in c Marmion ' in which Sir David Lindsey tells of the appearance to King James of the loved Apostle John, how he said : " In a low voice but never tone So thrill'd through vein, and nerve and bone ; ' My mother sent me from afar, Sir King, to warn thee not to war '." 2 HOLY INNOCENTS. R. C. Trench wrote from Ferrara in 1885 : " We got to Bologna yesterday about two hours before sunset, in time to visit the gallery of pictures, which, though not large, contains many of the greatest works of the Bolognese artists. One that pleased me most was a Domenichino the Child Jesus in the heavens standing by His Mother, and out of an urn which an angel child is holding, showering down roses in full handfuls, which are falling below where a general martyrdom is going on, St. Agnese and others. Especially beautiful are two little children who, unconscious that the executioners are at hand, are playfully struggling for one of the roses. It reminds me of the Church hymn for Innocents' Day : palmd et corond luditis" 3 Dean Hook wrote to Mr. F. T. Palgrave, who was mourn- ing an infant son : " In the spiritual house which the Divine Architect is building, He requires stones of every size, small as well as great, the fresh unstained soul of childhood, and the soul that has been hewn and chiselled and beaten into shape by the cares, temptations, and struggles of life. We are each predestined to 1 " Life of Dr. Dale," p. 79. a "The Hon. Adelaide Drummond : Retrospect and Memoir," p. 101. 3 " Letters and Memorials of Archbishop Trench," Vol. I, p. 195. 20 305 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xix. our place in the great spiritual building, and life in this world is the time for the preparation of the stones ; while part of our happiness hereafter will, no doubt, consist in our seeing all 1ms been ordered so as to qualify us for our eternal position." l CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL. ACTS ix. 1-8. Damascus. " Damascus," says a modern traveller, 2 " is one of the most populous and beautiful cities of the East. It contains miles of covered markets of typically Oriental character. The town and surrounding countryside are intersected by numerous running streams, while on the outskirts of the city are gardens and cultivation extending for a great distance. Fruit and flowers of all kinds attain great perfection, and the dry, calm atmosphere must be very healthy. In summer, though the days are hot, the nights are cool never sufficiently warm to make sleeping on the roof advisable, as is the custom in Bagdad and the Arabian cities. In winter there is sometimes a heavy snowfall hence the covered markets." ACTS ix. 18. And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales. Dr. James Martineau said that in the Unitarian Chapel of Nottingham, " under a sudden flash and stroke of sorrow . . . the scales fell from his eyes, and the realities and solemnities of life first came upon him. Here it was that the religious part of his life first commenced ; in fact the light was so overpowering and so strong, that it bore him from the workshop of his oc- cupation, and turned him from an engineer into an Evangelist. He well remembered, under the fervour of the first enthusiasm, how the voices that sounded in our various places of worship appeared to him to be beneath the exigencies of the case too sober and too cold ; and amid the broken light of an immature j udgment he thought there ought to be some stronger and more spiritual ministry, that should less depend upon our self-help, but should take us off our feet, and fling us into a diviner life than that which prevailed among us." * 1 " Life of Dean Hook," Vol. II, p. 494. 3 " A Modern Pilgrim in Mecca," by A. J. B. Wavell, pp. 39, 40. s " Life of Dr. Martineau," Vol. I, p. 24. 306 xix.] SOME ILLUSTEATIONS FOR SAINTS' DAYS A lesson in tolerance is taught to the Prince of Scotland by Saladin in "The Talisman". The prisoner Sir Kenneth is in the power of the infidel Emir Ildirim, who is the Soldan in disguise, and he fears that the putting on of an Eastern dress may be taken to imply his conversion to the faith of the Moslem. "Nazarene," answered the Emir, "thy nation so easily entertains suspicion, that it may well render themselves sus- spected. Have I not told thee that Saladin desires no converts saving those whom the holy prophet shall dispose to submit themselves to his law ; violence and bribery are alike alien to his plan for extending the true faith. Hearken to me, my brother. When the blind man was miraculously restored to sight, the scales dropped from his eyes at the Divine pleasure think'st thou that any earthly leech could have removed them ? No. Such mediciner might have tormented the patient with his instruments, or perhaps soothed him with his balsams and cordials, but dark as he was must the darkened man have re- mained ; and it is even so with the blindness of the understanding. If there be those among the Franks, who, for the sake of worldly lucre, have assumed the turban of the Prophet, and followed the laws of Islam, with their own consciences be the blame. Them- selves sought out the bait it was not flung to them by the Soldan. And when they shall hereafter be sentenced, as hypo- crites, to the lowest gulf of hell, below Christian and Jew, magician and idolater, and condemned to eat the fruit of the tree Yacoun, which is the heads of demons to themselves, not to the Soldan, shall their guilt and their punishment be attri- buted. Wherefore wear, without doubt or scruple, the vesture prepared for you, since if you proceed to the camp of Saladin, your own native dress will expose you to troublesome observa- tion, and perhaps to insult." The great Moravian teacher, Bishop Comenius, wrote in closing his last educational utterance from Amsterdam : " This is the sum of all that I wish to have done by those who undertake to rear little sons of God. I have no more to say, and you, gentlemen, with your schools and all the youth of your city dedicated to Christ, I commend to the grace of God, and myself to your favour ; signing these my last utterances on 150 1 THE CHEISTTAN YEAK IN HUMAN STORY [xix. Education on the day of the conversion of Paul, on which may the hearts of us all turn to the Lord, saying as Saul said, ' Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? ' " l Canon Liddon suggested in 1878 that the new great bell of St. Paul's Cathedral should have a Christian name. He sug- gested " Paulus, Doctor Gentium," and for a motto the words " Vae mihi, si non evangelizavero ". (Woe unto me, if I preach not the Gospel.) His proposal was duly carried out. 2 Dean Inge remarks that the future history of Europe and America for two thousand years, perhaps for all time, was deter- mined by St. Paul's missionary journeys. 8 MATT. xix. 30 (Gospel). Mr. Gladstone wrote to his son Stephen in 1862: "The saying of our Saviour is true of the career of intelligence as well as of the spiritual state, ' The first shall be last, and the last first '. God does not put people backwards and forwards arbitrarily ; but they who use well the means and faculties they possess, from being behind come to be before, and they who use them ill from being before come to be behind. If an oak could compare itself with a poplar at ten or twenty years old, it would be disappointed ; but let a hundred years roll away, and the tables are turned ". 4 PURIFICATION OF ST. MARY THE VIRGIN. LUKE ii. 34, 35. And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel ; and for a sign which shall be spoken against ; (yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also} that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. George Meredith, in " Vittoria," dwells on the sorrows of mothers who send their sons to the war. Of the Countess Ammiani he writes : " She had given her son to her country with that intensely apprehensive foresight of a mother's love which runs quick as Eastern light from the fervour of the devo- tion to the remote realisation of the hour of the sacrifice, seeing 1 S. S. Laurie, " John Amos Comenius," p. 215. a J. O. Johnston, " Life and Letters of Henry Parry Liddon, ;> p. 20. 3 "Quarterly Review," January, 1914. 4 "Letters on Church and Religion/' Vol. II, p. 174. 308 xix.] SOME ILLUSTKATIONS FOR SAINTS' DAYS both in one. Other forms of love, devotion in other bosoms, may be deluded, but hers will not be. She sees the sunset in the breast of the springing dawn. Often her son Carlo stood a ghost in her sight." And again : " If you know what is meant by that phrase, a conquered heart, you will at least respect them whom you call weak women for having gone through the harshest schooling which this world can show example of. In such mothers Italy revived. The pangs and the martyrdom were theirs. Fathers could march to the field or to the grey glacis with their boys ; there was no intoxication of hot blood to cheer those who sat at home watching the rise and fall of trembling scales which said life or death for their dearest. Their least shadowy hope could be but a shrouded contentment in prospect ; a shrouded submission in feeling. What bloom of hope was there when Austria stood like an iron wall, and their own ones dashing against it were as little feeble waves that left a red mark and no more ? But duty to their country had become their religion ; sacrifice they accepted as their portion ; when the last stern evil betel them they clad them- selves in a veil and walked upon an earth they had passed from for all purposes save service of hands. Italy revived in these mothers. Their torture was that of the reanimation of her frame from the death-trance ". 