Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be ;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering:

In the faith that looks through death;

In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And oh! ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves,
Think not of any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped, lightly as they ;
The innocent brightness of a new-born day
Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun,
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

The

Circumcision of Christ.

JANUARY I.

HE day on which we at present commemorate the Circumcision of our Lord has a singular, if not unique, history amongst the 'observable times' of the Church. Although from its earliest celebration regarded as a festival, it exhibited for a considerable time the outward phenomena of a fast; its observances being of a severe and penitential, rather than of a jubilant character. And for this there was good reason. The riot and license which, by the heathen world, were carried over from the Saturnalia-commencing about the seventeenth of December-to the calends of January, were so scandalous and extravagant as to force on Christian policy, no less than on Christian duty, the necessity of an active or a passive opposition. In the earlier life of the Church, the abstinence of her members from the pagan abominations of the season was nearly all that was possible; but as her strength and influence increased, her teachers rose with these to the indignant height of protest, rebuke, and denunciation. The writings of the Fathers abound in severe invectives against the indecent and superstitious revelry of the day; and some of them are the fiercer in their wrath against it, that its excesses were not always confined to the unbaptized. St. Augustine, Peter Chrysologus, Maximus Taurinensis, and Faustinus the Bishop, amongst others, reprobated the prevailing riot of the calends of January, which, many years before their times, St. Chrysostom had indignantly described as ¿oprýv diaßoλikýv, the Devil's Festival

On this day especially, as throughout the Saturnalia, under the pretence of temporarily reviving the glories and immunities of the golden age, the attempt was made to resolve the order of society

back into the elements of primæval chaos. In order to do honour to Janus, or Dianus, the god of the sun, the heathen, as the Fathers scornfully pointed out, feigned him to have two faces, of which one seemed to look back upon the past, whilst the other looked forward to the opening year. It was thus that stupid devotees, in their abortive attempts to fashion a god, succeeded in achieving a monstrosity, to which, at this season, some of them paid in their own persons the tribute of imitation. Others degraded themselves to the adoption of lower forms of life than their own; and, clothing themselves in the skins of cattle or of wild beasts, and assuming the heads of these, 'rejoiced and exulted that they could no longer be recognised as human beings.' Such voluntary degradation, it was said, proved the nature of the revellers to be more debased than that of the animals whose form or appearance they adopted. Further, men, putting off the vigour and roughness of their sex, masqueraded in the robes of women whilst women, divesting themselves of their proper modesty and shame, blushed not to disport themselves in the garments of men. On the calends of January the superstitious consultation of auguries was pursued with an uncommon ardour; and people indulged freely in the interchange of 'diabolical' strenæ,* or new year's gifts.

It was the observance of the calends of January 'by the greater portion of the human race with lust and luxury, debauch and impiety,' that induced the holy fathers of old to appoint, that by all the Churches throughout the world the season should be proclaimed as a public fast, in order that miserable men might know that, on account of their sins, fasting was imperative upon the Churches.' 'Fast, therefore,' is the exhortation of Bishop Faustinus, from whose Sermo in Kalendis Januarii we condense this account of the heathen revelry, in which it was his most bitter complaint that some Christian people were seduced to partake— Fast, therefore, most dear brethren, in these days, and with a true and perfect charity bewail the folly of these wretched men, who, haply, seeing us fast on their account, may come to understand their evil plight, and may even be touched and visited by God through our word and example.' And it is a fact recorded by Isidore of Seville, and by Alcuin, in his Liber de Divinis Officiis, that several churches formerly kept the first day of January as a fast.

But such reprobation and such advice as those of Faustinus were not left to be iterated by the unassisted zeal of isolated preachers. They were enforced by the collective authority of various councils. The second Council of Tours, for instance, which was convoked by order of King Charibert, and commenced its session November

* So called from Strena, or Strenua, a goddess who divided with Janus the doubtful honours of the day. Her name is still preserved in the étrennes, or gifts, which it is the custom in France to exchange on le Jour de l'An.

ANCIENT TITLES OF THE FESTIVAL.

75

17th, 566, set itself to oppose the pagan superstitions which were observed on the first of January, by proclaiming that day as a fast, and prescribing for it particular litanies and services.* In the spirit of this ordinance, as Bergier remarks, 'the first of January was long observed in France as a day of penitence and fasting, for the expiation, not only of the superstitions, but also of the disorders to which the votaries of paganism abandoned themselves. It was in 1444 that for this fast was substituted, in France, the solemn festival of the Name of Jesus.'

