Thou soon wilt awake me,

And bid me arise;
Will lead me, transfigured,
To paradise."

Then Anna took the babe upon her arms,

And pressed her mouth upon His infant lips;
Then came the Holy Spirit on her lips,
As erst upon Isaiah's, when the coal

Had touched his silent lips, and opened them;
With glowing heart she sang,

O Son of the King!

Though Thy birthplace was mean,
All-hearing, yet silent;

All-seeing, unseen;

Unknown, yet all-knowing;

God, and yet Son of man!

Praise to Thy name."

We complete our poetical illustrations of the Feast of the Purification with a poem from Dr. Monsell's "Spiritual Songs for the Sundays and Holidays throughout the Year," in which the narrative element is piously and unaffectedly combined with the didactic. The poem is entitled "Daily Prayer."

The days of separation past,
Commanded by the Word,

The Virgin Mary brings her child,
To offer to the Lord.

Thanksgivings for His wondrous love
Her grateful thoughts employ,
For blessings spared, and bliss bestowed,
Life, and a mother's joy!

Through childbirth she hath safely past,

Through fear of worldly shame,

Her body kept from grief and harm,

Her purity from blame.

And now she comes, her vows to pay,

His law her sacred guide,

Her glorious Infant in her arms,

Her husband by her side.

More than a mother's common joy
Her thoughtful heart beguiled,
For to her breast, she knew she prest
More than a common child.

The Hope of all the ends of earth

Then on her bosom lay,

Whom saints had sought, while Prophets taught

The coming of His day.

She knew the prize, for which all eyes
So long had strained, was won,
And how "that Holy Thing" was both
Her Saviour and her Son.

O wondrous mingling of the love
A mother only knows,

With the deep reverence, which a soul
Upon its God bestows!

Her arms His cradle-while His grace
Sustains her, lest she fall;

He draws from her life's daily food,
She draws from Him her all!

No glory of the days of old,
When great Jehovah bowed
Beneath the Temple gates of gold,
And entered in a cloud,

Was equal to that gentle light

Of reconciling Love,

Which now, through all the Holy Place,
Comes beaming from above.

God's rising Sun, on Israel's cloud
Its rainbow hues hath thrown,

A light to lighten Gentile homes,
The glory of His own.

But who were they, that knew that Light,

And, in that crowding throng,

Saw Jesus, in that little babe,

So meekly borne along?

The picturesque grouping suggested by the circumstances of the Presentation and Purification has attracted the genius of the Christian painter no less than the inspiration

of the Christian poet-the Temple and its accessories; the Holy Family, Joseph, Mary, and the Babe; Anna, the devout prophetess; and the God-instructed Simeon, whose ecstasy is either a pleasant or a portentous enigma to the ministering priest, and to the more or less interested spectators. And the sum of the lessons which the poets of the "double feast" inculcate is this-that in humility, obedience, and docility, we should imitate the Virgin; that we should imitate Christ in that reverence for Law which led Him as a helpless child into a fane of which he was the Divinity; that, with Anna, we should be constant in prayer and self-repression; and that, finally, as Simeon took up Jesus in his arms, we should so receive Him into our hearts, that at all times it may be said of Him and them," the Lord is in His holy temple."

*

* "Hodie Templi Dominum in Templum Domini Virgo Mater inducit." St. Bernard: First Sermon on the Purification.

22

St. Matthias.

FEBRUARY 24.

HE date of the introduction of this festival is involved in considerable obscurity. It appears

to have been established in the Greek Church in the course of the eleventh century. It was, perhaps, partially, observed in the West before that time; but it is entirely omitted in many ancient calendars. Dr. Waterland observes, in a MS. note on Wheatly, 'The oldest authority I have yet met with is the Calendar in Athelstan's Psalter, Cotton Libr. A.D. 703.'"*

The observance of the Day among ourselves has been attended with some confusion. The Common Prayer Book of Queen Elizabeth directs that, in Leap years, an intercalary or additional day should be supplied between the twenty-third and the twenty-fourth of February; and hence St. Matthias's Day, which in common years was observed on the twenty-fourth of February, was in Leap years celebrated on the twenty-fifth. But in the review of our Liturgy it was thought more proper to add a twenty-ninth day to February; so that now, there being no variation of the days, this festival must always keep to the twentyfourth of that month. In the Greek church, the Day of St. Matthias is observed on the ninth of August.

Although Matthias was not an Apostle of the first election, immediately called and chosen by our Saviour, and although *Riddle's Manual of Christian Antiquities.