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nearer; as Septuagesima becomes Sexagesima, and Sexagesima Quinquagesima; seventy, and sixty, and fifty days, before the Sun of Righteousness shall rise. This season, which is now almost half past, may be regarded as the dawning twilight of the Crucifixion. The Christmas sun bas set. The gorgeous western sky of the Epiphany has faded; the Star of Bethlehem has sunk below the horizon; the cold, grey light thickens about our path. The very Christmas greens, which charmed us with the memories of childhood, are seen no more. We half descry the sackcloth of Ash Wednesday. And all is still, and grave, and sombre, as with presages of coming darkness; and, it may be, of approaching doom. It is the evening twilight of the Christian year. It is beautifully said of Isaac, in his loneliness and sorrow, that "he went out to meditate in the field at eventide." It is a prompting which we all have felt, and with which we can all sympathise. When death has torn the darling from our breast, or absence chills and desolates the heart, who has not owned the power of twilight skies to sober, soften, and subdue; to bring again the aspects and the tones of home; to reproduce, in all the loveliness of love, the buried or the absent; to stir the tenderest pulses of the soul, and start the thoughts which lie "too deep for tears?"

"Soft hour, which wakes the wish, and melts the heart
Of those who sail the seas, on the first day

When they from their sweet friends are torn apart;
Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way,

As the far bell of vesper makes him start,

Seeming to weep the dying day's decay."

When JESUS was on earth, He owned and sanctified the accidents and sympathies of nature; He sanctified the household hearth; He sanctified the marriage feast; He sanctified the love of brothers and of sisters; He sanctified the bond of friendship; He sanctified the sigh; He sanctified the tear: "JESUS wept." And when He taught His sacred lessons, or ordained His holy Sacraments, He took of common things, and made them holy. Birds of the air, and lilies of the field, grow sacred in His lips; and simple water, and the bread and wine of every day, are spiritual, and cleanse and feed the soul by His appointment. And so the Church takes natural feelings, and the sympathies of our humanity, and sanctifies them to us, if we will, for comfort, for instruction, for direction, for encouragement, in her sweet paths of pleasantness and peace. As what we know of heaven is borrowed all from earth, but purified, and perfected, and made immortal; fountains of living water; trees of perpetual green; music that never tires; and love that ever dwells in sight of the beloved. Nothing, in her appointments for our

use, that chimes more sweetly with our natural feelings and domestic ties, than the vicissitudes of her revolving year startling us as they come round with the deep warning that another year has gone; half joyous, and half sad, in the awakened memories of childhood and of home; and drying the quick tear, which springs at the remembrance of the loved and lost, with the glad thought that but a few more years can hold us, so we keep the faith, from them and GOD. The evening twilight of the sacred year which gathers round us now, to thoughtful hearts, is full of holiest uses. It prompts to meditation; it is suggestive of self-examination; it should be preparative of peni"The world is too much with us.' We are too much

tence.

יי

taken up with things of time and sense. "What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed," engrosses us, till we forget that we have souls. Let us chastise these sensual thoughts, and subjugate them to the SPIRIT. Let us go out with Isaac into the field to meditate at eventide. Let us devote the brief and fading twilight of the sacred year to twilight thoughts; to self-communion and to self-consideration.

The approach of confirmation admonishes us to use this twilight season for self-searching, and self-subjection to the Cross. To them who have not been confirmed, it comes to tell them of their vows of baptism; that they were made to GOD; that they are written in heaven; that they bind the soul; that they consecrate the life. Think, my beloved children, of that thoughtthey consecrate the life! They leave you "not your own;" they mark you with His Cross; they stain you with His blood. It never can come off: it must be there through life; it must be there in death; it must be there at the judgment. Shall it be the sign of the Cross, to save? or shall it be the sign of the Cross, to destroy? Which it shall be it is for you to choose. The heavenly Dove is hovering now above your hearts; receive Him with affectionate desire; cherish Him with tender care. Let your hearts be to Him the warm and welcome nest which He delights in; so the peace which passeth understanding will be yours through life, and heaven be yours throughout eternity. But He is gentle, He is holy, He is heavenly. You may fray Him off from your young spirits, and offend Him by your indifference or ingratitude; and He may return to heaven, and the fluttering of His gracious wings be never, never heard by you again. To them who have been confirmed, the season comes to tell them that they were made the temples of the HOLY GHOST. Have they been mindful of the heavenly Presence? Have they kept up the fire of love upon His altar? they preserved themselves in piety, and purity, and charity, as temples of the living GOD? Dearly beloved, redemption without sanctification is not salvation. "The Dove must settle on

Have

the Cross." "Follow after holiness, without which no man shall see the LORD."

