healing the Leper who presented himself before him, and had worshipped him saying, "Lord, if thou wilt thou canst make me clean," and the other his healing at a distance the servant of the Roman Centurion, whose faith the Lord found greater than what he had found in Israel. The Collect beseeches the Almighty and Everlasting God "mercifully to look upon our infirmities, and in all our dangers and necessities, to stretch forth his right hand to help and defend us, through Jesus Christ our Lord."* Does not a little consideration shew us here a reference to the Gospel which furnishes an example of our Lord's readiness to put forth his hand, to cleanse him who worshipped him, and to do as he would wish it done to him, who shewed his belief in him?

Many of these Collects are prayers of very high antiquity-some of them occupying their present places for a period of twelve hundred years. At the Reformation, all the services of the Church underwent an accurate scrutiny, and of Collects in use from the fifth and sixth centuries, not less than forty-three have been transferred without any alteration into our Liturgy; while the erroneous doctrines were expunged, and the superstitious additions removed, which in the middle ages, had crept into and sullied the purity of the earlier * Third Sunday after the Epiphany.

offices. In the place of Collects deformed by corrupt tradition and false interpretation, the compilers of our Liturgy added twenty five composed by themselves, in the genuine principles of Gospel piety. In the Collects generally we find, the great body of the Church of England devotional: they give faithful explanations of the Christian doctrine, clear of any obscurity, with which at any time the articles may have been charged; and in the true spirit of meekness and of understanding, they inculcate the love of God and the love of the brotherhood. We read in them the insufficiency of man to do any thing that is good of himself, and we read the assurance, that God will give his grace to those who put not their trust in any thing that they do, that God is the Almighty Protector, the strength and refuge, both outwardly in their bodies and inwardly in their souls, for such as ask in his Son's name, that he gives the aid of his holy Spirit to help their infirmities, to lead them to the knowledge of divine truth, and to stir up the wills of his faithful people, to the bringing forth of good works. They give the high authority of the Church in special services where nothing is compromised, to the mysterious doctrines of the Incarnation, of the Trinity, of the Sacrifice of Christ our Passover for the sins of the world, and of the comforts * Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity.

*

of the Holy Spirit vouchsafed to the believers. They beseech the Lord, that through his protection "the Church may be free from all adversities, devoutly given to serve him in good works:" "and they urge on all who are admitted into the fellowship of Christ's religion, that they avoid those things that are contrary to their profession, and follow all such things as are agreeable to the same."*

The Epistle and Gospel are portions of Scripture, selected as specially adapted to the several Sundays to which, with their respective Collects, they have been assigned. The early Fathers of the Church testify the high antiquity of such appropriation of Scriptures to be read both in the Eastern and Western Churches. The computation of our ecclesiastical year, having different objects in view from the civil year, does not correspond with it in its beginning or its divisions, While for human and secular uses, the civil year counts its days, and numbers its times and its seasons by the motions of the great luminary of the firmament, the Christian computation is carried on by reference to him who is the true sun of righteousness, by the day star on high, sent to enlighten those who were sunk in spiritual darkness. The holy Festivals and Sunday Solemnities of the Church divide the ecclesiastical year into two parts. The first in *Third Sunday after Easter.

your prayer books begins with the first Sunday in Advent, and ends at Trinity Sunday: the second goes on thence, and ends with the twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity. The first commemorates the signal acts of our Lord's history in bringing about the Redemption of mankind: his incarnation, his nativity, his circumcision, his manifestation to the Gentiles, his sufferings, his resurrection, his ascension, and his sending the Holy Ghost to inspire and to invigorate the Apostles for the preaching of his word. The second, begins with a full declaration of explicit glory to the ever-blessed Trinity, and goes on through the succession of Sundays after Trinity. In the first part, we are taught the faith in Christ Jesus-in the second, we learn to practise what is agreeable to his injunctions. While the one gives the narrative of Christ's life on earth, the other directs us to form our lives after his example. The whole number of Sunday services is fifty-six, the number of Sundays after Epiphany and the number after Trinity read in the Church varying with the date of Easter, which is determined by an event varying in different years.*

* The Jews celebrated their Passover on the fourteenth day of the month Nisan, which month began at the new moon next after the Vernal Equinox: in correspondence with which the rule for Easter day directs, that it shall be the first Sunday after the first full moon which happens next after the twentyfirst day of March.

For the greater solemnity of the three Christian festivals, the Church has assigned certain days as in connection with these, some to go before, others to follow them. Before the Nativity of our Lord, the four preceding Sundays are attached to it, as preparing for the Advent or coming of the Lord in the flesh. The two Sundays after Christmas are succeeded by the Epiphany or Manifestation to the Gentiles, with six Sundays denominated after it. As our Lord's life on earth was that of a man of sorrows, we directly pass on to days of humiliation in the Sundays of Lent, and the three Sundays preceding it, deriving their names from implied distances in a sort of round numbers from the festival of the Resurrection.* The season of Lent begins with what is called Ash-Wednesday, a day of humiliation, as in sackcloth and ashes, instituted to prepare by mortifying and self-denial, for receiving and acknowledging the expiation of

* The season of humiliation and abstinence continues in our Church for forty days, such having been the time for which Moses and Elias but more particularly our Saviour fasted. This number is made out from Ash-Wednesday by the Sundays not being included, which were days of festival commemoration of the day on which our Lord rose from the dead. The first Sunday in Lent being thus forty days from Easter was properly called Quadragesima Sunday: and the Sundays in order preceding were called Quinquagesima, Sexagesima, and Septuagesima, fifty, sixty, and seventy being the next round numbers at their greater distance numerically from Easter.