1 ST. MATTHIAS DAY (GOSPEL). The Rev. John Carstares, father of the statesman William Carstares, was a Scottish minister of singular piety. His friend Durham said as he lay near his death, " There is but one promise in all the Scripture that I dare look to, ' Come unto me all ye that are weary '. May I venture my salvation upon it ? " " Yes," replied Carstares, "if you had a thousand souls you might venture them on it." 2 ANNUNCIATION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MAEY. The Chapel of the Charterhouse, London, was dedicated in 1372 as " The House of the Salutation of the Mother of God ". 1 Vittoria," Chapter XVI. 3 See Principal Story's " Life of William Carstares," pp. 8, 9. 309 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xix. The consecration of the new Chapel, belonging to the school buildings erected at Godalming, took place on 25 March, 1872, the Feast of the Annunciation. Bishop Harold Browne per- formed the consecration ceremony, and the Head Master preached from Psalm LXXXVU. 7, " All my fresh springs shall be in Thee ".' ST. MARK'S DAY. Louis IX of France was born on St. Mark's day. His con- temporary biographer, the Sieur de Joinville, says that on that day it was the custom in many places to carry veiled crosses in procession, and in France these were called "the black crosses ". "This was like a prophecy," adds Joinville, "of the multitude of people who should perish in these two crusades, that of Egypt and that other in which he died at Carthage ; much mourning has there been in this world, and many great joys are now in Paradise, for those who died as true crusaders in these two pilgrimages ". 2 Bishop Welldon begins his " Recollections and Reflections " with the following passage : " It has always been a pleasure to me that I was born on St. Mark's Day, 25 April. For the story of St Mark, as it is told in the New Testament and in ecclesi- astical legend, has strongly appealed to me. The mystery, the vicissitude, the mingled light and shadow which surround it, are pleasing to the imagination. I cherish the thought that St Mark was, as Irenaeus says, the pupil and interpreter of St. Peter, and that his is, if not the original, at all events the earli- est extant gospel. Nor do I honour his memory the less be- cause of the cloud which fell at one time upon his relation to St. Paul. How it seems to vanish that passing cloud as at sunrise, before those touching words of the aged Apostle, ' Take Mark, and bring him with thee; for he is profitable for the ministry ' ; words which may not unfairly be said to consecrate the friendship of St. Paul's two young fellow-disciples, St. Timothy and St. Mark." 1 "William Haig-Brown of Charterhouse," pp. 163-165. 2 Wailly's edition of Joinville (" Societe? de 1'Histoire de France"), p. 25. 310 xix.] SOME ILLUSTRATIONS FOE SAINTS' DAYS Dr. Welldon reminds us that 25 April was the birthday of Oliver Cromwell and of John Keble. At the luncheon following his enthronement in Canterbury Cathedral on 20 March, 1883, Archbishop Benson reminded his hearers of the practice of the Church of Alexandria, when the dead hand of St. Mark was placed in that of each new patri- arch ; and how it was said to a new Pope : " Non videbis annos Petri ". EPH. iv. II. 2 He gave some . . . teachers. Horace Bushnell, in his address entitled "The Age of Homespun," describes the little old schoolhouse where he re- ceived the first rudiments of learning. " Oh, I remember (about the remotest thing I can remember) that low seat, too high, nevertheless, to allow the feet to touch the floor, and that friendly teacher who had the address to start a first feeling of enthusiasm and awaken the first sense of power. He is living- still ; and whenever I think of him he rises up to me in the far background of memory as bright as if he had worn the seven stars in his hair." 3 Of the Moravian teacher, Bishop Comenius, the historian V r on Raumer says : " He is a grand and venerable figure of sorrow. Wandering, persecuted, and homeless, during the ter- rible and desolating Thirty Years' War, he yet never despaired ; but in enduring truth, and strong in faith, he laboured un- weariedly to prepare youth by a better education for a better future. Suspended from the ministry, as he himself tells us, and an exile, he had become an Apostle ad gentes minutulas, Christianamjuventutem; and certainly he laboured for them with a zeal and love worthy of the chief of the Apostles." 4 ST. MARK xvi. When Ion Keith-Falconer, the gifted mis- sionary, lay dying at Sheikh Othman in Arabia, he said to his colleague and physician, Dr. Cowan, " Read me the last chapter of Mark. It is disputed, but that doesn't matter." 1 " Life of Bishop Thorold," p. 227. 1 Epistle. 3 " Life of Horace Bushnell," pp. 10, 1 1. 4 Quoted by S. S. Laurie, " John Amos Comenius," p. 65. 311 THE CHKISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STOEY [xix. ST. BARNABAS. The feast of St. Barnabas is kept on 11 June, in the height of summer. Spenser has these lines in his " Epithalamion " : " Ring ye the bels, ye yong men of the towne, And leave your wonted labours for this day : This day is holy ; doe ye write it downe, That ye for ever it remember may. This day the sunne is in his chiefest hight, With Barnaby the bright, From whence declining daily by degrees, He somewhat loseth of his heat and light, When once the Crab behind his back he sees." ACTS iv. 37. In the spring of 1837 Dr. and Mrs. Pusey sold their horses and carriage, and Mrs. Pusey sold all her jewels and gave the money to the London churches. On St. Barnabas Day of that year, within a week of the sale of his wife's jewels, Pusey addressed a London congregation on the example of the saint who " having land, sold it, and laid it at the Apostles' feet". " If all cannot be parted with lawfully," he said, " why not some ? why not some, not merely of our superfluities, year by year, but (what only requires faith) of our substance, so that we may be poorer in the sight of men, richer in the sight of God ? . . . would there be no blessing if our women broke off the ornaments (which it is at least safer for Christian women not to wear) as the Jewish women of old, for the service of their God ? Is there no blessing for luxuries abandoned, establishments diminished, show of display laid aside, equipages dropped, superfluous plate cast into the treasury of God, the rich (where it might be) walking on foot here, that they may walk in glory in the streets of the City which are of pure gold?" l ACTS iv. 86, 37. Barnabas . . . having land, sold it, and laid it at the apostles' feet. " The Spectator," in an article of 31 May, 1912, describes Barnabas as "The man who knew his own chief end ". On the sale of his land, the writer says : 1 " Life of Dr. Pusey," Vol. II, p. 83. 812 xix.] SOME ILLUSTEATIONS FOE SAINTS' DAYS " It is possible that a good many of the people in the Church at Jerusalem, especially those whose faith was less robust, may have thought that Barnabas had made a rather daring specula- tion. But it is just here that the proof of this man's sound judgment appears. He was a good judge of himself and of the future. He was capable of a true estimate of the relative value of things. Christianity, if one believes in it, is, after all, of more value than the family farm or estate. We do not know what the value of his gift was, but we may be sure it was the best investment that Barnabas had ever made. No man to-day could purchase such a memorial for tenfold the price. For it was a memorial that Barnabas secured for himself that day. It gave him at once a right to be considered one of the founders of the first Christian congregation. Then, however great the generosity of the later ages of the Church, this man of Cyprus should have a ' royalty ' on the credit and praise for it all, for if he had not given when he did the stream of Christian liberality might never have flowed at all. And though we say that is inconceivable and it is still Barnabas, as the instru- ment with which the well was digged, is entitled to his meed of recognition. It was his wisdom, his decision, and his prompti- tude that made the beginning of all these things possible." ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST'S DAY. Dr. Pusey's " Library of the Fathers " has for its frontispiece a figure of St. John the Baptist seated on a rock in the wilderness, and pointing with his left hand to heaven, while his right holds a rude cross, with a pendant scroll inscribed " Vox clamantis in deserto ". The frontispiece appears for the first time in the ninth volume of the series St. Chrysostom's " Homilies on the Statues "published in 1842. 1 MATT. m. 14. When the Russian novelist Dostoevsky was dying, "he gave the New Testament used by him in prison to read aloud. The first passage chanced to be Matthew in. 14 : " But John held Him back and said, ' It is I that should be baptised by Thee and dost Thou come to me ? ' And Jesus answered and said unto him, ' Detain me not ; for thus it be- hoves us to fulfil a great truth '." When his wife had read this, 1 " Life of Dr. Pusey," Vol. I, p. 443- 313 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xix. Dostoevsky said : " You hear ; do not detain me. That means that I am to die". And he closed the book. A few hours later he actually did die. 1 ST. PETER'S DAY. " Brave weather-battered Peter, Whose stout faith only stood completer For buffets, sinning to be pardoned, As, more his hands hauled nets, they hardened. 