Especially are you invited by the holy Sacrament, which spreads itself before you, to twilight thoughts of self-distrust and self-communion. Not in the broad light of worldly joy, not in the black gloom of worldly sorrow; but in the sober twilight of the soul, serene, subdued, submissive to God's will, the Cross reveals itself for pardon and for comfort. "Let a man examine himself; and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup!"-The Missionary.

A CHORISTER'S FUNERAL.

ON Saturday, March 9th, the body of Mark Norman, lately one of the head choristers of Withyham, Sussex, was committed to the earth, in the churchyard of that place. The funeral was attended by the children of the two schools, preceded by six of the elder girls, dressed in white, who scattered flowers in the way. The coffin, borne upon the bier, and covered with the rich pall, was met at the western door of the Church by the two Curates of the parish; the Rev. G. Antrobus, now filling the place of the Rector, and the Rev. W. Dry, at present Curate of S. John's Chapel. Behind them came the choir, men and boys in surplices, together with six choristers from the neighbouring parish of Rotherfield.

The service was choral throughout; the priest's part being intoned by the Rev. G. Antrobus, and the whole conducted by Frederick Helmore, Esq., to whom so many choirs are indebted for his invaluable instructions, and by whom also the music was composed.

The newly-elected chorister, supported on either side by two others, carried, on a cushion of crimson and gold, the surplice and book of the deceased, and kneeling, laid them reverently on the first step of the altar.

The choir took their places in the chancel, the Psalms were chanted, and the lesson read; then round the grave, where all in order assembled, was sung to a beautiful cadence, rising and falling in the clear air, "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery; he cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as a shadow, and never continueth in one stay."

The body was lowered into the grave, to rest until the judgment. "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust." Then in rich harmony rose the anthem,-true comfort for the sorrowing heart,— "I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write from hence

forth, Blessed are the dead which die in the LORD; even so saith the SPIRIT, for they rest from their labours."

It was a solemn and beautiful ceremony, and there were many to witness it. May it be blessed to the good of their souls! May the young companions of the departed, and those also who assisted at his funeral, and to whom he was known, turn it by GOD'S blessing to good account! May they remember it on their knees, praying ever that they may be prepared for the great change which, to him, has come thus early! He no longer fills his usual place; his surplice is worn by another; his sweet voice is missed in the chant and in the anthem; but we have good hope that a yet whiter robe is in store for him, and that with a more perfect voice he may yet give glory to GOD, Whose child by baptism he was, and Whose praises were ever in his mouth even to his latest hour, when consciousness had fled!

EASTER AT MAGDALEN COLLEGE, OXFORD.

It is customary for a portion of the choir of this College to rise early on Easter-day, in order to break the slumbers of some of their elders by singing the Easter Hymn at their chamber doors. The singers remain invisible, except one, who, with gentle step and voice, approaches the sleeper with the Paschal salutation, "The LORD is risen indeed!" The following lines are an attempt to record the long-remembered thrill of almost unearthly happiness which the writer felt, when, for the first time, sounds so expressive of what Easter brought to pass gradually woke him to full consciousness.

I.

Beneath the Cross, that wrathful day,
A trembling sinner prostrate lay;
He could not lift his eyes for shame,
For fear he would not close the same;
He could but smite his guilty breast,
And cry, in anguish and unrest,
"O, by Thy sufferings on the Tree,
Deliver me, deliver me!"

II.

When lingering Time proclaim'd, at last,
Those darkling hours of shame were past,

And He Who came the world to save

Was lying lowly in the grave,

The weary sinner sought his bed,
In sadness and in solemn dread,

Yet, knowing that the grave would ope,
He laid him down to rest in hope.

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A FEW WORDS TO SOME OF THE WOMEN OF THE CHURCH OF GOD IN ENGLAND.

WE have scarcely concluded our remarks upon the eloquent pamphlet of the Rev. J. M. Neale, ere another is put into our hands, the production of one whose praise is in all the Churches, and who may well command the attention of those to whom she addresses herself. Those who have perused the admirable apology for Christianity made by Lydia Sellon, in answer to the accusations made against the Sisterhood of which she is the head, will believe us when we say, that her few words are as creditable to her head as to her heart. She dwells with no little force, although apparently incidentally, upon the fact, that it is not the province of woman to busy herself with theological controversies, and become involved in the mazes of perplexing theological questions. Many, doubtless, need a word of warning at the present juncture; and that which has sounded from the Tamar mouth will, we trust, calm and soothe many a troubled spirit.

Church News.

A CHRISTIAN FAREWELL TO A CHRISTIAN PRIEST.

THE New Zealand Mission appears in an especial degree to have been blessed with men of no ordinary character. The Bishop is a host in himself. A man of the highest attainments, yet the most childlike humility. In labours often, in perils by

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