repose. Witness these workmen, these sailors, and merchants. The Church of God rises at midnight. Rise thou, also, and observe the choir of the stars, the profound silence, the great quiet, which of itself can charm the passions of a troubled heart. Be amazed at the wonderful dispensation of thy God. Then the mind is purer, lighter, more subtle. This darkness and silence are enough to inspire it with compunction; but if you behold the heavens studded, as it were, with innumerable eyes, you will take delight in admiring the wisdom of the Creator. God is moved by nocturnal prayers, if you make the time of repose that of penitence." Speaking of the constant prayer and psalmody of the perfect Christian, Clemens Alexandrinus adds, “άλλà kαì výkтwp εvxαì núλiv." "The day," says Tertul“ἀλλὰ καὶ νύκτωρ εὐχαὶ πάλιν.” lian, "dies in the night, and is buried in darkness. The honor of the world is shrouded, and all substance is enveloped in blackness. All things are silent and amazed. Every where are justice and rest. Thus nature mourns for the departed light." St. Chrysostom, who had not foreseen what we now behold, in enumerating the beneficent works of God, takes especial notice of the merciful ordination of night to oblige men to suspend their labors who might otherwise be induced by avarice to deprive themselves of necessary repose. the woods and the wild seas rest. "Behold," he exclaims, "what tranquillity, what profound silence. Every thing in nature is hushed, every thing is in repose, even beasts and monsters possess quiet in sleep's calm bliss: there is an end also of complaint, and of those groans which proceed from the miseries of human life. The night is like a favorable port in which all men forget the storms with which they were agitated during the day." There is an end of the combats. of ambition. The friendly night, as Eschylus sings, wide over heaven's starspangled fields, holdeth her awful reign,§ and even the intemperate passions of the heroic world professed submission to its sway. νὺξ δ' ἤδη τελέθει· ἀγαθὸν καὶ νυκτὶ πιθέσθαι. It is night, when "Fatigued by the labors of the day, is it not," asks St. Cyrill of Alexandria, "through favor of the night that we recover the vigor which we had lost? What is more favorable than the night to promote our advance in wisdom? It is the time of those holy thoughts which raise our souls towards the Author of all good; it is then that we can devote ourselves more freely to reading and to the meditations of the divine oracles. Is it not during the night that we find in our soul a greater ardor for prayer, and in our voice more religious sounds to chant the sacred canticles? At what time does the remembrance of our sins present itself to us with the greatest force? Is it not during the night?" In the last book we remarked how familiar were men with death, and here we * Hom. 26, in Act. Apost. On Compunction, Lib. II. cap. 5. Tertull. de Resur. Carnis, cap. 12. § Agamem. Hom. II. VII. 28. see in their language abounding in solemn invocations, how they sympathized also with black night, the mother, not of the furies, but of peaceful and holy thoughts. "It seems to me," says Clemens of Alexandria, "that the night was called 'εuppóvn,' because at the time the soul is at rest from the senses, and partakes more of wisdom. On that account the mysteries are chiefly celebrated at night, and they signify the separation of the soul from the body."* Eustathius writing on the Iliad, cites the ancient proverb which ascribes counsel to the night, to which Eschylus seems to subscribe, saying, that during the day mortals are blind. In the arrangement of the ecclesiastical office these considerations have not been overlooked, for in the office of the night we may observe, that the lessons read are longer than those read in the day; because, as Cardinal Bona says, the night is for contemplation, the day for action. It appears from Tertullian, Athenagoras, Arnobius, Justin, and Minutius Felix, that the Christians were calumniated by the heathens on account of their nocturnal psalmody and vigils. They were called a people loving darkness, and addicted to impious rites. The Christians might, indeed, have referred them to their own poets, who speak of the sacred night,§ to Orpheus, who celebrated the night in noble hymns, to Cicero, who praises the nightly vigil consecrated to the gods,|| to Plato, who recommends the employing part of the night in transacting public business, and the affairs of domestic economy, for the reason that much sleep is injurious to the concerns of both body and soul. But the examples of the Old Testament supplied them with a sufficient authority, for there they read that Abraham rose up by night with his son to ascend the mountain and obey the voice of God; that it was by night when Jacob desired to see the mysterious ladder, and struggling with the angel till morning, received a benediction; that by night the Lord led the children of Israel out of Egypt; that Samuel the prophet prayed all night to the Lord; that Judith