THE CHRISTIAN TAUGHT BY THE Church's Services. EDITED BY WALTER FARQUHAR HOOK, D.D., PART III. The Minor Festivals. "Such as are planted in the house of the LORD shall flourish in the courts of the house of our GOD." (Psalm xcii. 12.) "They will go from strength to strength, and unto the GOD of gods appeareth every one of them in Sion (Psalm lxxxiv. 7.) THE CHRISTIAN TAUGHT, &c. PART III. THE Church instructs us by example as well as by precept. On the festivals relating to our blessed Lord, and their accompanying Sundays, she has furnished us with rules of holy living. The saints' days and other holydays show us how, by the power of the grace of God, these holy rules have been carried out in the lives of men of like passions with ourselves. When, therefore, on these days we call to mind, successively, the virtues of each particular saint or martyr, we adore, not the men who shewed forth the good works, but Him Who wrought those good works in them. We "glorify God in them," and strive to "become followers of them, even as they were also of Christ." From the earliest times, the Church has ever held sacred the memory of those who died for the faith of Christ. The days set apart to celebrate their death or martyrdom were called the days of their birth, and were observed with joy, not with sorrow. Christians rejoiced that one of their number should have been born again from a world of sin and suffering into a world of holiness and happiness. They praised God for having taken him out of the Church militant, to form a part of the Church triumphant. When, in after ages, the number of saints and martyrs increased, and the number of holydays multiplied with them, it became necessary to put a limit to their observance. Our branch of the Church, therefore, only retains in her calendar the names of those who were the immediate followers of our blessed Lord, and first preachers of His gospel; the commemoration of all others being reserved for the united festival of All Saints. In addition to these, we have two days sacred to the blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of our Lord, on which we commemorate some mystery or doctrine referring to our Lord Himself: the festival of the Holy Innocents, who, being the first of those who glorified God by their deaths, are raised to the rank of martyrs; and the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, wherein we praise God for the blessings we receive from the ministration of angelic beings, we strive to imitate their purity and copy their perfect obedience. Such are the festivals which the Church bids us observe in addition to those immediately relating to our Lord Himself; and on each of these holydays she provides a separate service for our instruction and improvement. The epistle and gospel usually supply us with part of the life, and sometimes a portion of the writings, of him whose memory we are celebrating. The collects for the most part gather up the instruction which is to be drawn from them, while the lessons, being selected from the practical books of Holy Scripture, or of the Apocryphal writings, are fitted for the guidance of those who are striving to follow in the steps of the holy saints of God. Thus are the members of the Church invisible even now permitted to influence and instruct their brethren of the Church militant upon earth. Like a great cloud of witnesses they compass us about, to guide and encourage us in our Christian course. We then, who would tread in their steps, must lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and run with patience the race that is set before us, while, with them, we look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of both their faith and ours. Thus may we be enabled so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of God's heavenly kingdom. |