By the spoiled and empty grave,
By the souls He died to save,
By the conquest He hath won,
By the saints before His throne,
By the rainbow round His brow—

Son of God! 'tis Thou! 'tis Thou!

The last few lines of the preceding poem have, in fact, carried us over the sadness of the Passion to the joys of Easter and the glories of the Ascension. It is necessary for us, therefore, to retrace our steps for the few minutes which we wish either to spend beside the Tomb, or to occupy with a very few observations on

EASTER-EVE; OR, HOLY SATURDAY.

Or this day, Dr. Neale remarks that it "has in few modern languages any more recondite name than in our own. In Portugal it is Sabbado de Alleluia, from the triumphant resumption of the Alleluia in the first Vespers of Easter. In some parts of Germany it is Judas Saturday. In the East, in the same way as the rest of the week, it is Great Saturday, except among the Armenians, who call it Burial Saturday." *

Great Saturday, or the Great Sabbath, was the only Saturday which the Eastern Churches, and some of the Western, observed as a fast. All other Sabbaths, about which the hallowing effect of Jewish associations, especially amongst the Oriental Christians, still lingered-all other Sabbaths, even those in Lent-were observed as festivals, together with the Lord's Day. "But this Great Sabbath was observed as a most solemn fast, which some joined with the fast of the preceding day, and made them both but one continued fast of superposition; and they who could not thus join both days together without some refreshment, yet observed the Saturday with great strictness, holding out their fast till after midnight, or cock-crowing *Church Festivals and their Household Words.

CHRIST IN THE TOMB.

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in the morning, which was the supposed time of our Lord's Resurrection.” * The Church might well be exceptionally humbled in her observance of this Day, for it was the day of the utter humiliation of her Lord, during all the hours of which He lay, as to His body, in the grave, and as to His soul, sojourned in the place of the departed.

The poetry of Holy Saturday is, therefore, essentially the poetry of the tomb. It is thus that George Herbert moralizes over the "Sepulchre :"

O blessed Body! whither art Thou thrown?
No lodging for Thee, but a cold hard stone?
So many hearts on earth, and yet not one
Receive Thee?

Sure there is room within our hearts good store;
For they can lodge transgressions by the score;
Thousands of toys dwell there, yet out of door
They leave Thee.

But that which shows them large, shows them unfit.
Whatever sin did this pure rock commit,

Which holds Thee now? who hath indited it

Of murder?

Where our hard hearts have took up stones to brain Thee,

And, missing this, most falsely did arraign Thee;

Only these stones in quiet entertain Thee,

And order.

And as of old, the Law by heavenly art
Was writ in stone; so Thou, which also art
The letter of the Word, find'st no fit heart

To hold Thee.

Yet do we still persist as we began,

And so should perish, but that nothing can,

Though it be cold, hard, foul, from loving man

Withhold Thee.

The only other poem which we offer as illustrative of Burial Saturday-to adopt for a moment the Armenian

* Bingham's Antiquities of the Christian Church.

name-is one which regards the grave of the Saviour as a place of rest after His work and Passion. The author of the poem is S. Franck; and its theme is "Easter Even." It is given in the following English version in Miss Winkworth's "Lyra Germanica," where it takes its motto from the Gospel for the Day :-" And Joseph wrapped the body in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock."

"Solomon Franck was born on the 6th March, 1659, in Weimar, and was afterwards secretary to the Consistory in the same town, where he died on the 11th June, 1725. Nothing further is known of his life. He was a pious man, who early learned to pray with Moses, So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. For he composed many hymns on death and heaven; and in his hymn-writing aimed at following the example of Rist. This hymn, addressed to "Jesus in the Grave," is one of seven Passion hymns in the second volume of Franck's poems, published in 1716."*

Rest of the weary! Thou

Thyself art resting now,

Where lowly in Thy sepulchre Thou liest:
From out her deathly sleep

My soul doth start, to weep

So sad a wonder, that Thou Saviour diest!

Thy bitter anguish o'er,

To this dark tomb they bore

Thee, Life of life-Thee, Lord of all creation!
The hollow rocky cave

Must serve Thee for a grave,

Who wast Thyself the Rock of our Salvation!

O Price of Life! I know

That when I too lie low,

Thou wilt at last my soul from death awaken;

* Rev. Theodore Kübler's Historical Notes to the Lyra Germanica.

THE PERVIGILIUM.

Wherefore I will not shrink

From the grave's awful brink;

The heart that trusts in Thee shall ne'er be shaken.

To me the darksome tomb

Is but a narrow room,

Where I may rest in peace from sorrow free:
Thy death shall give me power

To cry in that dark hour,

O Death, O grave, where is your victory?

The grave can nought destroy,
Only the flesh can die,

And e'en the body triumphs o'er decay:
Clothed by Thy wondrous might

In robes of dazzling light,

This flesh shall burst the grave at that last Day.

My Jesus, day by day,

Help me to watch and pray,

Beside the tomb where in my heart Thou'rt laid.

Thy bitter death shall be

My constant memory,

My guide at last into Death's awful shade.

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Of all the vigils of the Church the most famous was that between the Great Sabbath and Easter-Day; for it was the expectation of the rising Saviour. "This is the night," Lactantius says, "which we observe with a pervigilium, or watching all night, for the advent of our King and God: of which night and its observance there is a twofold reason to be given-for in this night our Lord resumed His life after His Passion; and in the same night He is expected to return to receive the Kingdom of the World. For He is our Liberator, and Judge, and Avenger, and King and God, whom we call Christ."*

St. Jerome mentions" a tradition among the Jews that Christ would come at midnight, as He did upon the Egyptians at the time of the Passover; and thence," he

Divina Institutiones; Lib. vii., De Vita Beata, c. 19.

says, "I think arose the Apostolic custom not to dismiss the people on the Paschal vigil before midnight, expecting the coming of Christ: after which time, presuming upon security, they kept the day a festival." *

This night was also famous above all others as a season for the Baptism of Catechumens, who were thereby rendered eligible to partake of the Holy Eucharist on Easter-day; for our observations on which Festival we defer any further remark upon the illuminations or other symbolical expressions of the joy attendant upon this as the greatest of the Baptismal seasons.

*Commentarius in Evangelium Matthæi; Lib. iv., c. xxv., v. 6.