went out by night and prayed; that the royal David rose at midnight to confess to the Lord, and invited others to lift up their hands by night and to bless the Lord. "The devotion of vigils," says Nicetius, "has always been known to the saints. Isaia cried, 'De nocte vigilat spiritus meus ad te, Deus.' David says, 'memor fui nocte nominis tui, Domine.' Anna, the widow, departed not from the temple day and night, the holy shepherds too were keeping watch when they beheld the vision of angels in the sky; and the Saviour himself repeatedly reminds us of the need of watching by night, and taught us by his example, and admonished Peter in the time of the passion, 'non potuistis una hora vigilare mecum? Vigilate et orate;' words sufficient to awaken men from the sleep of death. The blessed apostles kept vigils. St. Peter in prison, and the disciples who were assembled in the house of Mary, and Paul, and Silas. As for the utility of vigils, I must now speak,” con *Stromat. Lib. IV. c. 22. § Eurip. Ion. 85. + Eumenid. 105. + De div. Psal. De Legibus, Lib. II. TIb. Lib. VII. tinues this holy bishop, "although this can be more easily felt by the exercise than described by the words of a narrator; for it is by tasting that we see how sweet is the Lord. A good thing, indeed, is meditation by day; a good thing is prayer; but much more grateful and efficacious is nocturnal meditation; because in the day various necessities disturb us, occupation deadens the mind, multiplied cares distract the sense; but the night is secret ; the night is quiet and opportune for prayer, and fitting those that watch; know, therefore, that vigils are agreeable to God." "The hour of midnight," says St. Basil, "the hour of repose and silence, is the most favorable to the pure operations of the soul. The sight and the hearing receive then no impression from external things, the soul is then alone; it is disengaged from all earthly things; it is wholly occupied with Gol. During these precious moments of the night, the memory of sins presents itself most forcibly to her." It is then that she discerns the rapid flight of life; while every thing else is at rest, the strides of death are more distinctly beard. The whole world seems abbreviated before her, as it did to St. Benedict in the night, and she may almost behold herself already entering upon the eternal world. Ah, well may the night seem solemn! These views may appear ungrounded and paradoxical to the present race of men; for alas! who now is permitted to taste the sanctified night of Christians, or even the Ambrosian night of Homer? Dead both to grace and nature, if men do not, like some of the ancients, devote the uight to the rites of Bacchus, it is made the time of all others in which, as if they studied purposely to contradict all that the holy Fathers have ever written, they least think of wisdom or of God, and thus the gloom of moral darkness is added to the obscurity of nature. To Adam after his fall, the natural night seemed full of horrors: "With black air Accompanied, with damps and dreadful gloom, Which to his evil conscience represented All things with double terror." But during the middle ages, the night continued to appear as it did to the primitive Christians. "The night time is often favorable to devotion," says Thomas à Kempis," and of no small assistance to sacred meditations."§ If we reflect on the observation of Quinctilian, who remarked that when sleep was intermitted, thought was assisted by the very darkness of the night, we shall have reason to expect that the people of the middle ages who so loved vigils, would be found upon investigation to have been eminently that thinking people, which the moderns are so fond of being considered. "The nights are dearer and more useful to me than the days," says the Abbot Peter, of St. Remi, in a letter to Berneredus, Abbot of St. * Nicetius Episcop de Vigiliis Servorum Dei. apud Dacher, Spicileg. Tom. III. I Lib. X. 6. Crispin. "My occupations by day hurry me away violently and fraudulently from myself, but the winter nights, by their length, confer on me a double benefit ; for they give rest to my body, and they renew my spirits. They give liberty to revisit celestial things, and to inquire into their secrets, and also to be remindful of my friends."* Lucas, Archbishop of Cosenza, in the thirteenth century, used also to pass the night in writing, "yet," says the writer of his life, who lived with him, "to the conventual vigils in the Church he would always hasten, humbly singing and watching with the brethren."+ Cardinal Bona observes, that the heavy and continued sleep of worldly people is as much opposed to health of body as to philosophy, according to the judgment of Aristotle,‡ of Hippocrates,§ and of Avicenna. Then in alluding to the nocturnal vigils, he exclaims, “O si scirent homines quam sanctæ, quam gratæ Deo, quam salutares ecclesiastici, sed et fideles singuli, simul in unum dives et pauper, noctem verterent in diem nocturnis precibus summa studio insistentes."