color, and in well-rounded proportion, for the edification of all her children.

We must not therefore expect a full account of the Church's ritual year in the New Testament. We must be content if we get only glimpses of it here and there, and allusions to what S. Paul calls the "traditions," and "customs," and "ways" of the Church in Apostolic days, which are not to be lightly disregarded by any man calling himself a Christian.1 Nor must we expect to find the system of the Christian Year fully developed even in the later days of the Primitive Church. Like the liturgy, and Christian architecture, and art, and hymnology, it took on form and beauty by slow degrees century after century; just as beautiful cathedrals and parish churches, with altars, organs, music, painting, sculpture, trained and vested choirs, took the place of a bare room or a burial chamber in the catacombs; or just as some of the same things to-day take the place of a hired hall, or a disused foundry, or an old railway car in an American or Canadian mining town.

Let us first consider in some detail the immediate source and pattern of the Year of the Church of Christ. One of S. Augustine's many epigrammatic sayings was that the Gospel was "latent in the Old Testament, and patent in the New." That, however, is only another way of expressing the great assertion of our Lord that He came "not to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfil."2 And as Christ Himself was the fulfilment of all the foreshadowing and the promises of "The Gospel preached before" in the Old Testament,3 3 so His Church is the fulfilment of the Church of Israel.

This organic continuity, as of a tree from its root, is 1 2 Thes. ii. 15; iii. 6; 1 Cor. xi. 2, margin, and 16; iv. 17. 2 S. Matt. v. 17. 8 Gal. iii. 8.

forcibly and beautifully illustrated in those magnificent prophecies in the 52d, 53d, 54th and 60th chapters of Isaiah, where the new and the old are, in the prophet's vision, indistinguishable one from the other, each growing into and blending with the other. The Church of the promised Christ or Messiah is not a different Church, but the fruition, and enlargement, and glorification of the earlier Church of Israel. Though Israel is in the immediate foreground of Isaiah's vision, it is the glorious Church which is to have its new birth on the Day of Pentecost, and its preachers and priests in "all the world," among "all nations," and "unto the end of the world;"1 it is this great society and "kingdom of God" that the prophet addresses when he exclaims, "Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion, put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem. . . . How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace." Or again, after describing the sorrows and the shame of the Cross and Passion, he utters the wonderful apostrophe beginning, "Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear. . . . Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitation. . . . Thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles. . . . O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, I will lay thy foundation with sapphires. . . . No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn.” And once more in the splendid vision of the 60th chapter he exclaims, "Arise, shine, for thy light is come. . . . And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising." None of these prophecies ever had any fulfilment in the ancient and literal Church of Israel as it stood 1 S. Mark xvi. 15; S. Matt. xxviii. 19, 20.

1

alone. But all history proclaims the great vision realized in the Church of Christ, "My Church," the "Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church" of the creeds.

And again, just as we find all the ancient sacrifices fulfilled in the "one perfect and sufficient sacrifice" of the Cross, so we see its perpetuation and its commemoration in that holy sacrament instituted in the Upper Room out of the very materials of bread and wine which remained over and above from the Paschal feast, the greatest of all the sacrifices of Israel. And again, as we find the Mosaic or Aaronic priesthood in three sacred orders of high priest, priest, and Levite fulfilled in the one great "Apostle and High Priest, Jesus Christ," 2 so we see this ancient ministry fulfilled in and merging into the new apostleship and priesthood which our Lord Himself ordained to speak and act for Him on earth.3 The hereditary and physical descent of the sons of Aaron finds its counterpart and fruition in the spiritual descent of the apostolic succession of the three "Orders of Ministers in Christ's Church,-Bishops [or Apostles], Priests, and Deacons." "4 And in like manner we find the ritual year of Israel dying and blending into the dawn of a more glorious year, just as the Jewish Sabbath, on the primal Easter, "began to dawn toward the first day of the week," 5 telling in unmistakable accents that those things which prophets foresaw, and "kings desired to ," and the whole world languished for, had indeed come at last in all their fulness.

1 S. Matt. xvi. 18.

2 Heb. iii. 1.

'S. John xx. 21, 22, 23; Acts i. 8; 2 Cor. v. 20; 1 Cor. iv. 1; and compare Mal. iii. 3 with Acts vi. 7.

4 Preface to Ordinal in the Prayer Book. 5 S. Matt. xxviii. 1.

S. Luke x. 24; Haggai ii. 7.

CHAPTER IV

THE RITUAL YEAR OF THE CHURCH OF ISRAEL

"He appointed the moon for seasons."-Psalm civ. 19.

"These are the feasts of the Lord, even holy convocations, which ye shall proclaim in their seasons."-Lev. xxiii. 4.

LET us now think of some of the details of that ancient Messianic year which was "latent in the Old Testament, and patent in the New."

The Sabbath, one of its most essential parts, was of course not of Israel but was part of the primal and universal law of morals; made for man," as our Lord expresses it, that is, for all mankind. But even this universal Sabbath had an added meaning and purpose for Israel after its Exodus from Egypt, as 1500 years later it had a still greater added meaning and purpose for Christians. For in addition to the reason which all the world had for keeping the Sabbath, Israelites had now, they are told, another reason, inasmuch as it also commemorated their deliverance from the labor and bondage and death sentence of Egypt.2

It must be remembered that there was no Jewish character whatever in the Sabbath of the Ten Commandmandments, nothing which was inapplicable to "man," that is, to all the world. So far as one day in seven was concerned, it demanded only that it should be kept "holy," and that " no manner of work," except of course such as was necessary, should be done upon it. The Mosaic law indeed added much in the matter of the worship required for the day, in sacrifices and ritual 1 S. Mark ii. 27. 2 See Ex. xi., xii. 14, 17; Deut. v. 14, 15.

observances; and all this, which was not of the essence of the commandment, was sadly perverted when our Lord was on earth. Yet even the Mosaic observance of the day was meant to be "a delight as Isaiah had said.1 It was only the traditions of the Pharisaic school that had turned the day into a time of gloom, and of burdensome, and frequently most absurd, precepts which drew down the indignant condemnation of the Lord Jesus.2

The other sacred days of the Church of Israel, and which were peculiar to it, were all historical. They were commemorations of some great event in the nation's history, and were also for the most part connected with the agriculture of the nation, the chief source of its wealth, and the visible token of its direct dependence on God. The three greatest of these were the feasts of the Passover, of Pentecost, and of Tabernacles, held respectively in the spring, the summer, and "the end of the year."

The original purpose of the Passover was to keep in memory year after year the great deliverance of the nation from the bondage of Egypt.3 It received its name (Hebrew Pesach) from the fact that the angel of death had "passed over "4 the houses of the Children of Israel, whose lintels and door posts were marked with the blood of the Paschal Lamb. It was observed from the 14th to the 21st day of the month Abib (the older name of the month Nisan), the month in which the Children of Israel made their escape. The time was chosen for their hasty journey when the moon was at its full after the vernal equinox, the best season for such a flight. Henceforth, for this reason, this month

1 Isaiah lviii. 13.

2 S. Mark ii. 4, 5, 23, etc.; Ex. xii.

S. Luke xiv. 5; S. John v. 10, etc. 4 Ex. xii. 27.