him, and We will come unto Him, and make Our abode with him." [John xiv. 23.] In Collect and Scriptures the Church sounds her last herald-notes of the season which precedes Christmas; and we seem to hear the cry of the procession, as it draws nearer and nearer, "The Bridegroom cometh; go ye forth to meet Him." It is a cry that should bring peace and joy to her children. "Rejoice in the Lord alway," for "One standeth among you," even now, who brings down from on high "the peace of God which passeth all understanding."

A very striking accidental coincidence with this joyous tone of the Fourth Sunday in Advent occurs in the First Lesson for Christmas Eve, "Arise, shine, for thy Light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon thee." The words sound like an answer from heaven to the prayers of Advent, that the Light would vouchsafe to come, and illuminate the Church with His Presence. Other words which follow are equally striking, and offer themselves as a benediction of the Christmas decorations which have just been completed: "The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir-tree, the pine-tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of My sanctuary; and I will make the place of My feet glorious."

The following Antiphons to the Magnificat were formerly sung during the third and fourth weeks of Advent. In later times, two others were added, one for the Festival of St. Thomas, and another in which the name of the Blessed Virgin was used as we are not now accustomed to use it. But the original set of Antiphons appears to have consisted of these seven, the first being sung on December 16th, which is still marked "O Sapientia" in the Calendar, and none being used on the Festival of St. Thomas, or on Christmas Eve, the latter not being part of the Advent season. The dates on which they would thus fall are affixed to each Antiphon. References are also appended to the passages of Holy Scripture that contain or illustrate the respective titles of our Lord on which each Antiphon is founded, as these Antiphons are excellent examples of the manner in which Scriptural ideas and words may be used in direct acts of Adoration.

December 16th. [Ecclus. xxiv. 3. Wisd. viii. 1. Cf. 1 Cor. i. 24. Prov. i.-ix.]

December 18th. [Isa. xi. 10. Rev. xxii. 16.] O Root of Jesse, which standest for an ensign of the people, before whom kings shall shut their mouths, and to whom the Gentiles shall seek: Come, that Thou mayest deliver us; tarry not, we beseech Thee. December 19th. [Isa. xxii. 22. O Key of David, and Sceptre of the house of Israel: Thou who openest and no man shutteth, who shuttest and no man openeth: Come, that Thou mayest bring forth from the prison-house him that is bound, sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death.

O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum; super quem continebunt reges 08 suum, quem gentes deprecabuntur; veni ad liberandum nos: jam noli tardare.

Rev. iii. 7. Isa. xlii. 7.] O Clavis David, et Sceptrum domus Israël; qui aperis et nemo claudit, claudis et nemo aperit; veni et educ vinctum de domo carceris, sedentem in tenebris et umbra mortis.

INTROIT.-Drop down ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation [germinet Salvatorem]. Ps. And let righteousness spring up together. I the Lord have created It. Glory be.

CHRISTMAS DAY.

The Festival of Christmas was observed at a very early period in the Church, as indeed it could hardly but be; for that which brought the joy of angels within reach of men's ears, could not but have been devoutly and joyously remembered by Christians, year by year, when they came fully to understand the greatness of the event. St. Chrysostom, in a Christmas homily, speaks of the festival as being even then, in the fourth century, one of great antiquity; and, in an Epistle, mentions that Julius I. [A.D. 337-352] had caused strict inquiry to be made, and had confirmed the observance of it on December 25th. There are sermons extant which were preached upon this day by Gregory

Nazianzen and St. Basil, in the same century. It is spoken of by Clemens Alexandrinus, who died in the beginning of the third century, a little more than a hundred years after the death of St. John; and it was on Christmas Day that a whole church full of martyrs was burnt by Maximin, in Nicomedia.

In the primitive age of the Church, this Festival was more closely associated with the Epiphany than it has been in later times. The actual Nativity of Christ was considered as His first Manifestation, and the name "Theophania" was sometimes given to the day on which it was commemorated, as well as to the twelfth day afterwards, when the end of the Christmas Festival is celebrated with other memorials of the appearance of God among men. Most of the Fathers have left sermons which were preached on Christmas Day, or during the continuance of the festival; and secular decrees of the Christian Emperors, as well as Canons of the Church, show that it was very strictly observed as a time of rest from labour, of Divine Worship, and of Christian hilarity.

