The Church Seasons

RIGINALLY, and with stricter verbal propriety than now, the word Advent was taken to mean the time of the birth of Christ-His arrival, or having come, rather than His coming. But the Church has always loved dutifully to cultivate the idea of preparation for seasons of uncommon sanctity; and one effect of this disposition has been to throw back Advent over a season of three or four weeks, intended to be spent as a long Christmas Eve in the contemplation of the incidents of which the approaching festival is commemorative, and in devout and self-questioning anticipation of the Day of Judgment. It is with Advent, therefore, which begins on the Sunday nearest-before or after-to St. Andrew's Day, that the ecclesiastical year commences. The exact date at which the celebration of this season first came into use is uncertain; but it is proved to have been practised before A.D. 450, by the fact of Maximus Taurinensis having, in that year, written a homily upon the subject. The Eastern Church, with the exception of the Nestorians, who observe a fast of twenty-five days at this season, has, strictly speaking, no Advent; a circumstance which has the effect of considerably limiting our ground when we seek, as now, for poetical illustrations of individual or ecclesiastical piety in this kind.

The history of the world, from the time of its first defection from being a loyal colony of heaven, to the time of its final resumption into the more direct and visible government of God, has little or nothing of significance that is not related to the redemption and to the judgment of mankind. All the interests of the descendants of

a fallen ancestor culminate in the chances of recovery and final safety. The first Advent of Christ is the general pledge of the one; the second Advent will be the particular assurance of the other. The history of the world after Paradise, resolves itself, we say, into two capital seasons of Advent. The interval between the fall of Adam and the birth of Christ, was the first of these seasons; the interval between the first and the second coming of the Lord, is the second. The first interval was remarkable for the longing expectation of His coming as a Saviour; the second is characterised by the trembling hope with which is waited His coming as a Judge.

Advent poetry, therefore, parts at the outset into two grand divisions that which is prophetic or anticipative of one or both Advents; and that which, being commemorative of the first, is anticipative only with regard to the second. The first of these two grand divisions parts again as naturally and almost as palpably into two sub-divisions; the first sub-division being that which is characterised by the aspirations of a race amongst whom the line of successive revelations had been kept unbroken; and the second, that which is marked by the vague, darkling, and sometimes even despairing yearnings of nations amongst whom whatever of divine inspiration they had took rather the form of artistic, philosophical, and scientific culture than that of religious enlightenment. We would first speak a few words about the nations last mentioned, and forthwith dismiss them. Our gleanings in this field must be very scanty.

It would be idle to attempt to follow the efforts of the best thought of Heathendom after a just apprehension of the Divine, and its relations to the human. It is sufficient to say that the felt want of the most earnest minds, whether of Greece or of the further and more ancient India, was that of a Christ, a Redeemer. Whatever might be the case with the more extreme and more rigidly logical of Pantheists in the one country, or with the more insouciant of Epicurean speculators in the other, the average heart expressed itself in the invention of avataras and theophanies. Guided or not guided by the broken reflected lights of a revelation which their ancestors had forfeited, because they had not held it in honour, the masses wrote down a future incarnation as if past, and found their salvation in progressive manifestations of Vishnu, the Preserver, or in the benevolence of self-sacrificing or self-immolating heroes.

But such fables had not pith enough to be received as doginas by more subtle intellects. The Greek mind especially wearied itself in restless speculations. A moral despair walked abroad, to which the dying words of Aristotle may persuade us to believe that even he succumbed. But despair was not perfect till it became indifference. Above the din of the funeral games celebrated at the

HYMN OF EUPOLIS.

sepulchre in which the Sophists had entombed all noble aims, there rises the refreshing and the startling strain of Eupolis, a poet of the Socratic way of thinking, who outvied his fellows in the expression of a hope, common to his school, of the coming of a celestial instructor. It is a genuine Advent hymn; and it may be quoted not only as the single heathen contribution to our anthology, but also as exhibiting one of the very highest sentiments in the sphere of morals and religion, which the unbaptised Muse has 'wedded to immortal verse.' We use Charles Wesley's translation.

Author of being, source of light,
With unfading beauties bright;
Fulness, goodness, rolling round
Thy own fair orb without a bound;
Whether Thee thy suppliants call
Truth, or Good, or One, or All.

Ei, or Jao, Thee we hail,
Essence that can never fail ;
Grecian or barbaric name,

Thy stedfast being still the same.

Thee, when the morning greets the skies
With rosy cheeks and humid eyes:

Thee, when sweet declining day

Sinks in purple waves away;

Thee will I sing, O parent Jove!

And teach the world to praise and love.

And yet a greater hero far

(Unless great Socrates could err),
Shall rise to bless some future day,
And teach to live and teach to pray.
Come, UNKNOWN INSTRUCTOR, come!
Our leaping hearts shall make Thee room :
Thou with Jove our hearts shall share,
Of Jove and Thee we are the care.

O Father, King, whose heavenly face
Shines serene on all Thy race,
We Thy magnificence adore,
And Thy well-known aid implore;
Nor vainly for Thy help we call;

Nor can we want, for Thou art all!

The Advent of the Messiah was a glowing theme for the numbers of prophets and poets, and for the piety of saints of the Jewish dispensation; and not the less glowing or sublime on account of the indeterminateness attaching to many of the predictions and expectations of its nature. The paradoxes, which doubtless served at once to attract and to baffle inquiry in some directions, are to us so fully cleared up by events, that it is not necessary to dwell upon them longer than may suffice to indicate what a mysterious wealth of picturesque and pathetic metaphor the hopes of the Hebrew bards

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The Church Seasons: Historically and Poetically Illustrated