11 ROBERT BROWNING, " Christmas Eve". Mr. Charles Hiatt writes, in his " Westminster Abbey " : " The temperament of Edward the Confessor was ultra- religious : the very faults which unfitted him for a throne would have adorned the cloister. His piety took the form of special devotion to St. Peter. Before he ascended the throne, he had vowed that he would make a pilgrimage to the Apostle's tomb in Rome, and soon after his coronation he announced his in- tention of keeping his oath. The Great Council heard his decision with dismay. They dreaded the perils of the journey ' the roads, the sea, the mountains, ambuscades at the bridges and fords,' and even more did they fear ' the felon Romans, who seek nothing but gain and gifts,' and covet gold and silver ' as a leech covets blood '. A deputation was therefore sent to Leo IX to persuade him to release Edward from his vow. The Pope consented on condition that the king should found or restore a monastery to St. Peter. By this time the wild growths of Thorney had given way to fertile meadows : it was no longer ' the terrible place,' but a quiet retreat admirably suited to the dreamy disposition of the king, who was further attracted to it by the legends which gathered round it. Of these, the best known are the legend of the Hermit of Worcester and that of Edric the Fisherman, both of which are picturesquely narrated by Dean Stanley in his ' Memorials of Westminster Abbey '. "The king ultimately decided that the old monastery at Thorney, of which his intimate friend Edwin was the abbot, should be replaced by a new and magnificent Abbey of St. Peter 1 Maurice Baring, " Landmarks of Russian Literature." p. 149. S14 xix.] SOME ILLUSTKATIONS FOR SAINTS' DAYS Hitherto his favourite abode had been Islip, or Old Windsor, but now, in order personally to supervise the erection of the new church, he lived chiefly at the royal residence at West- minster. This residence he in great part rebuilt, go that the Abbey and Palace of Westminster grew up side by side." ST. JAMES'S DAY. Dante wrote in the " Vita Nuova " : ' ' Pilgrim ' may be understood in two senses, one general, and one special. General, so far as any man may be called a pilgrim who leaveth the place of his birth ; whereas, more nar- rowly speaking, he only is a pilgrim who goeth towards or fro wards the House of St. James. 1 For there are three separate denominations proper unto those who undertake journeys to the glory of God. They are called Palmers who go beyond the sea eastward, whence often they bring palm-branches. And Pilgrims, as I have said, are they who journey unto the holy House of Gallicia ; seeing that no other Apostle was buried so far from his birth-place as was the blessed Saint James. And there is a third sort who are called Homers ; in that they go whither these whom I have called pilgrims went : which is to say, unto Rome." 2 The tremendous war-cry of the Spanish mediaeval hosts as they rushed upon the Moslems, was " Santiago y cierra Espana : St. James and close, Spain ! " MATT. xx. 22. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of? (Gospel.) Father Le Jeune, one of the pioneers of Jesuit missions among the fierce Indian tribes of Canada, wrote in 1633 to his Superior : " We must take our life, and everything we have, and throw it right away, . . . choosing a large and heavy cross for all our riches. It is true indeed that God never lets Himself be con- quered, and that the more we leave, the more we find ; the more lost, the larger is the gain ; but sometimes God hides Himself and then the chalice is very bitter." 3 These heroic missionaries exposed themselves to no ordinary 1 At Santiago de Compostella. 2 Rossetti's translation. 3 " The Jesuits in North America," p. 107 (note). 315 THE CHRISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STORY [xix. martyrdom, but to torments the most refined, prolonged, ex- cruciating which Indian wickedness could conceive. 2 COR. iv. 5. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord ; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. (Epistle.) St. Vincent de Paul had a favourite phrase " The poor our masters ". The service of the Church, in his view, was synony- mous with the service of the poor. " We are told," says an English biographer, " that when he had been ten years at St. Lazare, at Christmas time 1642, he invited two old beggars to dine with him, and sat between them attending to their wants ; and it was characteristic of him that, having once had an opportunity of giving this literal interpre- tation to his idea of charity, he should hasten to repeat it. Ere long it became the custom to entertain two guests of this type daily at St. Lazare, albeit ' inftrmes et quelquefois assez degoti tans,' as a contemporary expresses it, and Vincent frequently was seen welcoming them when they appeared, and helping them up the steps of the refectory." l ST. MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS. The Archangel Michael, " Leader of God's host, When heaven and hell are set," s has been the comforter of Christ's captains in great distress. Francis Parkman tells us that the Indians of the Neutral Nation treated the Jesuit missionaries with extreme inhospitality on their visit in 1640. " * Go out, and leave our country,' said an old chief, ' or we will put you in the kettle, and make a feast of you '. " * I have had enough of the dark-coloured flesh of our enemies,' said a young brave ; ' I wish to know the taste of white meat, and I will eat yours.' "A warrior rushed in like a madman, drew his bow, and aimed the arrow at Chaumont. ' I looked at him fixedly,' writes the Jesuit, 'and commended myself in full confidence to St. i E. K. Sanders, " Vincent de Paul," p. 66. a W. B. Yeats. 316 xix.] SOME ILLUSTKATIONS FOE SAINTS' DAYS Michael. Without doubt, this great archangel saved us ; for almost immediately the fury of the warrior was appeased, and the rest of our enemies soon began to listen to the explanation we gave them of our visit to their country." l MATT. XVHI. 10 (Gospel). The Elder Zossima, in Dostoev- sky's novel " The Brothers Karamazov," speaks thus to a weeping mother who has lost a little boy of three, the last of her four children : " Once in olden times a holy saint saw in the Temple a mother like you weeping for her little one, her only one, whom God had taken. ' Knowest thou not,' said the aint to her, ' how bold these little ones come before the throne of God ? Verily there are none bolder than they in the Kingdom of Heaven. ' Thou didst give us life, O Lord,' they say, ' and scarcely had we looked upon it when Thou didst take it back again.' And so boldly they ask and ask again that God gives them at once the rank of angels. There,' said the saint, ' thou too, oh mother, rejoice and weep not, for thy little one is with the Lord in the fellowship of angels.' That's what the saint said to the weeping mother of old. He was a great saint and he could not have spoken falsely. Therefore you too, mother, know that your little one is surely before the throne of God, is rejoicing and happy and praying to God for you, and therefore weep not, but rejoice." 2 ALL SAINTS' DAY. Christians have ever dwelt joyfully on the thought of com- panionship in eternity with the great ones of Holy Scripture. The dust of Palestine and the water of Jordan are precious to Jew and Christian alike. Sir Moses Montefiore, in extreme old age, used to put his finger on the stone from Jerusalem which he had under his pillow, bearing the inscription, " For thy servants take pleasure in her stones and favour the dust thereof ". " This," he said, " you will put under my head when I am placed in my last resting-place." He expressed a desire that the dust from the Holy Land, which he had brought with him from the valley of Jehoshaphat, should be placed in his coffin, 1 " The Jesuits in North America," pp. 237, 238. 3 Mrs. Garnett's translation. 317 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY [xix. and that some of this should be sprinkled on his face in token of his veneration for the Land of Promise. 1 The devout Jew, con- sidering what God had wrought through his fathers, and the largeness of the promises to Israel, might have joined in the Methodist hymn : " We will praise Him again When we've passed over Jordan." The Gospel for All Saints' Day is ST. MATT. v. 1-12. In his Siberian novel, " The House of the Dead," Dostoevsky tells of one of his hero's earliest friends in prison, the Daghestan Tatar youth Aley. " In obedience to two elder brothers he had taken part in robbery and murder, but he was as innocent as Oliver Twist when under the power of Sikes. He was pure as a chaste girl, and any ugly, cynical, dirty, unjust, or violent action in the prison brought a glow of indignation into his beautiful eyes, making them still more beautiful." The hero, known as Alexander Petrovitch, possessed the Russian translation of the New Testament, a book not prohibited in prison. With this book alone, and no alphabet, Aley learnt in a few weeks to read excellently. In three months he had completely mastered the language of the book. He learnt eagerly, with enthusiasm. " One day we read together the whole of the Sermon on the Mount. I noticed that he seemed to read parts of it aloud with special feeling. " I asked him if he liked what he had read. " He glanced at me quickly and the colour came into his face. "'Oh, yes,' he answered. 