|| St. Bernard shows how the night is peculiarly favorable for prayer. "When sleep involves the world in profound silence, then," saith he, "prayer will be purer and freer. How securely does it then ascend to God, the sole arbiter, and to the holy angel who is ready to present it on the supernal altar! How grateful is such prayer! How serene! and uninterrupted by any sound! How clear from all dust of terrene solicitude; exempt from all praise or flattery of mortal beholders! O insignem nocturni temporis prærogativam! O sacras noctes omni luce splendidiores !" Not now devoted to Thessalian arts, but conscious of angelic light: "O nox purpureo splendidior die, O nox delitiis omnibus affluens."** The heretics, beginning with Vigilantius, whom St. Jerome, on that account, calls the sleeper, condemned the nocturnal vigils and psalmody. Polidore Virgil, generally a rash and vain writer, affirms that they were always held in suspicion on account of the danger of immorality; but such an error, says Cardinal Bona, does not deserve to be confuted. In the third century, under Marcellus, it was, indeed, forbidden to keep vigils in the cemeteries, in those low regions where sad night hangs around the drowsy vaults, and where moist vapors steep the dull brows of those whose limbs are laid to rest, but no where is it written that the vigils in churches were condemned by the ancients. St. Philip Neri was even accustomed to pass the night frequently in the cemetery of St. Callistus on the Appian way.†† St. Romuald had such a horror of sleep after vigils, that if any one confessed to him that he had indulged in it he would not allow him that day to celebrate mass.‡‡ Crodegand, Bishop of Metz, * Petri Cellens. Epist. Lib. V. 1. § 2 Apth. 3 + Italia Sacra, Tom. IX. 206. De divina Psalmodia, 122. ** Card. Bona, p. 128. In Economicis. Petr. Damian in Vit.S. Romualdi. forbids the canons on pain of excommunication to sleep during the interval between nocturns and the early sacrifice, unless on account of sickness or with leave. The holy Abbot Elredus, calls that a blessed interval which intervenes after the nocturnal psalmody, until the rising of the sun; for then he says, the heart is most refreshed with the sweetness of devotion. It is at this hour that celestial visions have been generally imparted to holy men. The rocks and woods of Alvernia were still involved in the solemn grey which precedes the first rosy streaks on the eastern sky, when the winged seraph in living flames descended upon Francis, giving the last signets to his saintly flesh by the fervor which it kindled.— Gilbertus, praising the same interval, exclaims,-" Deus bone! hora illa noctis quàm sine nocte est, quàm nox illa illuminatio in deliciis! Orationes illæ privatim fiunt, sed privata non petunt." Thus St. Anthony, after passing the night in prayer, when the sun rose in the morning, used to say, that it came to interrupt his peaceful ecstasy. St. Benedict used to pass the night in the upper chamber of a tower which rose above the monastery; and it was there, when all the other brethren were taking rest, that the holy man, while standing at a window on the south side, looking towards Capua, had that vision of the whole world, abbreviated amidst a sudden splendor which exceeded the light of the brightest day.* Pope St. Leo, when at Rome, used three times every week to walk by night barefooted from the Lateran Palace to St. Peter's Church, privately, attended by two or three clerks, praying and chanting psalms.† When St. Odo was a monk at St. Martins' of Tours, he used in the night to go alone to pray at the sepulchre of the saint, which was at a distance of two miles from the college, and the wolves used to terrify him as he walked thither. St. Gregory of Tours relates, that Trojanus, Bishop of Saintes, used to go, in the darkness of the night, to visit all the holy places which were within the circuit of that city, and attended only by one subdeacon.§ Thus Neemias rose up by night, and a few men with him, and indicated to no one what God had put into his heart that he should do in Jerusalem. Thus did he go out by the gate of the valley by night, and before the fountain of the dragon, and thus did he contemplate the walls of Jerusalem broken down, and its gates consumed with fire. "For," says Hugo of St. Victor, "it is the duty of spiritual doctors to rise up often by night, and while other men sleep, to go about investigating the state of the Church, that they may discover how they may correct and raise up the things which have been defiled by sins, and overthrown by the tempests of war."|| These nightly exercises of devotion were practised also by the laity with great assiduity, during the middle ages. One of the most remarkable confraternities of the Church of Paris, was that bearing the date of the year 1205, and entitled "Confraternitas Beatæ Mariæ Parisiensis surgentium ad Matutinas," which was Chronica Casinensis, S. B. cap. 35. Chron. S. Monast. Casinensis, Lib. II. 87. De Gloria Confessorum, 59. | Allegor. in Lib. VIII. II. |