God's omnipotence, which must be more than a match for the corruption of our nature and our spiritual foes. Upon God's wisdom, which knows perfectly our character, our past history, our present circumstances. Upon God's love, which can overcome all obstacles in the way of our salvation, since it moved Him to give His own Son for a world lying in wickedness and defying Him.1 And, finally, upon the sympathy of the good Shepherd, who cannot possibly desert the sheep for which He laid down His life, when He hears it crying to Him out of the midst of spiritual discomfiture and distress. And what assurance may we have that this power, this wisdom, this love, this sympathy, are not only diffused abroad (like the sunlight) for the benefit of mankind at large, but also centred upon us individually? The assurance given us by our Baptism, when we were washed in the laver of regeneration and formally entitled to the renewing of the Holy Ghost3 They who lean only upon the hope of this Covenant made with them by the Almighty, All-wise, All-loving One, shall assuredly have salvation secured to them by the mighty power of God and the intercession of their Saviour. "Salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks." 4 1 See St. John iii. 2 See St. Luke xv. 4. 16; 1 John v. 19; St. Luke xix. 14. 4 Isaiah xxvi. 1. VOL. I. Q CHAPTER XVI. THE SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY. D God, whose blessed Son was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil, and make us the sons of God, and heirs of eternal life; Grant us, we beseech thee, that, having this hope, we may purify ourselves, even as he is pure; that, when he shall appear again with power and great glory, we may be made like unto him in his eternal and glorious kingdom; where with thee, D Father, and thee, O Holy Ghost, he liveth and reigneth, ever one God, world without end. Amen. [A. D. 1661.] IN the Missal of Sarum, which may be called the most popular Communion Service of the English Church before the Reformation, no special provision was made for a Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany. The arrangement was this. On the Sunday which fell within the Octave of the Epiphany, and which we now call the First Sunday after the Epiphany, the Collect of the Festival was repeated. The Sundays following, of which there were five, were reckoned, not from the Epiphany itself, but from the Octave; first Sunday, second Sunday after the Octave of the Epiphany, etc. etc. At the Reformation this arrangement was altered to the simpler and more natural one of making the Sundays date from the Festival itself; but, in case of there being in any year six Sundays after the Epiphany, the last had no special provision made for it; but a rubric appeared, ordering that "the sixth Sunday (if there be so many) shall have the same 'Psalm " (Introit), "Collect, Epistle, and Gospel that was upon the fifth." So things continued down to the time of the final Revision in 1661-a period of 112 yearsand then Bishop Cosin drew up our present Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the Sixth Sunday, not only adding thereby to the body of the old Collects a prayer of great beauty, and every way worthy of its position, but showing a keen appreciation of the rationale of Church seasons, which we cannot too much admire. For, with this finishing stroke put to the series, wonderful is the significance of the Epiphany Gospels. The Gospel for the Festival itself rehearses the manifestation of Christ in infancy to the wise men. The Gospel for the First Sunday recounts His manifestation in childhood to the doctors in the temple. Then follow the records of His miraculous manifestations, the earliest of all that at Cana of Galilee, of which miracle it is distinctly said that thereby Jesus "manifested forth His glory." The miraculous cures of the Jewish leper and of the Gentile centurion's servant follow in the Gospel for the Third Sunday. The miraculous calming of the stormy sea, and of the still more stormy demoniacs, forms the subject of the Gospel for the Fourth Sunday. The manifestation of Christ in the Church, where there is ever a mixture of good and evil -tares and wheat in the same harvestfield-is brought before us in the fifth Gospel. There was wanted surely, to close the series, a description of the final manifestation of Christ "in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory." 2 And this has been given us by Bishop Cosin's master-hand in the Gospel for the Sixth Sunday, and is referred to with great solemnity and magnificence in the i St. John ii. 11, 2 St. Matt. xxiv. 30. associated Collect, which is probably the finest devotional piece we have of the era of the Restoration. "O God, whose blessed Son was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil;" an inweaving into the Collect of the text in St. John's First Epistle, “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy" (literally " loose," apply a solvent to) "the works of the devil." Christ always appears in the Gospels as the personal antagonist of Satan, struggling with him throughout, and eventually triumphing over him gloriously. He foils him thrice with the sword of God's word in the Temptation; 2 He detects his suggestion beneath the soft speech, which inclined Him to shrink from the cross, and repudiates it with horror.3 He is continually casting out devils, and rescuing from their thraldom the souls and bodies of men. When His end approached, He recognised Satan as girding himself up for his final and most formidable assault; and when about to leave His disciples, the legacy which He bequeathed to them, the Elijah's mantle, which may be said to have floated down from His ascending form on their shoulders, was this; In my name they shall cast out devils." 5 But it might, perhaps, be thought that, as demoniacal possession is commonly supposed to exist no longer, men generally have but little concern with this triumph of Christ over the powers of darkness. Any such conclusion is entirely precluded by another statement of the Epistle, to the effect that" Christ was manifested to take away our sins." 11 John iii. 8. 2 See St. Matt. iv. 4, 7, 10. 5 St. Mark xvi. 17, Luke xxii. 53. 61 John iii. 5. Observe that this is a nearer object of His manifestation, one not lying so far back in the horizon of the Divine purpose as that of destroying the works of the devil. "He was manifested to take away our sins." But who is the author of sin? who first introduced it into human life? who first envenomed our nature with it as with a viper's poison? "That old serpent, which is the Devil."1 Sin, and sin only, constitutes the devil's hold upon every man. And this hold it is which Christ was manifested to loosen. He loosens it by His blood and grace. First, by His blood, whereby "a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction " was made for sin. Death, to which mankind had been consigned as the penalty of sin, was the Goliath's sword wherewith the devil mowed down the successive generations of the human race. The death of Christ, instigated by the devil, was the great means of defeating the devil, inasmuch as it was a propitiation for the sins of the whole world. And thus our David with Goliath's sword cut off Goliath's head; 2 and so it is written that "through death he destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil,"3 and that, "having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in the cross." Secondly, Christ applies a solvent to the works of the devil,-loosens the hold which sin has over us, by His grace. This grace, or, in other words, the influence of His Holy Spirit, saps and undermines our love of sin, and thus breaks the yoke wherewith Satan hath bound us so fast from our birth, that we cannot lift up ourselves towards God, and enjoy that blessed communion with Him, which is to the soul what the fresh air and the glorious sunshine are to the bodily frame. " 4 1 Rev. xx. 2. 2 See 1 Sam. xvii. 51. 3 Heb. ii. 14. + Col. ii. 15. |