Drooped heavily, as if to float no more : Of Light approachless; and all suddenly Threatening the earth, save that the nail-pierced Hand Rebuke was in the vision; then, 'O Lord!' I asked, 'give me some nook and Thy command, Amongst the privileges which his peculiar intimacy with the Lord Jesus conferred upon St. James, was that of being one of the three witnesses of His Transfiguration. Bearing in mind the worldly conception of Christ's Kingdom which we have just seen to have been entertained by James and his brother, it may be proper to introduce here a poem which, whilst devoted to a deprecation of earthly distinctions, owes its suggestion to the proposal of Peter, to make on the Mount of Transfiguration three Tabernacles, one for Christ, one for Moses, and one for Elias (Matt. xvii. 4). Its author, Herbert Knowles, was a youthful poet, whose fame, like that of Wolfe, is almost entirely based upon a single production. Knowles was born at Canterbury in 1798, and died in the year 1817. At the age of eighteen, he produced the following 'Lines written in the Churchyard of Richmond, Yorkshire;' which soon obtained general circulation and celebrity. They were once thought to have much of the steady faith and devotional earnestness of Cowper :' Methinks it is good to be here, If Thou wilt, let us build-but for whom? Nor Elias nor Moses appear; But the shadows of eve that encompassed with gloom, Shall we build to Ambition! Affrighted, he shrinketh away; Ah, no! For see, they would pin him below In a small narrow cave, and begirt with cold clay To the meanest of reptiles a peer and a prey. To Beauty? Ah, no! She forgets The charms which she wielded before; Nor knows the foul worm that he frets The skin which but yesterday fools could adore, The trappings which dizen the proud? Alas! they are all laid aside, THE THREE TABERNACLES. And here's neither dress nor adornments allowed, Who hid in their turns have been hid; The treasures are squandered again; The revel, the laugh, and the jeer? Ah! here is a plentiful board! But the guests are all mute as their pitiful cheer, Shall we build to Affection and Love? Ah, no! they have withered and died, Or fled with the spirit above. Friends, brothers, and sisters are laid side by side, Unto Sorrow?-The Dead cannot grieve; Not a sob nor a sigh meets mine ear, Which Compassion itself could relieve. Ah, no! for his empire is known, And here there are trophies enow! Beneath-the cold dead; and around-the dark stone, The first tabernacle to Hope we will build, And look for the sleepers around us to rise ! The second to Faith, which ensures it fulfilled; And the third to the Lamb of the great sacrifice, Who bequeathed us them both when He rose to the skies. 323 Neither from the inspired writings nor from the ecclesiastical historians do we derive much information concerning St. James after our Lord's Ascension. He would seem to have confined his ministrations to his native country of Judæa or its immediate neighbourhood; and to have been especially active in Jerusalem, where his zeal and energy at length made him so obnoxious to King Herod Agrippa, that when he 'stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the Church, he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword' (Acts xii. 1, 2). This event took place before the days of unleavened bread, about A.D. 45. Amongst the adversaries whom St. James confronted in the interests of Christianity, it is said there was a certain Magus, by name Hermogenes, who sent one of his disciples to refute the arguments of the Apostle. When the scholar found this task to be beyond his powers, Hermogenes in a rage ordered the demons to bring St. James to him by force. This command of the master fell as power less upon the Apostle as the reasoning of the scholar had done ; and when the discomfited Hermogenes was obliged to recognize its futility, he professed himself a convert to the faith of Christ, destroyed his household images, burned his books of magic, and distributed amongst the poor the wealth he had amassed in the exercise of his profession. Notwithstanding the credit acquired by so remarkable a conversion, St. James was accused by the Jews to Herod, who ordered his apprehension, and sentenced him to death. On the way to execution, St. James performed a miracle of healing upon a paralytic, by which the principal witness against him, Josias, a Scribe, was so affected that he threw himself at the feet of the Apostle, and begged his forgiveness. St. James, after recovering from his surprise at the sudden change, raised him up, and embraced him with a kiss, saying, 'Peace be to thee, my brother.' Hereupon Josias boldly professed himself to be a Christian, and was on that account condemned to be beheaded with the sword at the same time and place as the Apostle whose words, and the remarkable spirit which they evidenced, had been instrumental in his conversion.