INTRODUCTION.

THE following Readings are "for the Sundays and Holy Days of the Church's Year." It may be well to premise a few preliminary considerations as to what the Church's Year is, and how her Holy Days and Seasons should be ordered.

The Church's Year is so called, as distinguished from the World's Year. Both are of the same length, and take their measure alike from the time of the earth's revolution

round the sun. Both consist of a recurring cycle of events. But the kind of events in the two is very different. The World's Year is made up of the changes of the seasons, and the various modes of life and occupation which these bring. The Church's Year is a series of commemorations; and her changes are in the thoughts and feelings which these in their turn are calculated to excite.

The observance of anniversaries, and the solemnizing them by fast or festival, is a practice universal among mankind. It has its root in family life, where he is cold indeed who refuses to join in the keeping of the wedding-day and the birth-day. It is seen in national life, when any event in the people's history has been of vital import, as when the Americans celebrate every Fourth

of July their Declaration of Independence. But it is especially in the religious sphere of human existence that we find the keeping of days and seasons so universal and instinctive. There is no ancient religion-whether of East or West, Egypt or India, Greece or Rome-in which sacred feasts of annual recurrence did not form a part of the ecclesiastical system. The Scriptures moreover show that the Divinely-given worship of the Hebrews formed no exception to the rule. The worshipper of the Tabernacle or Temple passed every year through a series of observances, commemorative, celebrative, or anticipative, given him by Jehovah Himself for his blessing.

It might have been thought that this Divine sanction of a universal practice would have been sufficient: and that when the Christian Church grew into the keeping of certain holy days and seasons proper to her own case, such growth would have been felt to be a legitimate development of her heavenly life. But these very Jewish ordinances which have been referred to as Divine sanctions for the practice are felt by some to militate against it for Christian people. They were part, it is said, of the types and shadows of the ceremonial Law, which in Christ is fulfilled and done away. The spiritual realities which they represent, and not any counterpart of the ordinances themselves, are to be seen in the Church. And in support of this position certain passages are cited from St. Paul's Epistles: as when he writes to the Galatians"How turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire to be in bondage? Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years,' "* and to the

* Gal. iv. 9, 10.

Colossians "Let no man judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy-day, or of the new moons, or of the sabbath-days; which are a shadow of things to come: but the body is of Christ."*

:

Now it should be sufficient for those who argue thus to point out that among the "days" whose observance is commanded by Moses and (as they say) stigmatized by St. Paul is the Sabbath. It comes first in the list of the Hebrew festivals given in Leviticus,† and as one of the series it is instanced, with the feast of the new moon, among the "shadows of things to come" to the Colossians. Yet these very persons not only unite with the Church at large in observing the Lord's Day, but transfer to it the Divine institution and moral obligation which belonged to the Sabbath, which is thus to them no part of the shadow, but rather of the body which is of Christ. Surely if any are transgressing St. Paul's admonitions, it is they. It is futile to say that the Apostle means the Jewish seventh-day sabbath, and says nothing of the "Christian Sabbath" on the first day. He is indeed speaking of Jewish things throughout : but his language is general, and strikes—so far as it goes-at the keeping of any holy day whatever. His complaint against the Galatians is" Ye observe days." And he writes to the Romans "One man esteemeth one day above another : another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord: and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it."‡

If, then, St. Paul's words are to be understood as forbidding to the Church any festivals or sacred seasons, and

* Col. ii. 16, 17.

† Ch. xxiii.

Rom. xiv. 5, 6.

especially such as were appointed in the Law of Moses, she must begin by expunging the Lord's Day from her calendar. But as none would more strenuously object to this step than the persons we have in view, we may fairly ask them to reconsider their argument. What is it that the Apostle is condemning? Plainly the reckoning the positive ordinances of the Law as matters of moral obligation on Christians, whether as regards imposing them on oneself or as judging others concerning them. This it is against which he inveighs. Stand fast, he says, in the liberty with which Christ has made you free; and be not subject again to any yoke of bondage. Judge no man, and let no man judge you, in the matter of meats or days. Let every day be holy to the Lord; and whatever you eat or drink, do it to His glory. These are the principles laid down by St. Paul. He feels nothing inconsistent with them in his condemnation of eating meats sacrificed to idols,* or in his sharing in the special observance of the first day of the week.† Just as readily, were he once more to appear in the Church, would he fall in with her regular annual observances; and would deal with those who despised them as he did with those who partook of the idol-feasts. "We know that we all have knowledge: knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth."

The truth is that the holy days and seasons of the Law stand with regard to the Church of Christ on the same footing as the whole service of the Tabernacle. The Church does not copy the Mosaic rites in her worship. But the forms in which the Holy Ghost expresses the

*

I Cor. x., comp. Rev. ii. 14, 20.

† Acts xx. 7.-comp. I Cor. xvi. I.

I Cor. viii. I.

Mind of Christ within her are necessarily analogous to the types of that Mind in the old Law. And so of sabbath-days and new moons and continual feasts-they

are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ." If the shadow has been cast behind by the body, the form of the body must correspond with the shadow. It must be with other holy days as with the Sabbath. From the beginning a Divine instinct led the Church to solemnize in a special manner the weekly anniversary of the Lord's resurrection. By the end of the Apostolic Age the first day of the week had become known as "the Lord's Day." The Sabbath had disappeared; but all that was eternal in the old institution lived again in the Christian holy-day: while the relations of the latter with the past Resurrection and the future renewing of all things shewed that its apparently fortuitous appointment was guided by Divine Providence, and had its root in the eternal realities. like manner the Church has been led into the observance of a certain course of holy seasons. She has grown into them by degrees; and we know not that in their appointment she has had before her any definite scheme or plan. But the result has been an order beautiful exceedingly in itself, and corresponding with the Jewish ecclesiastical year as closely as the Lord's Day with the Sabbath. It is impossible to doubt that such an order, at least in its main outline, has proceeded from that Eternal Spirit who ever lives in the Church, which is His Temple.

In

Let us now look at the Church's Calendar throughout the world. It begins with a commemoration of our Lord's Nativity (Christmas), preceded by a season of preparation for the same, called Advent. Then certain days are devoted to the memory of the recorded events of