صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

taken, even that which he hath.' As much as to say, whoso hath the desire and the zeal, to him shall be given those things which are of GOD; but whoso lacketh these and does not contribute that part which pertains unto him, to him neither are the things which are of GOD given, but even those things which he hath are taken from him; not because God Himself takes them away, but because he has made himself unworthy of those that he has." "Another evangelist said well, That which he seemeth to have," says S. Chrysostom in another passage a little further on, "for, in truth, he hath not even that he hath."

Before entering into the particulars of the subject set forth by our LORD in this sequence of parables, the proclamation of the kingdom of GOD upon earth and the definition of its characteristics, it was necessary to lay down distinctly who those are who are concerned in this announcement, and who those are that are not. Directly it does not concern all the world; but it does concern, directly as well as indirectly, every one of us who have accepted its conditions, have declared ourselves CHRIST'S faithful soldiers and servants, and have not openly thrown off our allegiance, or have not been openly rejected by Him-faithful or unfaithful subjects we may be-but we are subjects-we belong to the Church, and the Church here is His visible kingdom on earth. The Bible with its laws, its promises, and its blessings of grace, is not the book of the world, but exclusively the Book of the Church; it belongs neither to those who have not entered the Church, nor to those who have left it.

But in one sense both the Bible, and the Church whose book it is, may be considered the property of all men; for all men equally are invited to enter the one and

appropriate the other. We are among those who have done so already; our duty and our privilege then it is to make use of that which, having been given us, is our own. Remigius says in answer to the question, "To whom is it given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven ?” "To you, I say, who adhere to Me and believe in Me.". By the mystery of the kingdom of heaven the LORD intends the gospel doctrine. To them, that is to them that are without, the Scribes and Pharisees, and to the rest who continue in unbelief, it is not given. Let us then with the disciples come unto the LORD with a pure heart, that He may think us worthy to interpret to us the evangelic teaching, according to His typical promise made aforetime, (Deut. xxxiii. 3,1) that of those who sit at Thy feet every one shall receive of Thy words.

NOTE.-There always have been, and always will be in the Church of CHRIST two schools of divinity, to one or other of which thoughtful men will be attached by the natural bent of their minds, and the bulk of mankind by fashion or accident. The principles of justification by faith alone, grace, election, predestination, and such like, will recommend themselves to one class of minds, while those of obedience, works and duty will tell on others of a different stamp : either of these may form the leading idea in the mind of a true Churchman, provided it be not suffered to exclude the other. Either of these held exclusively becomes a heresy.

These two schools existed in the time of Charlemagne as well as in ours, and were considered then as the French and English respectively; at the head of the latter was our countryman Alcuin the founder of it in the empire; his celebrated pupil Raban; the scarcely less celebrated Hincmar, and many others; it prevailed principally in the northern parts of the empire, and was in favour with the Imperial party in the time of Charlemagne, though not in those of

The promise actually was made to Moses, but it was to Moses the type of CHRIST the Lawgiver. For the principle upon which the choice was made by GoD, compare Deut. xxxiii. 3, with Deut vi. 7 and 55.

his successor Lotharius. What we should now call the low school was more prevalent in the southern parts of France: it was based upon the writings of S. Augustine, and was carried by his followers a good deal beyond what S. Augustine would have sanctioned had he been alive. The case of Gotteschalcus, whose doctrines Raban had condemned, and whom Hincmar, his own Archbishop, had treated with cruelty, excited great notice at the time. Some time after his death, which took place in prison, it is said from the severities to which he was exposed, Remigius became Archbishop of Lyons, and showed himself a most able defender of the doctrine for which Gotteschalcus had suffered persecution. In 851, he presided over the Council of Valence, which passed sentence of condemnation on the Council of Quiercy, which six years before had declared the doctrines of Gotteschalcus heretical. He subsequently condemned the doctrine of another celebrated writer of the English school, John Scotus, commonly known as Erigena or the Irishman, on the subject of predestination.