* The peace which was the salutation and the legacy of the dying Apostle to Josias, was the peace of another world; for in this the rest of his life was short and troublous. The true and abiding Peace is a native of a far country-far, yet only the journey of an instant to the departing faithful. The following lines, from the pen of Henry Vaughan, the Silurist' (1621-1695), are original and picturesque, and very lively and stirring in their movement, and deserving of a wider popularity than they have lately enjoyed; My soul, there is a country * Far beyond the stars, All skilful in the wars. There, above all noise and danger, Sweet Peace sits crowned with smiles, And One born in a manger Commands the beauteous files. He is thy gracious Friend, To die here for thy sake. There grows the flower of Peace, The rose that cannot wither, Thy God, thy Life, thy Cure. Clement of Alexandria, quoted by Eusebius; lib. ii., c. 9. THE PATRON-SAINT OF SPAIN. 325 St. James the Great has the honour of being the 'Protomartyr of the Apostles,' as Stephen has that of being the Protomartyr of the Church in general; and thus he had a pre-eminence in drinking of that cup of which he had long before hastily and ignorantly professed to his Lord his willingness and ability to partake (Mark x. 38, 39). As for Herod, he was marked for the Divine vengeance, which overtook him in a horrible form of death, of which St. Luke gives a brief account (Acts xii. 20-23), and the details of which are narrated at greater length by Josephus the historian.* There is little or no reason to believe otherwise than that St. James was buried by the faithful at Jerusalem. He has long been regarded as the Patron-Saint of Spain, where he is held in especial veneration, as having been the first to introduce Christianity into that country, to which, indeed, a tradition avers that his remains were translated, and where they are now deposited in his church at Compostella. The tradition, however, is a comparatively late one; and Hospinian, who devotes some space to its investigation, sums up against its historic credibility with an expression of opinion that it was invented and developed by the bold cupidity of the priests.t The commemoration of St. James's Day has with much probability been assumed to have had an earlier local origin in Spain; but it does not appear to have become universal before the eleventh century. In the Greek Church, it is observed on the 30th of April, the anniversary of the Apostle's martyrdom; as the 25th of July, the day on which he is commemorated in the Western Church-and this may be taken as an argument that Spain is the country in which it had its local (Western) institution-is the anniversary of the presumed translation of his remains. * Wars of the Jews; lib. i., c. 33. + De Origine Festorum Christianorum. St. Bartholomew the Apostle. AUGUST 24. HE date of the first institution of the festival in honour of this Apostle is uncertain. By some authorities it has been referred to the eleventh century; whilst others appeal to ancient calendars for evidence that it was known as early as the eighth. The Greeks, whose days for commemorating the Apostles and Evangelists coincide with our own in two or three cases only, celebrate the martyrdom of St. Bartholomew on the 11th of June, reserving the 24th of August, the day on which it is observed in the Western Church, for the anniversary of the translation of his relics. In Rome, however, St. Bartholomew is honoured one day later, that is, on the 25th of August. The name of Bartholomew is a patronymic, implying that he was the son of Tholmai;' or, according to some learned writers, that he was a Tholmaan, a scholar or disciple of the school of Tholmai, the leader and eponymous of a sect amongst the Jewish students of the Law. A more popular tradition--popular, that is, in the sense of being capricious and uninstructed-maintains that Bartholomew was a son of Ptolemy, King of Syria-a tradition which manifests an utter ignorance of the true seat of the rule of the Ptolemaic family. It is more safe to regard the Apostle as a native of Cana in Galilee (John xxi. 2); and to relegate him to that occupation of a fisherman which was dignified by some of the most illustrious of the Apostles. There is little reason to doubt that the name of Bartholomew was conferred upon him by way of distinction, in addition to, or in substitution for, that of Nathanael, which was probably the name |