arriage, but is also a symbol of the purity and
unbroken constancy with which they should be "surely performed and
kept."

_Observance of the Church Year._--The Church Year was a very natural
development for the early Christians, familiar with the great annual
festivals of the ancient Jewish Church. By a series of anniversaries
and holy-days, with suitable services, the different seasons of the
year were in like manner made to serve a Christian purpose. Time as it
passes thus becomes a perpetual memorial of the events of our Saviour's
life, and of the work and virtue of the Apostles and other saints.

The year is divided into eight great seasons: Advent, Christmas-tide,
Epiphany-tide, Lent, Easter-tide, Ascension-tide, Whitsuntide, and the
Trinity season. Of these Whitsuntide is the shortest, {116} lasting
but one week. The Trinity season, including from twenty-three to
twenty-eight weeks, is the longest. The four greater Festivals are
Christmas, Easter, Ascension, and Whitsunday. The penitential seasons
are Advent, preceding Christmas, and Lent, preceding Easter. The two
great Fasts are Ash-Wednesday, at the beginning of Lent, and Good
Friday, the day of our Lord's crucifixion. Other days of fasting and
abstinence are the forty days of Lent, all the Fridays in the year, the
Ember-days (the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday before the four stated
Times of Ordination to the holy ministry), and the Rogation-days (the
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Day).

From Advent, with which the Church Year begins, to Trinity, our Lord is
set before us in His life and His work. "We live over again, year by
year, the time of the Incarnation from Bethlehem to Bethany." The
design is to "bring out, and to bring home to the minds and hearts of
all who shall reverently use these holy festivals and fasts, the great
representative facts of Christ's life--to exhibit and to glorify Him.
And that not in a vague, mystic, or one-sided way, but by setting Him
before us in all the majesty and beauty and completeness of His
character, from the manger to the Cross, and from {117} the Cross up to
the mediatorial throne. Thus a complete Christ, if one may so speak,
is set before us. All the great facts of His life are marshaled into
line and proportion; every feature and lineament of His character is
revealed and illuminated; every office He sustained in the work of
redemption is affirmed and emphasized."

In the long seas