The Christian Year

“ When the year comes round and brings the happy Christmas time; and the bells are ringing in every Christian land, we would join with universal Christendom in celebrating an event which brought "good tidings of great joy to all people." In such a spirit we take our morning walk to-day to the Church of the Nativity, to linger awhile beside the spot, where, according to tradition, our Saviour came into the world, and by the manger where they laid Him. ”

“ Trinity offers for contemplation an ineffable paradox of Pure Being. But the God of Christmas is no ethereal form, no mere spiritual essence, but a very human child, feeling the cold and the roughness of the straw, needing to be warmed and fed and cherished. Christmas is the festival of the natural body, of this world; it means the consecration of the ordinary things of life, affection and comradeship, eating and drinking and merrymaking; and in some degree the memory of the Incarnation has been able to blend with the pagan joyance of the New Year. ”

“ Speaker, we are all Americans. By virtue of that simple fact, I will again reiterate my belief that it is not only appropriate but, more importantly, is necessary during this special time of year to remember not only the birth of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, but also to recognize the important impact that the Christian faith has had on the foundation and development of our society, our nation, and our civilization. ”

“ E’en from the womb takes no release
From suffering, tears, and blood.
If thou would’st reap in love,
First sow in holy fear:
So life a winter’s morn may prove
To a bright endless year.
Second Sunday after Christmas.
When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. Isaiah, xli. 17.
And wilt thou hear the fevered heart
To Thee in silence cry? ”

“ But our whole life is, or ought to be, a preparation for his second coming; and it is this state, of which the season of Advent in the Church services is intended to be the representation.
There is something striking in the season of the natural year at which we thus celebrate the beginning of another Christian year. It is a true type of our condition, of the insensible manner in which all the changes of our lives steal upon us, that nature, at this moment, gives no outward signs of beginning: it is a period which does not manifest any striking change in the state of things around us. ”

“ So there is no reason, as from any defect of the divine gift to the weakest of us, why our Christian lives should have ups and downs, why there should be interruptions in our devotion, fallings short in our consecration, contradictions in our conduct, slidings backward in our progress. There is no reason why, in our Christian year, there should be summer and winter ”

“ We speak of the Great Jubilee introduced in ancient times among Christian customs and observed by our predecessors, who bestowed upon the years of general jubilee the title of the Holy Year, because it was usual for such a year to be blessed by a greater number of holy ceremonies, as these furnish the most copious means of help for the correction of morals and the leading of souls to sanctity. "We have ourselves seen with our own eyes the fruitful result of the last solemn celebration of the Holy Year. ”

“ In this we learn the duration of the power of Protestantism and the breaking forth of the evening light. We have before proven that a day in Scripture is used to represent different lengths of time, sometimes the whole of the Christian era, sometimes a thousand years, sometimes a hundred years, and sometimes a year. ”

“ XI. The idea of “a Christian year,” a sanctification of the seasons of nature by Gospel memories, is undeniably beautiful. This theory of time, adopted by the Church of England, reappeared at the Revolution, and days which mark the progress of the old earth’s journeys round the sun were stamped anew with sacred names, and entwined with the history of the Redeemer and His Apostles. Christmas celebrated the Incarnation, and Epiphany the infant appearance of Jesus to the Magi at Bethlehem, with subsequent manifestations of His glory ”

“ Ancestral spirits, it seems, were once believed to be immanent in the fire that burned on the hearth, and had to be propitiated with libations, while elsewhere the souls of the dead were thought to return to their old homes at the New Year, and meat and drink had to be set out for them. The Church's establishment of All Souls’ Day did much to keep practices of tendance of the departed to early November, but sometimes these have wandered to later dates and especially to Christmas. ”

“ In many countries the Midnight Mass is the distinctive Christmas service, a great and unique event in the year, something which by its strangeness gives to the feast of the Nativity a place by itself. Few Catholic rites are more impressive than this Midnight Mass, especially in country places; through the darkness and cold of the winter's night, often for long distances, the faithful journey to worship the Infant Saviour in the splendour of the lighted church. It is a re-enactment of the visit of the shepherds to the cave at Bethlehem, aglow with supernatural light. ”

“ The year of jubilee is come;
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.
2The gospel trumpet hear,
The news of pardoning grace:
Ye happy souls, draw near;
Behold your Saviour's face:
The year of jubilee is come;
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.
3Jesus, our great High Priest,
Has full assurance made;
Ye weary spirits, rest;
Ye mourning souls, be glad:
The year of jubilee is come;
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.
262. 8s. & 7s. M. J. Taylor. Gospel Call to the Church.
1Praise to God, the great Creator,
Bounteous Source of every joy,
He whose hand upholds all nature,
He whose word can all destroy! ”

“ And that day (May 12, 1858) was the preparation (day and year for 'the PREPARED place for you'—Cottleites—-by the widowed mother of the Father's house, at Kirkstall Lodge—John xiv. 2, 3) . And the Sabbath (Christmas Day, Dec. 25, 1859) drew on (for the resurrection of the Christian body on 'the third [Protestant Sun] -day'—1 Cor. xv. 35) . ”

“ Customs of augury are to be met with at various dates, which may mark the gradual shifting of the New Year festival from early November to January 1, while actual charms to secure prosperity are commonest at Christmas itself or at the modern New Year. Magical rather than religious in character, they are attempts to discover or influence the future by a sort of crude scientific method based on supposed analogies. ”

“ The Church and Superstition—Nature of Pagan Survivals—Racial Origins—Roman Festivals of the Saturnalia and Kalends—Was there a Teutonic Midwinter Festival?—The Teutonic, Celtic, and Slav New Year—Customs attracted to Christmas or January 1—The Winter Cycle of Festivals—Rationale of Festival Ritual: (a) Sacrifice and Sacrament, (b) the Cult of the Dead, (c) Omens and Charms for the New Year—Compromise in the Later Middle Ages—The Puritans and Christmas—Decay of Old Traditions. ”