The ancient Church of England welcomed Christmas Day with a special service on the Vigil, a celebration of the Holy Communion soon after midnight, another at early dawn, and a third at the usual hour of the mid-day mass. The first two of these services were omitted from the Prayer Book of 1549, and the third from that of 1552. But an early Communion, as well as the usual mid-day one, has always been celebrated in some of the greater churches on Christmas Day, and custom has revived the midnight celebration also, in addition to the ordinary Evensong of Christmas Eve. The midnight celebration commemorates the actual Birth of our Lord; the early morning one its revelation to mankind in the persons of the shepherds; that at mid-day the Eternal Sonship of the Holy Child Jesus.

It is most fit that the season so marked out by Angels by songs of joy, such as had not been heard on earth since the Creation, should also be observed as a time of festive gladness by the Church, and in the social life of Christians. Christ Himself instituted this festival when He sanctified the day by then first revealing His Human Nature to the eyes of mankind. The holy Angels witnessed to its separation for ever as a day of days, when they proclaimed the Glory that was then offered to God in the Highest by the restoration of perfect Manhood in the Virgin-born Jesus; and the peace that was brought among men on earth through the reunion of their nature to God. The whole world has since recognized it as the single point of history in which every age, every country, every living man has an interest. It is to the Nativity of our Lord that all the pages of the Bible point as the centre on which every thing there recorded turns. Kings have lived and died; empires have arisen and crumbled away; great cities have been built and destroyed; countries peopled and again laid desert: and all this is to us almost as if it had never been. Great as past events of history were to the generations in which they occurred, to us they are of less practical importance than the every-day circumstances of our common life. But the event which gives us the festival of Christmas was one whose interest is universal and unfading: one with which we are as much concerned as were the shepherds of Bethlehem : and which will be of no less importance to the last generation of men than it is to us. For it was in the Birth of Christ that Earth was reunited to Heaven, and both made one Kingdom of God above and below, as they were at the first Creation. In it, separation of man from God was done away, for One appeared Who in His own single Person was God, belonging to Heaven, and Man, belonging to earth. It was not only the beginning of a new era, but it was the Centre of all human history, the point of time to which the ages that were gone had looked forward, and to which the ages that were to come after must all look back; the one day of days which gathered all other times into itself, and stretching its influence through every hour of human existence from the Fall to the Judgment, makes for itself a history by connexion with which only can other histories have an eternal interest. And so, even beyond the immediate influence of the Church, it is found that the Christmas gladness of the Church is reflected in the world around: and a common instinct of regenerated human nature teaches that world to recognize in Christmas a season of unity and fellowship and goodwill, of happiness and peace.

INTROIT.-Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and His name shall be called Wonderful. Ps. Sing unto the Lord a new song, for He hath done marvellous things. Glory be.

THE THREE DAYS AFTER CHRISTMAS.

The position of the three days after Christmas Day is a very remarkable one. Easter and Pentecost each have two festive days following their principal day, the Sunday: and in this respect Christmas, with its three festive days, is placed on a similar though a more honoured footing. But at Easter and Pentecost the days are connected by name with the festival itself, whereas, at Christmas, they are associated with the names of Saints, in addition to that continued commemoration of the Nativity which belongs to them as to the other days of the Octave.

Some explanation of this may be found in the vivid convictions of the early Church respecting the close union between Christ and His people, especially His Martyrs, through the virtue of the Incarnation. Eusebius [viii. 10] speaks of the martyrs of Alexandria as XpioTopópoi, a name otherwise familiar to us in the story of St. Christopher, and in the appellation of Theophorus which was given by himself or others to Ignatius: and St. Augustine, in one of his Sermons on St. Stephen's Day, seems to adopt a strain of thought in accordance with these names, when he says, "As Christ by being born was brought into union with Stephen, so Stephen by dying was brought into union with Christ." There was, moreover, in the early Church (itself so familiar with a life of suffering) a profound sense of the continuous martyrdom which was involved in the earthly life of our Lord, both from the intensity of the humiliation which He underwent in becoming Man [non horruisti virginis uterum. Te Deum], and also from the sorrows which were inherent in His human nature as the bearer of all human woes. Hence they could not lose sight, in those days, of the fact that the Holy Child of Bethlehem was also the Man of Sorrows and it is very probable that this view of our Lord's Incarnation led to the commemoration of the first Martyr who suffered on the day succeeding that on which his Master had entered on a life of suffering, rather than on the anniversary of his martyrdom. In connexion with this view it is very observable, that at the first taste of martyrdom, even before the suffering of St. Stephen, the Church pleaded the Divine Sonship and human Infancy of our Lord: and although few of the Apostles are likely to have known their Lord in His childhood, (while His mature years and His final work were familiar to all, and His Ascent out of their sight as Man vividly fresh in their memory,) yet they speak of Him to the Father in their hour of trouble as Thy holy Child Jesus," and seem thus to fall back, so to speak, on the first days of the Incarnation more than a third of a century before, rather than on their recent knowledge of Him through whom they prayed for strength to do and bear all that was set before them. It may well have been that St. Stephen was among them when the words of that prayer were used.