Remigius was a partizan; still the Church owes him a deep debt of gratitude. It is true that the doctrines of Gotteschalcus, which Remigius defended, were heretical or nearly so; but it is no less true that the popularity of the English school, and the extreme into which some of its disciples suffered themselves to be led, was rapidly effacing other doctrines equally true and equally Christian.

Hincmar, himself a great divine and a great restorer of the Church's discipline, would nevertheless have pushed Alcuin's and Raban's doctrines into extremes, and destroyed the analogy of the faith. Remigius, no less a partizan himself, restored the balance, and thus it invariably happens that the LORD, through the instrumentality of fallible men, preserves the infallibility of His universal Church.

ORIGIN OF WHITSUN-DAY.

THE derivations of this high Festival given by Wheatley, Brady, L'Estrange, and others, are singularly unsatisfactory. White-Sunday would properly be the English synonym for Dominica-in-Albis, which falls in

Eastertide: Huict-Sunday, Wheat-Sunday, or White (meats) Sunday, or Wit (illumination) Sunday, are very far-fetched originals of the name, besides being ungrammatical; the adjective is Whitsun, not Whit.

The true fact is, that as we speak of Christmas-day, Ascension-day, or, more pertinently still, Easter-day, the word is Whitsun-day. The noun-adjective being used as in composition, with other words (Whitsun)-week ; -holy days;-eve ;-tide ;-ale ;-farthings ;-morrisdance;-Monday;-and Tuesday. The French call it, Le Jour de la Pentecôte: the Spaniards, Dia de Pentecostes: the Italians, Il giorno della Pentecoste: the Dutch, Der Pingster-dag: the Saxons, Pentecostenes mæsse-dæg.

Thus all these languages unite in the words day and Pentecost; so does our own in the term Whitsun-day; the adjective being a corruption through successive stages of the Greek original Pentecost, through the German, Phingsten-fest: [pingsten, (lower German) and pingest, Swedish.] Just as Ember (day) comes from the Latin Quatuor Tempora, through the German contraction Quatember or Easter-day from Oster.

:

Even Pentecost was corrupted into Pentcost, or Pencost: as Whitsun, was written Whysson, and, more anciently, Witson and Witeson, the former as used by Wiccliffe, and the latter by Robert of Gloucester, A.D. 1270.

M. E. C. W.

225

FUNERAL IN A FISHING-SETTLEMENT.

To the Editor of the Churchman's Companion. SIR,-In a file of Newfoundland papers, which I have perused with much pleasure in the Mediterranean, I find depicted a simple funeral scene in that island. It has carried me back, in recollection, to many a like scene which I have witnessed there, and in other portions of our North American dioceses. In the belief that it may be interesting to the readers of your little miscellany, I have extracted, and enclose it. To the question, of what good in this world could so sickly a member of the Church as the little departed one have been ?—I am sure that, upon reflection, the amiable writer would have given the reply, and that he will forgive me for suggesting it, that he might, even by a lengthened life of patient illness, and by sanctified suffering, have done much good in his allotted sphere, by bearing testimony to the consolations of the HOLY SPIRIT, had such been God's will. But I will not detain your readers from the missionary's sketch, which appears in the Newfoundland Times of the 3rd of March:

[ocr errors]

"A little child was dead-one whom, four years ago, I had admitted into the fellowship of CHRIST's religion, and signed with His own mark, was now called to be with Him in heaven. The poor little fellow had long been ill, some malformation or injury in the region of the chest having been his complaint; and now his life had terminated its brief career. His death could hardly be deemed untimely; for of what good in this world could so sickly a member be?-better far, removed from all those cares, and pains, and sorrows, which seemed more than usually inevitable to his lot. His mother was bitterly afflicted at his loss; his death was grief to her, to whom his life had

[blocks in formation]
« السابقةمتابعة »