'Yes. Jesus is a holy prophet. Jesus speaks God's words. How good it is ! ' " ' What do you like best of all ? ' " ' Where He says, " Forgive, love, don't hurt others, love even your enemies." Ah, how well He speaks.' " He turned to his brothers, who were listening to our con- versation, and began warmly saying something to them. They talked earnestly for a long time together, and nodded then- heads approvingly. Then with a dignified and gracious, that is, 1 " Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore," Vol. II, p. 346. 818 xix.] SOME ILLUSTKATIONS FOR SAINTS' DAYS a typically Mussulman smile (which I love so much, and love especially for its dignity) they turned to me and repeated that Jesus was a prophet of God, and that he worked great marvels : that He had made a bird out of clay, had breathed on it, and it had flown away . . . and that that was written in their books. They were convinced that in saying this they were giving me great pleasure by praising Jesus, and Aley was perfectly happy that his brothers had deigned and desired to give me this pleasure." l MATT. v. 8. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. " Oh that our lives which flee so fast, In purity were such, That not an image of the past Should fear from memory's touch ! Retirement then might hourly look Upon a soothing scene ; Age steal to his allotted nook, Contented and serene ; With hearts as calm as lakes that sleep, In frosty moonlight glistening : Or mountain rivers, when they creep Along a channel smooth and deep, To their own far-off' murmurs listening." WOKDSWOKTH. 1 " Mrs. Garnett's translation," p. 61. 319 SCRIPTURES PROPER FOR SUNDAYS. First Sunday in Advent Epistle : Romans xni. 8-14. Gospel: St. Matthew xxi. 1-13. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah i. First Evening Lesson : Isaiah n. or Isaiah iv. 2. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Second Sunday in Advent Epistle: Romans xv. 4-13, Gospel : St. Luke xxi. 25-33. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah v. First Evening Lesson: Isaiah xi. i-n or Isaiah xxiv. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Third Sunday in Advent Epistle : i Corinthians iv. 1-5. Gospel: St. Matthew xi. 2-10. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah xxv. First Evening Lesson : Isaiah xxvi or xxvin. 5-19. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Fourth Sunday in Advent Epistle : Philippians iv. 4-7. Gospel : St. John i. 19-28. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah xxx. 1-27. First Evening Lesson : Isaiah xxxn or xxxm. 2-23. Second Lessons : Ordinary. The Sunday after Christmas Epistle: Galatians iv. 1-7. Gospel : Matthew I. 18-25. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah xxxv. First Evening Lesson : Isaiah xxxvm or XL. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Second Sunday after Christmas Epistle and Gospel as for " The Circumcision of Christ ". First Morning Lesson : Isaiah XLII. First Evening Lesson : Isaiah XLIII or XLIV. First Sunday after the Epiphany Epistle : Romans xn. 1-5. Gospel : St. Luke n. 41-52. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah LI. First Evening Lesson : Isaiah LII. 13 and LIU., or LI v. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Second Sunday after Epiphany- Epistle: Romans xn. 6-16. Gospel: St. John H. i-n. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah LV. First Evening Lesson : Isaiah LVII or LXI. Second Lessons : Ordinary. 21 321 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY Third Sunday after Epiphany Epistle : Romans XH. 16-21. Gospel : St. Matthew vm. 1-13. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah LXII. First Evening Lesson : Isaiah LXV. or LXVI. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Fourth Sunday after Epiphany Epistle : Romans xni. 1-7. Gospel : St. Matthew vm. 23-34. First Morning Lesson : Job xxvii. First Evening Lesson : Job xxvin. or xxix. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Fifth Sunday after Epiphany Epistle : Colossians m. 12-17. Gospel : St. Matthew xm. 24-30. First Morning Lesson : Proverbs I. First Evening Lesson : Proverbs m. or Proverbs vm. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Sixth Sunday after Epiphany Epistle: i St John m. 1-8. Gospel : St. Matthew xxiv. 23-31. First Morning Lesson : Proverbs ix. First Evening Lesson : Proverbs xi. or Proverbs xv. Septuagesima Epistle : i Corinthians ix. 24-27. Gospel : St. Matthew xx. 1-16. First Morning Lesson : Genesis i. to n. 4. Second Morning Lesson : Revelation xxi. 1-9. First Evening Lesson : Genesis n. 4 or Job xxxvm. Second Evening Lesson : Revelation xxi. g to xxn. 6. Sexagesimal Epistle : 2 Corinthians xi. 19-31. Gospel : St. Luke vm. 4-15. First Morning Lesson : Genesis m. First Evening Lesson : Genesis vi. or Genesis vm. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Quinquagesima Epistle: i Corinthians xm. 1-13. Gospel: St. Luke xvm. 31-43. First Morning Lesson : Genesis IX. 1-20. First Evening Lesson : Genesis xn. or Genesis xm. Second Lessons : Ordinary. First Sunday in Lent Epistle : 2 Corinthians vi. i-io. Gospel : St. Matthew iv. i-n. First Morning Lesson : Genesis xix. 12-30. First Evening Lesson : Genesis xxn. 1-20 or xxm. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Second Sunday in Lent Epistle : i Thessalonians iv. 1-8. Gospel : St. Matthew xv. 21-28. First Morning Lesson : Genesis xxvn. 1-41. First Evening Lesson : Genesis xxvm. or xxxit. Second Lessons : Ordinary. SCEIPTUEES PEOPEE FOE SUNDAY Third Sunday in Lent Epistle : Ephesians v. 1-14. Gospel : St. Luke xi. 14-28. First Morning Lesson : Genesis xxxvn. First Evening Lesson : Genesis xxxix. or XL. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Fourth Sunday in Lent Epistle: Galatians iv. 21-31. Gospel: St. John vi. 1-14. First Morning Lesson : Genesis XLII. First Evening Lesson : Genesis XLIII. or XLV. Fifth Sunday in Lent Epistle : Hebrews ix. 11-15. Gospel : St. John vm. 46-59. First Morning Lesson ; Exodus in. First Evening Lesson : Exodus v. or vi. 1-14. The Sunday next before Easter (sixth in Lent Palm Sunday) Epistle : Philippians n. 5-11. Gospel : St. Matthew xxvii. 1-54. First Morning Lesson : Exodus ix. Second Morning Lesson : St. Matthew xxvi. First Evening Lesson : Exodus x. or xi. Second Evening Lesson : St. Luke xix. 28 or xx. 9-21. Easter Day Epistle : Colossians in. 1-7. Gospel : St. John xx. i-io. First Morning Lesson : Exodus xn. 1-29. Second Morning Lesson : Revelation i. 10-19. First Evening Lesson : Exodus xn. 29 or Exodus xiv. Second Evening Lesson : John xx. 11-19 or Revelation v. First Sunday after Easter- Epistle : i St John v. 4-12. Gospel : St. John xx. 19-23. First Morning Lesson : Numbers xvi. 1-36. Second Morning Lesson : i Corinthians xv. 1-29. First Evening Lesson : Numbers xvi. 36 or Numbers xvn. 1-12. Second Evening Lesson : St. John xx. 24-30. Second Sunday after Easter Epistle : i St. Peter n. 19-25. Gospel : St. John x. 11-16. First Morning Lesson: Numbers xx. 1-14. First Evening Lesson: Numbers xx. 14 to xxi. 10; or Numbers xxi. 10. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Third Sunday after Easter- Epistle : i St. Peter n. 11-17. Gospel : St. John xvi. 16-22. First Morning Lesson : Numbers XXH. First Evening Lesson : Numbers xxm. or xxiv. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Fourth Sunday after Easter- Epistle : St. James i. 17-21. Gospel : St. John xvi. 5-15. First Morning Lesson : Deuteronomy iv. 1-23. First Evenin" Lesson : Deuteronomy iv. 23- i or Deuteronomy v. 323 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY Fifth Sunday after Easter- Epistle : St. James i. 22-27. Gospel : St. John xvi. 23-33. First Morning Lesson : Deuteronomy vi. First Evening Lesson : Deuteronomy ix. or X. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Sunday after Ascension Day Epistle : i St. Peter iv. 7-11. Gospel : St. John xv. 26 to xvi. 4. First Morning Lesson : Deuteronomy. xxx. First Evening Lesson : Deuteronomy xxxiv. or Joshua i. Whit-Sunday The Proper Psalms : Matins, 48, 68 ; Evensong, 104, 145. Epistle: Acts n. i-n. Gospel : St. John xiv. 15-31. First Morning Lesson : Deuteronomy xvi. 1-18. Second Morning Lesson : Romans vm. 1-18. First Evening Lesson : Isaiah xi. or Ezekiel xxxvi. 25. Second Evening Lesson : Galations v. 16 or Acts xvm. 24 to xix. 21. Trinity Sunday Epistle : Revelation iv. i-n. Gospel : St. John in. 1-15. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah vi. i-n. Second Morning Lesson : Revelation i. 1-9. First Evening Lesson : Genesis xvm. or Genesis i. and n. 1-4. Second Evening Lesson : Ephesians iv. 1-17 or St. Matthew HI. First Sunday after Trinity Epistle : i John iv. 7-21. Gospel : St. Luke xvi. 19-31. First Morning Lesson : Joshua HI. ^ to iv. 15. First Evening Lesson : Joshua v, 13 to vi. 21, or Joshua xxiv. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Second Sunday after Trinity Epistle : i John HI. 13-24. Gospel : St. Luke xiv. 16-24. First Morning Lesson : Judges iv. First Evening Lesson : Judges v. or Judges vi. n. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Third Sunday after Trinity- Epistle : i Peter v. 5-11. Gospel : St. Luke xv. i-io. First Morning Lesson : i Samuel n. 1-27. First Evening Lesson : i Samuel in. or i Samuel iv. 1-19. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Fourth Sunday after Trinity Epistle : Romans vm. 18-23. Gospel : St. Luke vi. 36-42. First Morning Lesson : i Samuel XH. First Evening Lesson : i Samuel XIH. or Ruth i. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Fifth Sunday after Trinity- Epistle : i St. Peter HI. 8-15. Gospel : St. Luke v. i-n. First Morning Lesson: i Samuel xv. 1-34. First Evening Lesson : i Samuel xvi. or xvi 324 SCKIPTUKES PEOPEE FOE SUNDAYS Sixth Sunday after Trinity Epistle : Romans vi. 3-11. Gospel : St. Matthew v. 20-26. First Morning Lesson : 2 Samuel i. First Evening Lesson : 2 Samuel xu. 1-24 or 2 Samuel XVIH. Seventh Sunday after Trinity Epistle : Romans vi. 19-23. Gospel : St. Mark vin. 1-9. First Morning Lesson : i Chronicles XXL First Evening Lesson : i Chronicles xxn. or i Chronicles XXVIH. 1-21. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Eighth Sunday after Trinity Epistle : Romans vin. 12-17. Gospel : St. Matthew vn. 15-21. First Morning Lesson : i Chronicles xxix. 9-29. First Evening Lesson : 2 Chronicles i. or i Kings HI. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Ninth Sunday after Trinity Epistle: i Corinthians x. 1-13. Gospel : St. Luke xvi, 1-9. First Morning Lesson : i Kings x. 1-25. First Evening Lesson : i Kings xi. 1-15 or I Kings xi. 26. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Tenth Sunday after Trinity Epistle: i Corinthians xu. in. Gospel : St. Luke xix. 41-47. First Morning Lesson : i Kings xu. First Evening Lesson : i Kings xiu. or I Kings xvu. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Eleventh Sunday after Trinity Epistle : i Corinthians xv. i-u. Gospel : St. Luke XVIH. 9-14. First Morning Lesson : i Kings XVIH. First Evening Lesson : i Kings xix. or xxi. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Twelfth Sunday after Trinity- Epistle: 2 'Corinthians HI. 4-9. Gospel: St. Mark vn. 31-37. First Morning Lesson : i Kings xxn. 1-41. First Evening Lesson : 2 Kings n. 1-16 or 2 Kings iv. 8-38. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity-^ Epistle : Galatians HI. 16-22. Gospel : St. Luke x. 23-37. First Morning Lesson : 2 Kings V. First Evening Lesson : 2 Kings vi. 1-24 or 2 Kings vii. Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity Epistle : Galatians v. 16-24. Gospel : St. Luke xvn. 11-19. First Morning Lesson : 2 Kings ix. First Evening Lesson : 2 Kings x. 1-32 or 2 Kings xni. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity Epistle: Galatians vi. 11-18. Gospel : St. Matthew vi. 24-34. First Morning Lesson : 2 Kings XVIH. First Evening Lesson : 2 Kings xix or 2 Kings xxm. 1-31. Second Lessons : Ordinary. 325 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity Epistle : Ephesians HI. 13-21. Gospel : St. Luke vn. 11-17. First Morning Lesson : 2 Chronicles xxxvi. First Evening Lesson : Nehemiah i. and n. 1-9 or Nehemiah vni. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity Epistle : Ephesians iv. 1-6. Gospel : St. Luke xiv. i-n. First Morning Lesson : Jeremiah v. First Evening Lesson : Jeremiah xxu, or Jeremiah xxxv. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity Epistle : i Corinthians i. 4-8. Gospel : St. Matthew XXH. 34-46. First Morning Lesson : -Jeremiah xxxvl. First Evening Lesson: Ezekial n. or Ezekial xni. 1-17. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity Epistle: Ephesians. iv. 17-32. Gospel : St. Matthew ix. 1-8. First Morning Lesson : Ezekiel xiv. First Evening Lesson, Ezekiel XVHI. or Ezekiel xxiv. 15. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Twentieth Sunday after Trinity Epistle : Ephesians v. 15-21. Gospel : St. Matthew xxu. 1-14. First Morning Lesson : Ezekiel xxxiv. First Evening Lesson : Ezekiel xxxvn. or Daniel I. Second Lesson : Ordinary. Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity Epistle : Ephesians vi. 10-20. Gospel : St. John iv. 46-54. First Morning Lesson : Daniel in. First Evening Lesson : Daniel iv. or Daniel v. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Twenty-Second Sunday after Trinity Epistle : Philippians i. 3-11. Gospel : St. Matthew xvm. 21-35. First Morning Lesson : Daniel vi. First Evening Lesson : Daniel vn. 9 or Daniel xn. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity- Epistle : Philippians in. 17-21. Gospel : St. Matthew xxu. 15-22. First Morning Lesson : Hosea xiv. First Evening Lesson : Joel II. 21 or Joel in. 9. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity Epistle: Colossians I. 3-12. Gospel : St. Matthew ix. 18-26. First Morning Lesson : Amos in. First Evening Lesson : Amos v. or Amos ix. Second Lessons : Ordinary. 326 SCRIPTURES PROPER FOR SUNDAYS Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Trinity- Epistle: Jeremiah xxni. 5-8. Gospel : St. John vi. 5-14. First Morning Lesson : Micah iv. and v. 1-8. First Evening Lesson: Micah vi. or Micah vn. Second Lessons : Ordinary. The Lessons appointed for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday after Trinity must always be read on the Sunday next before Advent. Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Trinity- First Morning Lesson : Habakkuk n. First Evening Lesson: Habakkuk in. or Zephaniah in. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Twenty-Seventh Sunday after Trinity (Lessons for the Sunday next before Ad- vent). First Morning Lesson: Ecclesiastes xi. and XH. First Evening Lesson : Haggai u. i-io or Malachi in. and iv. Second Lessons : Ordinary. 327 SCRIPTURES PROPER FOR HOLY DAYS. St. Andrew Epistle : Romans x. 9-21. Gospel : St. Matthew iv. 18-22. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah LIV. Second Morning Lesson : St. John i. 35-43. First Evening Lesson : Isaiah LXV. 1-17. Second Evening Lesson : St. John XH. 20-42. St. Thomas- Epistle: Ephesians n. 19-22. Gospel : St. John xx. 24-31. First Morning Lesson : Job XLII. 1-7. Second Morning Lesson : John xx. 19-24. First Evening Lesson : Isaiah xxxv. Second Evening Lesson : St. John xiv. 1-8. Christmas Day Proper Psalms: Matins: 19, 45, 85. Evensong: 89, no, 132. Epistle : Hebrews i. 1-12. Gospel : St. John i. 1-14. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah ix. 1-8. Second Morning Lesson : St. Luke n. 1-15. First Evening Lesson : Isaiah vu. 10-17. Second Evening Lesson : Titus in. 4-9. St. Stephen \ Epistle : Acts vu. 55-60. Gospel : St. Matthew xxm. 34-39. First Morning Lesson : Genesis iv. i-i i. Second Morning Lesson : Acts vi. First Evening Lesson : 2 Chronicles xxiv. 15-23. Second Evening Lesson : Acts vm. 1-9. St. John the Evangelist Epistle : i St. John i. i-io. Gospel : St. John xxi. 19-25. First Morning Lesson : Exodus xxxm. 9. Second Morning Lesson : St. John xm. 23-36. First Evening Lesson : Isaiah vi. Second Evening Lesson : Revelation i. The Innocents' Day Epistle : Revelation xiv. 1-5. Gospel : St. Matthew n. 13-18. First Morning Lesson : Jeremiah xxxi. 1-18. First Evening Lesson : Baruch iv. 21-31. 328 SCRIPTURES PROPER FOR HOLY DAYS The Circumcision of Christ Epistle: Romans iv. 8-14. Gospel : St. Luke n. 15-21. First Morning Lesson : Genesis xvn. 9. Second Morning Lesson : Romans n. 17. First Evening Lesson : Deuteronomy x. 12. Second Evening Lesson : Colossians n. 8-18. The Epiphany, or the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles- Epistle : Ephesians in. 1-12. Gospel: St. Matthew u. 1-12. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah i.x. Second Morning Lesson : St. Luke in. 15-23 First Evening Lesson: Isaiah XLIX. 13-24. Second Evening Lesson: St. John u. 1-12. The Conversion of St. Paul- Epistle : Acts ix. 1-22. Gospel : St. Matthew xix. 27-30. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah XLIX. 1-13. Second Morning Lesson : Galations i. n. First Evening Lesson: Jeremiah i. i-n. Second Evening Lesson : Acts xxvi. 1-21. Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin Epistle : Malachi in. 1-5. Gospel : St. Luke n. 22-40. First Morning Lesson : Exodus xin 1-17. First Evening Lesson : Haggai n. i-io. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Saint Matthias Epistle : Acts I. 15-26. Gospel : St. Matthew xi. 25-30. First Morning Lesson : i Samuel n. 27-36. First Evening Lesson : Isaiah xxn. 15. Second Lessons : Ordinary. The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary- Epistle : Isaiah vn. 10-15. Gospel : St. Luke I. 26-38. First Morning Lesson : Genesis in. 1-16. First Evening Lesson : Isaiah LII. 7-13. Second Lessons : Ordinary. Ash Wednesday Proper Psalms : Matins, 6, 32, 38 ; Evensong, 102, 130, 143. Epistle: Joeln. 12-17. Gospel : St. Matthew vi. 16-21. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah LVIII. 1-13. Second Morning Lesson : St. Mark n. 13-23. First Evening Lesson : Jonah in. Second Evening Lesson : Hebrews xn. 3-18. Monday before Easter- Epistle : Isaiah LXIH. 1-19. Gospel : St. Mark xiv. 1-72. First Morning Lesson : Lamentations i. 1-15. Second Morning Lesson : St. John xiv. 1-15. First Evening Lesson : Lamentations n. 13. Second Evening Lesson : St. John xiv. 15. THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY Tuesday before Easter Epistle : Isaiah L. 5-11. Gospel : St. Mark xv. 1-39. First Morning Lesson : Lamentations in. 1-34. Second Morning Lesson : St. John xv. 1-14. First Evening Lesson : Lamentations in. 34. Second Evening Lesson : St. John xv. 14. Wednesday before Easter Epistle : Hebrews i. 16-28. Gospel : St. Luke XXH. 1-71. First Morning Lesson : Lamentations iv. 1-21. Second Morning Lesson : St. John xvi. 1-16. First Evening Lesson : Daniel ix. 20. Second Evening Lesson : St. John xvi. 16. Thursday before Easter Epistle : i Corinthians XI. 17-34. Gospel : St. Luke xxm. 1-49. First Morning Lesson : Hosea xm. 1-15. Second Morning Lesson : St. John xvu. First Evening Lesson : Hosea xiv. Second Evening Lesson : St. John xm. 1-36. Good Friday Proper Psalms : Matins, 22, 40, 54 ; Evensong, 69, 88. Epistle : Hebrews x. 1-25. Gospel : St. John xix. 1-37. First Morning Lesson : Genesis xxn. 1-20. Second Morning Lesson : St. John xvm. First Evening Lesson : Isaiah LH. 13 and LHI. Second Evening Lesson : i Peter n. Easter Even Epistle : i St. Peter HI. 17-22. Gospel : St. Matthew xxvn. 57-66. First Morning Lesson : Zechariah ix. Second Morning Lesson : St. Luke xxm. 50. First Evening Lesson : Hosea v. 8 to vi. 4. Second Evening Lesson : St. Luke xxm. 50. Second Evening Lesson : Romans vi. 1-14. Monday in Easter Week Epistle : Acts x. 34-43. Gospel : St. Luke xxiv. 13-35. First Morning Lesson : Exodus xv. 1-22. Second Morning Lesson: Luke xxiv. 1-13. First Evening Lesson : Canticles 11. 