and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength." What is now needed is that the "little strength" should become much, that we should "go from strength to strength,"1 receive "grace for grace" out "of his fulness,"" until at length in the heavenly Zion we appear before God.

"So by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect." "Continual" is an insertion of the translators, and a most significant one. The first impulse to enter in at the open gate of everlasting life came purely and simply from God's Spirit-from "grace preventing us." We had no share whatever in it; human endeavour found no place here. Subsequently when the good desire has to be brought to good effect, human endeavour does find place. For those who are old enough to be moral agents at all there must be an effort and a struggle to enter in, as it is said; "Strive to enter in at the strait gate. But though our most earnest endeavours are a necessary condition of success, they are not the only, nor the principal condition. God's "continual help," His help at every stage of the process of sanctification, is as much demanded as the original impulse which He gives. He must work concurrently with us, as well as antecedently to us, not only "preventing us, that we may have a good will;" but also "working with us when we have that good will" (Article x.)

"3

For we

Balaam

"We may bring the same to good effect." may not, we must not, rest in "good desires." would have entered in at the gate of everlasting life, if a devout aspiration had sufficed; for he said with great sincerity and fervour; "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his !" 4 Good

1 Psalm lxxxiv. 7.

8 St. Luke xiii. 24.

2 St. John i. 16.

4 Num. xxiii. 10.

desires," says Francis of Sales, "are the flowers of the heart." A show of blossom is a beautiful thing; but a show of blossom is not fruit; the blossom falls off, the fruit abides. There is a Jacob's ladder set up on earth through the mediation of the Redeemer, the top of which reaches to heaven; and the Lord, standing above it1 at the opened gate of everlasting life, says to the soul of each disciple, "Come up hither,"2 Moreover, He has furnished us with angel's wings to help us in our upward journey, the wings being "good desires." But to what purpose are the wings, if we will not use them to rise, if we will not plant our feet upon the stairs of the great ascent, if we allow the wings to be singed by the fires of earthly concupiscence, while our feet are entangled by the sin which so easily besets us? Lord, by the attraction of Thy cross, by the power of Thy resurrection, yea, by the Holy Spirit, which Thou didst shed forth after Thine ascension, draw us after Thee, draw us unto Thee, "with cords of a man, with bands of love."

"3

1 See Gen. xxviii. 12, 13.

2 Rev. iv. 1.

3 Hosea xi. 4.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER EASTER.

Almighty Father, who hast given thine only Son to die for our sins,

and to rise again for our justification; Grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may alway serve thee in pureness of living and truth; through the merits of the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. [A.D. 1549.]

As the Prayer

THIS Collect is due to our Reformers.1 Book was originally drafted in 1549, it was appointed for the second Communion on Easter Day, as also for Easter Tuesday. Bishop Cosin at the last Review transferred it from Easter Tuesday, as the Collect of which it stood in the Black Letter Prayer Book of 1636, to the First Sunday after Easter. It falls in very aptly with the associations of this Sunday. For on this Sunday the Services of the primitive Church had reference to the circumstances and wants of those who had received Baptism on Easter Even. This was the Sunday when these neophytes

1 It was substituted in 1549 for the following, appointed by the Sarum Missal to be said on the "Dominica Prima post Octavas Pascha :"

Præsta, quæsumus, omnipotens

Deus, ut qui Paschalia festa peregimus, hæc, te largiente, moribus et vita teneamus. Per Dominum.— [Miss. Sar., col. 385. Burntisland, 1861.]

Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that we, who have completed the solemnisation of the Paschal festival, may, through thy bountiful goodness, hold fast the spirit of it in our life and conversation. Through the Lord.

Certainly the Collect, which has superseded this ancient one, is much fuller of Christian doctrine, and (as we have already seen that all the modern Collects are) much more express in its references to Holy Scripture.

laid aside and deposited in the churches the white garments, which they had received in connexion with their Baptism, and had worn during the eight subsequent days. Such persons were, of course, to be admonished that they should keep their baptismal vow. Hence the old Introit, which began Quasi modo geniti infantes, "As new-born babes, [desire the sincere milk of the word"],—a circumstance which led to the Sunday being called "Quasi modo Sunday." Hence, too, the reminder in the Epistle, that those who are indeed born of God overcome the world, and its reference to the Spirit and the water that bear record on the earth, and to the Three that bear record in heaven, into the name of which Three we are baptized.1 And hence, perhaps, the mention in the Gospel of Christ's grant to His Church of the power of absolution, the first of all absolutions being that conferred in Baptism.2 Now, if a prayer were to be drawn up for newly-baptized persons, that they might duly perform their vow, it would be difficult to frame a more apposite petition than this, that they might so put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that they might alway serve God (serve Him perpetually, even after laying aside that outward white garment, which, in the early Church, was made the emblem of baptismal innocence) in pureness of living and truth.

Three features strike us in this Collect, the two first characteristic, more or less, of all the Reformation Collects, the last common to them with those which have come down to us from an earlier source; 1st, a reference to the Epistles of the New Testament rather than to the Gospels, which makes these Collects (generally speaking) more doctrinal than the older prayers; 2dly, direct citation of the very words of Scripture; 3dly, balanced clauses, with See 1 John v. 4, 7. 8 ; and St. Matt. xxviii. 19. 2 See St. John xx. 23.

a rhythm for the ear, as well as some antithesis or correspondence for the mind.

"Almighty Father," a form of invocation which occurs nowhere else among the Collects; but a very consolatory, and a beautifully appropriate one. First, the Collect is an Easter Collect; and, since it is by the resurrection of Jesus Christ that God hath begotten us again unto a lively hope,1 the calling Him "Father" is here specially apposite. Next, the Sunday is, as we have seen, specially associated in the practice of the primitive Church with Baptism. In Baptism "I was made a member of Christ, the child of God."2 "The child of God," because "a member of Christ." For it is impossible to be grafted into the true Vine, made members of the body of which Christ is the Head, without participating in the Sonship of Him, to whom the Father said in raising Him from the dead, "Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee."3 Again, the Epistle beginning "Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world," in the opening of the Collect God is appropriately invoked as Father. And the title Almighty" is equally appropriate with that of "Father." For Christ's resurrection, which we are still celebrating, is spoken of as the most stupendous achievement of Divine power," the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead."4

"Who hast given thine only Son to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification ;"-a reference to St. Paul's words in Rom. iv. 24, 25, "Jesus our Lord . . . who was delivered" (surrendered to sufferings and death by His

1 See 1 Pet. i. 3.

2 Second Answer in Church Catechism. 3 See Acts xiii. 33. 4 Eph. i. 19, 20.