“ I believe the time can be known by all who desire to understand and to be ready for his coming. And I am fully convinced that some time between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844, according to the Jewish mode of computation of time, Christ will come, and bring all his saints with him; and that then he will reward [173] every man as his works shall be. Matt. 16:27; Rev. 22:12.
“With the commencement of the new year, he issued the following
ADDRESS TO BELIEVERS IN THE NEAR ADVENT.
“‘Dear Brethren:—This year, according to our faith, is the last year that Satan will reign in our earth. ”

“ Paul in the epistle of this day; and how blessed are all those amongst us who can feel that this is truly said of them! Then, indeed, a new year's day is a day of rejoicing; we are so much nearer that period when all care, all anxiety, all painful labour will be for ever ended. But there is other language of a different sort, which, it may be, will suit us better. "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me." "Their land is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made;" ”

“ First, the zeal of the Church against the Kalends celebrations as impious relics of 171heathenism: to root them out she even made the first three days of the year a solemn fast with litanies.{24} Next, the particular offences should be observed. These are: first, the dressing up of men in the hides of animals and the clothes of women; next, the New Year auguries and the superstition about fire, the giving of presents, and the laying of tables with good things; and last, drunkenness and riot in general. All these we shall find fully represented in modern Christmas customs. ”

“ ’Tis sweet, as year by year we lose
Friends out of sight, in faith to muse
How grows in Paradise our store. ”

“ Then there were seven heavens, planets, stars; seven notes in music, primary colours, deadly sins, senses. A child was not named before seven days; the teeth sprang in the seventh month, renewed in the seventh year; faculties develop in thrice seven years, and life extends to ten times seven.
THE POPE MAKING A JUBILEE YEAR.
In 1300 Pope Boniface VIII., whose chief objects were ambition, avarice, and revenge, celebrated with religious ceremonies the year of Jubilee. A rumour had been raised in 1299 among the people of Rome that whosoever in the ensuing year should visit the temple of St. ”

“ So should it be. At Christmas, we should with the old year bury our quarrels and our cares; and as our religion teaches, look forward with a sure hope and certain faith to the new year, which assuredly will dawn. ”

“ And taught by thee the Church prolongs
Her hymns of high thanksgiving still. ”

“ So God send you all a joyful New Year.
6⁠Then Christ called His disciples
And tried them over death
And said: All powers are given to you
In heaven and on earth;
Go forth and teach all nations
Despise you not my death. ”

“ Now Christmas-time was always a time of rejoicing among many heathen nations, and long before the Lord Jesus Christ came. That was natural and reasonable enough, if you will consider it. For now the shortest day is past. The sun is just beginning to climb higher and higher in the sky each day, and bring back with him longer sunshine, and shorter darkness, and spring flowers, and summer crops, and a whole new year, with new hopes, new work, new lessons, new blessings. The old year, with all its labours and all its pleasures, and all its sorrows and all its sins, is dying, all but gone. ”

“ Thus, on the anniversary of my birth, I had every reason—oh, not to curse the hour in which I was born, but, on the contrary, after serious contemplation of the world, to thank God and you, my dear parents, for the life that you have given me! I celebrated it, on the 18th of October, by a peaceful and ardent submission to the holy will of God. On Christmas Day I tried to put myself into the temper of children who are devoted to the Lord; and with God’s help the new year will pass like its predecessor, in bodily pain, perhaps, but certainly in spiritual joy. ”

“ Every ancient nation has thus its calendar filled with joyful days. The worshippers of Jesus delight in their Christmas and their Easter; the Mahometans, in the Hegira of the Prophet. The year-book of mankind is thus marked all the way through with the red-letter days of history. And most beautifully do those days illuminate the human year, commemorating the victories of the race, the days of triumph which have marked the course of man in his long and varied, but yet triumphant, march of many a thousand years. ”

“ Every New Year’s Day the sacristan comes and puts a morsel of the holy bread in her mouth, and that is all she has to live on. Long, long has she rued her fatal wish who set this transient life above the eternal joys of heaven. ”

“ In this text a day represents a century. Three days are three centuries, and a half day is a half century. After three days and a half, which are three centuries and a half, or 350 years, of the reign of Protestantism, the Spirit of life from God entered into them. This is the dawning of the evening, when the whole and entire Word of God is believed and experienced and the Holy Spirit has the same power in governing the church of God as he did in the days of the apostles. The downfall of the first beast, or Romanism, and the arising of the second beast, or Protestantism, was in the year 1530. ”

“ Surely no religion in the world can equal the sublime teachings of the New Year's day and the Day of Atonement, first filling the heart of mortal man with awe before the Judge of the world and then cheering it with the assurance of God's paternal love being ever ready to extend mercy to His repentant children. ”

“ All in all, we prepare for a great Feast of the Purification which, at the New Year's beginning, is to symbolise our re-conversion to Nature's straight religion. Then will be a rare market in doves—let us pray there be at least—which all, conscious of the true virgin heart, are to bring. ”

“ Here healing dews and balms abound:
Here are soft hands that cannot bless in vain,
By trial taught your pain:
Here loving hearts, that daily know
The heavenly consolations they on you bestow.
Sweet thoughts are theirs, that breathe serenest calms,
Of holy offerings timely paid,
Of fire from heaven to bless their votive alms
And passions on God’s altar laid.
The world to them is closed, and now they shine
With rays of love divine,
Through darkest nooks of this dull earth
Pouring, in showery times, their glow of “quiet mirth.” ”