Another explanation is to be found in the Rationale of Durandus [vii. 42]. The substance of this is, that Christ being the Head to which all the members are joined, three kinds of members are joined to Him by martyrdom: as mystically signified in the Song of Songs [v. 10], by the words, "My Beloved is white and ruddy, and the chiefest among ten thousand." The first and chief order of martyrs he thus considers to be those who, being baptized in blood, suffered both in will and deed the

second, those who gave their will up entirely to suffer, but yet escaped with life, and so accomplished a white martyrdom: the third, those who suffered but had no wills of their own to sacrifice to God, as was the case with the Holy Innocents.

One other view may be named; which is, that as the second half of the Christian year represents the Christian life founded on the life of Christ, so the three days after Christmas represent the three ways of suffering, love, and purity, by which the Incarnation bears fruit in the saints of God. St. Stephen was the nearest to the King of Saints in His life of suffering, St. John in His life of love, the Holy Innocents in His life of purity. The first trod immediately in his Master's footsteps of a Martyr death in its most perfect form; the second lying on Jesus' bosom in close communion with Him to the end of His earthly life, followed Him closely ever after in His heavenly example; the third were the first-fruits of that holy train whose innocence and purity admits them nearest to the Person of their glorified Redeemer, so that "they follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth."

§ St. Stephen.

Nothing is known of St. Stephen before his martyrdom beyond the solitary fact that he was one of the seven deacons ordained by the Apostles when they began to divide off the lower portions of their ministerial functions, duties, and cares. His eloquence, ready knowledge, heroic courage, are strikingly exhibited in the account given of his last hours in the seventh chapter of the Acts. It may be that he is only a fair and average example of those wonderfully endowed men who carried on Christ's work in the Apostolic age; and that the peculiarity of his martyrdom as being the first, and as occurring while the Church was still confined almost within the walls of Jerusalem, has given it the prominence of a Scriptural narrative. There were, doubtless, many others in that holy band of Apostolic men, of whom it might have been recorded that, "full of faith and power, they did great wonders and miracles among the people;" and many who suffered as boldly and as meekly as St. Stephen. Yet it is around the head of the Proto-martyr alone that Holy Scripture places the nimbus of glory; and however truly it may be the due of others also, it is of St. Stephen only that the words are written, "And all that sat in the council, looking stedfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel." Hence St. Chrysostom calls him the Zrépavos or crown of the Church, in respect to her martyrdoms.

The dying words of St. Stephen are also of a most saint-like character, whether that character was common to the saintly martyrs or not. The last words of his Master's passion, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," have a parallel in the servant's, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge ;" and the commendatory prayer, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," is the saint's version of the Son's cry, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit."

Such circumstances as these seem as if they were providentially ordered, in part, as a monition to the Church of the honour in which the martyrs of Christ were ever after to be held; to show her that Christ was to be glorified in His saints, through whom the lustre of His own Light was shed around as planets disperse the light of the sun when it is beyond our horizon. Nor must it be forgotten that the narrative of St. Stephen's martyrdom is given us in that book which is principally made up of the Acts of St. Paul, the account of the missionary life and sufferingsand how small a part!-of that "young man whose name was

Saul," at whose feet the official "witnesses" of the cruel and sudden death "laid down their clothes." Were all these official μápτupes won over to be martyrs in life and death as that young man was? Whether or not such fruit was borne by the first martyr's blood, it is certain that all the members of the then existing Church must have had his death keenly engraved on their memory; and that, as Christ ordained Christmas Day by the very fact of His Nativity, so His holy Martyr must have been privileged to originate the observance of Saints' Days by the very circumstances of that Martyrdom whereof the Church, and the Apostle of the Gentiles above all, must have said year by year, This was the day on which Stephen fell asleep.

