Amid the howling wintry sea
We are in port if we have Thee.*

The Rulers of this Christian land,
"Twixt Thee and us ordained to stand,-
Guide Thou their course, O Lord, aright,
Let all do all as in thy sight.

Oh, by thine own sad burden, borne
So meekly up the hill of scorn,
Teach Thou thy Priests their daily cross
To bear as thine, nor count it loss!

If some poor wandering child of thine
Have spurn'd, to-day, the voice divine,
Now, Lord, the gracious work begin;
Let him no more lie down in sin.

Watch by the sick: enrich the poor
With blessings from thy boundless store:
Be every mourner's sleep to-night,
Like infant's slumbers, pure and light.

Come near and bless us when we wake,
Ere through the world our way we take:
Till in the ocean of thy love

We lose ourselves in heaven above.

*Then they willingly received him into the ship; and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went. St. John vi. 21.

ADVENT SUNDAY.*

Now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.-Romans xiii. 11. [Epistle for the Day.]

[Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that, in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.t]

AWAKE-again the Gospel trump is blown-
From year to year it swells with louder tone;
From year to year the signs of wrath
Are gathering round the Judge's path:

Strange words fulfill'd, and mighty works achiev'd,
And truth in all the world both hated and believ'd.

Awake! why linger in the gorgeous town,
Sworn liegemen of the Cross and thorny crown?

*

[The beginning of that season which commemorates the Advent or coming of our blessed Lord. It has immediate reference to his first coming in the flesh, and so is designed to prepare us for the due celebration of the festival of the nativity, commonly called Christmas Day. It has ultimate reference to his second coming in glory, and so is designed to aid us in preparation for the day of final judgment. The Advent Sundays, of which this is the first, are the four next preceding Christmas. The first Sunday in Advent is always the Sunday nearest to the festival of St. Andrew, whether before or after. If that Sunday fall on the last day of November, then St. Andrew's Day and Advent Sunday coincide. See note on St. Andrew's Day.]

[Throughout the "Christian Year," the collect for the day, in the book of Common Prayer, will be inserted.]

Up, from your beds of sloth,. for shame,
Speed to the eastern mount like flame,
Nor wonder, should ye find your king in tears,
Even with the loud Hosanna ringing in his ears.

Alas! no need to rouse them: long ago
They are gone forth to swell Messiah's show;
With glittering robes and garlands sweet
They strew the ground beneath his feet:

All but your hearts are there-O doom'd to prove
The arrows wing'd in heaven for Faith that will not love!*
Meanwhile he paces through th' adoring crowd,
Calm as the narch of some majestic cloud,
That o'er wild scenes of ocean-war

Holds its course in heaven afar:

Even so, heart-searching Lord, as years roll on,t
Thou keepest silent watch from thy triumphal throne:
Even so, the world is thronging round to gaze
On the dread vision of the latter days,
Constrain'd to own Thee, but in heart
Prepared to take Barabbas' part:
"Hosanna now, to-morrow" Crucify,"
The changeful burden still of their rude lawless cry.
Yet, in that throng of selfish hearts untrue,
Thy sad eye rests upon thy faithful few,
Children and childlike souls are there,
Blind Bartimeus' humble prayer,

*

["And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way: others cut down branches from the trees and strewed them in the way. And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, Hosanna to the Son of David."-Here was faith in Jesus as the Messiah. The sad catastrophe of the crucifixion too soon proved that it was not the faith which "worketh by love."]

[So the apostles, at the election of Matthias, addressing Jesus, "Thou, Lord, who knowest the heart."]

And Lazarus waken'd from his four days' sleep,
Enduring life again, that Passover to keep.

And fast beside the olive-border'd way
Stands the bless'd home, where Jesus deign'd to stay,
The peaceful home, to Zeal sincere
And heavenly contemplation dear,

Where Martha lov'd to wait with reverence meet,
And wiser Mary linger'd at thy sacred feet.

Still, through decaying ages as they glide,
Thou lov'st thy chosen remnant to divide;
Sprinkled along the waste of years,
Full many a soft green isle appears:
Pause where we may upon the desert road,
Some shelter is in sight, some sacred safe abode.

When withering blasts of error swept the sky,*
And Love's last flower seem'd fain to droop and die,
How sweet, how lone, the ray benign,

On sheltered nooks of Palestine!

Then to his early home did Love repair,t

And cheer'd his sickening heart with his own native air.

66

*Arianism in the fourth century.

† See St. Jerome's Works, i. 123, edit. Erasm. [The letters of Jerome are full of rural pictures of exceeding beauty. He evidently wrote con amore, with a painter's eye, and a poet's feeling. Having passed," he says, "so much of my life in agitation, my poor bark now tossed with storms, now shattered against rocks, I betake myself to the retirement of the country, as to a safe and peaceful port. Here, plain bread, roots raised by my own hands, and milk, the peasant's luxury, supply me cheap but wholesome food. So living, we neither suffer hinderance, in our devotions from drowsiness, nor in our studies from satiety. Is it summer,our trees tempt us with their sheltering shade. Is it autumn,the genial temperature of the air delights us, while the fallen leaves afford a soft and quiet couch. Is it spring,-flowers enamel the ground, and the tuneful birds lend to our hymns their

Years roll away: again the tide of crime
Has swept thy footsteps from the favour'd clime.
Where shall the holy Cross find rest?

On a crown'd monarch's* mailed breast: Like some bright angel o'er the darkling scene, Through court and camp he holds his heavenward course serene.†

A fouler vision yet; an age of light,

Light without love, glares on the aching sight:
Oh who can tell how calm and sweet,
Meek Walton! shows thy green retreat,‡
When wearied with the tale thy times disclose,
The eye first finds thee out in thy secure repose?

sweet accompaniment. And even when winter comes, with storms and sleet, we have wood so cheap that we need neither sleep nor watch unwarmed." But there was a charm for Jerome, in his retirement, greater even than this. To the eye of a painter and the fancy of a poet, he added, what is far more fertile in enjoyment, the heart of a Christian; and in his rustic seclusion this had abundant gratification. "Here," says he, "clownish though we are, we are all Christians. Psalms alone break the pervading stillness. The ploughman is singing hallelujahs while he turns his furrow. The reaper solaces his toil with hymns. The vineyard-dresser, as he prunes his vines, chants something from the strains of David. These are our songs, and such the notes with which our love is vocal."-I find in the Annals of Modern Missions a beautiful coincidence with the sentiment of Jerome. "It is now very different from what it used to be," said a native assistant to the Moravian missionaries in Greenland; "every where you hear the people singing psalms."]

*St. Louis in the thirteenth century.

+ [Even Gibbon was constrained to say of him, "that he united the virtues of a king, a hero and a man; that his martial spirit was tempered with the love of private and public justice; and that Louis was the father of his people, the friend of his neighbours, and the terror of infidels."]

["Honest Izaak." See his "Complete Angler," which has been well called "an exquisitely pleasing performance;" and his incomparable lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert and Sanderson.]