10. Second Evening Lesson : Matthew xxvm. i-io. Tuesday in Easter week Epistle : Acts xm. 26-41. Gospel : St. Luke xxiv. 36-48. First Morning Lesson : 2 Kings xm. 14-22. Second Morning Lesson : St. John xxi. 1-15. First Evening Lesson : Ezekiel xxxvu. 1-15. Second Evening Lesson : St. John xxi. 15. St. Mark- Epistle : Ephesians w. 7-16. Gospel : St. John xv. i-n. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah LXII. 6. First Evening Lesson : Ezekiel i. 1-15. Second Lessons : Ordinary. SCRIPTURES PROPER FOR HOLY DAYS St. Philip and St. James- Epistle : St. James i. 1-12. Gospel : St. John xiv. 1-14. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah LXI. Second Morning Lesson : St. John i. 43. First Evening Lesson : Zechariah iv. Second Evening Lesson : Ordinary. Ascension Day Proper Psalms, Matins, 8, 15, 21 ; Evensong, 24, 47, 108. Epistle : Acts i. i-n. Gospel : St. Mark xvi. 14-20. First Morning Lesson : Daniel vi. 9-15. Second Morning Lesson : Luke xxiv. 44. First Evening Lesson : 2 Kings n. 1-16. Second Evening Lesson : Hebrews iv. Monday in Whitsun Week Epistle : Acts x. 34-48. Gospel : St. John HI. 16-21. First Morning Lesson : Genesis xi. i-io. Second Morning Lesson: i Corinthians xn. 1-14. First Evening Lesson : Numbers xi. 16-31. Second Evening Lesson : i Corinthians xn. 27 and xin. Tuesday in Whitsun Week- Epistle : Acts vni. 14-17. Gospel : St John x. i-io. First Morning Lesson : Joel 11. 21. Second Morning Lesson : i Thessalonians V. 12-24. First Evening Lesson : Micah iv. 1-8. Second Evening Lesson : i John iv. 1-14. St. Barnabas Epistle : Acts xi. 22-30. Gospel: St. John xv. 12-16. First Morning Lesson:, Deuteronomy XXXIH. 1-12. Second Morning Lesson : Acts iv. 31. First Evening Lesson : Nahum i. Second Evening Lesson : Acts xiv. 8. St. John the Baptist- Epistle : Isaiah XL. i-n. Gospel : St Luke i. 57-80. First Morning Lesson : Malachi in. 1-7. Second Morning Lesson : St. Matthew HI. First Evening Lesson : Malachi iv. Second Evening Lesson: St Matthew xiv. 1-13. St. Peter- Epistle: Acts XH. T-II. Gospel : St. Matthew xvi. 13-19- First Morning Lesson : Ezekiel HI. 4-15. Second Morning Lesson : St. John xxi. 15-23. First Evening Lesson : Zechariah HI. Second Evening Lesson : Acts iv. 8-23. St. James Epistle : Acts xi. 27 to XH. 3. Gospel : St. Matthew xx. 20-28. First Morning Lesson : 2 Kings i. 1-16. Second Morning Lesson : St. Luke ix. 51-57- First Evening Lesson : Jeremiah xxvi. 8-16. Second Evening Lesson : Ordinary. THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY St. Bartholomew Epistle : Acts v. 12-16. Gospel : St. Luke xxn. 24-30. First Morning Lesson : Genesis XXVIH. 10-18. First Evening Lesson : Deuteronomy xvm. 15. Second Lessons : Ordinary. St. Matthew- Epistle : 2 Corinthians iv. 1-6. Gospel : St. Matthew ix. 9-13. First Morning Lesson : i Kings xix. 15. First Evening Lesson : i Chronicles xxix. 1-20. Second Lessons : Ordinary. St. Michael and all Angels Epistle : Revelation xn. 7-12. Gospel : St Matthew xvm. i-io. First Morning Lesson : Genesis xxxii. Second Morning Lesson : Acts xn. 5-18. First Evening Lesson : Daniel x. 4. Second Evening Lesson : Revelation xiv. 14. St. Luke the Evangelist Epistle : 2 Timothy iv. 5-15. Gospel: St. Luke x. 1-7. First Morning Lesson : Isaiah i. v. First Evening Lesson : Ecclus. xxxvm. 1-15. St. Simon and St. Jude Epistle : St. Jude 1-8. Gospel : St. John xv. 17-27. First Morning Lesson: Isaiah xxvin. 9-17. First Evening Lesson : Jeremiah in. 12-19. Second Lessons : Ordinary. All Saints' Day- Epistle : Revelation vn. 2-12. Gospel : St. Matthew v. 1-12. First Morning Lesson : Wisdom in. i-io. Second Morning Lesson : Hebrews xi. 33 and xn. 1-7. First Evening Lesson : Wisdom v. 1-17. Second Evening Lesson : Revelation xix. 1-17. 332 GENERAL INDEX. ADVENT Season, the, 1-30. Affr6, Archbishop, of Paris, 178. Ainger, Canon, 39, 231. Ainsworth, Percy, quoted, 26, 29, 181, 188. Alexander, Archbishop, 43. Andersen, Hans Christian, 223. Andrew, St., 302. Andrewes, Bishop Lancelot, 112, 238, 265. Anselm, 87, 128, 129. Appleton, Dr., 59, 60, 150. Aquinas, St. Thomas, 39. Arabia, Moslem traditions of, 85. Argyll, the 8th Duke of, on Elizabeth Fry, 28. Ark, John Keble on the, 86. Arnold, Matthew, on Advent Sunday, 4 ; on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 37 ; on June in England, 229 ; on the doctrine of St. Paul, 257. Arnold, Dr. Thomas, 117, 164. Ascensiontide, 193-204. Ash Wednesday, 93-97. Audubon, his love of nature, 208 ; on the habits of birds, 264. Augustine, St., on the Epistle for Advent Sunday, 4 ; on Psalm xix., 33 ; on St. John I., 10 ; on Psalm XXXH., 93 ; on Psalm en., 94 ; on Psalm xxn, 142 ; on his mother, St. Monica, 146, 277, 278 ; on slander, 196, 197 ; on the miracle of Nain, 278. BACH, John Sebastian, his knowledge of the Bible, 15, 16; his modesty, 56; his blindness, 95 ; his Passion Music, 131 ; the purpose of music, 276. Bacon, Francis, on bonds of unity, 274, 275. Baedeker, Dr., 30. Balfour, the Right Hon. A. J., on Genesis i., 27; on the procession of humanity by a sunlit lake, 240. Barnabas, St., 311, 312. Barnett, Canon, on Advent services, 19. Barry, Dr. William, on Carlyle, 66, 294 ; on the Easter message, 154. Basil, St., 279. Bassanto, in " The Merchant of Venice," 5. Baxter, Richard, 19, 157. Bay Path in New England, the, 243, 244. Bayard, the Knight, 259. Benedict, St., 84. Benson, A. C., 222. Benson, Archbishop, on the Second Advent, 2, 4; on strength of will, 126, 127- on St. Mark, 311. Benson, Monsignor Hugh, 222. Benson, Father R. M., 101, 120, 165, 196. 333 THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY Bergson, Henri, on pity, 235, 236. Bernstein, Edward, on Socialists and the Bible, 18. Bible Sunday (second in Advent), 13-22. Birkbeck, W. J., on the festival processions of the Eastern Church, 68; on a Russian missionary student, 180; on memories of St. Andrew at Kieff, 302. Blachford, Lord, on Giotto's frescoes, 131. Blake, Admiral Robert, and his brother, 250. Blake, William, 106, 219, 220. Blomneld, Bishop, 183. Blunt, Bishop, of Hull, 180. Boehme, Jacob, 96, 206. Bompas, Bishop, 41. Bonar, Dr. Andrew, on the tunnelling of the Alps, 118. Bonaventura, St., 72. Boniface, St., 144. Borrow, George, on the Parable of the Sower, 82 ; quoted, 212. Botticelli, Sandro, on the Adoration of the Magi, 51. Bourget, Paul, quoted, 64. Bowen, Edward, a Christmas poem, 41. Bradley, Dr. A. C., on the text, " I have Overcome the world," 183. Brahe", Tycho, 101. Brahms, his Requiem at St. Paul's, 46 ; his kindness to his parents, 190. Bromby, Canon Henry, 128, 150. Bronte, Charlotte, quoted, 56, 291. Bronte, Emily, 291. Brookfield, Mrs. W. H M on Elizabeth Fry, 57. Brooks, Bishop Phillips, on the Babe of Bethlehem, 3 ; on the childhood of our Lord, 32 ; inscription for the tombstone of his mother, 105 ; on the tents of Edom, 125 ; his Good Friday message, 138 ; an Easter sermon, 162 ; on the " first day of the week," 176 ; on our Lord and Nicodemus, 220. Brown, Dr. John, 40. Browne, Bishop Harold, 15, 276, 291, 292. Browne, Sir Thomas, 105, 106. Browning, Mrs, on Psalm LXXXV, 35; on the purple twilights of Eden, 84 ; on transient opportunity, 102 ; words for Good Friday, 138 ; on life and creed, 296, 297. Browning, Robert, on the day of grace, 102 ; for Easter dawn, 150 ; on the desert prophet, 184; "The Ring and the Book" quoted, 207; "Saul" quoted, 248; on a miracle of Elisha, 270; on St. Peter, 314. Bryce, Viscount, on the first lesson of Christianity, 7 ; on the coronation of Charlemagne, 34. Bunyan, John, 3 ; his last sermon, 39 ; on the woman of Canaan, 105 ; on Psalm XL., 143 ; on the Lord's lodgings, 211 ; on " Heirs of God," 211 ; on abund- ance of room in heaven, 238. Burne-Jones, on the Books of Kings, 265. Bury, Bishop, on his visit to a school in Siberia, 20, 21 ; on Russians and the Gospels, 257, 258. Bury, Richard de, on the Labourers in the Vineyard, 76. Bushnell, Horace, 112, 232,311. Butler, Josephine, on the doves that fly to their windows, 54 ; on her portrait by Watts, 125, 126; on hidden gold, 135. Butler, Bishop, 213, 235. CAESAR, Julius, 124. Cairns, the late Principal, on the burial-ground of the Jews at Prague, 20. Calvin, John, on Psalm vi., 93. Carlyle, Thomas, 25, 40, 58, 126, 161, 256. 