The Council of Constantinople, convoked in 692, by order of the Emperor Justinian II., and called Quinisextum, or, more popularly, in Trullo,† also ordained the suppression of the various indecent sports; the public dances of women; the disguise of women as men, and of men as women, which obtained at the time of the calends of January.

It will be seen that there was much to retard the consolidation of the Circumcision into a universal festival of the Church; and the date of its introduction is uncertain and debatable. 'After the introduction of the festival of the Nativity,' observes Mr. Riddle, 'which took place in the fourth century, the first of January received a certain distinction, in accordance with the custom of continuing the celebration of the higher festivals during several days, or the adoption of the system of octaves from the Jewish ritual. From that period until the seventh century the day was distinguished as Octava Natalis Dominis, the Octave of the Nativity.' By this title it is that Isidore and the more early writers mention it. It is pretty well established that, in the course of the seventh century, a festival was of very general observance, under the titles of the Circumcision, the Octave of the Nativity, and the Name of Jesus, any one of which would from that time be used indifferently, or according to the idea to which it was intended for the moment to give prominence. Such a commemoration, as Mr. Riddle points out, 'would naturally take place in the Church, in accordance with the course of the general narrative, when once it had become usual to celebrate the Nativity on the twenty-fifth of December, independently of the influence of other octaves.'

The date of the introduction of the feast of the Circumcision is, we said just now, uncertain and debatable; and considerable diversity of opinion has been exhibited in regard to it. The truth seems to be, that one author or another is inclined to fix on every * Edmund Martene's De Antiquis Ecclesiæ Ritibus.

+ From the circumstance of its having been held in the Dome chapel of the palace. This council, at which two hundred and eleven bishops assisted, wa regarded by the Greeks-not by the Latins, for the Pope was not represented -as a general one, and was supplementary to the fifth and sixth Councils of Constantinople, at which no canons of discipline were promulgated.

Manual of Christian Antiquities.

single and several stage of development between the first dawning or germ and the noon-tide or full growth of universality, as that in which the introduction of the festival is to be recognised. There are writers who assign the first commemoration of the Circumcision to the fifth century; and in support of this era refer to a homily of Maximus Taurinensis, On the Circumcision of our Lord, or, on the calends of January.' But from the fact that no mention of the festival of the Circumcision occurs throughout the homily, it is fair to infer that, in this case, as in many others, the title is of later origin than the work itself; and thus its evidence is invalidated. An ancient Sacramentary of the fifth century, with which the name of Popes Leo I. and Gelasius I. have been associated, does, however, give colour to the more modest proposition that in that century there was already a kind of incidental or sub-presentation of the festival of the Circumcision along with that of the Octave of the Nativity. In this Sacramentary, although the latter of the two titles just mentioned has the dignity of being applied to the day of the Circumcision, yet the Circumcision itself has a nominal recognition in the private prayers of the offices.*

Those who refer the origin of the festival of the Circumcision to the seventh century, appeal to a collect in the Sacramentary of Gregory the Great, in which occur the words, 'per Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum, cujus hodie Circumcisionem et Nativitatis Octavam celebramas: through our Lord Jesus Christ, whose Circumcision, together with the Octave of His Nativity, we this day celebrate.' Doubts have been raised, however, as to the genuineness of the Sacramentary; and, until these are laid, its evidence cannot be admitted as decisive with regard to the festival in question. Moroni, per contra, draws attention to the fact that, 'we have a decree of Reciswindus, who ascended the throne of Spain in the year 649, in which the celebration of the festival of the Circumcision was enjoined.'t

Our own countryman, the Venerable Bede, has left a homily, produced, probably, within the first quarter of the eight century, which is not only entitled In Die Festo Circumcisionis Domini, but which really and directly treats of that event as its subject. Casaubon, nevertheless, with whom Wheatly appears to have coincided without an effort, presumes that the festival of the Circumcision was first established by Ivo Carnotensis,-Ivo, Bishop of Chartres-at the close of the eleventh century; and that it was first mentioned by St. Bernard of Clairvaux, in a sermon preached early in the twelfth century. Casaubon further says that the festival was universally and canonically established by the Synod of Oxford, A.D. 1222. This Synod, or Council, was held by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the reform of the English Church, espe