The Collect for St. Stephen's Day, as it now stands, is first found, in Bishop Cosin's handwriting, in the margin of the Durham Prayer Book. Until 1661 it was used in this much shorter and less beautiful form,-" Grant us, O Lord, to learn to love our enemies, by the example of Thy martyr, Saint Stephen, who prayed for his persecutors to Thee; which livest." It is observable that in both forms of this Collect it follows the example given by St. Stephen, of prayer to the second Person of the Blessed Trinity. The following passage from the Contestatio Missa of the Gallican Mass for St. Stephen's Day, printed by Cardinal Bona [Rer. Liturg. i. 12], is very like the newer portion of our Collect,-"Illi pro nobis oculi sublimentur, qui adhuc in hoc mortis corpore constituti stantem ad dexteram Patris Filium Dei, in ipsa passionis hora viderunt. Ille pro nobis obtineat, qui pro persecutoribus suis, dum lapidaretur, orabat ad Te Sancte Deus, Pater omnipotens." This was not printed by Bona until 1676, but it is an interesting illustration of the unity which pervades the tone of ancient and sound modern forms of prayer.

INTROIT.-Princes also did sit and speak against me. They persecute me falsely; be Thou my help, O Lord my God: because Thy servant is occupied in Thy statutes. Ps. Blessed are those that are undefiled in the way, and walk in the law of the Lord. Glory be.

HYMN.

MATTINS and EVENSONG. Sancte Dei pretiose. H. N. 15. 40.

quæsumus, Salisbury Use.

S. Joan. Evan.

Domine, benignus illustra; ut Greg. Nat. beati Joannis apostoli tui et evange

§ St. John the Evangelist.

The beloved disciple of the Holy Child Jesus is known to the affection of the Church as the Apostle of Love, to her intellect as the coλóyos, or Divine. There is little recorded of him in Holy Scripture, but a large part of the New Testament was revealed by God to His servant John; and none of the Apostles, so far as we know, except St. Paul, exercised so extensive an influence over the subsequent ages of the Church. It is not known how soon a festival was instituted in honour of this Apostle, but it is placed in the ancient Sacramentaries and Lectionary, and is therefore of primitive origin.

St. John the Evangelist was one of the sons of Zebedee and Salome, a fisherman like his father, and early called by our Blessed Lord to be a fisher of men. With three other of the Apostles he stood in a near relationship to the Blessed Virgin, which may be best represented by the following table.

The intimate relationship between the Blessed Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth seems to make it probable that the son of her sister Salome would become an early disciple of St. John the Baptist; and as his follower he was in company with St. Andrew when the Baptist bore official witness to the Mission of our Lord as "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." The Evangelist, therefore, was one of the first pair of disciples who were called from following the Law to follow the Gospel sharing indeed with St. Andrew in the honour of the title ПрwтókλnTos. It would appear to have been some little time afterward that St. John was required to give up his ordinary

24.

blessed Apostle and Evangelist Saint John may so walk in the light of thy truth, that it may at length attain to the light of everlasting life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Joan. ii. 7.

occupation that he might be trained to the office of a fisher of men, and become a constant attendant on our Lord: still longer before that training had been so far carried on as to qualify him in outward knowledge for receiving the commission and power of an Apostle. In the appointment of the Apostles, St. John was one of the three whom our Lord distinguished by new names: he and his brother St. James being then called Boanerges, a title which ancient writers connect with the great eloquence of these two Apostles, as Demosthenes and Plato were called "tonantes" by old Roman writers. This does not seem quite to explain the title yet in the case of St. John it is easy to see that it might have such a prophetic application to him as the last writer of the New Testament, who was to proclaim resounding theological truths to the world as from a Gospel Sinai after historical narratives had done their work in preparing the minds of men for their reception.