334 GENEEAL INDEX Carroll, Dr. J. S., on the golden candlesticks in Dante's " Purgatorio," 20; on Dante's view of hospitality, 63 ; on St. Bonaventura, 72 ; on the three theological virtues, 89 ; on Dante's view of Solomon, 265, 266; Dante and dreams, 293. Carroll, Lewis, on the Sun of Righteousness, 597, 298. Carstares, Rev. John, 309. Carter, T. T., 79, 83, 263. Cecil, Richard, 70, 284. Charlemagne, Coronation of, 34. Cholmondeley, Mary, 104, 105. Christmastide, 31-48. Chrysostom, St. John, 289. Clough, A. H., on Jacob's ladder, 109 ; his Ode on Easter day, 160 ; on the valley of dry bones, 283. Clyde, Lord (Colin Campell) and the French Bible, 15. Cohen, Israel, on the Jewish home, 191. Coillard, F, of the Zambesi, on life with the Basutos, 173, 174. Coleridge, S. T., 29, 32, 37, 142. Colet, Dean, 55, 59, 280. CoHins, Bishop, of Gibraltar, 183, 236. Columbus, Christopher, a student of the Bible, 13. Colvin, Sir Sidney, on marginal notes written by Keats in a copy of " Paradise Lost," 282, 283. Comenius, Bishop, 307, 308, 311 ; Conde, the great, his last hours, 88. Confucius, 33. Conrad, Joseph, on the anger of the sea, 66. Crashaw, Richard, 147. Crawford, Dan, quoted, 198. Cromwell, Oliver, letter to his daughter, 238 ; his last hours, 287. DALE, R. W., on Ephesians, 51 ; on power from on high, 199; on "the fulness of God," 274 ; his first sermon, 282 ; on the inward life, 304, 305. Damascus, 306. Dante, on our Lord's early visit to the Temple, 60 ; on love to neighbours, 63 ; on faith, hope, and charity, 89; on the "harrowing of hell," 152; on Psalm cxiv., 158, 159; on pilgrims, 166 ; on Solomon in Paradise, 265, 266 ; on his experience in battle, 266 ; the three wild beasts, 281 ; on St. James the Great, 315. Darlow, Rev. T. H., quoted, tgi, 192. Defoe, Daniel, on the Plague of London, 22. Deguerry, the Abbe, 128. Delitzsch, F., on the Resurrection, 161. De Quincey, Thomas, on the story of Joan of Arc, 248, 249. Dickens, Charles, the vision of a star, 52, 53. D'Oria, Prince Andrea, 246, 247. Dostoevsky, F., on Christmas in a Siberian prison, 36 ; on the miracle at Cana of Galilee, 62 ; on sufferers from " possession," 67 ; on the study of Genesis, 116, 117; on the Siberian convicts' Palm Sunday, 130; on the love of nature, 234, 235 ; on the confession of St. Thomas, 303 ; his dying words 313 ; on the words of Jesus, 318, 319. Drake, father of Sir Francis, and the Bible, 13, 14. Drake, Sir Francis, 182, 183. Drummond, the Hon. Adelaide, 305. Dudden, Dr. Homes, quoted, 212, 213. 335 THE CHEISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STORY Dumas, Alexander, on Anne of Austria and her children, 115 ; on reverence for Royalty, 174. Duncan, Dr. John, 56, 102, 105. Dunstan, St., 158. EASTER, 155-167. Easter Even, 150-154. Easter Sepulchre, in the Mediaeval Church, 153, 154. Edwards, Principal T. C., on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 38; on the more perfect tabernacle, 104. Elias, Brother, 260. Eliot, George, on debt, 5 ; the motto of " Silas Marner," 40 ; on maternal love, 61 ; on the stars, 78 ; on the character of Judas, 126 ; on the element of fear in life, 230; on carrying fear about, 230; "Scenes of Clerical Life" quoted, 261. Ellis, E. T., quoted, 62. Emerson, R. W., 196, 220. Epictetus, on " Caesar's friend," 145, 146. Epiphany Season, the, 49-72. Ewing, Juliana Horatia, 2. Exeter office, the, 26. " FAIRLESS, Michael," 44, 167. " Falconer, Lanoe" (Marie Hawker), 163, 174, 288. Parrar, F. W., on his mother's Bible-reading, 16. Ferrar, Nicholas, 113. FitzGerald, Edward, 161, 165, 166. Fiume, pilgrimage church at, 12. Forsyth, Christina, 69. Forty days, the great, 169-192. Fox, Caroline, on the words of Gethsemane, 134. Francis of Assisi, St., 92, 289. Friday, Good, 137-147. Froude, Hurrell, on Psalm xxxn., 93, 94. Fry, Elizabeth, 28, 30, 57, 127, 252. Fry, William, 252. Fuller, Thomas, on river-borne music, 35, 36 ; on the two witnesses in Revela- tion, 57 ; on the tares, 67 ; on the gift of water, 69, 70 ; on Proverbs, 72 ; on Eldad and Medad, 213, 214 ; on anger, 275 ; on the man sick of the palsy, 280 ; on Ezekiel, 282. GARDINER, S. R., on the knowledge of the Lord, 21 ; on moderation, 27 ; on the signing of the Covenant in Edinburgh, 173. Gardner, Miss Alice, on the Emperor Julian, 27. George V, King, a war message to his people, 22. Gibbon, Edward, on early Christian charity, 58 ; on Samuel as honoured at Con- stantinople, 264. Giotto, on envy, 87. Gladstone, W. E., 172, 181; 295, 308. Goethe, quoted, 156. " Golden Legend," Longfellow's, quoted, 123. Good Friday, 137-147. Gordon, General, on the Bible, 15. Gratry, Pere, on the " Tongues of Pentecost," 208. Gregory, St., the great, 297. 336 GENERAL INDEX Grcenwell, Dora, quotes from Bunyan's " Holy War," 8; on " Him Who shall be called Wonderful," 40; on the parable of the tares, 67; on Psalm XL., 142 ; on the Holy Grave, 150 ; on St. Luke xxiv. 39, 167 ; on St. John xiv. 19, 209 ; on I Cor. xn. 5, 214 ; on the tree known by its fruits, 259, 260 ; on the Good Samaritan, 262 ; on the martyr Ignatius, 269, 270. Grotius, 260, 261. Guadalquivir, the river, 81. Guadiana, the river, 45. Gu6rin, Maurice de, 174. Guiney, Louise Imogen, a Christmas poem, 48. HALL, Bishop, 105, 133. Hallam, Arthur, Letter to R. C. Trench, 145. Handel and the blindness of Samson, 88 ; his death on Good Friday, 142. Hardy, Thomas, a Christmas poem, 42 ; on a deserted highway, 244 ; on t Kings xix, the history of Elijah, 269. Harford-Battersby, Canon, 291. Haroun-al-Raschid, 28. Harper, Prof., on Moses as mediator, 187, 188; on the grave of Moses, 203. Havergal, F. R., 106, 276. Hawker, R. S., of Morwenstow, on Bossuet's Advent Sermon, 4 ; on the prophets, 13 ; on the Magi, 51, 52 ; on the parish church, 107, 108 ; on Jacob's ladder, no, in; on the tree of the Cross, 140; on the Great Forty Days, 170; on the doctrine of the Trinity, 218 ; on birds and angels, 264, 265. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, quoted, 138. Hazlitt, William, on a sermon by Coleridge, 24, 25 ; on holy dreamers, 71 ; on his father's portrait, 88, 88 ; on the wisdom of the ancients, 90 ; on Jacob's ladder, no ; on Dr. Johnson as " Good Samaritan," 262. Helps, Sir Arthur, 173. Henry II, of England, 93. Henry IV, of France, 76, 77. Herbert, George, 156. Hole, Dean, 207. Holland, H. Scott, on Canon Liddon's Advent Sermons in St. Paul's Cathedral, 4 ; on Prof. Mozley and Joseph, 116. Holmes, Archdeacon, quoted, 187. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, on the discipline of trial, 0,7. Holy week to Maundy Thursday, 119-136. Hook, Dean, 113, 114, 176, 305. Hooper, Bishop, 93. Horn, the musical, 241, 242. Hugo, Victor, on the miracle of the loaves, 259. Huguenot Pastors at La Rochelle in 1573, the, 203, 204. Button, R. H., on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 37 ; on St. Paul and Roman law, 59 ; on the song of Deborah, 243. INNOCENTS, the Holy, 305, 306. Irving, Edward, 67. Isaiah, the Prophet of Advent, 8-13. JACKS, Dr. L. P., on the sowing oi thought, 82 ; his shepherd of genius " Snar- ley Bob," 179, 180. Jackson, Stonewall, Bible student, 15. James, St., the Great, patron of Spain, 3x5. James V, of Scotland, troubles of his reign, 10. Japanese martyrs, 158. Jerome. St., 37, 276. THE CHEISTIAN 3EAB IN HUMAN STOKY Jesuit missionaries in Canada, the, 315-317. Jews, Burial-ground of the, at Prague, 20 ; their reverence for the Sabbath, 278, 279. John, St., the Baptist, 313, 314. John, St., the Evangelist, 304, 305. Johnson, Dr. Samuel, his resolution for Advent Sunday, 5. Jones, Edward Burne-, on the work of twelve men, 89. Jones, Prof. Viriamu, 181. Jowett, Benjamin, 20. Jowett, Rev. John, 211. Jowett, Dr. J. H., quoted, 43. Juliana of Norwich, 210. Keble, John, on the Ark, 86 ; Father Benson on, 101. Keith- Falconer, the Hon. Ion, on St. Mark xvi, 311. Kelman, Dr. John, on the victory of the Cross, 134. Kempis, Thomas a, quoted, 23, 77, 82, 97, 289, 290. Ker, Dr. John, 93. Kettle, Prof. J. M., 106. Kieff, St. Andrews' church at, 12. King, Bishop, of Lincoln, 157, 222; on Ezekiel, the prophet of hope, 281. Kingsley, Charles, on the talismanic Name, 127 ; on love casting out fear, 229, 230 ; his last sermon, 260. Knox, John, his last hours, 257. LACORDAIRE, Fere, his last words, 215. Lamb, Charles, on sundials, 46, 47; quoted by Mr. Gladstone, 296 ; on Saints' Days, 301-302. Lambert, John, 157. Landon, Perceval, on Lamaism and Christianity, 231. Laud, Archbishop, 164, 165. Lavadores, the, a Jewish Society, 152, 153. Lawrence, Lady, her message to John Nicholson, 14, 15. League of Nations, the, 12. Lecky, W. E. H., 9, 10, 293, 303. Leighton, Archbishop, on the study of the Bible, 16 ; on " hurries of the world," 25 ; on living monastically, 75 ; on " thorns and briars," 84 ; Gilbert Burnet on, 166, 167, 182, 232. Lent, the approach to, 75-90. Liddon, H. P., his Advent sermons at St. Paul's, 4 ; his last Bampton lecture, 30; a Christmas sermon, 35; his last sermon, 181, 182; on a motto for a bell at St. Paul's, 308. Lincoln, Abraham, 70, 238. Livingstone, David, 39, 172, 270. Lloyd George, the Right Hon. D., on little nations, 295. London, the Bishop of (Dr. Winnington Ingram), his first war sermon, 146. Louis IX of France, crowned on Advent Sunday, 5 ; his love of the Bible, 13 ; and Psalm xix., 34; his dying words, 90; his longing for the gift of tears, 290; 310. Louis XIV, as listener, 176. Luther, Martin, on Psalm xxxn., 93 ; quoted by Dr. Whyte, 103. Lyall, Edna, 277. Lytton, Bulwer, the Roman bandits in " Rienzi," 10, n ; on the plague in the Middle Ages, 22. 