Sunday Reflections

ADVENT SUNDAY

Collect. Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast

away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which Thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when He shall come again in His glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through Him who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. AMEN.

Epistle. Rom. xiii. 8.

Gospel. St. Matthew xxi. 1.

How

"Behold the King cometh unto thee." great were the expectations and longings for that coming! How wondrous the preparations for this Son of Man! The earth made ready, through countless millions of geologic ages, by ice and fire, upheaval and flood. The mountains of difficulty come down, the crooked places are made straight. His people are chosen out, educated and prepared through the centuries that through them the King might come to command all nations and enlighten all. This preparedness is part of the Advent message.

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ADVENT SUNDAY

But for what is our preparation? To receive the light of transfiguration which we are to put on. The vision of revelation is all light, it is the manifestation of the glory of love. "Now, in the time of this mortal life," put on the light. Don't think that you are to be transfigured when you die. Let your life now be transfigured in His light. Let Him be your King. Live royally.

To-day shall I walk with head erect and heart full of kindness, showing to others something of the goodness vouchsafed to me, or shall I dwell in the entanglements of inferior things? With what an easy air the lesser duties can be done and turned aside if the heart is right royal! Live now, in every duty, every relation of life, that we may be ready to rise to those higher glories, reserved for those that love Him. Putting away the things of darkness, and loathing them ; putting on the Lord Jesus, and radiant with His life.

Oh, the great meaning of life! The worth of its hours, its emptiness to so many, its frivolity to some, its ruin to others! I am, as it were, ever sitting at the portals of young life, seeing it measured out in such differing quantity, according to the choice of the young; for Moses' great word still stands-"choose."

The lesson of the Epistle is the getting rid of the commercial spirit in things divine. "Owe no man anything." Certainly, pay your debts, keep honest commercially; but there is a fulfillment of the law of the kingdom beyond this.

ADVENT SUNDAY

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Owe always love; it is ever to pay, and thus the whole law will be fulfilled.

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The lesson in Isaiah prophesies the breaking up of the old kingdom, the establishment of the City of Righteousness," the "City of the Faithful," this City of God whose glorious vision rose on the soul of St. Augustine, and was dreamed by Dante in his Monarchia. A rule of One, under whom kings rule, and ministers decree justice, an organized, outward rule. How can we wonder that in a literal age, when an Origen or a St. Francis lived, the struggle for the supremacy of Church over State should arise and that the full force of "render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's and to God the things that are God's " should be weakened? The battle had to be fought in order that mankind might come to understand that the kingdom of Christ, while it has a form, is intrinsically not of this world; that its citizenship is in heaven.

The New Jerusalem, coming down from heaven, needs no light of sun or moon. The Lord is the light thereof. Its doors are open day and night. Into it enters nothing unclean. All its members are clothed with the armour of light; their life is hid with Christ in God. By the Incarnation assurance is given of the reality of this world of light and life and love; beginning here and completed when He shall come in His glorious Majesty.

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ADVENT SUNDAY

Blessed Lord, give us a firm grasp on the large and enduring realities, a portion in the Eternal Years, a dwelling place in the Tabernacle not made with hands. Order all our life, let Thy tender, pitying love transfigure all our duties, and clothe us with the light of Thine eternal beauty.

THE SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT Collect. Blessed Lord, who hast caused all Holy Scrip

tures to be written for our learning; grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of Thy Holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which Thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. AMEN.

Epistle. Rom. xv. 4.

Gospel. St. Luke xxi. 25.

"The blessed hope of everlasting life" has efficacy to still the small jars, antagonisms, incongruities, misapprehensions of this close pent up sphere of ours. It lifts our fellows into a larger place as well as ourselves. But how feebly we often grasp our best blessings and then how regretful we are in the retrospect! I do not think this is more true in our relation to our dear ones who have left us than it is of the gifts of God to us in His life lessons: the choice of the current days, the riches of His word in the Scriptures.

The words of Holy Writ, of the Lord, of the prophets whom our Lord studied and loved, what an illumination is about them! How can they be to us other than sacred--polarized? That illustration helps to make us see the forces at work in