The next time St. John's name occurs in the Gospels is as one of the three "elect of the elect" who were chosen by our Lord to witness the manifestation of His Divine power in the chamber of Jairus's daughter, and of His Divine glory on the Mount of Transfiguration. The same three were also present at the Agony. They seem to have been chosen, not for any purpose of sympathy needed by Christ, but as a part of their own training. All three were afterwards distinguished by special services for their Master, and these visions of His Power, His Glory, and His suffering were preparing them for their work. Of the two sons of Zebedee, St. James was the first martyred Apostle, St. John the latest living Apostle. The first miracle of the Church was wrought by St. Peter and St. John; they, too, were the first sufferers after the Ascension; they were the first Apostles who went beyond Judæa; and they were the "pillars" of the Church in its early days. If we reckon up the extent of their work in the education of the Church, it will be found that far the greatest proportion of the New Testament has come from the pens of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. John; the second great Apostle appearing to have filled up the vacancy caused by the martyrdom of St. James. And as St. Peter exercised a vast external influence over the Church of the Future, while St. Paul was its great moral teacher, so St. John the Theologian was the Apostle by whom the world was to learn more than by any other, those truths which lie at the very root of orthodox and true conceptions respecting the Blessed Trinity, our Redeemer, and the work of the Incarnation in making God and man at one. The Church of England traced up its usages in primitive days to the teaching of St. John, and there is good reason to think that the influence of this Apostle has moulded her Liturgy and her spirit very extensively; preparing her, perhaps, for the great struggle against unbelief in which she seems destined to bear a prominent part.

The Blessed Virgin having been committed to the care of St. John the Evangelist at the Cross, his office towards her appears to have terminated about the year 48, but between that time and the later part of the century his history is in obscurity. Possibly it was part of the fulfilment of the Lord's words, "If I will that he tarry till I come," that St. John should really see Jerusalem

encompassed with armies, and that he did not leave for Ephesus until so late as the year 66, when the siege began: which was only a year before the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul. It was about this time, certainly, that the Evangelist and Theologian began to be the sole remaining Apostolic centre of the Church, as he continued to be for about a third of a century. This isolation of St. John sets him in a position of patriarchal prominence, greater even than that of St. Paul had been: and he was doubtless directed to Ephesus, the Metropolis of Asia, the great centre of nature-worship, and the commercial port of the one great sea of the then known world, as the place where his influence would extend farthest and widest during those eventful years in which the Church was breaking free from Judaism, and settling into definite forms of doctrine and worship.

The latter part of St. John's life was marked by two acts which fulfilled our Lord's words, that he should tarry until His Coming. A poisoned cup of wine was given to him at Ephesus, but the Apostle made over it the sign of the Cross, and partook of it without harm; according to the promise, that if the Apostles drank of any deadly thing it should not hurt them. He was also summoned to Rome, and there cast into a caldron of burning oil [see Calendar], but escaped unharmed. Banished to Patmos, the visions of the Apocalypse were revealed to him; and when his work was done there, his Master's Providence led him back to Ephesus, to contend against the rising heresies of the day, to speak loving words about the love of God, and to breathe out his spirit in peace at the age of 100 in the midst of his "little children,"-those whom he had begotten in Christ.

Lying on the bosom of his Master, not only in those few minutes in the upper chamber of the Institution of the Holy Eucharist, but ever after by contact of his spiritual senses with the Word of God, this holy Apostle learned things from the Divine lips and heart which had been kept secret from the foundation of the world; which the angels desired to look into, but could not until they were revealed to mankind. As St. John the Baptist, the last Prophet of the Old Dispensation, was the Forerunner of Christ, so it may be said that St. John the Evangelist, the Prophet of the New Dispensation, occupies a similar position as the Herald of the Second Advent; and for this reason, as well as others that have been stated, his Festival is connected so closely with Christmas. When He that enlighteneth every man came into the world, He cast some of the bright beams of His Light upon St. John, that by him the illumination of the world might be more perfect, and the Sun of Righteousness which had arisen with healing in His beams might shine more gloriously over the understandings and the love of His Church.

INTROIT. In the midst of the Church did he open his mouth; and the Lord filled him with the spirit of wisdom and understanding. He endued him with a robe of glory. Ps. He poured out upon him His treasures of joy and gladness. Glory be.

HYMNS.

MATTINS.-Annue Christe sæculorum Domine. H. N. 86. 75. EVENSONG.-Exultet cælum laudibus.