338 GENEEAL INDEX MACAULAY, Lord, 6 39 5 on the Garden of Eden, 79, 80 ; on the Seven Bishops, DI ; on the field of blood," 124 ; on fallen tyrants, 133 ; on Good Friday 39; on the ''Bloody Assize," 186; on "touching" for the King's Evil, 198 ; on Jewish history, 268 ; 279. Macdonald, George, quotations from " Thomas Wingfold, Curate," 43 44, 144 Mackay, Alexander, 68, 69. Maclaren, Alexander, on the trial of Abraham, 108 ; on Hosea as the prophet of repentance, 136. Macnaughtan, Miss S., on the Bible as a universal human document, 17 ; on a custom in Georgia, 25. Mark, St., 310, 311. Marsden, Samuel, 41. Martineau, Dr. James, 306. Martineau, Mrs. James, on the Good Friday message, 142. Mary, the Blessed Virgin, 308, 309, 310. Matheson, George, 96. Matthias, St., 309. Matsys, Quentin, 126. Maurice, F. D., on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 37; on the Holy City, 80, 81 on Jacob's ladder, in; on the Resurrection, 160, 164; on Whitsunday, 206, 209 ; on the Holy Trinity, 218, 224, 225. Meccan Pilgrimage, the, 221, 222. Melanchthon, Philip, his wish to die in Palestine, 37. Meredith, George, on mothers and war, 308. Merriman, Henry Seton, on rivers, 81. Michael, St., and All Angels, 316, 317. Millet, J. F., as lover of the Psalms, 16 ; on the programme of work, 83. Milton, John, 288. Moffatt, Professor James, his translation of the New Testament, quoted, 50 ; 102, 276 ; on the early martyrs, 86, 87. Mommsen, Theodor, 6, 288. Montaigne, on the fruits of grace, 259. Montefiore, Sir Moses, 45, 46, 152, 202, 247, 248, 267, 268. Montefiore, Lady, 135 ; and the story of Ruth, 248 ; 317, 318. Montalembert, on monasteries as a ladder to heaven, in, 112; on the birds that fed Elijah, 267 ; on valiant monks, 288, 289 ; on a Prior of Solesmes, 297. Montserrat, n. More, Sir Thomas, 190. Morgan, Professor de, 161. Morley, Lord, on " Bacon's divine saying," 235 ; on holiness, 256. Morrison, Dr. G. II., 237. ' Mothering Sunday," 103. Moule, Bishop Handley, 172. Miiller, Max, 203. Mmillo, hie motto, 102. Myers, F. W. H., 196, 197, 203, 268, 269. NEALE, J. M., quoted, 28, 29, 45, 54, 102, 121, 139, 140 ; on the bird of paradise, 201, 202 ; on St. Thomas the Apostle, 302, 303. Newman, J. H., on the Advent Scriptures, 2, 9 ; on Time as the arbiter of actions, 23 ; on the Epiphany, 50 ; on the elect of God, 59 ; on love of friends, 86 ; on Keble's view of Psalm xxxn, 94 ; Principal Shairp on his preaching, 104 ; on the Gospel feast, 106 ; on Easter Day, 159 : on Ascensiontide, 195, 199, 200, 223 ; on Thomas Scott, 224. Nicholson, John, 232. Nicodemus, the Gospel of, 152. THE CHRISTIAN YEAR IN HUMAN STORY Nicoll, Sir W. Robertson, on the Sabbath of the Son, 200 ; on the life of the Spirit-born, 221. Nightingale, Florence, on the prophet Isaiah, 8, g. Nile, the river, Si. Norgrove, Betsy, nurse of F. D. Maurice, on his earty Bible-reading, 16. Norton, C. E., a letter to Lowell, 26; on the Act of Emancipation, 70. ORDERIC, the Chronicler, 76. PAUET, Sir James, on debt, 6. Palgrave, W. G., on Arabian pearl-seekers, 71. Palissy, Bernard, 196. Parker, Dr., on the watered garden, 96; on living darkness, 103; on Psalm LXIX, 143, 144 ; on profitable Scriptures, 182 ; on grace, 201 ; on listening stones, 242. Parkman, Francis, on the Jesuits in North America, 141, 206. Pater, Walter, 72. Patteson, Bishop, 304. Patrick, St, 210. Paul, St., the prisoner, 51 ; Feast of his Conversion, 306-308. Paul, St. Vincent de, 75, 76. Pepys, S., on signs in the heavens, 18 ; on industry in office, 56, 57. Perraud, Cardinal, and Pere Gratry, 279, 280. Perreyve, Henri, on the Saviour's choice of sinners, 135, 136 ; on the Feast of the Ascension, 198, 214 ; on true liberty, 233. Peter, St., Edward the Confessor and, 314, 315. Plague of London, the, 22. Pusey, E. B., a sermon by, 26 ; his first University sermon, 34 ; on the castaway, 76; on the Napoleonic Wars, 97; on a service at Gottingen, 123; his mother's influence, 146; on the preparation for Easter, 156, 292; on the example of St. Barnabas, 312, 313. RAINY, the late Principal, 231, 260. Rheims Cathedral, " Holy Sepulchre" in the Treasury, 151, 152. Ridding, Bishop, his farewell sermon at Winchester, 134, 135. Robertson, Rev. J. A., on the Shema, 190, 191. Roman religion, and its " royal laws," 6. Rossetti, Christina, on Advent, 2 ; on the closed gate of Eden, 85 ; 123, 222, 223. Ruskin, John, on the death of our Lord, 25; on the perfect home, 29; on daughter and mother, 61 ; on luxury, 77 ; on Our Lord's Temptation, 105 ; on Moses and Aaron, 183, 208 ; on diversities of gifts, 214, 224, 237, 240, 251, 280,281, 294. Russia, Easter in, 162, 163. Rutherford, Samuel, quoted, 58. Soc/o Calino of Genoa, the, 81. Saint-Cyran, the Abb6 de, 274. Saints, Festival of All Saints, 318, 319. Sales, St. Francis de, 39, 106. Salisbury, the great Marquis of, his confession of faith, 160. Salway family, motto of die, 175. San croft, Archbishop, 68. Sanderson, Bishop, 158. Savonarola, his Advent sermons on Haggai, 8 ; on the new Jerusalem, 51 ; on the four-and-twenty elders, 219. 340 GENERAL INDEX Scott, Sir Walter, 9, 28, So; " The Abbot " quoted, 107 ; hytnns of his last days, 146; "The Heart of Midlothian" quoted, 184, 185; "The Talisman" quoted, 187,307; " Ivanhoe " quoted, 188, 189 ; on the horn of Roland, 242; " Pevenl of the Peak " quoted, 267; " The Antiquary " quoted, 27$; " Marmion " quoted, 305. Seine, the river, 81. Selwyn, Mrs., on the virtue of hope, 8g. Shairp, Principal, on Newman's preaching, 104. Shakespeare, William, on Henry V at Agincourt, 38 ; on the crusade dreamed by Henry IV ; " Antony and Cleopatra " quoted, 349, 250, 251 ; " King John " quoted, 300. Sillery, the Girondist, 45. Simeon, Charles, 223. Slessor, Mary, 293. Smetham, James, 38 ; on the Christmas Carol, 139 ; on the sympathy of our Lord, 201. Smith, Principal Sir G. A., quotes from Victor Hugo's " Les Mise'rables," 10 ; on the message of Joel, 95 ; on the song of the well, 186 ; on David's Elegy, 252. Smith, W. Robertson, 276. "Spectator," the, on a shepherd recruit, 244 ; on St. Barnabas, 312, 313. Spenser, Edmund, quoted, 21, 57, 242, 258, 259, 289, 292, 312. Spurgeon, C. H., 296. Stanley, A. P., on Russian national thanksgivings, 19 ; on the burial ground oi the Jews at Prague, 20; on Epiphany in the Eastern Church, 54, 55; on Dr. Arnold, 60; on Mount Hor, 185 ; on the pilgrims to Canterbury, 196; on early Christian mosaics of the river Jordan, 240 ; on a picture of Joshua in Russia, 241 ; on the dry bones and the new era, 283, 284 ; on Dr. Arnold and St. Thomas, 303. Stephen, St., 304. Stephen, Sir James, on Zachary Macaulay, 24. Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Milton's " Ode on the Nativity," 37. Stevenson, R. L., on the lepers of Molokai, 64 ; on the river Oise, 255. Stock, Dr. Eugene, 41. Story, Principal, on his father, 118, 130. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, on prayer, 27 ; on the American slave, 47 ; reminiscences of her grandmother, 53, 54; on mother and son, 60, 61 ; on the sacrament of love, 89; on the ladder to heaven, 113 ; on her mother, 189, 190. Stratton, David, a Scottish martyr, 302. Stuart, Prof. James, 206. Swinburne, A. C., his knowledge of the Bible, 17. Symonds, John Addington, 86. TAIT, Archbishop, 71, 127. Talbot, Bishop, quoted, 185. Taylor, Jeremy, on the De Profundis, 94. Temple Church in London, the, a relic from, 151. Tennyson, Alfred, on Isaiah, 9 ; on the immortality of the soul, 161 ; on th new spring, 162 ; on the horns of Elfland, 242 ; on Elijah and the prophets of Baal, 268. Teresa, St., 35. Thackeray, W. M., on the story of Samuel, 245. Thames, the river, 81. Thomas, St., the Apostle, 302-304- Thompson, Francis, on Jacob's ladder, no; "The Veteran of Heaven," 114, 125. Thorold, Bishop, 71, THE CHKISTIAN YEAE IN HUMAN STOEY "Times, The," on the literature of Easter Day, 159. Tolstoy, Count Leo, 107. Toynbee, Dr. Joseph, 117, 175. Trench, R. C., 120, 189, 235, 305. Trevelyan, Sir George, quotation from his book " Cawnpore," 146, 147, Trevelyan, G. M., on Garibaldi and the birds, 263, 264. Trinity Sunday, 218-225. Trinity, Sundays after, 229-298. Turgenev, quoted, 87, 88; 114, 115. Tynan, Katharine, her poem "St. Francis and the Ass," 8; on "The Great Mercy," 132. Tyrrell, Father, quoted, 215. USSHER, Archbishop, 261. VENN, Henry, 172. Vercelli Codex, the, 65, 66. Vincent de Paul, St., 290, 316. Volga, the, 82. WAITE, Arthur E., on the gifts of the Magi, 50 ; on the mystery of the universe, 287. Waldensian Church, the, 39. Walton, Izaak, on Psalm xxxn., 93 ; on the fishermen Apostles, 239. Watson, the late Dr. John, quoted, 22, 23. Welldon, Bishop, on St. Mark, 310, 311. Welsh peasants and the Bible, 17. Wesley, John, 23, 136, 208, 289. Westcott, Bishop, on the Epistle to the Hebrews, 37; on Romans xu., 55 ; on the children of God, 103 ; on Ascensiontide, 195 ; on Whitsunday, 206 ; his motto, 212; inscription on his grave, 215; the answer of Samuel, 246. Whichcote, Benjamin, 297. Whitsuntide, 205-215. Whyte, Dr. Alexander, on Sanctification, 102, 103. Wilkinson, Bishop G. H., 261, 262. Wilson, Bishop Daniel, 163, 260. Wilson, Bishop Thomas, 57, 58, 113, 261. Woolner, Thomas, on the duty of work, 84. Wordsworth, Bishop Christopher, and Bible study, 15 ; and Bethlehem, 37 ; on Ascensiontide, 193. Wordsworth, Bishop, of Salisbury, 177. Wordsworth, Miss E., 4, 89. Wordsworth, William, on the gift of a child, 40 ; on Jacob's ladder, 109 ; on Elijah at the brook Cherith, 266, 319. Wren, Christopher, his love of the Bible, 4. XAVIER, St. Francis, his fear of fear, 230. ZOSSIMA, Father, in " The Brothers Karamazov," 6, 7, 116, 117, 317. Zwemer, Dr., on the Arabian desert, 45 ; an Arabic motto, 56 ; on Isaiah LIII., 69. PB1NTED IN GBEAT BRITAIN BY THE ABBBDEBN UNIVEBSITY PBE8S 342 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000 675 729 8