loveth not his brother abideth in death;"1 because the life of God, which is the true life of all rational creatures,— the life of love, has never been quickened in such an one. And again we hear from one Apostle that "faith without works is dead," 2 which is just tantamount to what another tells us; "though I have all faith, and have not charity, I am nothing." 8 For when St. James speaks of works as the vitalising principle of a religious profession, he clearly means works, not as separate and detached virtues, but as wrought into a living organism by love, works which express and betoken the life of love, that life which is akin to, and indeed is a scintillation from God's life, and in the absence of which whosoever liveth is counted dead before" Him.

11 John iii. 14.

2 James ii. 20.

81 Cor. xiii. 2.

CHAPTER XX.

THE FIRST DAY OF LENT, COMMONLY CALLED

ASH WEDNESDAY.

Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent ; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. [A.D, 1549].1

THIS Collect may be said to have made its earliest appearance in the First Prayer Book of Edward VI. (A.D. 1549). For, though its invocation and first clause seem to have been borrowed from one of the medieval Collects which were used at the benediction of the ashes on Ash Wed

1 Dr. Neale very pertinently calls attention to the fact that one would have expected the Collect about fasting to be appointed for the first day (not the first Sunday) of the Quadragesimal Fast, and gives the account of its not being so ["Essays on Liturgiology,"p. 55]:

"It is rather wonderful that the Collect for the first Sunday in Lent was not transposed with this. At the same time, it shows the most venerable antiquity of these compositions, that fasting should be for the first time mentioned not on the Wednesday, but on the Sunday; the four extra days, being, as every one knows, of comparatively modern introduction."

As "every one " is by no means so learned as Dr. Neale was, I subjoin the following from Bingham's "Antiquities of the Christian Church" [Book xxi. Chap. i. Sect. 5]:

"Who first added Ash Wednesday and the other three days to the beginning of Lent in the Roman Church, to make them completely forty, is not agreed among their own writers. Some say it was the work of

nesday1 (before they were laid on the heads of members of the congregation with the words, "Remember, man, Gregory the Great, but others ascribe it to Gregory II., who lived above a hundred years after, in the beginning of the eighth century. But, as Azorius says, It is not very material whether of the two was the author of the addition, since it is confessed to be an addition to Lent, after it had continued six hundred years without it. And this is a plain demonstration that Lent, in this notion at least, as taken for the precise number of a forty days' fast, could not be of apostolical institution, whatever it might be in any other form or duration."

1 This benediction, with its preceding rubric, ran as follows:Deinde fiat benedictio cinerum sine Dominus vobiscum et sine Oremus, sacerdote ad orientem con

verso.

Oratio.

Omnipotens sempiterne Deus, qui misereris omnium, et nihil odisti eorum quæ fecisti,* dissimulans peccata hominum propter pœnitentiam; qui etiam subvenis in necessitate laborantibus: benedicere et sanctificare hos cineres dignare, quos causa humilitatis et sanctæ religionis ad emundanda delicta nostra super capita nostra more Ninevitarum ferre constituisti ; et da per invocationem sancti tui nominis, ut omnes qui eos ad deprecandam misericordiam tuam super capita sua tulerint, a te mereantur omnium delictorum suorum veniam accipere, et hodie sic eorum inchoare sancta jejunia, ut in die Resurrectionis purificatis mentibus ad sanctum mereantur accedere Pascha, et in futuro perpetuam accipere gloriam. Per Dominum.

This expression is taken verbatim from the Vulgate Version of the Apocryphal Book of Wisdom (Ch. xi. 24).

Then let the benediction of the ashes be made, without The Lord be with you, and without Let us pray, the priest turning to the East.

Almighty and everlasting God, who hast compassion upon all men, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost not impute the sins of men by reason of their penitence; who also dost succour those who labour in necessity; Vouchsafe to blessand sanctify these ashes, which thou hast appointed us to bear upon our heads after the manner of the Ninevites, in token of humiliation and holy devotion, and in order to the washing away of our offences; and, by this invocation of thy holy name, grant that all those that shall bear them upon their heads, to implore thereby thy mercy, may obtain from thee [both] the pardon of all their offences, and [also] grace so to begin to-day their holy fasts, that on the day of the Resurrection they may be counted worthy to approach to the holy Paschal feast, and hereafter to receive everlasting glory. Through the Lord.

that thou art ashes, and unto ashes shalt thou return "), the body of the prayer-its petition and aspiration—are quite new, and inculcate most important doctrine.

"Almighty and everlasting God." "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." 1 One object of the prayer being to produce and foster in the heart a feeling of profound humiliation, those attributes of Almighty God are appropriately recited in the opening clause, which bring before us His Majesty and loftiness. He is omnipotent; He is everlasting; His being has no limits, but reaches from the past into the future Eternity.

Man's

"Who hatest nothing that thou hast made." The implication here is, though the thought is not expressed, "however man may have abused and spoiled it." nature became, by the fall, debased and depraved, blinded and hardened. And in the exercise of his free will he has reduced it to a lower pitch of depravity and debasement, so that an unbelieving and impenitent man, who rejects God's offers of grace, tramples under foot His laws, and defies his judgements, might seem to be an object of God's aversion. God, however, hates not him, but the sin that is in him. There are noble capacities in man, however depraved and debased-capacities of mind and heart -which God would gladly see unfolded in His service. Our nature was originally made with exquisite skill for the enjoyment of no lower an end than that of communion with God. And God cannot bear to see His handiwork spoiled and lost. There is something analogous to this feeling in our own minds. Could a painter,

a statuary, a poet, bear to see the productions, on which

1 Psalm xc. 2.

they had stamped the impress of their genius, consigned to the flames, or dashed or torn to pieces? There is a very beautiful and tender tie, binding us to the heart of God, which grows out of our creaturely relationship to Him. One of the old saints used continually to plead this tie with God in the touching words, "Qui me plasmasti, miserere mei,"-"Thou who hast moulded and formed me, have compassion on me." He hateth nothing that He hath made, but sees in it its great capacity under all its superinduced baseness. He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."

"And dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent.” It is a wise policy in prayer to lay down, in the first instance, some word of God, some Scriptural promise, as a groundwork on which our petition may rise. Thus shall we build our prayer stably and firmly, and effectually obtain what we ask. The Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testaments, abound with promises to repentance. The passage in the first Chapter of Isaiah, where we are exhorted to "wash and make" "" us clean;" to " put away the evil of" our "doings from before" God's "eyes;" to 66 cease to do evil ;" and "learn to do well;" with the assurance which is given to those who do so, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool," 2 is perhaps the grandest, in point of style, of all these promises. And lest any one should say that under the Gospel, where faith more especially comes into view, repentance is superseded as a condition of pardon, St. Peter, in the second sermon delivered by him after the descent of the Holy Ghost, says, "Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out."3

1 See Matt. v. 45.

Vers. 16, 17, 18.

3 Acts iii. 19.